Partnership modules can provide individuals with the ability to create, manage and review users and data, centrally, at a high level.
If you are missing or require any of the permissions outlined here, get in touch with one of our team to find out more or speak to the colleague leading BlueSky in your organisation.
Dashboard | Organisations | Users & Groups | Training | Resources | Priorities & Objectives | Flood Fill | Observations | Calendar | Projects | CPD | Templates
Dashboard
The Dashboard provides you with a quick snap shot of activity and compliance data across your entire group but can be filtered down to a single member organisation.
Mirroring the organisations Admin dashboard each section highlights key information and any areas that might require monitoring and/or intervention. The Activity chart when compared with the Summative Totals gives you insight into use and trends.
Organisations
Here you will find an index of the organisations within your group and a central access point to the administrative areas of organisations you have permission to.
Review the organisations latest inspection grades, leader information and where applicable where your experts are. Any organisation name that appears as link, will allow you to drill through to that organisations Admin area.
Expertise can be applied to individuals within your organisation or to the organisation itself. This helps identify where your leaders in education are and enables other BlueSky subscribed organisations to get in touch through the community area.
For more information on identifying experts and recording organisation expertise, get in touch with one of the team.
Users & Groups
Users
Once access is granted, each organisations staff list can be available here including their name, email and organisation. Should visibility to staff be in appropriate or not covered in your group’s policies, these can be restricted.
Users with permission to this area also have the ability to bring individuals ‘up’ into the Partnership organisation. This is commonly done with headteachers or principals, which then allows the CEO to appraise them within the confines of the Partnership. This would also be done to any central team staff or those who hold cross organisation responsibilities.
- Use the search or pagination options to locate the individual you wish to bring into the partnership.
- Select the Add option to the right of their name and information.
- This will take you into the Partnership's Admin, to complete the action press Submit.
- You will receive a green confirmation banner and an opportunity to apply a unique ID and pay scales but you do not have to submit these at this time.
Groups
Groups are an important administrative task at set-up. Groups can be used to improve efficiency when using features such as Flood Fill but they are also an important filter for areas such as Resources and when Reporting; in addition to playing a vital role in restricting permissions or access to data.
- From Users & Groups on the left, select Manage Partnership Groups in the top right corner.
- In the top right corner, select New Partnership Group Category.
- Enter your category title which will hold your groups and then press Save.
- Now select Create Partnership Group in the top right corner.
Example: group category is Key Stage Groups, the groups would then be KS1, KS2, and KS3 etc. - Enter the title of your first group and press Save.
- You will then have 3 options; Edit Members, Edit Group or Delete. Select Edit Members.
- A window will appear containing every user across the organisations within your partnership.
- Select the checkbox to the left of the individual’s name. A green Saved will appear and will auto save as you move through the list.
- Utilise the search area when looking for particular individuals, it will autocomplete as you search limiting your results instantly.
In the example above you will notice that Ann appears multiple times. This is because Ann works in/across multiple organisations, she has multiple jobs; one at the demonstration school, one at the SCITT and one at the academy.
Because Ann could have data in one or several of these jobs, when including individuals in your groups you will need to include all of their jobs or check which ones will have their data in.
In the instance you are restricting visibility to data or looking to exclude certain data, creating groups based on only individual’s academy roles rather than any trust or leadership roles will be required.
Training
The Partnership Training area works exactly the same as the organisation’s admin Training area. For full guidance on how to create and manage events please see our standard Admin guidance.
Unique to the Partnership area, once published, all member organisations can view and opt into the event being promoted. This allows your professional development and learning team to centralise their resources and monitor budgets and impact, much more effectively, whilst still allowing organisations to retain autonomy and create any organisation specific training.
Should you wish to only notify particular groups of staff or certain organisations such as your Primary's but not your Secondary's, you can do so by using the BlueSky Notifications option found near the foot of the event creation form. This will not hide the event but restrict who is notified.
Resources
Upload and share documents, links, video and/or audio across your Partnership. By centralising your resources, you can efficiently store, share and manage files such as safeguarding and pay policies or training and reference material for your organisations.
- To begin with, create Categories based on context, content or your preferred filing system.
- Select Resources from the left hand navigation menu.
- Click on Manage categories, in the top right hand corner.
- Click on New category in the top right hand corner.
- Enter the category name and press Save.
- Once you are happy with your categories, click on Return to resources index.
- Select from the different file type options;
- Add document (i.e. excel, word, pdf, photo)
- Add link (i.e. cloud drive URL or perhaps a training provider)
- Add video / audio
- Enter the label of the file and any other required fields.
