Established in October 2014, the Learning Trust has built a strong reputation for supporting pupils through the provision of exceptional teaching.
With inclusion at the core of everything they do, the organisation is committed to helping pupils from all backgrounds, removing any barriers that stand in the way of personal development.
The focus on learning is underpinned by a core set of values, which include:
- Make a positive impact on young people through the provision of high-quality education
- Ensure outstanding leadership and management across all schools, whilst empowering leaders to drive school improvement
- Ensure quality teaching that focuses on the experience of the learner
- Ensure the needs of disadvantaged pupils are supported appropriately
Background
Each school and academy has its own unique set of strengths that serve the students and the wider community. To ensure consistent progression and development, the schools learn from one another, sharing outstanding practice and creating innovative approaches to teaching and learning.
As part of the drive to deliver seamless communication and collaboration between the various schools, the Trust was keen to consolidate information from several intranets into one centralised location. The core deliverable was a centralised and flexible SharePoint intranet structure that would foster the following:
- A strong sense of community across the Trust
- Sharing best practice across all schools and academies in the Trust
- Better knowledge exchange and communication across the organisation
It was vital that the solution delivered a well-designed intranet that adopted modern SharePoint page designs, whilst ensuring best development practice and user-adoption techniques were employed throughout.
A formal tender process for Partner selection was followed to ensure best value would be delivered for the budget holders. The joint approach from Public Sector Managed Services specialist, Probrand, and Information Management specialist, Circyl was selected as the right Partner for the Trust.
“We are extremely pleased to deliver another solution to the Education sector, we really do take pride in making a difference in the community. Our long-term partnership with the team at Circyl allows us to offer a complete solution to our customers and we are pleased that together we were able to deliver the solution very quickly and look forward to supporting them further as they use technology to support their organisational goals.”
Ian Callens
Sales Director, Probrand
Objectives
The aim of the project was to enable all 1,500 staff/ governors and around 6,000 students to access their resources from any location through an intranet link. Given that all schools and academies had their own tenancies, the aim was to migrate each of these into a single Tenancy.
A SharePoint tenancy is how SharePoint Online allocates and manages resources for different organisations or users and defines the separation of data and resources among multiple entities (in this case schools and academies) on a shared infrastructure. Removing the barriers between all the schools and centralising multiple tenancies into a single tenancy for key for the project to be a success
The aim of the single Tenancy was to drive collaborative working and the sharing of resources across the Trust – an objective that was not straightforward with multiple tenancies.
The new Tenancy needed to accommodate:
- Modern design and layout for a new Home site
- Links to core academy pages and departmental sites
- Access to third-party applications
Whilst a tenancy already existed and had many users already set up, only a single team had access. Circyl worked closely with Probrand on the overall migration project, allowing the customer to consolidate all tenancies into one for future ease of management and administration.
Outcomes/values
Following an initial discovery and analysis engagement, Circyl produced a high-level requirements catalogue that detailed the approach to building a consistent organisation-wide landing page. By following Circyl’s Agile methodology for project delivery, all the client’s initial needs and requirements were met.
Built upon Microsoft’s industry standard webparts that adhered to the Trust’s branding guidelines, the solution contains links to the other academy pages and third party applications. By following industry standard practices, the solution can be easily maintained and enhanced by the in-house team.
To ensure key members of staff could utilise the solution correctly, Circyl took a ‘train the trainer’ approach that enabled the team to understand the inner workings of the solution and how best to use and maintain it. The customer’s team now has full control over the way in which they develop solutions using their Microsoft 365 platform.
All content was migrated quickly and efficiently using the free SharePoint Migration Tool (SPMT) that Microsoft provides to securely move content into Microsoft 365.
The organisation now has an intuitive and easy to use intranet that contains all the information that was previously spread across multiple systems and locations, providing a single trusted source for all organisational information. The solution contains the appropriate levels of information and document security, controlling who can see what information based on their profile and role.
Technologies utilised
During the project, Circyl leveraged the following technologies:
SharePoint: SharePoint is a web-based collaborative platform that integrates with Microsoft Office, enabling organisations to manage and store documents efficiently. It is highly configurable, and solutions can be tailored to meet the unique needs of any organisations
“The Trust had a clear vision of what they needed and the complementary skills of Circyl and Probrand allowed us to quickly deliver a solution for them. We have a consistent approach and methodology that gives customers comfort that we have delivered something similar many times before and therefore that they will get value from their investment in IT.”
Roger Peacock
Business Development Manager, Circyl
Want to know more?
Circyl offer free consultations to allow businesses to discuss their productivity issues and ask us in-depth questions about our services and pricing.
Call 03333 209 969 to speak to a member of our team directly or send a message by filling in the contact form here.