Back-to-School User Management: A 4-Step Admin Setup Guide

Back-to-school season means fresh starts, new staff, and a wave of administrative setup. A solid user management setup for schools — roles, groups, and sharing rules configured before anyone logs in — is what separates a week of manual cleanup from a platform that runs on autopilot from day one.

That’s what we covered in our August TORSH Platform Power Hour, a deep dive into the user management workflows that save admins the most time: roles, groups, bulk invites, and automatic sharing. Below is the short version. We’ve also turned it into a 4-step checklist you can keep open while you set up your system this year.

The 4-Step User Management Setup for Schools

Step 1: Tailor Your Platform Roles

Every organization runs a little differently, so out of the box, TORSH starts with three default roles — Administrator, Coach, and Mentee (often called Teacher or Provider). Instead of forcing staff into generic buckets:

• Rename or clone default roles to match your organization’s actual titles, or build entirely custom profiles — cloning Administrator to create a “Coach Manager” role, for example.
• Set the coach mode when cloning (managing, providing, or receiving coaching) so users get routed correctly and don’t trigger the wrong system alerts.
• Customize access in the Manage Permissions tab so each role sees exactly the tools it needs — no more, no less.
• Save your changes before moving on. It sounds obvious, but it’s the step people skip.

Step 2: Build Your Groups Before You Invite

Order of operations matters here. Build your organizational groups — typically based on coaching arrangements, like one coach to a group of several mentees — before you invite a single user.

Groups built in advance pave the way for automation in Step 3: new hires can drop directly into their correct cohort the moment they’re invited, with no manual assignment afterward.

Step 3: Bulk Invite, Then Audit Your Licenses

Bring staff into the system at scale, and clean up who’s still using a seat:

• Import at scale. The bulk CSV import tool invites, assigns roles, and groups 100+ users in a single upload — a same-day setup instead of a week of manual invites.
• Audit existing licenses for staff who are leaving or changing roles. Mark departing staff as Disabled (their data stays accessible, but the seat is still in use) or Deleted (frees the license immediately, with a 30-day window to restore before the account is permanently removed).
  

Doing this before the year starts means you’re not troubleshooting access mid-September.

Step 4: Put Sharing and Visibility On Autopilot

Getting artifacts and videos in front of the right people shouldn’t depend on staff remembering to share them manually.

• Assign coaching relationships at the group level, not individually. It keeps relationships clear on profile pages and in sharing menus, and it means assignments — and historical artifacts — transfer cleanly if staff change mid-year.
• Set system-wide sharing rules to Opt-Out. New uploads are automatically shared with the right admins or coaches, with no manual step required from the person uploading.

Pro tip: Sharing rules aren’t retroactive. A new rule only applies to materials uploaded after it’s created. Set yours up before teachers start uploading back-to-school artifacts, not after.

Equip your team for the year ahead

This 4-step user management setup for schools pairs directly with two resources if you want more than the summary above:

Download the checklist. We turned these four steps into a single, printable reference: the Back-to-School Admin Prep: 4-Step System Setup Checklist — keep it open while you configure your system, or hand it to whoever’s doing the setup.

Watch the full session. See these exact workflows demonstrated step-by-step in the recording of our August Power Hour, browse the full library of past sessions, and register for future monthly trainings here.

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