With over 14,000 students and over 2,000 staff members, user account management is a challenging task in any event. Most people would likely be surprised to learn, then, that creation of new accounts for new staff members and students who enroll mid-year has been handled manually. As you might imagine, this can result in substantial delays for newcomers to our district to receive accounts that they can use to log in to district computers, and to use the communication tools that we provide.
In order to address this inefficiency, and ultimately improve access for our students and staff, the district is implementing the User Management Resource Administrator (UMRA), which will allow for automatic synchronization of student and staff information between our student/staff databases and network services, such as Active Directory, which handles logins to computers on our network, our Google Apps domain, Office 365, Follett Destiny (library catalog software), and Microsoft Exchange. By automating this process, we can make the process of creating new users – and suspending departed ones – both automatic and virtually-immediate, eliminating the delays that students and staff have often experienced as it relates to getting access to new accounts.
As we approach the implementation (timeline is currently 5-6 weeks out), we will communicate information to buildings and department heads regarding what new users need to do in order to get access to their respective accounts.