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Hierarchy

A hierarchy in itslearning is the organisational structure of the school. The school itself is at the top of the hierarchy and different classes, the administration and so on can be added as subhierarchies.

When users are added in itslearning, they are added into hierarchies. The advantage of having the different learners grouped into subhierarchies is that groups of learners are easier to work with. Imagine if all the learners in a school were grouped in a large list? It would not be easy to handle school work in such a situation. Below is a suggestion on how to structure a hierarchy at a school:

Chesterson

Chesterson \ Employees

Chesterson \ Teachers

Chesterson \ International

Chesterson \ International \ 2001

Chesterson \ International \ 2002

Chesterson \ International \ 2003

Chesterson \ International \ 2004

And so on. Note that instead of using classes named by year or age, it is a good idea to name classes after, for example, the year it began. This makes it easier to adjust the hierarchy for the next school year without having to change the name of this element in the hierarchy.

What to use hierarchies for?

When you add a course you have to add participants to it. If you have a school with several thousand learners, it is tedious to select the learners you want to add to your course from one single list. Instead, if the different classes are divided into sub-hierarchies, a group of learners is easily added to the course. In itslearning, this is called hierarchy synchronisation.

Setting up hierarchies correctly

The Hierarchy type setting, under Admin >> Hierarchy >> Add/edit hierarchy, is crucial for making functionality such as privacy, terms, and policies work.

It is important to define the root hierarchy as a Site. You should not add a site under a site. The organisations for which you want to add terms, policies, and privacy rules must be defined as School or Site. The logical rule is as follows: one site, and several schools within that site, but not several schools within a school.

If your site hierarchies are created by external administrative systems, you might see them defined as Class or Group. These are managed by external administrative systems, so it is not possible to change their type manually or set them to refer to an organisation.

External administrative systems

Larger schools may have some kind of administrative system that automatically synchronises the user data of the learners with itslearning. Such systems can, in most cases, synchronise to which courses and hierarchical structure the learners belong. The basic structure is created before the school starts a new semester.

Roles in the hierarchy

There are four roles in a hierarchy: Administrator, Employee, Student and Guest. These roles cannot be changed, and must not be confused with profiles.

Change site name

The name of a site, as it appears in the header on the main page, can be changed by editing the name of the root hierarchy, or the name at the top of the hierarchy list. See Editing a hierarchy in the How-tos section below. To change the name of the site, edit the Title field:

Properties of a single hierarchy level

Each level/group in the hierarchy can be set up with different properties. Note that the nature of a hierarchy demands that some of the sublevels inherit properties from the levels above them.

How-tos

Adding a sub-hierarchy

1. Click the Admin tab.
2. Click Hierarchy.
3. Select the hierarchy below which you want to add a sublevel hierarchy, by clicking it once so that it becomes highlighted in blue.
4. Click the Add button.
5. Enter a title for the hierarchy, such as '2012', 'Year 2011' or similar.
6. Select the options you prefer (described here).
7. Click Save

Using import from file to create hierarchy levels

1. Click the Admin tab.
2. Click Users and access rights.
3. Click Import users from file.
4. Click the browse icon to browse for the file you want to import. You can, for example, make the list in an Excel file and then export it to a semicolon-separated file that you can import into itslearning. You can read more about importing from files here. When you make the file in Excel, you have to set it up like the example below:
   
   
   
   
5. Specify the separator character in the file. This can, for example, be a comma, a semicolon or similar.
6. Click Next.
7. Select the fields you want to import in this overview (see the screenshot below). Select a profile in the Profile drop-down box. The headings from your file are available from a drop-down list. We have the following headings in our file: First name, Last name, Sync key, Level 1 a and Level 2. In the First name field, select the option from the drop-down list that corresponds with the heading in your import file. In this case we have used the heading "First name". Repeat this in the fields you want to import. Choose a starting point in the existing hierarchy and match Level 1 with Sub level 1 and Level 2 with Sub level 2. Note: This will create the users and the hierarchy levels that we have defined in the CSV file, as well as place the users in the specific groups.
8. Click Finish. You are then asked if you want to start importing.
9. Click OK.

Editing a hierarchy

1. Click the Admin tab.
2. Click Hierarchy.
3. Select the hierarchy below which you want to add a sublevel hierarchy by clicking it once so that it becomes highlighted in blue.
4. Click the Edit button.
5. Make your changes. For information on the various fields, see the step Adding a sub-hierarchy, above.
6. Click Save.

Deleting a hierarchy

1. Click the Admin tab.
2. Click Hierarchy.
3. Select the hierarchy you want to delete by clicking it once so that it becomes highlighted in blue.
4. Click the Delete button.
5. Click OK in the pop-up box to delete the hierarchy.

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