Admin FAQs

You cannot send the invitation email again after adding a user. Share these steps with the new user instead:

1. Go to your Atlas URL: ******.rubiconatlas.org

2. Enter your school email address.

3. When prompted, select Reset Password to receive a password reset email.

4. Check your email (and junk folder) and select the link in the email to set your personal Atlas password.

5. After signing in, bookmark your Atlas site from your Atlas Dashboard.

You may need to add people who will not develop or teach curriculum, such as a superintendent, principal, long-term substitute, support staff or members of your accreditation team. Add them under Manage Users. All users can browse your school's curriculum by default. They cannot edit any curriculum unless you assign them to a course under Manage Courses.

Yes. Use the Import Users button to add new user accounts in bulk from a .csv (comma separated values) file. Follow the instructions on that page.

Importing users does not assign them to courses. Do this separately under Manage Courses.

No. Deleting a user never deletes their courses or curriculum. When you delete a user with courses, Atlas offers to reassign their courses to another faculty member. If you are not ready to do that, the courses stay in your full course list under Manage Courses, where you can assign them at any time.

Users are marked Inactive after 2 years without signing in to Atlas. This helps you spot former faculty who may need to be deleted, or current faculty who may need extra help.

1. Ask them to check their junk folder.

2. Go to Admin > Manage Users and check their account is active and their email address is correct. Without this, they cannot sign in or receive password reset emails.

3. To reset their password manually, go to Admin > Reset Passwords. Give them their temporary password.

4. Ask your IT department to mark @onatlas.com as a safe sender so users receive password reset emails in future.

You can assign a user to a course as either or both. Curriculum Developers have full editing control: they can add and delete units on the calendar, develop unit details and add lesson plans. Teachers can only add lesson plans to existing units.

Not automatically. The Admin tab lets you manage the structure of your Atlas system, but not the curriculum in courses. Every user can already view, search, browse and analyse curriculum. To edit a course's content, you need to be assigned to that course or have Special Editing Privileges applied.

Copying a current or archived course with its curriculum takes two parts:

1. Assign Curriculum Developers to a blank course.

2. Ask them to use the Copy Unit button to copy all or part of another course.

For example, a Curriculum Developer assigned to a blank Algebra 8 course can copy some or all units from any current or archived Algebra 8 course in your system.

• Course Titles: your list of approved course names, the potential course offerings for each grade and subject. Use Course Titles to remove repeated or inconsistent names. For example, AP Biology should appear only once, so you do not also have Biology (AP). Not every Course Title needs to be taught each year.

• Course Assignment (also just called a Course): a course actively taught this academic year. When adding a Course Assignment, you select the Course Title, School and Curriculum Developers for the year. There may be several AP Biology Course Assignments if several users teach it independently. Remove any courses not taught this year from the list.

• Curriculum Map: another name for the course curriculum (units, assessments, lessons and so on) that lays out the plan for the year. The Curriculum Map view shows the year's curriculum for each course on one page.

1. Go to Admin Dashboard > Manage Courses > course assignments.

2. Select Add New Course to create a course, or Edit to change an existing one.

3. Assign more than one user.

A course with more than one user becomes a Collaboration, so several users can edit it. Collaborations have a Collaborative icon after the Course Title. They are often used for co-teaching, or when subject or grade-level teams build a consensus curriculum.

The Recycle Bin captures all deleted courses that hold any curriculum data, so you can retrieve them later if you make a mistake.

1. Go to Admin Dashboard > Manage Courses > course assignments.

2. Select Delete on the course.

3. Confirm that you want to move the course to the Recycle Bin.

In other areas, such as Admin Dashboard > Manage Courses > Courses by Users, Delete only removes the user from the course and does not move the course to the Recycle Bin. If you remove your own course, it goes to the Recycle Bin.

Map Types let system admins label Curriculum Maps meant for a specific use. Users see the label on courses in All Curriculum > All Courses or Reports. Common Map Types include:

User Map Types

• Consensus (C): the intended curriculum.

• Diary (D): user-created maps describing the taught curriculum.

• Best Practices (BP): highlights users' exemplary courses.

• Sandbox Map (SM): maps that are not officially approved courses (for example, a course being prepared for next year).

• Awaiting Review (AR) and Reviewed (R): shows which maps have been reviewed, if your school has a review process.

Core Map Types

• District Map (DM), Skeletal Map (SM), Pacing Map (PM), Consensus Map (CM): different names for the approved core curriculum for a course.

Administrator Map Types

• Formatting/Style Guide Map (SG): guides users on how to format their map (for example, what should be bold, where to use bullets, how much detail to include).

• Leadership/Planning Map (LP): outlines upcoming professional development days and the activities or goals of each session.

The Public checkbox decides which parts of your curriculum can appear in a Public version of your Atlas system. A Public Atlas system is a live copy of your password-protected system that parents and community members can browse without a password. If your school does not have a Public version, you can leave these checkboxes as they are. To find out more about creating one, contact Atlas Support.

