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What happens at end of term

What happens at end of term

The End of year page explains, in plain terms, exactly what will happen for your school — using your real dates and settings. This is a summary of the whole process.

The window

Your school has a provisioning window with two dates: when it opens (the start of your year) and when it closes (the end of term). While the window is open, changes in your MIS flow out to your users in Google Workspace, Microsoft Entra and any other platforms you sync to.

The freeze {#step-1}

When the window closes (your final date), sync freezes. In plain terms: changes in your MIS stop reaching your users in Realsmart, Google and Entra. This is deliberate — over the summer, school-office changes (leavers, timetable rebuilds, roll-overs) shouldn't disturb live accounts. While frozen, nothing MIS-driven is pushed to your connected platforms.

There is one thing you can still choose to do. New staff you recruit over the summer, and students whose application you have already accepted, are held by the freeze along with everything else — which is unhelpful when you want their logins ready for day one. Release early accounts on the End of year page lets you create accounts for exactly those people, and nobody else, while the rest of the freeze stays in place. You preview who would be created first, and nothing happens until you confirm. See Release early accounts during the freeze.

Your Classrooms {#step-2}

At the same moment, your Google Classrooms are handled according to your End of term Classroom option — archived, left as they are, or archived at the start of next term. You set a school-wide default and can override it per group. See End of term Classroom options.

Resuming for the new year {#step-3}

Sync turns back on automatically — on your chosen resume date, or by default on 1 September. The window rolls forward by a year and everything reconciles to your latest MIS data. You don't have to do anything for this to happen. See Resuming sync for the new year.

Preview what will actually happen {#step-4}

Before the end of term, use Preview — what will actually happen on the End of year page. It runs a dry-run of your end of term against today's data — computed the way the sync engine will compute it, changing nothing — and shows real numbers and the actual items:

  • when the freeze lands (your final provision date);
  • exactly which Classrooms will be archived at end of term, archived at the new term, or left alone — expandable to the full list, each with its reason (school policy or a group's own override);
  • exactly which pre-admission students will be admitted (application accepted) and who's held back, by status;
  • what's waiting on you — protected users/groups in the tidy-up queue and orphan candidates from the last detection run (nothing there happens without your confirmation);
  • when sync resumes and what the reconciliation does.

This is the moment to catch a misconfiguration — if the preview says it will archive every Classroom and that's not what you meant, change the policy and press Recompute. The fine print under the preview explains exactly how each number is computed and its limits.

End of year preview showing what will actually happen with expanded real counts

What you need to do {#step-5}

The freeze and the resume both happen automatically — you don't have to trigger either one. But end of term is a once-a-year, high-stakes moment, so we recommend working through this sequence before your window closes rather than leaving everything to chance:

  1. Confirm or edit your window dates and Classroom policy. Check the first and final provision dates on the timeline are right for this year, and set (or confirm) your school-wide End of term Classroom option. See The provisioning window and the freeze and End of term Classroom options.
  2. Run the Preview dry-run. Use Preview — what will actually happen (above) to see the real numbers against today's data — nothing changes yet, but it's the moment to catch a misconfiguration before it's live.
  3. Work through tidy-up and orphan review before the freeze date. Review the protected users/groups queue and any detected stale orphans while you still have full visibility — both are entirely manual, nothing is removed without your say-so. See End-of-term tidy-up and Stale orphan review.
  4. Set or confirm a resume date — or accept the 1 September default if that's right for your school. See Resuming sync for the new year.
  5. Let freeze and resume happen automatically. Once the above is done, there's nothing further to run — the freeze lands on your final provision date and sync resumes on your resume date (or 1 September).
  6. Over the summer, release early accounts if you need logins ready for day one. Once you're frozen, use Release early accounts to create accounts for new staff and accepted applicants without waiting for resume. This one is optional and entirely on your timetable — build a preview whenever you want to see who is waiting. If you have September starters, check the Pending mentors setting is on first, or they won't appear. See Release early accounts during the freeze.

If anything changes before the window closes (a revised term date, a Classroom policy change), come back and repeat step 1 — the preview always reflects your current settings.

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