App defaults — set Launchpad apps for the whole trust

Which apps appear in a person's smartpanel is set per school. When you run 65+ schools, configuring them one at a time is a lot of repeated work. This page lets you set the apps once at trust level and apply them to every school in your trust in one confirmed action. It's in the MAT overview, under Platforms → App defaults.

Only a trust admin sees this page. A school admin inside a trust configures apps on their own school's Apps page instead.

What "trust default" means

Setting an app here creates a default for every member school — it does not silently overwrite a school that has deliberately set things differently. For each app and each school, the page tracks whether the school is:

• Following trust default — the school matches what you last applied.
• Overridden locally — someone changed that app for that school after the last apply.
• Not applied — the school has no setting for this app yet.

This is why re-applying later can keep local overrides (see step 3): the page remembers what was applied last time, so it can tell a genuine local change apart from a school that simply follows you.

Set the default visibility for shared apps

The Shared apps list shows the Realsmart apps every school can use. For each one, set who should see it by default across the trust using the four toggles:

• A — Admins
• M — Mentors (staff)
• L — Learners
• D — Starred (appears in the starred/favourites row)

These toggles are a draft — nothing changes in your schools until you press Apply to all schools. The Across the trust column shows, at a glance, how many schools are currently following, overridden, or not yet applied.

The list holds the Realsmart apps that are currently published. When Realsmart retires a product, it stops appearing here and in your schools' panels, so you're never setting a default for a tile that can no longer open. Schools that had it keep their settings, so nothing is lost if it ever comes back.

Apply to all schools

Press Apply to all schools. You'll get a plain-language summary before anything happens, for example: "This will set 12 apps as the default for all 66 schools in the trust. 3 schools have local overrides."

If any schools have local overrides, you choose what happens to them:

• Keep their local overrides — only update the schools that are following the trust default; leave the schools that changed things themselves untouched.
• Replace their local overrides — overwrite every school with the trust default, including the ones that had changed it.

The apply runs in the background so it never times out, even for a large trust. Panels refresh within about 10 minutes — the smartpanel caches results briefly, so a change isn't always instant.

Open Beacon to all staff across the trust

Beacon is your support helpdesk, and it has its own card at the top of this page rather than a row in the Shared apps list. That's because Beacon isn't an ordinary tile you point at a link: it's granted per trust, and its tile is created in each of your schools automatically wherever it's switched on.

The card tells you where it stands:

• On in n schools — Beacon is switched on and the tile is in those schools' panels.
• Not switched on — Beacon isn't enabled for your trust yet. Ask Realsmart to turn it on.

When it's on, the one setting that's yours to make is who sees it:

• Leave All staff can raise requests off and Beacon stays with your support team only.
• Select Turn on for all staff and every member of staff across the trust gets the Beacon tile and can raise a request. This is the setting to use when you want Beacon available trust-wide.

Two things aren't settable, by design: admins always see Beacon wherever it's on, and learners never do. Tiles can take a few minutes to appear or disappear after you change this.

If you turn it on and no mailbox in Beacon is open to staff yet, you'll be told so — the switch is on, but requests have nowhere to go until someone opens a mailbox in Beacon under Settings → Mailboxes.

If your trust runs Beacon per school rather than trust-wide, the card may say the setting differs between schools. Turning it on then applies it to every school where Beacon is enabled.

Author a custom app for the whole trust

Under Custom apps, select Add custom app to create a tile (a link or app) that your trust owns. Give it a title, a link, an optional icon URL, and choose who sees it by default. When you save, it is created as a tile in every school in your trust at once.

A custom app is a managed set: it lives as one tile per school, but you manage it here as a single thing. Edit changes it everywhere; Delete removes it from every school. When you edit, you can again choose to keep schools that changed the app locally, or overwrite them all.

See and revert per-school overrides

Select Review schools on any app to see every school's status against the trust default. For a school marked Overridden locally, select Revert to put it back to the trust default in one click — or Revert all overridden to reset every diverged school for that app at once.

Who can change this, and what's recorded

Only a trust admin can manage app defaults, and only for their own trust's schools — never beyond their access. Every apply, custom-app change, and revert is recorded in the audit trail (who applied what, to how many schools, and when).

What a school admin sees on their own Apps page

Trust-level control is never hidden from the school it applies to. On a member school's own Apps page:

• A trust-authored custom app carries a Trust badge in the Source column (not "School") — it's materialised as a tile in that school, but it's still owned centrally. Editing it there creates a local override for that school only, which your trust can choose to keep or overwrite next time it re-applies (see step 4). It can't be deleted from the school's Apps page — only from here, in MAT overview.
• A Realsmart shared app that has a trust default set shows "Trust default" under its visibility toggles when the school matches it, or an Overridden badge when the school has changed it locally — the same following/overridden language used on this page, seen from the school's side.