Release early accounts during the freeze

When your provisioning window closes, sync freezes and MIS changes stop reaching your users — see The provisioning window and the freeze. That is usually what you want, but it also holds back the two groups of people you most need ready for day one: staff you have just recruited and pupils who are about to join.

Release early accounts is the deliberate exception. It lets you create accounts for those people — and only those people — while everything else stays frozen, so you can hand out logins before term starts.

When the card appears, and where

The Release early accounts card is on two pages under Data → Incoming learners and mentors: Learners and Mentors. It's the same card on both, so it can never tell you different things depending on where you opened it. It appears whenever your school is inside its freeze: the window has closed and sync has not resumed yet. You need View MIS (Wonde) data to open those pages, and Run syncs & provisioning to build a preview, release or send anyone. See Reduced admin access.

The End of year page no longer holds the card itself. While you're frozen it shows a short card that says new staff and pupils are being held and tells you to create their accounts from Data → Incoming learners and mentors, with a Go to incoming mentors button.

The sidebar shows Learners only when Import pre-admission students is switched on, and Mentors only when Import pending mentors is on. If both are off, the Incoming learners and mentors group isn't in the sidebar at all — use Go to incoming mentors on the End of year page to reach the card.

Outside the freeze the card is hidden, and it should be — while the window is open your normal sync is already importing these people every night, so there is nothing to release.

No cloud sync is switched on

A live cloud sync is not required. If Google or Microsoft Entra sync is on and live for your school, released accounts are sent there too. If neither is — or your Google sync is still in preview mode, which does not count, because nothing it produces reaches your tenant — release still works and the accounts are created in Realsmart only. There is nowhere to send them, so no Send them to… button appears, and the card says so rather than implying they went somewhere. Turning a cloud sync on later gives them their Google or Microsoft account then.

Their usernames are still permanent from the moment they are created, so this is not a rehearsal.

Preview first — a preview creates nobody

Nothing is ever released automatically. The flow is always preview, review, then confirm.

Choose Build preview. Realsmart reads your MIS and shows exactly who would be given an account: their name, whether they are staff or an applicant, their year group, and the groups they would be added to. It takes a minute or two and the page updates on its own ("Checking your MIS. … Nothing is being created."). A badge on the card says how old the preview is. If your school has pre-admission switched on, Realsmart also refreshes the preview itself every night, so there is often one waiting already.

The list shows the first few people with Show all … underneath, so a big intake does not bury the rest of the page. Nobody is left out of it — open it before you release and check the whole list, especially if the count is larger than you expected.

A preview creates nobody. It changes nothing in Realsmart, sends nothing to Google or Entra, and can be rebuilt as often as you like with Rebuild preview. Only the confirmation dialog behind the Release button creates anything, and that step spells out what it is about to do before you agree to it.

A preview goes out of date. If it is more than 24 hours old the card says "This preview is more than 24 hours old, so it may no longer match your MIS. Build a fresh one before releasing." — your MIS may have moved on since.

Who is released, and who is not

Released:

• New members of staff, including people who have not started yet. A teacher recruited in June who starts in September is exactly the case this feature exists for. (September starters need the Pending mentors setting switched on — see "Import pending mentors" is switched off.)
• Pre-admission pupils you have chosen. A pre-admission pupil is only ever created once an admin has chosen them: on Incoming learners, under Choose who to import, tick the pupils who are genuinely joining and select Approve for import. See Import pre-admission students. Release only creates the pupils you chose, and a pupil your MIS has marked withdrawn, rejected or declined is not released even if you chose them. Pupils whose application is only "Applied" or "Offered" and who nobody chose are never given an account.
• Pupils already on your live roll with a future admission date. A pupil who is on the roll but doesn't start until September can be released as an early starter, as long as Import pre-admission students is switched on for your school. (This is not offered inside the annual pre-admission pause below.)

Not released — these still wait for resume:

• A pupil who joins mid-summer as an ordinary in-year admission. Someone added straight onto your live roll in July with an admission date that has already passed (or none at all) is not an early starter, and their year group is in the middle of rolling over, so releasing them risks giving them a permanent username built on out-of-date information. They are created by the normal sync when your school resumes. This is a deliberate limit, not a fault.
• Leavers, class changes, timetable rebuilds, and any update to somebody who already has an account. The freeze holds all of it until resume.
• Anyone who already has a Realsmart account. Early release only ever creates new accounts; it never changes an existing one.

Which groups a released account gets

This is the part that most often surprises people, so it is worth reading twice.

A released account gets its role groups only:

• students go into the students group;
• staff go into the staff group, and into teaching staff or non-teaching staff.

Nothing else. No class groups, no year groups, no registration or house groups, no subject groups. And no group memberships are created in Google or Entra — those wait until your school resumes and the full sync reconciles everything.

So a released teacher can sign in, appears in your directory, and lands in the right place in Google — but their classes are not there yet. That is expected. Group memberships arrive with everything else on your resume date; see Resuming sync for the new year.

Usernames are permanent

A released pupil's username already carries the school year they are joining in — the release does not give them this year's number and correct it later.

That matters because a username cannot be changed by any later sync. It is fixed the moment the account is created, in Realsmart and in every platform it reaches. If one turns out to be wrong, the only way to correct it is to rename the user by hand in the admin area — no sync tidies it up for you.

For the same reason, a pupil whose admission date is missing from your MIS, has already passed, or is more than a year away is held back rather than released. Realsmart will not guess a joining year it cannot confirm. Those pupils are listed on the card with the reason, and they are created normally when sync resumes.

When the only problem is a missing date. If every pupil who is held has no admission date at all, a tick box appears: Also create the N pupil(s) with no admission date. Tick it if you've chosen their year group yourself and you are happy with the username shown for each on the list. Realsmart remembers the tick for this freeze only, and it clears itself when your window rolls forward. The list doesn't change until you Rebuild preview, at which point those pupils move from held to ready. The tick doesn't override a date that is in the past, too far ahead, or that disagrees with the year the username would carry; those need your MIS put right first. You need Run syncs & provisioning to tick it.

One more check happens at the moment of release: if the joining year the username would carry does not agree with the pupil's admission date in your MIS, that pupil is held too. It is the signal that the year group they are in now setting is wrong for your school — see Pre-admission students. Because this one is only checked as the accounts are created, those pupils appear in the result afterwards rather than in the preview, so a release can create fewer people than the preview offered.

Because the joining year comes from your pre-admission settings, check Import pre-admission students before you release — in particular that the year group they are in now is the year these pupils are finishing elsewhere, not the year they are joining.

Steps