This article is designed for schools who do not require a migration due to being a brand new school or schools who are taking our 'Manual Migration' Service.
What is the onboarding process for a brand new school
When schools plan to open on Arbor they do not require a migration from another system. They do, however, have their own requirements to ensure they're ready to take attendance and do their statutory requirements from the day their school opens.
Arbor has two onboarding journeys for these schools depending on their day one requirements:
Standard Site Setup: Schools who require 'foundational' operations for day one will take our 'standard site setup service'. This service will ensure that you are able to run your school site affectively by taking attendance, sending communications to parents, managing absence & cover and running basic reports.
The purpose of the standard site setup is to ensure the schools' academic structure & staff members are set up on Arbor before the students are manually transferred using CTF files. In addition to setting up the school, users will need to ensure they're trained on all the key modules they plan to use when they open.
Schools will spend eight weeks in their Onboarding journey - this includes four weeks pre go live and four weeks post live. Arbor's Digital Onboarding team will help support you during this process to ensure you're getting the best out of Arbor with your new site.
Extended Site Setup: Some schools may require additional functionality from day one, in addition to the foundational modules included in the 'standard site setup' above. This includes being able to manage behaviour, set up Arbor's parent portal, utilise My Classroom, interventions, student portal, assessments, payments and clubs & trips. We believe that the setup of these modules can only be achieved after your foundational modules are setup and you have access to a live Arbor system. The extended site setup process includes everything in the standard site setup process but includes an additional four weeks of support and training to ensure you have these modules set up before transitioning to long term Arbor support.
What is the onboarding process for a manual migration
There are some schools that move to Arbor that are moving from a system that we do not have a migrator for. This means there is no mechanism to automatically migrate their data from their current MIS onto Arbor. These schools could be coming from systems such as Pupil Asset or SchoolPod.
The onboarding journey for a school who are 'manually' migrating to Arbor is similar to the journey for brand new schools, however, extra time is dedicated towards ensuring that statutory, census and safeguarding information is transferred to Arbor.
The tools that you will use to ensure that your school is statutory, census and safeguarding compliant include:
- Importing students using CTFs
- Topping up information in bulk using Arbor's 'Entity Importer' tool
- Bulk uploads
- Manual entry
Schools will spend eight weeks in their Onboarding journey - this includes six weeks pre go live and 2 weeks post go live. The pre go live time is two weeks longer than the process for brand new schools to allow additional time to enter any key information to their Arbor site. Arbor strongly recommend that schools go live with just the basic statutory, day to day operations on Arbor before looking to introduce additional functionality like clubs & trips, payments, assessments etc.
Next Steps
Your Partnership Manager should have already told you when your onboarding journey starts. Your onboarding team will reach out to you on your planned start date to detail your next steps. If you would like to understand your onboarding journey in more detail, we have week by week guides that explain what to expect during your onboarding:
Contacting your onboarding team
Your onboarding team are happy to go through any questions you have regarding your move to Arbor. Please email them at myonboarding@arbor-education.com. The team are happy to speak to you on the phone if you have a complex query or would prefer to speak to someone directly. Please just mention on your email that you'd like them to call you back.
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