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# Onboarding your school: getting students and teachers into SimplyPrint

# Onboarding your school: getting students and teachers into SimplyPrint

Setting up SimplyPrint for a school or class? This guide walks through the whole workflow, from getting your teachers in first to bringing whole classes of students on board, organizing them, and keeping things tidy term after term. It points you to the right tool for each step so you can pick the path that fits your school.

|| This guide is for the School plan. The tools it describes (classes, teacher mapping, bulk import, temporary access) are built for education accounts. See the [pricing page](https://simplyprint.io/pricing) for what's included.

## What you'll find here
- The big picture
- Step 1: set up your groups
- Step 2: bring in your teachers
- Step 3: choose how students will join
- Step 4: organize students into classes
- Step 5: decide your approval and sign-in rules
- Step 6: set limits and access windows
- Onboarding one class at a time
- End of term: tidying up

## The big picture
Getting a school running comes down to three questions: how will people sign in, who's a teacher, and which class is each student in. SimplyPrint gives you a few ways to answer each, and you can mix them. For most schools the smoothest path is **single sign-on (SSO)**, so students and teachers use the school login they already have, with a **bulk import** as the quick alternative when SSO isn't an option.

| If your school uses Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, set up SSO first (Step 3). It removes passwords from the picture entirely and can sort teachers and classes for you automatically.

## Step 1: set up your groups
SimplyPrint starts you with school groups out of the box: **Administrator**, **Teacher**, **Specialist** and **Student**. New people become **Students** by default. Before you add anyone, take a moment to check these groups match how your school works, and adjust the permissions if needed. For example, you might let teachers manage printers but not billing.

See [User groups and permissions](https://help.simplyprint.io/en/article/user-groups-and-permissions-what-each-one-controls-1284ueh/) for what each permission does and how to edit a group.

## Step 2: bring in your teachers
Start with the adults. Inviting teachers first means they're ready to help when students arrive.

1. Open the **Users** page and click **Invite users**.
2. On the **Email invite** tab, enter your teachers' email addresses.
3. Tick **teacher** and choose the **Teacher** group.
4. Send the invites.

Each teacher gets an email to join. Full details on inviting are in [How to invite users](https://help.simplyprint.io/en/article/how-to-invite-users-to-your-account-1gue0zv/).

## Step 3: choose how students will join
There are three ways to get students in. Pick whichever suits your school:

### Single sign-on (recommended)
With SSO, students sign in with their existing school account, no SimplyPrint passwords to manage. Even better, SSO can read your directory and **flag teachers automatically** and **place students in the right class**, using attribute mapping. This is the lowest-maintenance option for a school.

- Start at [Set up single sign-on (SSO)](https://help.simplyprint.io/en/article/set-up-single-sign-on-sso-for-simplyprint-4coj1g/).
- For teacher and class mapping, see [SAML user groups, group mapping, and teacher mapping](https://help.simplyprint.io/en/article/saml-single-sign-on-user-groups-group-mapping-and-teacher-mapping-lfgz7/).
- To keep your roster in sync automatically as students join and leave, add [SCIM provisioning](https://help.simplyprint.io/en/article/scim-provisioning-automatically-sync-users-from-your-identity-provider-1j9r556/).

### Bulk import
If you have a class list or a directory export, import everyone at once. The importer reads a **CSV**, a **Google Workspace** export, or a **Microsoft 365** export, maps the columns, and can even create your classes for you. You choose whether to create the accounts now (and email password-setup links) or send invitations.

See [Importing users from a CSV or directory export](https://help.simplyprint.io/en/article/importing-users-from-a-csv-or-directory-export-1gptsxc/).

### Invitation links
For a smaller class, create a **shareable invitation link** and hand it out, for example on a slide at the start of a lesson. Remember a link is valid for 24 hours, so create it just before the lesson.

See [How to invite users](https://help.simplyprint.io/en/article/how-to-invite-users-to-your-account-1gue0zv/).

