Create a user

8 steps 5 min Updated 4 November 2026

Add a single new person to the current school. Once created, the user is available to add to groups and is queued straight away for your connected platforms (Google Workspace, Entra), with Active Directory and Apple School Manager following on their own schedules.

Before you start

You must be an admin for the school you want to add the user to, with the Manage users & groups permission.
Make sure you are working in the correct school — check the school name shown in the top-left switcher.
If you need to add many users at once, see Import users in bulk instead.

Steps

Step 1: Open the Users page

In the left sidebar, open Users (under Users & Groups) and select Users.

The Users list for the current school opens.

Step 2: Start a new user

Select Add user in the top-right corner of the page.

The Add user form opens, headed "Create a new person in" and your school's name.

Step 3: Choose a role

Select the Role from the dropdown:

Admin — full system access
Mentor — teacher / support staff
Learner — pupil / student
Observer — limited, read-only-style access for someone who needs to look people up but never manage them
Governor — member of the governing body
Ofsted — inspector access, typically used during an inspection

See User roles explained if you are unsure.

Add user form Role dropdown open showing all six roles: Admin, Mentor, Learner, Observer, Governor and Ofsted

Step 4: Enter the user's name

Title — optional (e.g. Mr, Mrs, Dr)
First name — required
Surname — required

Step 5: Set the username

Enter a Username. The username:

Must be unique within this school
Cannot contain spaces
Is saved in lower case
Forms the basis of the person's Google Workspace or Entra email address
Is locked once you save it, so the MIS import never changes it. To change it later, use Rename a user.

If your school uses Google Workspace, the email will be [email protected].

Step 6: Enter the UPN or staff code

Enter the UPN (for a pupil) or Staff code (for everyone else) — the field is labelled to match the role you chose in step 3, and reads UPN / staff code until you pick one. It is required.

This is the id your MIS knows the person by. Type it exactly as it appears — or will appear — in your MIS. It is how this hand-made account gets matched to their MIS record when the MIS starts sending them; get it wrong and the sync creates a second account for the same person instead.

If you don't know it yet, look it up in your MIS before creating the account. If your school replaces staff codes with MIS IDs, the caption under the field says so.

Step 7: Set status and other options

Status — leave as Active for a normal account. The choices are Active, Suspended and Locked. See User statuses for what they mean.
Protected (exclude from automated sync deletion) — ticked by default. Protected is also called Smartsync off. A protected account is never suspended automatically, and the MIS import never changes its details or groups. That suits people who will never be in your MIS, such as supply and cover staff, governors and test accounts. Untick it if this person will be in your MIS and you want the import to take over their details, year group and groups once they appear there. See User statuses.

Step 8: Create the user

Select Create user.

Result

A message says User created. and you land on the new user's edit page. They also appear in the Users list for the current school. They're added to the school's group for their role (for example learners or mentors), and they start on the school's default password for their role, being asked to change it when they first sign in — unless they're a learner who isn't allowed to change their own password. See What password does a new or reset user get?

The Google Workspace and Entra accounts are queued straight away and usually appear within a few minutes. Active Directory and Apple School Manager pick the person up on their own schedules. On the edit page, Sync now pushes them again. If a banner says Cloud sync is paused, the account is saved in Realsmart and is sent when sync resumes — see Cloud sync is paused. To look back at accounts Realsmart has created in Google, see Account creation history.

Troubleshooting

"I can't see the Add user button" — you may not have admin access to this school, or you may be in MAT overview mode. Switch to the specific school first using the school switcher in the top-left. If you open the Add user address in MAT overview you'll see "Switch to a school to create a user."
"The username has already been taken." — usernames must be unique within a school. Try a different format (e.g. jsmith2 instead of jsmith).
"The username field format is invalid." — the username contains a space. Remove it.
"Someone else in this school already has that UPN" (or Staff code), followed by "The sync cannot tell two people apart on the same one." — two people in one school cannot share one, because the sync has no way to tell them apart and would keep updating whichever record it found first. Find the person who already has it (search the Users list for the code) and check which of the two is wrong. If both are genuinely correct, the value is wrong in your MIS and needs fixing there.
"The UPN field is required." (or The Staff code field is required.) — every new account needs one, so the MIS can be matched to it later. Look the value up in your MIS; if the person genuinely isn't in the MIS and never will be (a governor or an inspector, say), enter the code your school uses for them so the field is still unique to that person.
"The forename field is required.", "The surname field is required." or "The role field is required." — fill in the field the message names. The first-name box is the forename.
"My new member of staff was suspended or didn't get their MIS groups." — see Why does a user keep getting suspended?. It's about the Protected tick.
"I need to add many users" — use Import users to upload a CSV file.

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