Provision subjects as groups

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) exactly 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.

Where to find it

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

Subjects page (Platforms → Subjects) — the full preview table with per-subject staff drill-in, plus the on/off switch, membership mode, and the refresh/provision actions. This is where Steps 1–6 below happen.
School settings → Sync tab — a Subject groups card with the same switch, membership mode and actions, and a 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) — bulk enable/disable Provision Subjects and set the membership mode 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 teacher attached to a class that belongs to a subject becomes a candidate for that subject's group.

There are two membership modes:

All associated (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 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 change applies on the next sync.

The preview banner

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.
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.

Steps

Step 1 — Open the Subjects page {#step-1}

Go to Platforms → Subjects in the admin area. 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 {#step-2}

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. A refresh usually completes within a few minutes.

Step 3 — Review the subjects and staff {#step-3}

Each row is a subject, showing the group it would create (subject-<name>) and how many staff would be in it. Open a subject to see the individual staff, their role labels (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 with a name clash already shares its group name with another, unrelated group — Realsmart will skip it (never overwrite the existing group) until the clash is resolved.

Step 4 — Choose the membership mode {#step-4}

Set the membership mode to All associated or Teaching only (see "How membership is worked out" above for the trade-off). All associated is the safe default.

Step 5 — Turn on Provision Subjects {#step-5}

Switch Provision Subjects on. You'll be asked to confirm, because the next sync will create these groups and add these staff on your connected cloud platform. Once confirmed, the groups are created on the next sync run.

Step 6 — Provision now (optional) {#step-6}

If you don't want to wait for the next scheduled sync, select Provision now to queue a run immediately for this school. This is only available once Provision Subjects is on.

What happens after you turn it on

On each sync, Realsmart creates or updates a subject-<name> group for every active subject (skipping name clashes) and keeps its membership in step with the MIS. Group names are cleaned into a safe form the same way all group names are — see How group, cohort and house names are formatted. If a subject later disappears from the MIS, its group is suspended, not deleted, so it comes back cleanly if the subject returns.

Turning Provision Subjects off stops future syncs from creating or updating subject groups; any groups already created are left in place.

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 only and they don't hold a teaching-flagged class on that subject. Switch to All associated 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.