## Step 4: organize students into classes

![A school members table showing the Teacher and Classes columns](https://storage.crisp.chat/users/helpdesk/website/-/f/f/2/2/ff22a914001c1000/onboarding-your-school-school-_126mi5a.png)

![The Set classes bulk modal on a school account](https://storage.crisp.chat/users/helpdesk/website/-/f/f/2/2/ff22a914001c1000/onboarding-your-school-set-cla_1qwuj0d.png)

Classes keep each group of students together and let you give a class its own printers, quotas and teachers. However your students arrive, you can assign classes:

- **At import** - map a class column (or a Google Org Unit Path), and the importer creates and fills classes for you.
- **Through SSO** - map a directory attribute to classes so students land in the right one automatically.
- **On the Users page** - set or change a student's classes in the table, one at a time or in bulk with the **Set classes** action.

## Step 5: decide your approval and sign-in rules
Before you open the doors, decide how careful you want joining to be:

- **Approval** - require an administrator to approve new students, or only those without a school email. Set this in your registration settings. See [Approving new members](https://help.simplyprint.io/en/article/approving-new-members-and-confirming-their-email-1j68zuw/).
- **Email confirmation** - require students to confirm their email before using the platform.

SSO sign-ins are trusted by your identity provider, so they skip approval automatically.

## Step 6: set limits and access windows
Two optional tools are especially useful for schools:

- **Temporary access** - give a class or a guest access that ends automatically at the end of a term or project. When the date passes, students are suspended (and easy to re-enable next term) or removed, your choice. See [Give a member temporary access](https://help.simplyprint.io/en/article/give-a-member-temporary-access-58a6an/).
- **Quotas and limits** - cap how much each class or group can print or spend, so a few students can't use up all the filament. See [The quotas & limits feature](https://help.simplyprint.io/en/article/the-quotas-limits-feature-control-how-much-your-users-can-print-1emghhw/).

You can also keep printer control on-site with [panel IP restrictions](https://help.simplyprint.io/en/article/require-2fa-and-restrict-panel-access-by-ip-nr6fb4/).

## Onboarding one class at a time
A reliable routine for each new class:

1. Make sure the **class** exists (create it in your school settings if not).
2. Bring the students in by your chosen method (SSO, import, or a link).
3. Check they're in the right **class** and the **Student** group.
4. If it's a time-limited group, set **temporary access** to the end of term.
5. Set any **quotas** for the class.

Repeat per class, and your whole school is set up in an afternoon.

## End of term: tidying up
When a term or year ends, clear out students who've moved on so your account stays within its user slots. The **Clean up users** tool finds inactive students by last activity, class or group, and removes them in one go. The account owner is always protected, and teachers are protected by default (you can choose to include them if you need to). You can also have cleanup run automatically.

See [Cleaning up and removing users](https://help.simplyprint.io/en/article/cleaning-up-and-removing-users-from-your-account-1e2a42y/).

## Related articles
- [Managing your users: the Users page](https://help.simplyprint.io/en/article/managing-your-users-the-users-page-15hfca/)
- [How to invite users to your account](https://help.simplyprint.io/en/article/how-to-invite-users-to-your-account-1gue0zv/)
- [Importing users from a CSV or directory export](https://help.simplyprint.io/en/article/importing-users-from-a-csv-or-directory-export-1gptsxc/)
- [Set up single sign-on (SSO)](https://help.simplyprint.io/en/article/set-up-single-sign-on-sso-for-simplyprint-4coj1g/)
- [SAML single sign-on: user groups, group mapping, and teacher mapping](https://help.simplyprint.io/en/article/saml-single-sign-on-user-groups-group-mapping-and-teacher-mapping-lfgz7/)
- [Give a member temporary access](https://help.simplyprint.io/en/article/give-a-member-temporary-access-58a6an/)
- [Cleaning up and removing users from your account](https://help.simplyprint.io/en/article/cleaning-up-and-removing-users-from-your-account-1e2a42y/)