18 Years of Manual Provisioning in Manitoba, Cleaned & Automated in Minutes

Park West School Division, a rural school board in Manitoba, manages 16 schools across a massive 7,000 square kilometers. With only three people on the IT team, ICT Supervisor Grant Roszell and team spent years manually provisioning accounts. When he implemented Clever IDM, the first sync made over 800 changes to their environment. Today, student identities are created on enrollment and deactivated on withdrawal—automatically.

Park West School Division serves students across 16 schools in rural Manitoba, spread over more than 7,000 square kilometers. Grant Roszell has been the division’s ICT Supervisor for over 21 years. He manages the entire digital environment alongside just two colleagues. Most of Park West’s schools are small — many with 100 students or fewer — and the division runs primarily on Chromebooks with Google Workspace, with Microsoft access available for select use cases. Their student information system is PowerSchool.

The Challenge: 18-Years of Manual Account Setup

For Grant Roszell, a new school year didn’t mean fresh notebooks and sharp pencils—it meant a tidal wave of manual tickets. Managing student identities for 16 schools across rural Manitoba by hand was chaos.

Grant wasn’t able to think about innovation; instead he was thinking, How many account requests am I going to get today?
Because account management was manual, names were often misspelled, and duplicate records piled up. The deeper threat, however, was what happened when students left. Without a reliable notification system, accounts for students who had moved on years ago remained active. In a directory running for nearly two decades, these accounts were left open with potential for misuse.

The Solution: Automated Identity Management

Grant connected with Clever to solve a simple but risky problem: sync the directory directly to the student management system (SMS), PowerSchool. If a student is actively enrolled, they get an account; the moment they leave, it’s disabled—automatically.

The goal was automated provisioning. If a student is actively enrolled, they get an account. The moment they leave—whether IT hears about it or not—the account is disabled. Grant implemented Clever IDM over the summer, working with Clever’s support team to structure Google Workspace organizational units and ensure a seamless rollout.
Centralized, automated password management helps keeps accounts secure without burdening IT’s desk. Now, students have secure, complex passphrases and if they forget their password, there’s no need to submit a password reset ticket or for IT to travel to the school to solve it. Principals and secretaries have troubleshooting tools right in Clever to solve student password challenges and unlock access in seconds.

The Impact: A Cleaner Directory, a Lighter Workload

The results from Park West’s first Clever IDM sync were immediate. Over 800 changes were made  on day one, duplicate records were eliminated, and the IT team has not processed a manual account request since.

Security

• Made Over 800+ Changes: Clever IDM identified and made over 800 changes to accounts.  These included students in wrong grades, students in the wrong school, disabling various test accounts, disabling students who had left, as well as accounts belonging to students who have left the board
• One Student, One Identity: Eliminated duplicate accounts caused by manual entry errors.
• MFA-Protected Credentials: By moving password visibility into the Clever Portal, Park West replaced risky spreadsheets with a process that requires staff to authenticate via MFA.

Operations

• Zero Manual Requests: The IT team no longer processes manual account requests. Everything is tied to PowerSchool enrollment.
• Eliminated IT tickets IT no longer has a logistical nightmare when students or teachers submit password reset requests. Principals and secretaries look up passwords on demand in the Clever Portal when help is needed. 

Crisis Averted: When a grade level suddenly needs device access, the accounts are already there. The IT team stays focused on high-value work instead of resetting passwords.

What’s Next

Park West is moving toward a fully automated digital ecosystem.

• Microsoft Entra ID: Automating provisioning for Microsoft and Entra ID accounts is next on the roadmap.
• Clever Badges: Younger students in elementary schools will soon use scannable Badges for faster, frustration-free logins.

Full Portal Integration: Grant’s goal is to give every student single sign-on (SSO) access to every app they use daily.

Advice From the Field: How to Get Automation Right

After a year with Clever IDM in production, Grant has become a trusted voice for school organizations looking to ditch manual provisioning. At a recent regional tech session in Manitoba, peers from across the province had questions. Here’s what he told them. 

Q: We’ve had our directory for 18 years. Where do we even start with automation without breaking everything?

Grant: You have to understand your current process in full before you touch a single setting. Document every detail of how identities are managed today. If you’re on Google, map out your Organizational Units (OUs) and group memberships. On Microsoft? Identify which attributes are assigned to students now—Clever can sync those same attributes into Entra. The clearer your baseline, the smoother your setup.

Q: Our SIS data is… messy. Will that crash the sync?

Grant: Clean your SIS data first. If the data Clever needs isn’t in your system, add it before you begin. Structural changes are far easier to make before that first sync. Since Clever can pull custom fields, work with their team early to map those fields correctly if your school organization has unique requirements.

Q: I’ve heard of Clever’s solutions, but does it actually work end-to-end?

Grant: Don’t just review slides—get the Clever team to show you a full live demo. Seeing the complete flow often surfaces requirements you didn’t know you had. It’s the fastest way to avoid “go-live” surprises.

Q: We’re moving to a cloud-only Microsoft environment. Any considerations?

Grant: Know Microsoft’s cloud-only password requirements. Their complexity rules are fixed. We use a “three-random-words” approach, so verifying those policies upfront was one of our most important steps.

Q: What about the security of password resets? We’re tired of sharing spreadsheets.

Grant: Shared sheets are a massive liability. Now, our staff log into the Clever Portal using their Google account—protected by MFA—to look up student passwords. No spreadsheets, no email chains, no exposure. It gives schools autonomy while keeping IT in control.

Q: Is the implementation as heavy as a traditional local directory?

Grant: Honestly? The PowerSchool API plugin took roughly seven clicks to configure. By automating Google and Azure accounts, our local directory became redundant. We’re moving to a fully cloud-native infrastructure, and the payoff in saved time was immediate.

For other Canadian school organizations still weighing whether to make the jump, Grant’s message is simple: the implementation is genuinely straightforward (the PowerSchool API plugin takes roughly seven clicks to configure), the Clever team is responsive, and the payoff—in time saved, security improved, and operational complexity removed—is immediate and lasting.