Automating identity and communication across an all-through school | Bartholomew School and Heyford Park School
Bartholomew School and Heyford Park School
The Customer
With over 2,000 learners combined – from age 3 through to sixth form – the IT team faced increasing manual overhead, inconsistent communication processes and a growing pressure to meet compliance expectations around timely on/off-boarding.
They needed a solution that would reduce the time and effort spent manually creating and managing accounts while ensuring reliable, accurate communication groups for primary and secondary phases.
By implementing SalamanderSoft’s automation and provisioning tools, the two schools have transformed how they manage identity, access and communication.
Bartholomew School is a secondary school with around 1,400 students aged 11-18, while Heyford Park School is an all-through school with approximately 700 pupils from early years to age 16. Both schools sit within the Eynsham Partnership Academy Trust, an 11-school Trust in Oxfordshire.
Thomas Phillips, IT Director of EPA Trust and Digital Infrastructure Manager for both Bartholomew and Heyford Park, leads a small IT team, across the EPA Trust alongside several third party MSPs.
Thomas and his team work to maintain secure, consistent, and compliant IT services for thousands of users.
The Challenge
Manual provisioning created a significant overhead
Like many schools, the challenge of taking a new starter from appointment to being fully integrated with all the necessary systems is a significant obstacle, affecting numerous staff. IT teams can receive late or incomplete information about staff joiners and leavers.
Without automation, staff could arrive onsite asking, “Have you got my login details yet?” while leavers risked retaining access longer than they should. As compliance expectations increase, manual provisioning simply isn’t sustainable.
Targeted messaging needed for different school communities
As an all-through school, Heyford Park need to send targeted messages to separate primary and secondary communities. Previously, staff were manually added to Office 365 distribution lists – a process prone to human error.
This led to staff not receiving crucial information, parents receiving irrelevant or sensitive updates, and increased data-protection risk.
On/offboarding and access control
The MAT needed a consistent and dependable way to manage user accounts throughout their lifecycle. New starters had to be set up quickly and accurately, leavers needed to be removed promptly for security and compliance, and staff roles had to be reflected correctly in their access rights and communication groups.
In addition, staff and sixth form students require controlled access throughout the school day, meaning their digital identities need to synchronise with the school’s access systems. Integrating with Paxton Net2 is an essential part of ensuring students and staff could enter and leave the premises securely.
The Solution
Automated provisioning, integrated with Arbor
Salamander connects directly to Arbor, synchronising user accounts, groups and roles, permissions and Team/Class creation.
SalamanderSoft synchronises classes into Microsoft Teams and Google Classroom. Teachers log in and find everything ready to go.
The system provisions new users automatically and deactivates accounts as soon as they are removed from Arbor, giving the two schools confidence that access is always up-to-date and compliant.
Structured, role-driven communication groups
To fix communication inconsistency, Thomas’ team introduced user-defined fields in Arbor for Primary and Secondary, each with subcategories for teaching and support staff.
Salamander uses the designated role fields within Arbor to determine exactly where each staff member belongs, automatically placing them into the correct nested groups without the need for manual intervention.
As roles change, the system updates group membership instantly, ensuring staff always receive the right communications and are removed from any groups that are no longer relevant.
“It’s actually allowed us to enhance our use of Arbor. With Salamander, as long as someone enters the information into Arbor, the rest just works. We can spend our time tweaking roles and permissions rather than manually creating accounts or sending login details.” – Thomas Phillips, IT Director of EPA Trust.
Automated class creation in Microsoft Teams and Google Classroom
Sixth form students and staff use cards to access buildings. Salamander feeds account status and group information into Net2, enabling immediate access for new sixth formers and automatically removing access for leavers.
“Salamander absolutely saves you time and effort and streamlines processes that are often major pain points for IT teams. It integrates with numerous products, and the support makes all the difference.” – Thomas Phillips, IT Director of EPA Trust.
The Results
Huge amounts of time saved
The IT team now spends far less time on repetitive processes, giving them the bandwidth to focus on improving infrastructure, supporting teaching staff and optimising Arbor’s use within the two schools.
More secure, compliant and reliable processes
Automated provisioning ensures there are no delays in creating accounts when a student or staff member starts, and no school leavers are left with active accounts or access to sensitive information.
Enhanced use of Arbor
With Salamander handling identity and access, the IT team has been able to get more value from their MIS by introducing new groups, adding custom fields, refining licensing by role and improving data consistency.
Exceptional support
Thomas praises Salamander’s support team or their responsiveness, familiarity with their setup and ability to make efficient, bespoke adjustments:
“With some companies you have to go through multiple channels to get to someone who understands your issue. But with Salamander, it’s usually the same person each time – they know our setup inside out. They fix things quickly and honestly go above and beyond what is in their SLA.” – Thomas Phillips, IT Director of EPA Trust.
Comments from Bartholomew School and Heyford Park School
"Salamander absolutely saves you time and effort and streamlines processes that are often major pain points for IT teams. It integrates with numerous products, and the support makes all the difference.”