RM Cloud Service Delivery can assist you with your MIS Sync installation and Microsoft® 365™ federation. For further information, please speak to your Sales representative on 01235 645 316 or email getintouch@rm.com, quoting this article.

As an establishment with RM Unify MIS Sync enabled, it is possible to sync your teaching groups, year groups and registration groups from your MIS with Microsoft 365 to create education classes. These classes can then used to create teams in Microsoft Teams.

The huge benefit of using classes (as opposed to Microsoft 365 Groups) to provision your teams is that the class and team membership is automatically kept in sync with your MIS via RM Unify Group Sync. This type of sync does not happen automatically with Microsoft 365 Groups and Microsoft Teams.

After syncing the MIS group to Microsoft 365, RM Unify will set the education class up as follows:

Group type in RM Unify	Microsoft 365 class owners* (These are the admins, with management rights for the Class.)	Microsoft 365 class members
Year group	RM Unify admin(s) selected on the Group Sync Settings page.	Students in the year.
Registration group**	RM Unify admin(s) selected on the Group Sync Settings page.	Students in the registration group as per the MIS.
Teaching group†	RM Unify admin(s) selected on the Group Sync Settings page, plus the registered Teaching Staff*** on record in the MIS.	Students in the teaching group as per the MIS.

* If the class is created by clicking the Action button in the Management Console, the logged on RM Unify user will also be set as a class owner.
** Might be known as 'Tutor group' in your MIS.
*** Except for Glow schools using 'SEEMiS' (where all Staff group members will be made class owners), this will be a single Staff user/owner. Additional class owners can be added via the M365 Admin centre.
† Teaching groups are not extracted for the ScholarPack MIS.

Note: The RM Unify Management Console displays student membership of MIS groups. It does not display teacher membership of MIS groups.

RM Unify Group Sync for Microsoft 365 Classes works by syncing MIS group and membership data into M365. If members of a group change in your MIS and RM Unify, e.g. a student moves in or out of a group, an overnight schedule automatically syncs those changes to M365. You can resync a class's membership at any time from the RM Unify Management Console by clicking Actions, 'Resync Microsoft 365 members'. Similarly, if you want to remove the class from M365, click the 'Delete Class from Microsoft 365' option from Actions in the RM Unify Management Console.

If you wish to sync your school's year groups, registration groups and teaching groups from your MIS to Microsoft 365, you must first sync your MIS with RM Unify. To set this up:

1. Log on to RM Unify as an RM Unify administrator.
2. Click Management Console, Groups.
3. At the top of the page, click Settings, 'Set up groups sync to apps'.
4. On the 'Automatically Create MIS groups in Apps' page, select the MIS group types that you want to automatically create in Microsoft 365. If the groups are not selectable and you see a highlighted message (as per the screenshot below), you need to first enable the Microsoft 365 APIs to allow automatic group syncing:
   1. On the current window, click the 'Enable this in the Support Info section of App Details' link to be taken to a Microsoft 365 tile in the App Library.
   2. Under the Support Info section, in the ACTION REQUIRED box, click 'Click here'.
   3. Click Enable Microsoft 365 APIs.
   4. Log on to Microsoft 365 as a global administrator, if prompted.
   5. On the 'RM Unify needs permission to' window, click Accept.
5. Enter a group 'name identifier' if required, to include in the class names in Microsoft 365 (the default will be your school's DfE code).
6. Select which RM Unify admin users you want to additionally set as a group owner of new classes. Teaching staff members of teaching groups are automatically set as class owners.
7. Click Save.

Each night, new MIS groups of the selected type(s) will be automatically created in Microsoft 365.

1. Log on to RM Unify as an administrator or teaching staff user.
2. Click Management Console, Groups.
3. Find the group* you wish to sync with Microsoft 365 and click Actions.
4. Click 'Create Class in Microsoft 365'.
   Note: if the option to Create is greyed out, you will need to enable the Microsoft 365 APIs, as per the screenshot above.
   
   The Create menu option is also not available on role groups or non-MIS year groups as these are already automatically created in Microsoft 365.
5. Edit the class name if required and add a description (these will be visible in Microsoft 365).
6. Indicate the 'Required lifetime' of the class. This helps the Microsoft 365 administrators to know how the classes are being used. There is no automatic deletion of classes.
7. Click OK.

It takes up to half an hour to send the group to Azure Active Directory and for it to appear within the Microsoft 365 apps to use.

Once the classes have been provisioned by Microsoft (which can take up to 30 minutes), they can be used to create class teams. Please see TEC7699072 in the 'Other Useful Articles' section below.

When RM Unify receives MIS group data, it creates classes using the following naming convention:

<MISGroupName>_Class <NameIdentifier> <MISAcademicYearStart>, where MISGroupName and MISAcademicYearStart come from your MIS and NameIdentifier is set in the RM Unify Management Console.

Here are some naming outcomes examples in RM Unify and Microsoft 365:

* To view your default domain, sign into the Microsoft 365 Admin Centre as a global administrator and click Setup, Domains.

• New owners added directly to a Microsoft 365 class are retained, even on the next group sync or update from RM Unify.
• New members added directly to a Microsoft 365 class will be removed on the next group sync or update from RM Unify.