Reasons to have multiple managers on Tapestry

[Lauren]

Hi everyone,

We’ve been finding recently that some of you have been running into difficulties because your Tapestry account only has one manager on it. There definitely are circumstances where only having one does make the most sense, and of course you know the specific circumstances of your setting, so feel free to leave it like that if that is the best thing for you, but we wanted to explain why we do recommend that you have more than one manager on your Tapestry account. In short, they are:

1)     Because you can!

2)     Because the statutory framework suggests that you should.

3)     Because if the only manager leaves you might lose access to a substantial part of Tapestry.

I’m going to go into each one in a bit more depth now.

1) Because you can

We’ve spoken to quite a few people recently who have staff set up with their own logins but who all share the login details to one manager account. But, if you’re doing that, it’ll be easier and more secure if everyone who has access to that managerial account is just set up a manager themselves.

That way, each staff member will only ever have to login with one set of details (their own), regardless of what task they’re doing, and it will be very clear who has done what – all changes that are made to Tapestry accounts (including adding and deleting data) are recorded in your events. Therefore, if something odd happens on your account you will be able to easily tell exactly who did what when, as opposed to if everyone uses the same login details, in which case you will be able to see what happened when, but you’ll have no idea who actually did it.

You’re not limited with the number of managers you can have on account. So, if you do want several of them you can add new ones by selecting ‘Manager’ as the staff type when you add a new staff member, or by editing existing staff in the ‘Manage Staff’ section of the control panel by clicking on the ‘edit’ button next to their name, then changing their staff type to ‘Manager’. Just remember to save the change at the bottom of the page!
 

 

2) Because the statutory framework suggests that you should
 

We know that for the childminders amongst you, it might not be appropriate to have more than one manager, but for those of you in group settings, the statutory framework for the EYFS says:

“The provider must ensure there is a named deputy who, in their judgement, is capable and qualified to take charge in the manager’s absence.” (p21)

All managers on Tapestry have permission to do some things that regular staff members don’t e.g. adding and removing children, staff, and relatives, and there are permission options which mean regular staff can be quite limited in other aspects too. For example, it’s possible that only managers would be able to approve observations, see the analysis screens, and export PDFs of several observations at once. If the only manager is absent and the deputy is not a manager, you may find that they are not able to take charge of your observation and assessment system.

 

3) Because if the only manager leaves you might lose access to a substantial part of Tapestry

If the only manager leaves without adding a new manager or leaving their login details, and you don’t have access to the email address they used to sign in (so you can reset the password), you will not be able to sign in as a manager and therefore will not be able to access the control panel. As mentioned in part 2, there are several important things that only managers can do so it is vital that you have access to that.

We in the customer service department of the Foundation Stage Forum do not add managers to Tapestry accounts ourselves for safeguarding reasons. Tapestry can store a lot of potentially sensitive data on it, and as we do not know who each person is in your setting and what each of your responsibilities are, we cannot be sure who should have access. If you do lock yourselves out of the account by losing access to the only manager account we can sometimes add the headteacher/manager to the account, but only if we can independently verify who they are, and we are certain that we are in contact with them, rather than just someone who tells us they are them. This usually takes a little while, and it is possible that we won’t be able to add a new manager and so you will lose access to very important areas within the account.