Import pending mentors

4 steps 6 min Updated 4 November 2026

Pending mentors is the staff equivalent of pre-admission. Just as pre-admission lets you bring in pupils before they enrol, this pulls in members of staff before they officially start — so you can set them up, add them to groups and hand over their sign-in before day one.

It is a per-school setting and is off by default. Unlike pre-admission, nobody has to be chosen: once it is on, every qualifying member of staff is brought in automatically.

Before you start

You need to be an admin with sync settings permission to switch it on or off.
To see the Mentors page you need the View MIS (Wonde) data permission.
Your school must be connected to its MIS through Wonde — the start dates come from your MIS.

Steps

Step 1: Open School settings → Sync

In the sidebar, open School settings and select the Sync tab. The Pending mentors card sits directly below Pre-admission (or use the Pending mentors jump chip, which shows On or Off).

Step 2: Check who would come in (optional)

Select Preview on the card. It lists who qualifies right now, with their start date, even while the setting is off. See Preview who currently qualifies.

Step 3: Turn it on

Tick Import pending mentors (future-starting staff). A warning box appears ("These staff get live accounts before they start") — read it, because the accounts are real as soon as the next sync runs.

Step 4: Save

Select Save pending mentors. You'll see "Pending-mentor setting saved." The next MIS sync brings in anyone who qualifies. To turn it off again, untick the box and save.

Seeing who is coming

Open Data → Incoming learners and mentors → Mentors in the sidebar to see, live from your MIS, exactly which incoming staff currently qualify. The Mentors item appears once this setting is switched on (and only for admins with the View MIS (Wonde) data permission). In MAT overview the page asks you to switch to a school first.

If you open the page while the setting is off, it says "Importing incoming mentors is switched off — the list below shows who would be brought in if you turned it on". Recompute reads your MIS again; Sync settings jumps to the card above.

What it does

Off (default): the sync imports a member of staff only once your MIS lists them as a current employee — i.e. once they've actually started.
On: the sync also imports staff who aren't current yet but who are due to start soon — a pending (incoming) mentor. They're brought in ahead of their start date.

Staff who are already current are always imported either way — this setting only changes whether future-starting staff come in early.

What counts as a "pending mentor"

A member of staff is treated as a pending (incoming) mentor when all of these are true in your MIS:

they are not a current employee yet, and
they have an employment start date recorded, and
that start date is in the future, and
it's within roughly the next 20 months (about 600 days).

If any of those isn't true they're not brought in by this setting. In particular, a future starter with no start date recorded, or one starting more than ~20 months away, is skipped — as is anyone who has already left. So if a new starter hasn't appeared, the usual cause is a missing or too-distant start date in the MIS.

Preview who currently qualifies

Select Preview on the Pending mentors card (or open Data → Incoming learners and mentors → Mentors) to see exactly who qualifies as an incoming mentor right now — real names and their start date (Starts 1 Sep 2026), pulled live from your MIS using the same criteria above. It works whether the toggle is on or off, so you can check "if I turn this on, who gets brought in early?" before switching it on. If nobody qualifies it says "No one currently qualifies." Nothing on the preview changes anything — it's read-only.

What happens to them once imported — read this before turning it on

This is the important part, and it's worth being precise about:

A pending mentor is imported as a normal, active, fully-provisioned account — the same as any other member of staff. That means, if the relevant services are on for your school, they get a Google/Microsoft account, email, and group memberships straight away, ahead of their start date. They are not held back in a limited or "pending" state.
Internally they carry a "pending" marker, but that marker isn't used to restrict anything — it doesn't delay provisioning or block sign-in. It only records that they came in as a not-yet-started starter.

So the trade-off is: turning this on gives you future staff, ready to configure in advance — at the cost of live accounts existing for people who haven't started yet (and, occasionally, for someone whose start is later cancelled, until your MIS drops them).

When to use it

Turn it on if you like to prepare accounts ahead of a start date — add new staff to teaching groups, get their email working, hand over credentials at induction.
Leave it off if you'd rather an account only exists once someone is actually employed.

Interactions

It affects staff only — it's completely separate from pre-admission (students) and has no blackout window and no year group setting; it's a simple on/off.
The staff import runs with the normal weekday MIS import. While your school is frozen for the summer (the End of year freeze) that import doesn't run, so nothing new is imported — pending mentors included — until you resume. To hand out logins to new staff during the freeze, use Release early accounts — it needs this setting switched on to include staff who haven't started yet. See Release early accounts during the freeze.

Troubleshooting

"A new member of staff hasn't appeared." — open Data → Incoming learners and mentors → Mentors (or Preview on the card). If they're not listed, your MIS has no start date for them, the date is in the past, or it is more than about 20 months away — fix it in your MIS. If the setting is off, turn it on (Steps 3–4). If your school is frozen for end of year, use Release early accounts.
Notification: "N members of staff start soon and are not being imported" (or "1 member of staff starts soon and is not being imported") — your MIS shows staff joining before long, but Import pending mentors is off, so their accounts aren't created ahead of time. Switch it on if you want them set up before they start. The count is refreshed once a night.
"This school is not connected to Wonde." or "Couldn't reach Wonde: …" on the preview — the page can't read your MIS; select Recompute to try again, and contact support if it persists.

Where to find it

School settings → Sync, directly below Pre-admission. The list of who's coming is under Data → Incoming learners and mentors → Mentors.

Import pre-admission students — the student equivalent
How syncing works
A user isn't syncing
Release early accounts during the freeze

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