Introduction
This guide will walk you through manually managing hierarchies in itslearning, following a recommended structure. This approach prevents several known issues that can happen if a participant in an organisation is manually moved in the hierarchy. By setting up a predefined structure where all participants stay in the same place throughout their years in the school or organisation, it will also be easier to delete users when they are noe longer in the school. Please note: itslearning highly recommends creating and maintaining all hierarchies' trough synchronisations.
It is important to note that when you set up a hiearchy, an organisation should always be defined, even if there is ony one school on the site. That is because structurally, itslearning are using the organisation tag to define several actions. Without an organisation level, itslearning might not work as intended.
Initial setup
When you create or need to change a hiearchy, you should build the hiearchy structure before importing participants.
The top level on your site will always be the site level. Certain system administrator changes on your itslearning site will be defined from what lies under the site (such as global setting). All changes on global settings will create a change for all organisations on the site. 
This is a typical hiearchy with a site (Lind demo) and its schools/organisations. Note that the small houses represent the organisation level:
Click "add" to create a new level in the hiearchy. We will create a new organisation called "The school of Bergen"
Click save after inserting the name and you will have a new school in your hiearchy tree.
Working in the school/organisation
Organising the students
In order to maintain control over where in the hirachy all participants are, you should create a hiearchy called "All students". Under this folder, you should create a folder for each school year. The students that starts school in 2016 is placed in the 2016 folder, the students starting in 2017 is in the 2017 folder and so on. The student will always stay in this place in the hiearchy, until they leave the school.
When the class of 2016 leaves the school. this folder can be deleted, but only after all student accounts from that year have been deleted and put in the trashcan. Deleting all students enrolled in a spesific year is very easy. Just search for all students and select the correct enrollment year-hiearchy and delete all the students in one go.
Under the school of Bergen, you now need to create a hierarchy for classes that change from year to year. We call this "Grade levels 2024/2025. Under this hierarchy you will create the grade leves of your school. The participants in this hierarchy will move from this hierarchy and to a new hierarchy next year (Grade levels 2025/2026). But they will always be "home" in the "students" hierarchy.
If this is a big school and you need to further divide the students into classes, you should also define these in the hiearchy.
Adding students to the hierarchy
There are different ways to add students to itslearning. You can add them manually one by one, or you can import them with a CSV file (link).
When we have created the hierarchies shown above, we can give students the correct hierarchy memberships. For a student this means that we add him/her first to the year they were added to the school "Students 2024”.
If a student transfers into your school, its important to put them in the hiearchy at the year they would have started. A student starting in 6th grade in your school should not belong to the "students 2024" hiearchy.
This hierarchy membership will never change for the students that were added that year. Secondly we add the students from 2024 to “1 Grade” under the year “Grade levels 2024/2025”. An example hierarchy membership structure is shown for one of the students in 1 grade
Student “Ida Andersson” will always (as long as she is a student at this school) have membership to All students 2024” because that is the year she was enrolled as a student. She is also a member of “1 grade” in the current school year, because she is a student in this class. The hierarchy “Grade levels 2024/2025/1grade” can then be used to add her to courses she need to attend the school year 2024/2025.
A new school year
When you approach a new school year, you can create a new hierarchy: Grade levels 2025/2026. This hierarchy will be built to mirror the old one.
When the schoolyear 24/25 is over, you can start the process of deleting students from the "Grade levels 2024/2025" and import them to their new classes in "Grade levels 25/26". Remember to put the students in the correct new class. The students can be added to their new hiearchy one by one or in bulk.
**Should there be a separate article about moving people around in the hiearchy, or should I screenshot the process here? Ant: This would be a good usecase for a collapsible section.
Organizing the parents
In order to maintain control over where in the hierarchy all parents are, you should create a hierarchy called "All Parents". Under this folder, you should create a folder for each school year, similar to the student structure. The parents of students who started school in 2024 are placed in the "Parents 2024" folder, the parents of students starting in 2023 are in the "Parents 2023" folder, and so on.
Some parents can be members of several parent groups, depending on whether they have multiple children attending the school who entered in different years. For example, one parent could be a member of both "Parents 2019" and "Parents 2022" if they have children who started school in these two different years.
When the class of 2017 leaves the school, their parent folder can be deleted, but only after all parent accounts from that year have been reviewed. This will cause all parents having membership to that group to lose their membership to this parent group and only have "All Parents" membership left. Based on that, you can then do a search for parents not having children in the school and can delete those parent accounts.
If you want the school to use information classes for parents, or parent representatives need to have access to some courses, you need to create another hierarchy that defines school years for parents as well.
If parents need course access
Under the school/organization, you also need to create a hierarchy for class-specific parent groups that change from year to year. We call this "Parent Groups 2024/2025". Under this hierarchy, you will create parent groups for each grade level or class. These groups can then be used to give parents access to relevant courses where schools share information, announcements, and updates specific to their children's classes.
The parents in this hierarchy will move from the old hierarchy to this new one for the next school year, but they will always maintain their original membership in the "All Parents" hierarchy based on when their first child entered the school. This structure ensures clean course access management from year to year without any conflicts.
Teacher and Staff Hierarchy Management
Core Structure
For teachers and staff members, we recommend implementing a single permanent hierarchy that will contain all teacher and staff groups. "All Teachers and Staff." This hierarchy will remain constant and should not be renamed in future years.
Sub-Groups Organization
Under this hierarchy, create sub-groups for different categories of staff such as:
- External colleagues
- Internal colleagues
- Teaching staff
These sub-group names remain constant from year to year, while their membership changes annually as teachers join or leave the school. You'll need to update the memberships for each teacher/staff at appropriate times throughout the school year.
Departmental and Course Assignment Structure
For subject departments with sub-hierarchies like "Biology," "Chemistry," etc., there are two possible approaches:
Option 1: Year-specific subject departments
Under this hierarchy, maintain all your subject-based sub-hierarchies. For the next school year, create a new parent hierarchy (e.g., "Subject Departments – 2025/2026") with similar subject-based sub-hierarchies.
Assign teachers memberships to the appropriate subject hierarchies for the current school year. These hierarchies can then be used to synchronize teachers into corresponding courses.
Option 2: If already using permanent subject departments
If you are already using permanent subject departments and simply updating memberships each year (not renaming the hierarchies), you can continue this practice as it aligns with our recommendations.
Course Teaching Assignments
Important: When assigning teachers to courses, use the "Teaching Staff" hierarchies rather than the general staff hierarchies mentioned above.
The key difference from your current practice is that you should not rename the class hierarchies each year. Instead:
- Create a new school-year-specific parent hierarchy (e.g., "Teaching Staff – 2025/2026")
- Create new class hierarchies as sub-hierarchies under this parent
- Assign teachers membership to the appropriate class hierarchies for the new school year
Benefits of This Approach
This method ensures:
- Teachers aren't "stuck" in outdated hierarchies when transitioning between school years
- No risk of carrying over "old participants" into new courses
- Clean separation between academic years
- Easier management of teacher assignments across years
Your hierarchy should now look something like this with several of the subhierarchies open.
