How schools in Moray manage staff Glow passwords

Context

Allan Reid (formerly Moray Glow Development Officer) and I were looking for a way to give schools more autonomy in managing their Glow Accounts. As a result of a change as part of the ongoing Glow Refresh, we are now able to give staff in schools the ability to manage the passwords of other members of staff without assigning full Accounts Service Manger (ASM) permissions.

The Glow roll-out began in Moray in Spring 2009 and over the course of a year the vast majority of staff in schools in the authority had logged into Glow. As of June 2010, ASMs had been trained in only a small number of Moray schools so requests for staff Glow accounts to be unlocked and passwords reset were dealt with centrally. As Glow is being used more and more regularly by staff in Moray, the number of support calls about forgotten passwords or locked accounts was increasing and it was felt that that this could be managed in a more efficient way. The facility to assign members of staff in schools with the permission to manage other staff passwords became available and this was the ideal way to achieve our goal.

Ingredients

1. A Glow login
2. An authority or school ASM to assign the required permission
3. The names of individuals within an establishment to assign the permission to
4. The guide explaining how to manage staff passwords

Recipe

1. Contacting schools

The following correspondence was sent to all schools asking them to identify an individual, or multiple individuals, to be given the permission to manage the passwords of other staff members:

“As part of the ongoing Glow refresh we now have the ability to assign staff the right to unlock other staff Glow accounts and reset staff passwords. In the event of a staff member being locked out of Glow, forgetting their password, or having written it down incorrectly, this could be resolved easily by another member of staff at your school. Whilst staff can already reset pupil passwords, devolving the right to reset staff passwords will allow your school to become more autonomous in managing your Glow accounts.

These rights can be assigned to any number of people in your school although it might make sense for staff who have previous experience of using Glow to be thus empowered in the first instance. Suitable candidates might be a Glow Mentor, IT technician, administrator, senior manager or any member of teaching staff with well developed ICT skills.

If you would like a member or members of staff at your school to be able to manage other staff passwords, please forward their name(s) to us by…”

Once schools had replied, the details of each member of staff identified were added to a spreadsheet and the required permission assigned.

2. How do I assign the permission?

3. Guidance

An email was sent to each named person with a step-by-step guide, detailing how to manage staff passwords. The guidance can be found in the following document:

How to Unlock Staff Accounts and Reset Passwords

Guidance on how to reset pupil passwords was also sent as many staff did not know how to do this or that they had the required permission to do so. Click the following link to download this document:

How to Unlock Pupil Accounts and Reset Pupil Passwords

4. How to manage another staff member’s password

5. Other Associated Changes

Prior to this Glow change a ‘Change other user’s profile’ link could be accessed by all staff from the Glow Settings webpart on their Staff home and could be used to edit pupil profiles. Unless you have been given the new ‘Change other user’s password’ permission by your school or authority ASM, this link will no longer be visible.

To locate and edit a pupil profile, use the Change profile link in your Glow Settings Webpart as shown below:

Handy hint – To locate a member of staff or a pupil, use the advanced search to search by first name, last name and base establishment name.

Please refer to the document above for full guidance on how to do this.

Impact

The majority of schools in Moray have at least one member of staff who can manage other staff passwords. There have been very few support calls for Glow passwords to be reset or accounts to be unlocked so this has been a success.

Ross Watson, Glow Development Officer
M: +44 (0)787 2415354
E: R.Watson@LTScotland.org.uk
Learning and Teaching Scotland
The Optima, 58 Robertson Street, Glasgow, G2 8DU
Moving Education Forward – www.LTScotland.org.uk