Implementation

Set up properly.
With minimal disruption to your school.

Implementing Orca is a structured, guided process. We do the heavy lifting. Your school provides context, access, and the right people at the right times. Most staff won't know anything is happening until the day they're invited to use it.

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What to expect

Four weeks from kickoff to go-live

A typical implementation takes around four weeks, covering the build-out of your Orca environment, integration with your identity provider and SIS, and a rollout to staff designed to land smoothly.

At every stage, the work sits primarily with us. What we need from your school is clear and specific: a decision-maker to confirm configuration details, an IT contact for integration access, and the right staff available when it's time to go live. Beyond that, your team gets on with their jobs while we get on with ours.

Implementation planning
The Process

A clear path from kickoff to go-live

Six stages, four weeks. Here's exactly what happens and what we need from you at each step.

Discovery

We start with a single discovery conversation, typically an hour, to walk through your school's structure (campuses & cohorts), activity types and approval workflows. This gives us everything we need to build out your Orca environment. Any follow-up is handled over email; we won't pull people into meetings unnecessarily.

What we need from you

One conversation with the right people, usually the operations manager, and whoever oversees compliance and risk. No preparation required.

Week 1
Weeks 1–2

Configuration and integration

We build out your school's Orca environment: structure, custom fields, and approval workflows aligned to your governance requirements. We connect Orca to your SSO provider, and your SIS for automated user, relationship and cohort syncing. We handle the technical coordination and come to your IT team with specific, scoped requests.

What we need from you

An IT contact with access to your identity provider and SIS. Their total involvement across this stage is typically a handful of hours..

Review walkthrough

With configuration complete and your users and cohort data flowing in, we walk through the environment with your team. This is the point where Orca looks like your school: real staff, real activity types, real approval chains. We confirm everything is correct before anything is communicated to staff, and address any adjustments needed before go-live.

What we need from you

The right people to review and sign off, typically the same people from the scoping conversation. This is a confirmation step, not a new conversation.

Week 3
Week 4

Staff communications

We prepare everything your school needs to communicate the rollout to staff: announcements, role-specific guidance, and onboarding materials, all written and ready to send. Your school sends them through your own channels, in your own voice. Staff arrive at Orca already knowing what it is, why the school is using it, and what they need to do.

What we need from you

Review and sign-off on the prepared materials before they go out. Sending is handled through your normal staff communication channels.

Go-live and first use

Staff are activated and begin using Orca for real activities. The rollout can happen across the whole school at once, or in stages by cohort, whichever suits your calendar and the pace of change that works for your staff. We stay close through this period, monitoring for any friction and available to respond quickly if something needs attention.

What we need from you

A nominated internal contact to field any questions from staff, and confirmation of your preferred go-live date.

Go Live
Ongoing

Handover and ongoing ownership

Once implementation is complete, a nominated person at your school (typically an IT contact, compliance manager, or operations manager) is given access to Orca's admin features. This allows your school to manage day-to-day configuration changes independently: updating approval workflows when an approver leaves, adjusting flows after a change in organisational structure, managing custom fields, and tailoring the platform's theme.

Building out your digital risk assessment templates is also an ongoing, school-led project. Most schools start with their existing paper-based templates and policies and progressively refine them inside Orca over time. This is work your compliance or operations team leads at their own pace.

Our support team remains available as part of your subscription. We check in proactively through your first term and stay accessible for questions, guidance, or anything that needs our involvement.

What this looks like in practice

A school-side admin with access to configuration and admin tools. An ongoing project to digitise your risk assessment templates. And a direct line to our team whenever you need it, without tickets or queues.

Common questions

A few questions worth answering

No. Their involvement is focused and time-bounded, primarily during the identity and SIS integration stage. We come to them with specific, clear requests and handle the coordination around those. For most schools, the total IT commitment across implementation is a handful of hours.

Most staff have a small, specific set of tasks in Orca (submitting an activity, checking an approval, marking a roll) and the role-specific materials we prepare ahead of go-live cover those clearly. For schools that prefer a more structured introduction, we can arrange trainer-led sessions tailored to each role. Both approaches work well; it comes down to what suits your staff and your school's culture.

If your SIS has an API, we can set up a scheduled sync through Orca's API to keep user and cohort data flowing automatically. If it doesn't, we'll work through the alternatives during scoping, for example a regular CSV export from your SIS that Orca imports on a schedule. Either way, the goal is the same: accurate data with minimal manual effort from your team.

After go-live, a nominated admin at your school has access to Orca's configuration and admin tools. That means your team can update approval workflows, manage custom fields, adjust roles after staffing or structural changes, and tailor the platform without waiting on us.

Digitising your risk assessment templates is typically an ongoing project led by your compliance or operations team, building from your existing paper-based templates and policies at whatever pace suits your school.

Our support team remains part of your subscription. We check in proactively through your first term and stay available for questions, guidance, or anything that needs our involvement.

Ready to talk through what implementation looks like for your school?

We'll walk through your context and give you a clear picture of what to expect, including a price.

Book a conversation → hello@orca.school