An introduction for Managers

A guide to help Managers understand their role, their permissions and levels of access in Educator Portfolios.

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Written by Support
Updated over a week ago

This article includes information on the new premium Educator Portfolios platform.

Note: This article uses the terms 'independent service' (single-site services with one location) and 'network' (multisite organisations with multiple locations).

Storypark's Educator Portfolios are designed to help the management of an organisation to:

  • Support ongoing capability development to strengthen quality practice, consistency and impact across your organisation

  • Promote ongoing reflective and intentional teaching that improves outcomes for children

  • Align educators with your organisation's purpose and goals

  • Enable your professional learning and development as management to go further, to be reinforced and collaborative

  • Streamline important processes such as induction and appraisal

  • Set, work towards, and save evidence against educators' areas of focus

  • Enable more collaboration between educators and their managers, mentors and peers

  • Provide each educator with their own space they feel proud of

  • Keep everything in one place, removing the need for multiple platforms and trainings.

In this guide:

Manager contributors work differently in network services and independent services. This article is divided into two sections. Please read the first section if you work in a network service, and read the second section if you work in an independent service. first section

For network services:

What is a Manager in Educator Portfolios?

As a contributor with 'Manager' access, you have an additional level of management and oversight over your team's portfolios than a standard contributor.

There are three types of Manager contributors:

  • Managers

    The indirect managers (eg. an educator's manager's manager) who needs access to each portfolio for the purposes of pedagogical or HR support. They can add, remove, and edit the contributor-type of their team's contributors.

  • Direct Managers
    A manager who an educator reports to directly. For an educator, this might be their Head Teacher or Room Leader. For a Head Teacher this might be their Service Manager). A Direct Manager has the same access to each portfolio as a Manager, but they are notified of certain portfolio updates whereas Managers are not.

  • Network Administrators

    A Head Office manager who manages the organisation's portfolio subscription and setup. Just like a Manager they can add, remove, and edit the contributor-type of anyone in their organisation.

Adding, changing or removing a Manager

Portfolio owners cannot add or remove their own Managers or Direct Managers. Only Management can do this.

A Network Admin needs to assign the first Manager to each portfolio owner, then that Manager can assign others if needed.

To assign a Manager:

  1. Visit an educator's Contributors page and tap the 'Add contributors' tile.

  2. Place your cursor in the search field and either begin typing or select from the educators listed.

  3. Check the 'Manager' checkbox, and then also check 'Direct Manager' if appropriate.

  4. Tap the 'Add contributor' button and they will now appear on the Contributors page.

Change a contributor's role

To change a standard contributor into a Manager or Direct Manager (or vice versa):

  1. Visit an educator's Contributors page

  2. Find the contributor's tile whose role you wish to change

  3. Click the dropdown arrow in the top right corner, and select the contributor role you'd like to change them to

  4. Check the 'Manager' checkbox, and then also check 'Direct Manager' if appropriate.

  5. That contributor will immediately have the permissions of their new role

Clicking the dropdown arrow in the top right corner is also the way you remove a contributor completely.

Manager and Direct Manager differences

Managers and direct managers have the same level of access as each other, the difference is only in what notifications they receive.

  • Direct managers receive notifications of certain activity within a portfolio, such as when plans are started. This is so they are aware of portfolio updates and can support their direct team members where needed.

  • Managers don't receive any notifications and instead must visit their contributor dashboard to see what activity has been happening. This is because managers could potentially be contributing to hundreds of portfolios and could be overwhelmed with notifications that aren't relevant to them.

Note: If a (non-direct) manager wants to receive notifications of updates to their teams' portfolios they can simply change their status to 'Direct Manager'.

For independent services:

What is an Admin contributor?

In independent services, service admins have 'Admin contributor' access rights over each of their team's portfolios. Depending on how your service works, there may be one or more admins, such as the service manager and possibly room leaders.

As a contributor with 'Admin contributor' access, you have an additional level of management and oversight over your team's portfolios than a standard contributor.

Can I add or remove an Admin contributor?

Only standard Contributors can be added and removed. Admin contributors are automatically assigned and cannot be removed.

What can Admin contributors access?

Admins can:

  • Invite, change permissions of, and remove contributors

  • Assign you focus areas and see the links you've made to them

  • Review your focus areas at the end of a cycle

  • Start plans for you from a portfolio template. If the template allows it, they may also edit and comment on the plans

  • Start and contribute to new conversations (they cannot access conversations they are not added to)

  • View and respond to any portfolio story that you've changed from private to visible

  • View your portfolio reports

  • Message you via your manager check-in

  • Give you recognition, and read what others have written

  • View and assign To Dos.

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