Provision subjects as groups

6 steps 8 min Updated 4 November 2026

Provision Subjects turns each subject in your MIS into its own Realsmart group — named subject-<name> (for example subject-religious-education) — and fills it with that subject's teachers. Once it's on, those groups sync to your connected cloud platform (Google Workspace or Microsoft Entra) like your other groups, so you can email, share with, or manage a whole subject's teaching staff in one place.

Nothing is created until you turn it on, and you get a full preview first — so you see exactly which subjects and which staff would land before anything reaches your cloud platform.

Before you start

You need to be an admin with sync settings permission.
Your school must be connected to its MIS through Wonde, with the subjects permission granted. The banner on the Subjects page tells you if either is missing (see below).
Subjects are read for one school at a time. In MAT overview the Subjects page lets you pick which of your schools to look at.

Where to find it

Provision Subjects is available to any admin who can change sync settings, in three places:

Subjects page (sidebar Platforms → Subjects) — the full preview table with per-subject staff drill-in, plus the on/off button, the membership choice, and the Refresh preview and Provision now buttons. This is where Steps 1–6 below happen.
School settings → Sync tab — a Subject groups card with the same on/off button, membership choice and actions, and a one-line summary of the preview. Handy when you're already configuring sync; use Open full preview to jump to the Subjects page.
MAT sync settings (trusts, in MAT overview → Sync settings) — bulk set Provision Subjects and Subjects membership across selected schools. Bulk-enabling skips the per-school preview look, so review each school on the Subjects page first.

How membership is worked out

Your MIS doesn't record "who belongs to a subject" directly — so Realsmart works it out from who teaches the subject's classes. Every member of staff attached to a class that belongs to a subject becomes a candidate for that subject's group. (Vacancy placeholders in your MIS are ignored, and staff who haven't started yet only count if Import pending mentors is on.)

There are two membership modes, shown as the Who joins each subject group choice:

All associated staff (default, recommended) — every staff member associated with the subject's classes, whatever their role. This includes a head of department or second-in-department who oversees the subject but may not personally be the timetabled teacher of a class.
Teaching staff only — just the staff flagged as the main or class teacher on the subject's classes. Warning: this can drop the head of department from their own subject's group, because oversight roles often aren't the timetabled teacher. Choose it only when you specifically want the teaching staff alone.

You can switch modes at any time. The choice is saved the moment you pick it (you'll see "Membership mode updated — it applies on the next sync.") and applies on the next sync.

The Subjects page always shows a status banner. An empty result names its cause — it never just says "no subjects" when the real reason is a connection or permissions gap:

Subjects preview is ready — the subjects and staff below are what would provision, with counts of active and archived subjects, staff associations, staff not yet in Realsmart, and any name clashes.
This school isn't connected to Wonde — there's no MIS link to read subjects from.
Wonde hasn't granted the subjects scope — a permissions gap in the school's Wonde connection, not an empty subject list. Ask the school to approve the subjects scope in Wonde, then refresh.
This MIS doesn't expose subjects — the school is on an MIS that has no subjects feed, so the feature isn't available for it.
No subjects preview yet — run Refresh preview to read the subjects for the first time.

The on/off button and the membership choice only appear when the banner is Subjects preview is ready or No subjects preview yet. With any of the three problem banners there is nothing to configure until the cause is fixed.

Steps

Step 1: Open the Subjects page

Go to Platforms → Subjects in the sidebar. If you administer one school, the page opens on it directly; if you administer several, pick the school you're configuring from the School selector at the top of the page.

Step 2: Refresh the preview

Select Refresh preview. This reads the school's current subjects and teaching staff from the MIS and updates the table below. It changes nothing in Realsmart or your cloud platform — it only refreshes what you're looking at. You'll see "Preview refresh queued — the mirror below will update when it completes (usually a few minutes)."

