Overview

In Classter, external companies or organizations that take part in an institution’s internship, traineeship or thesis placement activities are represented as Partner (also referred to as Employer or Company) accounts. Rather than leaving a newly created Partner account without any access at all, Classter can automatically place it under a specific Role, so the account immediately has a working dashboard and a defined set of menus and permissions.

The “Default Role for Partner/Employer accounts” setting is where the institution chooses which Role is used for this automatic assignment.

What This Setting Does

This setting is a drop-down list from which you choose one Role – specifically, one of the Roles your institution has created and designated for Partner/Employer accounts.

• Whenever staff create a brand-new Partner/Employer account – typically for a company that hosts student internships, traineeships or theses – Classter automatically assigns the Role selected here to that new account.
• Because the Role is applied immediately, the moment the account is created its owner can log in and already see the dashboard, menus and pages that come with that Role, instead of starting with an empty or undefined account.
• The setting can be configured separately per institution and per academic period, although most institutions keep the same default Role from one period to the next.
• If no Role is selected, new Partner/Employer accounts are created without a Role, and a staff member must assign one manually afterwards before the account can use any dashboard functionality.
• This value only sets the starting point. Staff can always change the Role of any individual Partner/Employer account afterwards, using the “Change Role” option available on that account, for example when a specific partner needs broader or narrower access than the standard default.

Where It Is Used

Location: Settings > Security Settings > Accounts & Roles tab.

• This setting sits alongside four similar settings, each defining the default Role for a different type of account: Student accounts, Teacher accounts, Parent/Guardian accounts, and Secretary/Staff accounts. Partner/Employer accounts follow the same logic.
• It takes effect at one specific moment: when a new Partner/Employer account is created, typically from the Contacts area of the system, where staff register a new external company as a “Company” contact.
• It also applies when a new Agent account (an external recruiting or admission partner, created through the same account-creation flow) is registered and linked to more than one admission period – in that case, the same default Role is applied for each extra period the Agent is enrolled in.
• Changing this setting has no retroactive effect. Accounts that already exist keep whatever Role they received at creation (or whatever Role was assigned afterwards via Change Role); only accounts created from that point onward use the new default.

Business Logic / Behavior

• The drop-down only lists Roles that have already been created and designated for the Partner/Employer account type. If no such Role exists yet, this setting has nothing to select – see Prerequisites in the Notes section below.
• A Partner/Employer account represents an outside organization, not an individual person. It is a distinct account type, separate from Parent/Guardian, Student, Teacher, or general Contact records.
• The automatic assignment happens only once, at the moment of account creation. Changing this setting later changes the default used for the next new account, not for accounts created earlier.
• The Role applied through this setting determines what a Partner/Employer sees as soon as they log in. Typically, their dashboard offers options to update their own company details and contact persons, view a calendar, see institution announcements, and – where Internship (Traineeship) functionality is enabled for the institution – manage internship/traineeship placements and view the students assigned to them.
• This setting behaves the same way regardless of whether the institution is running in K-12 mode or Higher Education mode; see the Notes section for details.

Example

Riverside Technical Institute uses Classter to manage student internships with local companies. The registrar’s office has already created a Role called “Partner Standard Access” for Partner/Employer accounts, giving it access to the internship management pages and to the company’s own contact information.

In Settings > Security Settings > Accounts & Roles, the registrar’s office sets “Default Role for Partner/Employer accounts” to “Partner Standard Access.”

A few weeks later, admissions staff register “Brightpath Manufacturing Co.” as a new company that will host two student interns for the upcoming term. As soon as the new company account is created, Classter automatically assigns it the “Partner Standard Access” Role. When Brightpath’s contact person logs in for the first time, they already see a dashboard showing the interns assigned to them, their own company details, and any announcements from the institute – without anyone at Riverside Technical Institute having to configure their access first.

Later on, Riverside’s staff decide that Brightpath should also be allowed to register additional internship offers directly, so they use the “Change Role” option on Brightpath’s account to switch it to a more advanced Partner Role. This individual change does not affect the default Role that will be applied to the next new Partner/Employer account created afterward.

When to Use

When to Enable (select a Role)

• Your institution works with external companies or organizations for internships, traineeships, thesis/dissertation placements, or similar partnership activities, and those organizations are given their own accounts in Classter.
• You want new Partner/Employer accounts to have working dashboard access immediately after creation, without staff needing to manually assign a Role to each one.
• You have already defined (or are ready to define) a Role for Partner/Employer accounts with the pages and permissions such an account should have.

When to Disable (leave unselected)

• Your institution does not use Partner/Employer accounts at all – for example, it does not run an internship or placement program through Classter.
• You prefer to assign a Role manually and individually to every new Partner/Employer account, for example because different partner organizations should always receive clearly different levels of access from the moment they are created.

Notes

• Terminology: “Partner” is Classter’s default term for this account type. It may also appear as “Employer” or “Company” in menus and messages, since the account always represents an outside organization rather than an individual.
• This setting also affects certain Agent accounts: specifically, when an Agent is linked to more than one admission period, the same default Role is applied for the additional periods.
• K-12 vs. Higher Education mode: this setting behaves identically whether “Enable Configuration for Higher Education” / Xrisi_parametropoihshs_kolegiou (Settings > Higher Education Customization > Higher Education Basic Settings) is turned on or off. In practice, Partner/Employer accounts and internship/placement functionality are used more often by Higher Education institutions, but nothing about this setting itself is restricted to that mode.
• Prerequisite: before this setting can be configured, at least one Role must already exist for the Partner/Employer account type. Roles are created in the Roles administration screen under Settings > Security Settings > Roles, selecting the Partner account type when the Role is created.

Related settings:

• “Default Role for Student accounts” / Student_Dashboard_Default_Role (Settings > Security Settings > Accounts & Roles) – the same concept, applied to Student accounts.
• “Default Role for Teacher accounts” / Teacher_Dashboard_Default_Role (Settings > Security Settings > Accounts & Roles) – the same concept, applied to Teacher accounts.
• “Default Role for Parent accounts” / Parent_Dashboard_Default_Role (Settings > Security Settings > Accounts & Roles) – the same concept, applied to Parent/Guardian accounts.
• “Default Role for Secretary accounts” / Secretary_Dashboard_Default_Role (Settings > Security Settings > Accounts & Roles) – the same concept, applied to Secretary/Staff accounts.
• “Partner/Employer username format” / SchoolPortal_Morfi_Onomatos_Xristi_Partner (Settings > Security Settings > Accounts & Roles) – controls how the login name is generated for new Partner/Employer accounts.
• “Enable Custom message for Partners/Companies on Dashboard” / Enable_Custom_Message_For_Partners_On_Dashboard (Settings) – shows a custom message banner on the Partner/Employer dashboard.
• “Custom message for Partners/Companies on Dashboard” / Custom_Message_For_Partners_On_Dashboard (Settings) – the text displayed when the setting above is enabled.