What is a Network Hub?
A Network Hub is a central Educa site that lets head office teams share information and communicate across multiple Educa sites from one place.
The Hub is designed for organisation-wide communication and content sharing. Access to an individual site’s local information is managed separately.
Important: Hub access does not give access to a site’s local information.
Hub users can be given permission to share content or perform Hub actions for selected sites.
If a Hub user also needs to open an individual site and view its local information, they must be added as a teacher on that site and given the appropriate local access.
This separation helps ensure that access to site-level information is controlled independently from Hub-level permissions.
How the Hub is set up
Educa Support creates the Network Hub.
A Hub Admin is invited to manage the Hub.
Hub Admins link member sites using Centres > Link Centre.
Hub Admins can organise linked sites into Networks using Manage Networks. Networks can be based on region, service type or another structure that suits your organisation.
Hub Admins can invite additional Hub users and manage their Hub access.
Networks make it easier to target shared content at the right level: across the whole organisation, to a specific network, or to selected sites.
How shared content is distributed
Hub content can be distributed at three levels:
Organisation-wide – All sites connected to the Hub receive the content.
Network-level – Only sites in the selected network receive the content.
Centre-specific – Only the selected sites receive the content.
Important: Content created through the Hub is read-only on member sites. It cannot be edited or deleted from an individual site. Any changes must be made from the Hub.
Roles: Hub Admins vs Hub Users
Hub Admins (recommended for now)
At the moment, we recommend adding head office staff as Hub Admins, as Hub Admin access provides the smoothest experience.
Hub Admins:
Automatically see all linked sites (including newly added sites).
Can perform Hub communication and sharing actions across the network.
Can link additional sites to the Hub, provided they have site admin access on those sites, and manage networks.
Can manage Hub users (invite, remove, change access).
Local site access: Hub Admins still need to be added as a teacher on each site if they need to enter/view that site’s local data.
Hub Users (limited functionality at present)
Hub Users can be used when you want to give someone more limited Hub access. Their available actions are currently more restricted than those of a Hub Admin.
Hub Users can:
View the Hub based on the sites they have been assigned.
Add new Policies and Resources for distribution to those sites.
Hub Actions
On the Centres overview, you’ll see a summary list of linked centres and quick actions (e.g. Message Teacher), which opens Teacher Messages with that centre pre-selected.
Hub-created content can’t be edited or deleted from individual sites (Policies, Resources, and Message Board posts).
Teacher messages
Send messages to all teachers or to teachers at selected sites.
Reply visibility is controlled by the Hub’s Comment Settings:
Multi-Center Comments (on by default) – Comments are shared across the participating sites. On individual sites, comments show the teacher and site they came from.
Single Center Comments – The Hub shows comments from all participating sites, but users viewing the message from an individual site only see comments from that site.
Comments Disabled – Commenting is turned off for the Hub Teacher Message.
Note: The Viewed by count currently reflects Hub-level views only.
Message Board Posts
Use Message Board posts to send announcements to families across all sites or selected sites.
Message Board posts created from the Hub are announcement-only, so families cannot reply or comment. To keep site content controlled, Hub-created posts also cannot be edited or deleted from the individual sites.
The Hub shows which sites received the post, but it does not show Viewed by information for those sites.
To check who has viewed a post, open the post on the individual site’s Message Board. The Viewed by list shows views for that site only. If the post was shared with multiple sites, check each site separately.
Policies (Library)
Use Policies to distribute consistent guidance across your network.
Policies shared from the Hub are added as Hub-managed items on member sites. They do not overwrite policies that already exist on those sites.
Notes
Shared policies do not support comments.
One attachment per policy.
Policy view tracking is not shown in the Hub.
Resources (Library)
Use Resources to share documents/files across your network.
Resources created via the Hub can’t be edited or deleted from the individual sites.
Resources shared from the Hub are added as Hub-managed items and do not overwrite resources already on a member site.
Notes
No comments on Hub resources.
Folder structures created in the Hub are not replicated on member sites. Resources are distributed as individual Hub-managed items.
Hub Resources are displayed with the newest items first.
Visibility can still be set (teacher-only vs everyone).