Step 3: Review the subjects and staff

The table has one row per Subject, with the Group name it would create (subject-<name>), the number of Staff who would be in it (and how many that is under each membership mode), and a Status — Active, Archived or Name clash. Select a row's N staff button to see the individual staff, whether each is Teaching or Non-teaching, the role labels your MIS gives them (for example Head of Department), and whether each person is already in Realsmart. A member marked "In the MIS, not yet in Realsmart" can't be added to the group until they've synced in as a user.

A subject flagged Name clash ("A group already has this name — resolve before provisioning.") shares its group name with another group that wasn't created by this feature — Realsmart will skip it (never overwrite the existing group) until the clash is resolved by renaming one of the groups.

Step 4: Choose the membership mode

Under Who joins each subject group, choose All associated staff or Teaching staff only (see "How membership is worked out" above for the trade-off). All associated is the safe default.

Step 5: Turn on Provision Subjects

Select Turn on in the Subject provisioning card. You'll be asked to confirm ("Turn on subjects provisioning?" — "Provisioning will create these groups and add these staff on its next run — this creates groups on your connected cloud platform."), because the next sync will create these groups and add these staff on your connected cloud platform. Once confirmed the badge changes to On and you'll see "Provision Subjects turned on — groups will be created on the next sync."

Step 6: Provision now (optional)

If you don't want to wait for the next scheduled run, select Provision now (top right, or on the Subject groups card in School settings) and confirm. This queues a run immediately for this school ("Provision run queued for …"). It is greyed out until Provision Subjects is on. The groups are created in Realsmart within a few minutes; they reach Google and Microsoft with the normal cloud syncs (see below).

What happens after you turn it on

Subject groups are created by a scheduled subjects run that happens Monday to Friday at about 05:45 (or straight away with Provision now); Sync status → Schedule lists it as Subject sync. On each run Realsmart creates or updates a subject-<name> group for every active subject (skipping name clashes) and keeps its membership in step with the MIS. The groups then reach your cloud platform with the normal syncs: Microsoft Entra at the 06:00 run the same morning, Google at the next 04:00 run.

The group name is made from the subject's name: lower case, with spaces, full stops and slashes turned into hyphens, anything other than letters, numbers, hyphens and underscores removed, and cut at 64 characters (if a subject has no usable name its code is used). The groups appear in your Groups list with the type Subjects. If the cloud sync's Group types to sync is narrowed, make sure Subjects is ticked there too — see Google Workspace settings and Microsoft Entra settings. A subject group is an ordinary group otherwise: for example, with Provision Google Classroom on, a subject group with at least one member of staff can get a Google Classroom like any other group (see Google Classroom settings).

While your school is frozen for end of year, no subject groups are created or updated; the next run after the freeze lifts catches up.

If a subject later disappears from the MIS, its group is suspended, not deleted, so it comes back cleanly if the subject returns. A subject group that ends up with nobody in it (for example, none of its staff are in Realsmart yet) is suspended too.

Turning Provision Subjects off (Turn off, then confirm — "Turn off subjects sync?") stops future syncs from creating or updating subject groups; any groups already created are left in place and nothing is deleted.

Troubleshooting

"My preview is empty." Read the banner — it will say whether the school isn't connected to Wonde, is missing the subjects scope, is on an MIS with no subjects feed, or simply hasn't been previewed yet. An empty preview is only "the school genuinely has no subjects" when the banner says the preview is ready.
"A teacher is missing from a subject group." Either they aren't in Realsmart yet (shown as "In the MIS, not yet in Realsmart" — they'll be added once they sync in as a user), or you're using Teaching staff only and they don't hold a teaching-flagged class on that subject. Switch to All associated staff to include oversight roles.
"A subject didn't create a group." It's either flagged as a name clash (resolve the clashing group name), or it has no resolvable teachers to put in it (a group is never created empty), or Provision Subjects is off or the school is frozen for the summer.
"The Provision now button is greyed out." Provision Subjects is off — turn it on first (Step 5).
"I don't see the Turn on button." The banner is one of the three problem states (no Wonde link, subjects scope missing, MIS without subjects) — fix that first.

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