RM Site Creator for Office 365 A Quick Start Guide to the RM Site Creator for Office 365 app
Introducing RM Site Creator for Office 365 RM Site Creator takes the complexity out of using Office 365 SharePoint. In just a few minutes you will be able to build an education-focused intranet site for your school or college. You simply choose a template, add your school name and logo, edit your subject and year groups, and choose one of our professionally designed background images, or upload your own. RM Site Creator will automatically construct your new site, leaving you only to add your school s documents and content. With RM Site Creator you can design and maintain a professional site, save days of work building your school site, and immediately take full advantage of the many features of Office 365. This guide is written for the network administrator or authorised staff member who will create the school site. It takes you through the steps required to create a SharePoint school site, and the steps required to add a new page or site. Prerequisites Before you can use RM Site Creator for Office 365, the following steps must be completed: 1. Purchase either RM Unify Premium or RM Unify Standard with Office 365 Connector. 2. Set up Microsoft Office 365 Education (free of charge). 3. Link ( federate ) your Microsoft Office 365 domain to RM Unify. Instructions for all the stages of setting up Office 365 with RM Unify are available for download from RM Knowledge Library article DWN3332757. Preparing Office 365 To use RM Site Creator you need to have a clean SharePoint site collection, and your RM Unify account must have administrative privileges for that site collection. Choosing the site collection RM Site Creator requires a SharePoint site collection that has no content in it. You could either use the root site collection which was created automatically in your establishment s Office 365 tenancy, or you could create a new site collection for this purpose. Should I use the default site collection? When your establishment s Office 365 tenancy was created, a root SharePoint site collection is created; by default this is named tenancyname.sharepoint.com. We recommend that you use this if possible, provided that your school or college is the only establishment in your Office 365 tenancy. It will link the Office 365 My School tile in RM Unify to your school site, and it will make it easy to navigate to your site from Office 365. RM Education 2013 2
However if any content has already been created in your root site collection, you can t use RM Site Creator with it. Your options then are to delete the existing content, or to delete the entire site collection and then recreate it, before you can use RM Site Creator. Should I create a new site collection? If your Office 365 tenancy includes several schools or colleges, it is sensible to create a new site collection for each of them, using a naming convention like tenancyname.sharepoint.com/sites/miltonparkschool. For instructions, see Creating a new site collection on page 4. Note that if you do this, the Office 365 My School tile in RM Unify will not link to your school site. Giving administrative rights for the site collection RM Site Creator can only be used by an RM Unify user that has administrative privileges for the chosen site collection. To select the site collection and make the RM Unify user an administrator of it: 1. Log into your school or college s Office 365 account as an Office 365 administrator. 2. From the Admin menu choose SharePoint. 3. In the SharePoint Admin Center, under Site Collections, tick the box for the site collection you have decided to use. Make a note of the URL you ll need it for RM Site Creator. 4. From the Site Collections menu choose Owners and then Manage Administrators. 3
5. In the manage administrators window add your RM Unify account to the Site Collection Administrators list, and click OK. Creating a new site collection If you have decided to create a new site collection for RM Unify Site Creator, do the following: 1. Log into your school or college s Office 365 account as an Office 365 administrator. 2. From the Admin menu choose SharePoint. 3. In the SharePoint Admin Center, on the Site Collections tab choose New, Private Site Collection. 4
4. Enter your Site Collection details in the new site collection popup window. For Template Selection choose the Team Site template; for Administrator enter your own username. 5. Click OK. The new site collection is created and listed under Site Collections. Make a note of the site collection URL. You will need this information when you create the site. 5
Gathering resources to build your site When you create your school intranet site it will be helpful to have the following ready: An image of your school or college logo, in either.jpg or.png format A background image for your site, if you don t want to use the standard template A list of your year group and subject area names that require a page on the site Background images for your year groups and subject areas, if you don t want to use the standard template images. Creating the site 1. Purchase RM Site Creator from the RM Unify App Library and add it to your RM Unify Launch Pad. 2. In the RM Unify Launch Pad, click on the RM Site Creator tile to launch the app. 3. Click Create now on the splash screen. 4. A Welcome page is displayed. Enter the Site Collection URL for the site you created earlier, and your RM Unify password. Click Next to log into RM Site Creator. There are six steps in the site creation process: 5. School Type: Select your school type (e.g. Primary) and click Next Step. 6
