Activating Mana at a centre level (centre-led activation)

This guide supports centre managers preparing a centre-led Mana activation.

Welcome to your Mana journey! As leaders at your centre, you play a key role in bringing Mana to life. Setting things up properly now means less admin later, smoother workflows for your team and more time to focus on what matters most: supporting children's learning and growth.

This guide is for Centre Managers and Educational Leaders at a centre within a broader organisation, where your centre will onboard its own teachers/educators and upload its children (centre-led activation). You'll need a Manager role on your centre's Mana team to complete these steps. It walks you through everything you need to get your centre Mana-ready.

To get the best out of training, we recommend you complete all actions in this guide before your centre's training session.

💡 Not the right guide for you?

If head office is inviting your teachers and bulk uploading your children, use Activating Mana at a centre level (head office led activation) instead.
If you're a single, independent centre (not part of an organisation), use Activating Mana as a single centre.
If you're driving the rollout across an organisation, use Activating Mana at an organisational level.
If you're a teacher or educator, use Activating Mana as a teacher or educator within a centre.

You will need:

an invitation to your centre's Mana team (sent by your organisation) and access to that email
a list of your children and educators for upload
your centre's philosophy, a writing sample, and your learning framework/s
parent and guardian consent before uploading children

To start, let's bookmark the Mana help centre, your one-stop shop for all of your ongoing Mana support needs: https://help.makemana.com/en/

You will see these icons used throughout the guide:

✅ Green tick: key action to complete

📖 Book: read more for further support

💡 Light bulb: tips & tricks

⚠️ Exclamation point: take note

Step 1: Login to Mana and accept your invitation to join your centre in Mana

To get started, you'll need to join your centre's Mana account.

Option A: If you're new to Mana, you'll create your account from the invite email sent by your centre.
Option B: If you already have a Mana account, you'll simply sign in and accept your centre's invitation from your settings area.

Option A: Accept your invitation to join Mana as a new user

💡 Already have an account? Jump down to Option B

You will receive an email titled Join [your centre's name] on Mana
Within this email there will be a purple button titled Sign in to Mana: click on this button
You will be asked to provide your email address to commence creating your account in Mana.
⚠️ Create your account using the same email address that you were invited to Mana with so that you can immediately access the team you have been added to.
Set up your password for using Mana
⚠️ Your Mana password must be at least 12 characters long and include an uppercase letter, a lowercase letter and a numerical digit.
You will be asked to verify your email account.
Go to your email and open the verification email sent to you by Mana Security and tap the link to verify your email address.
💡 The verification email usually arrives within a few minutes. If you can't find it, check your junk or spam folder. Still nothing? Ask your organisation's Mana point of contact to re-send the invitation, or email [email protected].
Back in the Mana app, you can now tap Confirm Verification to continue.
Next, you'll be asked to accept your invite to join your teammates. Tap accept to continue.
Next, you will be asked to provide your First Name and Last Name.
Lastly, you can select your teaching philosophy.
After you provide this information, you will be taken to your Docs page. Welcome! If you can't see your centre's team after signing in, check you used the invited email address, then ask your organisation's Mana point of contact to re-send the invitation.

📖 Read more: How do I accept my invitation to Mana

Option B: Accept your invitation if you already have a Mana account

💡 Don't have an account? Scroll back up to Option A

⚠️ Make sure you log into Mana with the same email address that you were invited to the centre with to view and accept your invitation.
⚠️ If you were invited to Mana with a different email address, you should either:
Create a new Mana account using the email address you were invited with; OR
Ask your Manager to re-issue the invitation to your preferred email address

If you were invited to Mana with the same email address that you used to sign up for Mana with, log in to Mana as normal
Click on your profile icon.
Select Settings
Under your personal tab, select Invitations
Click Accept next to the invitation.
✅ Once accepted, your centre's team appears in your account switcher. If no invitation is listed, it was likely sent to a different email address — ask your organisation's Mana point of contact to re-issue it.

Switching between your Mana profiles

💡 You can switch between your Personal, Team, or Parent account at any time:

Click on your profile icon.
Select Switch.
Choose the account from the drop-down menu, or search for it using the search bar.
Click on the account to switch.

📖 Read more: How do I accept my invitation to Mana

Step 2: Familiarise yourself with your Settings page

Familiarise yourself with the Settings page first. In the top right hand corner of your screen, click on your profile icon and then click Settings. This will open up a Settings dashboard.

Ensure you work out of the Team Settings to make updates to your Centre's profile in Mana. There are 4 key sections to your Team Management section which we provide detail on throughout this article:

Management
Learning
Features
Analytics

Team Settings dashboard showing Management, Learning, Features and Analytics sections

Step 3: Personalise your Team Learning on Mana

Personalising Mana to your centre makes the platform more meaningful and effective. Every centre has its own routines, culture, and priorities: when Mana reflects that, educators see information that feels relevant, families feel more connected, and Mana supports your way of working.

Start by going to Settings > Team > Learning to view spaces to personalise Mana to your service.

Settings, Team, Learning tiles for personalising Mana

✅ Team Writing Style

Under Team Writing Style, add a writing sample that best represents how you like your centre to write

✅ Team Philosophy

Under Team Philosophy, add your centre's philosophy

✅ Team Frameworks

Under Team Frameworks, add your centre's learning framework/s & service type

Learning framework selection in team settings

✅ Coaching

Under Coaching, configure your team's coaching settings

📖 Read more: Configure team settings

Step 4: Personalise your Features on Mana

Under Settings > Team > Features, you can:

Customise your team's Journeys experience on Mana
Customise your team's Curriculum experience on Mana
Decide when to enable Mana Families
Decide when to enable Mana Grow

Settings, Team, Features tiles including Journeys, Curricula, Families and Grow

✅ Journeys: Customise Journeys (Cycle of Planning)

Customise your Journeys settings first. If your organisation has an approach they are rolling out for journey stages in Mana, ensure to customise your centre's journey stages to that approach before you commence creating journeys.

