Microsoft 365 that a school can actually govern.
Schools adopt Microsoft 365 quickly and end up with content sprawl: hundreds of sites, duplicated policies, and departments running shadow systems because the official one was too hard. We build the structure, automation and governance underneath it, so staff collaborate in one governed place. We have delivered this for an independent college.
01Enrolment & admissions02Student records03Attendance04Timetabling & rooms05Family communication06Staff & clearances07Fees & billing08Reporting & governance
Why they call us
The software stopped being the thing that saves time.
Content sprawl beats good intentions
Every department creates its own site, policies get duplicated and drift, and nobody can say which version of the excursion form is current.
Processes run on paper and email
Permission slips, leave requests, incident reports and purchase approvals move as attachments, which means they are slow, unauditable and easy to lose.
Compliance reporting is a scramble
Attendance, child safety, staff clearances and funding reporting assembled by hand each period from systems that were never designed to talk.
What’s in the platform
Eight modules. Turn on what you need, build what you don’t have.
Every organisation starts from the same core and diverges within weeks. The modules below are the starting point, not the ceiling.
01 / ENREnrolment & admissions
Enquiry through to offer and acceptance, with document collection, interview scheduling, waitlists and a conversion view of the whole funnel.
02 / STUStudent records
One record per student across academic history, wellbeing notes, medical and consent documents, and family relationships, with access scoped by role.
03 / ATTAttendance
Roll marking across classes and excursions, unexplained absence follow-up, and the reporting your education authority requires without a manual export.
04 / TTTimetabling & rooms
Timetable publication, room and resource booking, cover and relief allocation, and a single view of who is where.
05 / COMFamily communication
Announcements, permission forms, parent-teacher bookings and secure messaging, delivered through the channels families actually read.
06 / STFStaff & clearances
Staff records, working-with-children and background clearance expiry tracking, professional development and onboarding workflows.
07 / FEEFees & billing
Fee schedules, discounts and sibling rules, payment plans, extras and excursions, reconciled into your finance system.
08 / RPTReporting & governance
Compliance reporting, board packs, policy currency and site governance, so the annual audit is a report rather than a project.
Customization
What’s standard, what’s configurable, what we build for you.
Most vendors stay vague about this until you are mid-contract. Here it is up front, so you can price the gap before you commit.
| Area | Standard | Configurable by you | Custom build |
|---|---|---|---|
| Collaboration | SharePoint site structure, document libraries | Site templates, metadata, naming conventions | Cross-campus architecture, external partner portals |
| Student records | Core record, documents, consent | Fields, forms, access roles | Wellbeing case management, special-needs planning |
| Processes | Power Automate approvals and forms | Approval chains, notification rules, form content | Complex multi-stage workflows, finance integration |
| Communication | Announcements, forms, messaging | Templates, audiences, timing | Parent app, translation, AI enquiry agent |
| Governance | Permissions, retention, policy library | Retention periods, review cycles, ownership | Automated site lifecycle, sprawl remediation |
| Reporting | Attendance, enrolment, compliance basics | Saved views, scheduled distribution | Authority-specific returns, Power BI models |
| Integrations | Microsoft 365, finance, SMS | Credentials, sync frequency, field mapping | Learning management systems, legacy migrations |
The AI layer
Where a custom build earns its cost.
Off-the-shelf systems bolt a chatbot onto a decade-old database. We build the intelligence into the workflow, using the same engineering we ship for enterprise clients on Azure AI.
Enquiry agent
Answers prospective-family questions from your own published information, captures the enquiry into the funnel, and books tours, with anything sensitive routed to a person.
Policy knowledge assistant
A grounded assistant over your policy and handbook library, permission-trimmed, citing the source document. New staff stop asking the same six questions, and the answers are current.
Absence pattern detection
Surfaces attendance patterns that predict disengagement early enough for a wellbeing team to act, rather than at the end of term.
Report comment drafting
Drafts report comments from assessment data and teacher notes as a starting point. The teacher edits and signs, and the draft is never published unreviewed.
Document classification
Classifies and tags incoming documents into the right library with the right retention, which is what actually keeps a governance model alive after year one.
Ask your data
A grounded assistant over enrolment and attendance data. "Which year levels lost the most enrolments after the fee change?" answered from your records.
Integrations
It has to live with the systems you already bought.
We integrate rather than replace, so what already works keeps working.
Microsoft
- SharePoint Online
- Microsoft 365
- Teams for Education
- Power Platform
- Entra ID single sign-on
- Power BI
Learning
- Learning management systems
- Assessment tools
- Library systems
- Parent portals
- Single sign-on for students
Operations
- Finance & fee systems
- SMS gateways
- Payment providers
- HR & payroll
- School websites
Compliance & data
Built to survive the questions your adviser will ask.
Student privacy in both markets
Designed against FERPA and state student-privacy law in the United States, and the Privacy Act and Australian Privacy Principles in Australia, with access scoped so staff see only what their role requires.
Child safety obligations
Clearance and working-with-children expiry tracking, incident recording with restricted access, and reporting aligned to Child Safe Standards in Australia and state mandatory-reporting requirements in the US.
Records that survive an audit
Retention schedules on student and staff records, versioned policy libraries showing what was current when, and exportable audit trails on access to sensitive records.
How the build runs
From first call to first live site.
Discovery and governance model
We map departments, content, permissions and the processes that currently run on email. The governance model is agreed before anything is built, because that is what makes it last.
Core build
Site architecture, document libraries, metadata and the first automated processes stood up in your own Microsoft 365 tenancy.
Migration and integrations
Existing content migrated and tagged, finance and communication systems connected, and duplicate or dead content retired rather than carried over.
Pilot department and training
One department goes live with us on hand, staff trained, then a two-week hypercare window before the rest of the school follows.
Support and roadmap
A named engineer, an agreed response SLA, and a termly cycle where you decide what gets built next. It runs in your tenancy, so you own it outright.
Questions
What owners ask us first.
We already have Microsoft 365. What are we actually buying?
The structure and the discipline. Microsoft 365 gives you the tools, not the information architecture, the automation or the governance model. That gap is why most schools end up with sprawl, and it is the part we build.
Have you delivered this for a school?
Yes. We delivered Microsoft 365 collaboration, SharePoint document management and Power Platform automation for an independent college, with a governance model designed to stay maintainable after handover.
Does this replace our student information system?
Usually not, and we will say so. Most schools keep their SIS and we build the collaboration, document and process layer around it, integrating where it matters. Replacing an SIS is a much larger decision.
How do you stop the sprawl coming back?
Lifecycle rules, owner accountability on every site, retention that runs automatically, and a review cycle. Governance that depends on people being disciplined forever does not work, so we automate the parts that can be automated.
Is student data safe with AI features enabled?
The assistants are grounded in your own content and permission-trimmed, so they cannot surface anything the asker could not already open. You choose whether any content is processed outside your tenancy, and AI features are optional throughout.
Can teachers actually use it without training?
Some of it, yes, because it looks like the Microsoft tools they already use. That familiarity is a real argument for building on Microsoft 365 rather than introducing another separate system with its own login.
Can we start with one department?
That is what we recommend. One department proves the architecture and the migration pattern, and gives you internal advocates before the wider rollout.
See it running before you decide anything.
Thirty minutes, a working demo build, and an honest answer about whether a custom platform is right for you. If off-the-shelf is the better call, we will say so.
You’ll speak with engineers, not account managers.