6. Site Theme: Enter your school name, and upload your school logo and a main school site background image. You should also choose a default colour scheme for the main school site. Click Next Step. 7. School Structure: Select the school site structure you want. You can choose from a selection of alternative structures appropriate for the school type you chose in step 4. Click Next Step. 7
8. Depending on the school type and structure you have chosen, you will be presented with appropriate screens for adding Subjects, Year groups and Classes. In each case you can add or remove items, change their titles, background images and themes, and preview your changes. Click Next Step as required to progress through the screens. 9. Review: The final step allows you to review your site before publishing. When you are happy with it, click Publish. It will then take 20 45 minutes for RM Site Creator to build your site in SharePoint. Click Finish to visit your new site. Adding content to the site after publication The new site is now ready for your school community members to add their page content. To do this they need to have Full Control or Contribute permissions for the site. Site Creator automatically gives teachers Full Control permissions when it creates the school site; students get only Read access. 8
Adding sites and pages You can create additional sites and pages in your Office 365 SharePoint site at any point using RM Site Creator. 1. On your site page, click the RM Site Creator button in the top right corner. 2. Enter your RM Unify password and click Next. RM Site Creator presents a 6-step process for adding your site content. 3. For the first step, Content Type, the Recommended tab displays a selection of site templates appropriate to the location in the school s structure from which you clicked the Site Creator button. Alternatively, the Sites tab lets you browse other site templates (e.g. Year Groups, Blogs, Student Voice, School Trips, Groups or Subjects), and the Pages tab lets you browse page templates for wikis, picture galleries, discussions and surveys. From one of these tabs, select the content type you want to add; enter a name or title, and click Next Step. 9
4. The next step is to set permissions for the new content. o If you want the new content to inherit permissions from the site above it in the site hierarchy (the parent site), click the Inherit he parent site s permission settings check box. o Alternatively you can choose custom permission levels for staff or students. We recommend that you chose to inherit permissions whenever possible, as this makes it easier to manage your permissions. When you ve made your choice click Next Step. 5. If you are using a site template, the next page, Site Theme, lets you configure the look and feel of the new content if required. When you have finished click Next. 6. The next page, Menu Placement, allows you to drag and drop the new content into the right location in your school s site structure. Unless you specify a different location, this will be at the bottom of the structure, linking to the home page. When you have finished click Next Step. 7. The final step allows you to check the details of your content. When you have finished, click Publish. 8. Click Finish to visit your new site. Further help for RM Site Creator You can also find an instructional video showing how to use RM Site Creator here. 10
Glossary SharePoint SharePoint is a collaboration platform produced by Microsoft for customised Web services. Because it includes so many features and is so customisable, it is hard to define! However it is a very powerful tool for organisations such as schools to help share and organise information. It makes it easier for members of the organisation to create and manage their own collaborative websites, including shared calendars, blogs, wikis, surveys and document libraries. SharePoint integrates seamlessly with Windows and Office. Site collection The top level of organisation in SharePoint, a site collection consists of one top-level site and all subsites below it, sharing a single content database. Use a site collection to house your related sites for example, your school s intranet and public website. Shared administration pages and site settings make administration easier: content types, templates and Web Parts can easily be shared across sites in a collection. You can view and create site collections in your Office 365 account s SharePoint Admin Center. Personal site, My Site A type of SharePoint site that is used by an individual user for personal productivity. Team site, school site A type of SharePoint site designed for team collaboration. Use the Team Site template for creating your school site. Web part A customisable unit of information that can be used as a modular element to build a SharePoint page. For example, Calendar, Announcements, Shared Documents and Links Web parts make it easy to display information from a variety of sources on a site page. 11