Business Roles / Permissions Pushdown: Centrally Managing User Permissions in MAT MIS

This article explains the functionality for managing Business Roles / Permissions Pushdown in your MAT MIS. This feature allows Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs) to centrally control and standardise user permissions across all their schools from the MAT MIS. This helps administrators ensure consistent access levels for school staff (e.g., standardising a 'Teacher' role across all primary schools in the Trust).

Permissions

To use the Business Roles Pushdown feature, you'll need the following permissions, which must be assigned to an Arbor Business Role and assigned to your user profile:

• To create ot edit pushdowns: Group: Policy: Administer

• To view pushdowns: Group: Policy: view

If you don't have the permission, you'll need to ask your admin team to give you permission using these instructions.

Note: This feature is part of the MAT MIS Plus and Enterprise packages. If you are unsure about your Arbor package, please contact our Partnership Team by emailing customersales@arbor-education.com 
 

Key features

When a pushdown is created:

• It creates a template of the existing business role.
• It pushes edits to that role in the school, meaning it doesn't create an additional role but modifies the existing one
• You can create multiple pushdowns from the same original business role.
• You are prevented from pushing down the same business role twice to your schools
• If a pushdown is deleted, the school business role will automatically revert to the default Arbor business role
• Once a MAT implements the pushdown, schools cannot revert control or assume responsibility for managing that business role's permissions. School staff will see an indicator that the role is managed by your central team.
   

Creating a New Business Role Pushdown

1. Head to Administration > Pushdowns > Business Roles in the top menu
2. Click on the Create New button to add a new pushdown 
3. This opens the 'Create new pushdown' slideover.

4. In the slideover, enter a unique name for the pushdown. This is useful for distinguishing roles, such as differentiating a Primary School Teacher role from a Secondary School Teacher role. 

   Note: The name you set here is he name of the pushdown, not the name of the business role. This name lets you distinguish this pushdown from others; the school you push the business role down to does not see this name. To change the name of the business role you push down, see the Editing permissions you push down section of this guide.

5. Choose a Business Role from the dropdown menu to use as the template for the pushdown. This is the business role that will change on the school site that you push down to later.
   
   Note: The dropdown only contains school roles (it excludes group business roles)

4.  Click Create pushdown to proceed.
 

Managing Pushdowns

Once you've added a new pushdown, you get taken to the pushdown's overview page. You can also get here by navigating to Administration > Pushdowns > Business Roles and clicking on the relevant pushdown.

From here you can:

• Edit the permissions you push down for the role in question
• Push down the permissions to schools of your choosing
• Remove pushdowns to school sites and delete the pushdown
   

Editing permissions you pushdown

On the Pushdown's Overview page, you can change which permissions are pushed down with your role with these steps:

• Click Edit Details on the left or View and edit details in the Business Role Details section
• For single permission changes: 
   
  • Click a permission in the Permissions table to open a slide over, 
  • Remove or add the permission using the red or green button 
  • Confirm your choice on the pop-up
• For bulk permission changes: 
  • Tick the boxes next to the permissions you want to bulk add or remove from the role
  • Click the green Bulk Action button
  • Select Add permissions to role or Remove permissions from role as required
  • Confirm your choice on the pop-up

If you wish to change the name of the business role pushed down, too, you can do so by clicking the name on this same page and editing it on the slide over. 

If you do not set a different name here, the role will be pushed down with the role's default Arbor name, regardless of the name you set when creating the pushdown.
 

Pushing roles down to schools

Once you have edited the permissions to your liking, you can move on to pushing the role down to schools. To do this:

• Head to the Pushdown's Overview page
• In the Pushdown Details section, click Add
  
  
• On the slide-over, select the schools to push down to using the tickboxes
• Click the Bulk Action button and select Add Institutions to pushdown

The pushdown details section will now show the number of schools you have pushed the role down to. Click on No. of Subscribed institutions to see further details.

Making changes after a pushdown

If you make changes to the permissions included in your Business Role Pushdown, this creates a new version of your pushdown template. To ensure the new version gets pushed down to school sites, you need to push down the new version with the steps above.

To see which version of the pushdown is assigned to which school, click the Previous Versions tab on the Pushdown's Overview page.
 

Removing and deleting pushdowns

You can remove pushdown from schools that have the latest version shared with them. If you are not able to remove the pushdown from a school, ensure you push down the latest version with the instructions above first.

To remove a pushdown from a school:

• Click Remove on the Current Version tab of the Pushdown Overview page
• Tick the boxes next to the relevant schools
• Use the Bulk Action
• Select Remove institutions from pushdown
• Confirm the removal on the pop-up

To delete a pushdown completely:

• First, ensure all schools have been removed from the pushdown (if a school is still subscribed, you cannot delete the pushdown)
• Click the red Delete Pushdown button under the Pushdown Details section
• Click Yes, delete to confirm
   

What a business role pushdown looks like on school sites

When viewing a business role that has been pushed down by the MAT, staff in the school MIS will see:

The Business Role Overview page will show that Permissions management is set to Managed by your central team.
 

Clicking into the Permissions section will display a banner highlighting that the role is centrally managed, stating, "This business role is centrally managed. Please contact your administrator for any changes to this role or its permissions."