Select the default view for journeys your team will have for Mana Journeys (i.e. the individual cycle of planning for each child or individual learning plan for each child).
Select the default journey duration: this should be the length of time that your cycle of planning runs for. We recommend no shorter than 12 weeks.
Select Manage Journey Stages to customise the Journey Stages for your Centre:
- Default journey stages for Australia (EYLF): Family input > Observe & Assess > Plan & Implement > Evaluate & Reflect
- Default journey stages for New Zealand (Te Whāriki): Whānau Aspiration > Notice & Recognise > Respond (Plan) > Evaluate

Example of a default journey for an Australian centre that has selected EYLF as their learning framework:

Example default EYLF journey stages for an Australian centre

How to customise stages for your journeys in Mana:

Journey stage row showing the three-dot menu and arrow controls

3 vertical dots: Edit / Delete stage (options appear when 3 dots clicked)
Arrow: opens up option to add a Quality Check that instructs Mana on what to assess for as part of that stage in the journey

✅ Families: Enable Mana Families

If you plan to invite families to view documents you share with them from the Mana platform, ensure Families is toggled on like so.

Families feature toggle switched on in team settings

✅ Grow: Enable Grow

If your organisation is using Mana Grow (Mana's professional development feature), enable it for your Centre through the Grow tile under Settings > Team > Features.

📖 Read more: Grow Feature Collection

✅ Curricula: Personalise your Curricula Stages

If you are using Mana to support your Room Programming/Room Curriculum development, manage your Curriculum Stages through the Curricula tile.

📖 Read more: Curricula Feature Collection

Step 5: Build your Centre in Mana - add Rooms, add Children and invite your team

Use the sections below to prepare your centre’s children, Rooms and team.

✅ Obtain parent and guardian consent to support your Mana rollout

Obtain parent and guardian consent before adding children to Mana.

📖 If you are rolling out Mana Teachers only, check out our sample letter and consent form here: A letter to families and consent form (Mana Teachers)

📖 If you are rolling out Mana Teachers and Mana Families, check out our sample letter and consent form here: A letter to families and consent form (Mana Teachers & Mana Families)

Alternatively, use the template provided by your head office (if available).

✅ Add all of your children to Mana via a bulk upload

Add all of your children to Mana via a bulk upload.

📖 Read more: How to bulk upload Children into your Centres

This includes a bulk upload csv template.

Remember to obtain family consent before bulk uploading your children into Mana.

Children list in Mana after a bulk upload

✅ Set up your centre's rooms in Mana and assign children to rooms

Set up your centre's rooms in Mana and assign children to rooms.

📖 Read more: How do I create a room/group and add children?

Creating a new group or room in Curricula

Decide how you want to manage your centre on Mana

Open Settings → Team Management to find the centre’s management controls.

Members: invite and manage team members.
Allocations & Access: review child allocations, Room allocations and educator visibility.
Team Resources: upload centre documents for AI coaching.

Choose how key children are allocated

Key children give you a clear focus for the children whose learning you take particular responsibility for. The aim is to help you know each child well and work closely with their family, with contributions from the wider team.

Your centre can coordinate allocations so someone can check how responsibility is shared across the team, or let educators choose their own key children.

When Manage child allocations centrally is on, managers make key-child allocations and educators cannot choose their own key children. When it is off, educators can manage their own key children where their access permits. Restricted educator access is a separate setting and can also prevent self-assignment.

Managers can review these choices in Settings → Team Management → Allocations & Access.

Manage key-child allocations explains the manager controls. Educators can follow Choose your key children.

✅ Team Resources: Upload centre specific documents to improve your team's AI coaching experience

Here you can upload any centre specific documents: centre philosophy documents, general documents, QIP Improvement Priorities & QIPs (QIP: Quality Improvement Plan).

✅ Members: Add all of your educators/teachers to Mana

Add all of your educators/teachers to Mana from the Members tile.

📖 Read more: Manage your team members

Team members list in Mana showing invited educators

✅ Members: Confirm your educators have accepted their invites to join Mana

Confirm your educators have accepted their invites to join Mana.

📖 Read more: Manage team members

✅ Success check: every educator appears in your Members list without a pending invitation. If an educator hasn't received their invite, ask them to check junk/spam, confirm the email address, and re-send the invitation from the Members page.

Members list showing invitation status for each educator

✅ Assign your educators/teachers to relevant Rooms

Assign your educators/teachers to their relevant rooms.

📖 Read more: Assigning your team members to rooms

You're ready for training when...

You have completed centre-led activation when:

✅ You've accepted your invitation and can open your centre's team
✅ Writing style, philosophy, frameworks, service type and coaching settings reflect your centre
✅ Journey stages match your organisation's approach; Families/Grow/Curricula are enabled as needed
✅ Consent is obtained, children are uploaded and assigned to rooms
✅ All educators have accepted their invitations and are assigned to rooms

If any step didn't work as described, contact us using the options below.

Need more help?

The Mana team is not far away if you need help with setup:

📰 Visit the Mana help centre, your one-stop shop for all Mana support needs
💬 Chat with us in the Mana app: tap your Profile icon, select Help & Support, then choose "Talk to a human"
📧 Email us at [email protected]