Adding and Editing Groups in School Manager

School Manager uses two types of Groups: Synced Groups and Local Groups. You can use Groups to:

• Allow or block groups of users access to certain websites or filtering categories
• Specify which staff, teachers or students a School Manager user can access
• Allow staff or teachers to bypass filtering
• Limit which staff, teachers or students appear in Community reports
• Restrict which students’ Community timelines are shared with guardians
• Assign teachers to classes in Classwize and to access Classwize reporting
• Restrict Classwize functions to staff, teachers or multiple students

Synced Groups

The primary source of your Groups is a sync from your third-party authentication service, such as LDAP, Microsoft Entra ID Directory, Google Directory. Syncing your Users and Groups ensures School Manager is using the most current data from your registrar and school administration. Your Synced Groups are displayed with your Local Groups in School Manager, but School Manager cannot be used to edit synced data.

Local Groups

The secondary source of Groups is manually entered Local Groups. Local groups are managed within School Manager and are used when creating Groups in your third-party directory is not practical. You can use Local Groups to resolve immediate needs, set up a very small number of users or group users for a short period of time. You can also use Local Groups to combine synced Groups.

A good example for using a Local Group is to support two year-groups of students preparing for a Model United Nations event. The students and teachers need access to political and health news that is normally blocked by your Filtering Policies. You can add a Local Group and create a Filtering Policy to allow access to specific topics and websites. When the event is over, you can deactivate the Filtering Policy and Archive the Group.

Adding a Local Group

Use Local Groups for temporary, immediate or very small sets of users. If you have a large number of users or the Group will be active for more than a few weeks, create the Group in your directory.

1. Go to Configuration > Users and Groups > Groups.
2. Select Add Group. 
3. Enter a Group Name.
4. Select Add.
5. Complete one of the following actions:
    

   Combine Synced and/or Local Groups	Enter three or more characters of the group’s name in Subgroups. Select the Group name.  Repeat until all Groups are listed in Subgroups. Select Save.
   If your school uses Classwize and the Subgroups or Users contain students	Teachers need to be associated with the Group: Enter three or more characters of the teacher’s name in Owners.  Select the Teacher.  Repeat until all Teachers are listed in Owners. Select Save.
   Manually add Users	Select Save. Go to Configuration > Users and Groups > Users. Select Search. Enter three or more characters of a user’s first or last name. Select the User to open their page. Select Group Membership. Enter three or more characters of the new group’s name. Select your Local Group. Select Save. Repeat the steps until all Users are added to the Group.

Searching for Groups

You can search for Local or Synced Groups by the Name or Description. The search is a step in finding Local Groups you want to edit or archive. 

The search can also be used to spot check a few of the Synced Groups you are familiar with. You must use your directory admin panel to edit your Groups and then manually run the sync in School Manager to verify your changes.

1. Select Search.
2. Enter 3 or more characters unique to the Name or Description of the Group.
   • You can edit the characters in your search at any time to update the results.
   • The Provider column identifies the source of your Group data, for example GOOGLE, AZURE, LDAP or LOCAL. 
3. (Optional) Refresh your browser to clear your results and display all Groups.

Editing Local Groups

You can edit the Subgroups and Owners in a Local Group. You can also find a link to the Users manually added to the Local Group and open the User page to remove them from the Group. 

School Manager cannot be used to edit Synced Groups. If you need to edit a Synced Group, you must use the user and group functions provided by your third-party service (for example, your Google Workspace Admin Console or your Microsoft Entra Portal).

1. Locate the relevant group in Configuration> Users and Groups > Groups.
2. Select the group’s name or its corresponding Edit button on the Operations column.
3. On the Manage Group screen, you can complete the following actions:
    

   Remove a Subgroup or Owner	Select the X after a Group or Owner name.  Select Save.
   Add a Subgroup or Owner	Enter the name of the Group or Owner. Select the Group or Owner name.  Select Save.
   Remove a manually added User from the Group	Search for a User.  Select the User. (The User page is displayed.)  Select the X to remove the Group Membership. Select Save.

Archiving a Local Group

Archiving a Local Group deactivates the Group. Before you archive a Group, you must disable or remove the Group from policies to avoid error messages. You can reactivate the Group or reference the use of the archived Group in the future. Keeping an archived Group can be helpful. You can temporarily enable the Group if your users have issues after you archive a Group.

1. Go to Filtering > Content Filtering.
2. Find the Content Filtering or Content Modification Policy containing the Group:
    

   Turn off the Policy and reuse or reference it in the future	Select the Enable toggle to the left of the Policy name.  The policy is disabled when the toggle color is gray.
   Remove one or more Groups and continue to use the Policy	Select the Edit icon (pencil). Select the X to the right of the Group name in Criteria. Select Save Policy.
   Permanently remove the Policy	Select the Delete icon (trash can).

3. Go to Configuration > Users and Groups > Groups.
4. Select the Search.
5. Enter 3 or more characters from the Provider Name, Provider Description or Provider DN.
6. Select the Provider Name to open the Group.
7. Check the Archived checkbox.
8. Go to the bottom of the window and select Save.

Restore an Archived Local Group

You can restore an archived Local Group to be reused or as part of a troubleshooting process. After the Group is restored, you can Edit the Subgroups, Owners or manually added Users as needed. The Local Group can also be restored as a troubleshooting step if you have other issues.

1. Go to Configuration > Users and Groups > Groups.
2. Select the Status column label twice to display the Archived Groups at the top of the list.
    
   

   Tip

   School Manager only shows Archived Groups if the Group is in the first 50 results. Archived Groups are hidden if they would be displayed after the 50th result.

3. Select the name of the Archived Group.
4. Uncheck the Archived checkbox.
5. Select Save.