Some areas of the Admin tab ask for an Identifier when you edit Subjects or Unit Template Categories. It is a best-fit category that describes what you are creating. It is mainly used when sharing curriculum in an Exemplars and PLCs community. Select the best option from the list. Your choice does not affect your curriculum data in Atlas.

If your school aligns to standards, find them under All Curriculum > Adopted Standards. Teachers can also reach them when developing units in My Atlas > My Courses.

Yes, you can add more standards for Curriculum Developers to align to. Discuss this carefully with your school leadership team first. Hundreds of sets of standards are available, and the ones you choose should clearly reflect the goals of your curriculum. To ask about adding standards, contact Atlas Support.

Yes. The Standards Editing Tool lets schools create custom standards for Curriculum Developers to align to in My Atlas > My Courses. Contact Atlas Support to enable the feature and get training on the tool.

Yes. In the Unit Planner, Curriculum Developers can align to any available set of standards. The Standards menu defaults to the course's subject area, but they can select any available standards. Atlas remembers the last selection and defaults to that set in future.

You can copy and paste standards from various document formats into Atlas with the Standards Editing Tool in Admin Dashboard > Maintain Standards. We recommend using the tool during your standards review, so updated standards can be viewed and used in Atlas right away. See the resources and videos in Admin Dashboard > Maintain Standards, or contact Atlas Support to enable the feature and get training.

Atlas lets you keep two versions of standards for the same subject, so Curriculum Developers have time to move across. We suggest adding (use till 201X) to the older version and (use from 201X) to the newer version so Curriculum Developers can quickly see which to use. For questions or standards loading best practice, contact Atlas Support.

Standards only appear in My Atlas > My Courses once they have benchmarks.

1. Select the arrow icon to the left of a standard.

2. Add the first benchmark in the text box that appears. More text boxes appear when needed.

Yes. Only Atlas system admins can edit the Unit Planner template, in Manage Unit Planner Template in the Admin Dashboard. Changes may affect users across the whole system, so agree them with your school leadership team first. To add new templates, contact us.

Editing the title or description of a category applies to all schools in your system using it. You can edit categories in Admin Dashboard > Unit Template Categories.

To delete a category, contact Atlas Support.

1. Go to Admin Dashboard > Unit Template Categories.

2. Select Edit next to the category.

3. Update the description. You can use the rich text editor to add bold, italics or bullet lists.

The change applies to all schools in your system using this category. Descriptions appear as mouse-overs in Unit Maps, Curriculum Maps and when Curriculum Developers work in their Unit Planners.

Contact us and send the new logo as a JPG. We will update your Atlas site.

After each Annual Archive, you may need to update your Atlas calendar for the new academic year. In Admin Dashboard > Academic Calendar, you can change:

• the first and last day of classes

• dates of any holidays during the year

• end of semester, term or quarter dates (if applicable)

The Annual Archive keeps a snapshot of the curriculum from each academic year, so you can access curriculum from prior years. Archived courses are read-only. Find them in All Curriculum > All Courses by filtering the Current Year. Users can browse archived courses and copy units from them.

On the Archive Date, all Curriculum Maps are copied and saved for reference in All Curriculum > All Courses. They also copy forward so faculty can keep editing for next year. So the Archive Date should usually be at the end of the academic year, after users have finished mapping, and before staff start editing their maps for next year.

The Archive Date applies to all schools in your Atlas system, so consult other school leadership before changing it. See Set Archive Date.

Go to All Curriculum > All Courses and select a previous academic year from the Current Year menu.

Teachers can copy units from the archives themselves with Copy Unit. As an admin, you only need to make sure the teacher has a course with the correct Course Title for the current academic year. The teacher can then copy all or part of an archived course into it.

Discussions are visible to everyone in the system. Notes are private and can only be viewed by the course developer and admins. The Notes I've Received panel shows all notes left for you and all notes you have left. Read more in Notes and Discussions.

1. Select the magnifying glass in the Search bar, then select Activity.

   

2. In the Activity Type filter on the left, choose Discussions and any other filters you need.

3. Select Search, then select the relevant link in the results.

4. In the unit or report, select Actions > Join the Discussion to view comments and add your message.

You get an alert in your notification channels: the envelope icon at the top right of Atlas, next to your account name. The Communications icon (two speech bubbles) is at the top of the vertical row of four icons on the left of Atlas. Select the link in the alert to open the shared item.

Any user can print the notes they have received on a course:

1. Go to the Unit Calendar of the course and select the small arrow next to any unit title.

2. Select Leave a Note.

3. Select View Notes at the top right of the pop-up.

4. Select Actions > Print.

A Public version of your Atlas system is available as a Professional Service and costs $500. Public sites can be accessed without a password and can show parts of your password-protected Atlas system, for example to share your curriculum with parents or board members. We work with you to set up the initial requirements, then show you how to manage your public system.

1. Ask your school leadership team to look at the sample public sites listed in the Communities tab for ideas.

2. Contact Atlas Support to take the next steps.