Managing data in bulk FAQ

This article covers common questions regarding the bulk management of data. If you cannot find an answer to your query in this article, check our dedicated section of the Help Centre on this topic here.

Does Arbor edit or delete our data?

Arbor acts as a data processor for schools or MATs, meaning it holds data but does not edit or delete it without consent. Data management is the responsibility of the school or MAT, and Arbor will only make changes with prior approval. Arbor will inform organizations of any necessary updates and will not automatically delete old data.

Your school or MAT is the data controller for data on your School or MAT MIS site. Arbor is the data processor, meaning we hold the data but are not responsible for it.

Arbor will never edit, change or delete data without consent:

• Arbor Support won't edit your data at your request. As your school or MAT is the data controller, regular edits need to be made by your organisation.
• Arbor will not automatically delete or remove old data, such as past scheduled events or data that may no longer be relevant or correct. For student, guardian and staff profiles, here's how your school can manage them: Managing data retention for your MIS
• If you get in touch with Arbor with an issue, and if after investigation by us the only resolution is for us to edit your data, we will only do so with consent. For large changes, we will also request consent from your Senior Leadership Team before actioning anything.
• There may be scenarios where we identify that we need to update your data. Before doing so, we will inform your organisation of any changes we will make.

You may also see instances of Arbor Admin in your logs. This will appear when:

• there is a rule you have set up in your site to automate data, such as auto-calculation of period targets in assessment marksheets
• there is a Third Party App you have approved that has permission to write data into Arbor.
• this data was imported into Arbor as part of the migration from your previous MIS.

Should you have any further questions or would like to report an issue, contact the Arbor Support Team if supported by Arbor using the Contact Us form in the top right of the Help Centre, or your Support Partner if not supported by Arbor.

Can we update usernames in bulk?

Usernames in Arbor are typically set to email addresses, and while bulk importing of email usernames is possible, non-email usernames cannot be updated in bulk. Individual non-email usernames can be changed through user profiles.

By default, users' login usernames are set to their email address. If there is no email address, a non-email username is generated by Arbor for them. It is not possible to define a specific default format for these usernames.

If you use email addresses as usernames, you can import these in bulk: Bulk import student, guardian or staff email addresses

It is not possible to update non-email usernames in bulk.

To update an individual's non-email username:

1. Go to their profile
2. Click on the User Details section
3. Click Change username.

Can we import or upload data in bulk from an Excel spreadsheet or CSV?

There are various places where you can update data in bulk - take a look at the Data Quality Dashboard for where you can get started. For certain data, you can upload this in bulk using our spreadsheet templates:

• Once you've set up your assessments, you can import marks: Using the assessment import spreadsheet
• Add new starters to your site alongside guardian details: Uploading Applicants
• Add email addresses: Bulk import student, guardian or staff email addresses
• Once they've been set up, upload extra detail about students in bulk: User Defined Fields (UDFs)
• Add students to lesson registers: Using our bulk enrolment spreadsheet

You can also import certain data if it was previously stored in third-party applications or you didn't have access to it at the time of migration using our Entity importer

For other things, such as Timetables, we may have a specific importer such as for TimeTabler or Edval. This would not be from Excel.

Can we delete staff in bulk?

No, it is not possible to remove staff profiles in bulk. This is a safety feature to prevent large amounts of data from being deleted accidentally. You would need to delete staff profiles individually.

The Workforce Census collects data for the past academic year, so we recommend keeping staff profiles for reporting and reference purposes until the data retention policy dictates.

When a staff member leaves, you should end their employment to disable access.

Why do downloads have duplicate columns for Year Groups or Registration Forms?

This article explains how to handle duplicate columns for Year group or Registration form when downloading tables or reports. It provides steps to remove extra columns by downloading as a CSV, editing in Excel, or adjusting unique identifier settings.

You can use this setting to automatically include a column for various student identifiers when downloading a table or report to Excel or Live Feed: Customising the download with Unique Student Identifiers

This means that for tables that already include a column for Year group or Registration form, a download or export will include two of these columns.

To remove these extra columns you can:

• download as a CSV and open in Excel.
• Remove the columns in your file.
• Amend the unique identifier settings to remove these columns from all downloads.