- Select a category from the dropdown.
- Choose visibility settings based on your Groups or by Organisation i.e. Secondary Only. By default it will be visible to all.
- Press Save (or Next and Upload for video/audio)
Priorities & Objectives
- Select Priorities & Objectives from the left hand navigation menu.
- Select New Partnership Priority in the top right hand corner.
- Enter the name of the first Priority i.e. Leadership and Management.
- Press Save
- Repeat for any further headline priorities. Further examples might be Outcomes, Behaviour and Welfare or along the lines of ‘Strategy: Growth and Development’.
- You will notice the priority you created is a blue link. Select the priority to add its objectives (actions).
- Select New Partnership Objective in the top right hand corner.
- Copy and paste or type in the first of your objectives.
- Underneath this field you will see your partnership groups. If you would like to restrict who has access to these objectives i.e. particular key stage or staff performance groups. If they are intended for all staff, leave unticked.
- Press Save
- Once they have been linked to individual’s records or your organisations own plans, you can review the number of individual’s professional objectives and see any member organisations objectives that have stemmed from yours.
Flood Fill
- Select Flood Fill from the left navigation bar.
- Select CPD Activities from the sub-menu.
- Select all individuals within a particular organisation, individuals from several organisations or use the quick group select to choose individuals based on their role or responsibility. Note: Users are grouped by organisation, so may appear multiple times.
- On the right hand side, under the group selection window, you will find a dropdown for training events and BlueSky Learning modules. Choose one if relevant.
- You are also able to determine the creator of the flood fill from a list of Partnership Primary Users and Line Managers, including yourself.
- When you are happy with your selection, press Next step.
- You can review your individual selection on the right hand side, this will be split by the organisations the individuals are based in. Should you need to amend this list, simply use the browsers back option, to return to the previous page where you can select or deselect the individuals as required.
- Complete the required and relevant fields and decide whether to pre-authorise the activities or not.
- We recommend double checking the details of the activity. You will not be able to make changes to it after it has been created. Once submitted, the CPDs will be queued for creation and may take a few minutes to appear to users.
- Select Create.
Observations
Create and manage observation and monitoring templates across your Partnership. By creating forms at Partnership level, you can ensure a consistent approach to QA, Observations and many other activities.
Creating custom Scales with any custom forms ensures you are able to record and collect numerous sets of data unique to your group across any number of organisations.
BlueSky also enables you to create forms for specific organisations, either those in need of intervention or perhaps when differentiating between Primary and Secondary practice.
These will be available in addition to any templates the organisation has created themselves. For full step-by-step guidance on creating custom scales and custom forms check out our Create custom Observations Forms Part 1 and 2
Calendar
Projects
Review Projects created by individuals across the Partnership with Partnership visibility. Review the content and resources being shared to ensure it is appropriate and drill through to request membership should it be of interest.
CPD
Manage all CPD activities across your group and apply an additional or 3rd layer of authorisation to existing activities. Whether organisations have a CPD Team or not, here you are able to monitor, manage and authorise any CPD activities created by individuals within your member organisations.
If you have a central budget or a professional development team, access to the Partnership CPD Manager can centralise, streamline and improve the efficiency of reviewing and authorising activities, across all organisations in the group.
Provided in Partnership CPD are numerous filters to sort and/or locate particular activities;
User, Organisation, Activity Date (Academic Period), Partnership Authorisation, Line Manager Agreement, CPD Team Approval, Training event, Sort by and Order by.
You will also find a filter for Individuals within the Index, should you wish to retrieve any and all activity requests they have made, combined with other filters this can assist in ensuring an individual hasn’t or isn’t exceeding or under any cover or budgetary limits.
On the left hand side, a checkbox is available to select all or individuals and Sign off their activities. By clicking on the CPD Activity Name, you can enter the record and review it in full.
Partnership authorisation can then be made by choosing to Authorise or Reject the activity request, along with an opportunity to record the reason for you decision.
Individuals will be notified about the decision. Should they update their request, perhaps a new date or less expensive course, you will be able to Update Partnership Authorisation.
Templates
Create and manage Overview Statement templates across your Partnership. By creating fields and templates at Partnership level, you can ensure a consistent approach to recording activities such as Mid-Year Reviews, Induction and Probation Reviews and/or any conversations that require being recorded between individuals and their Managers.
BlueSky also enables you to create templates for specific organisations, perhaps when differentiating between Primary and Secondary practice. These will be available in addition to any templates the organisation has created themselves.
For full step-by-step guidance on creating Template Form Fields and Overview Statement Templates see Create custom Templates Part 1 and 2.