SIMs and Excel

[Cronkgarrow]

Hello again,

Thanks for the replies, browsing the code now, although tiz making me headscratch somewhat. Thank goodness it's been well commented. I still can't work out how to make a report have assessment manager data in it - I'm such a SIMS noob.

Have spoken to the SIMS Manager and she's not been amazingly helpful. Politics is involved as currently there are two traffic lighting systems in school - hers and mine. Mine is in excel, hers is in SIMS. Hers can't do everything mine can do, but in some ways I prefer hers. I think I'll try pushing her to get hers perfect so that SMT can let me drop mine.

I've passed on the traffic lighting that matt40k gave me - lets hope she gets keen.

In the meantime people, thanks for all your ideas, it's given me some thoughts, but in the end the SIMS manager is right, we shouldn't be having two systems in one school.

Thanks All!

[apeo]

No probs. I think it would be better to have just 1 system and if it can all be done in SIMS then all the better.

[Willzzz]

Well the main reason SMT want to stick with my Excel sheet, as opposed to the traffic lighting directly in SIMS, is that our SIMS manager doesn't know how to show all subjects one sheet per child, with colouring.

OK Several options here:

1) A report with VBA macros, this isn't as daunting as it sounds really. SIMS will output all the data as a list, you just need a macro to loop through each student, and then through each subject.

What is useful is that you can run a report directly from the student details page, and it will return data only for that student.

2) An individual report, the drawback is that ironically SIMS doesn't make it easy to run a report for an individual student. It would be awesome if you run an individual report on the fly from the student details page, like you can with STAR reports.

3) The full on database solution.
The system I am running here is an SQL database with a web front end. It duplicates a lot of the SIMS functionality only in a logical, user friendly, modular, customisable way. SIMS annoys the hell out of me, and quite frankly the time I have spent creating my own system I have recouped in such a short time span compared to thrashing away at SIMS until it eventually works.

Please let me know if you are interested in how this works.

[Cronkgarrow]

Your bespoke front end to bypass sims sounds like my idea of heaven to be honest.

SIMS is the most unfriendly and counter-intuitive piece of s.... oftware I've come across in a long time... and I thought SIMS.net was supposed be all shiny and new and sensible... but no.

Although I'd love to have something like your system running, I'm not the SIMS manager, so it'd be a major fight. I don't really have the skills. Our last SIMS manager did a lot of his own bespoke things, but when he left they all got dropped because noone knew how to keep them working.

So, in the meantime I shall just have to live with things as they are, and hope that the SIMS manager can learn enough so that my system can be dropped.

[Willzzz]

Here is a file I have produced for our tutors, this is a small part of what my system does, but I think this is the sort of thing you are trying to produce.

Hopefully SIMS can produce something similar, it just isn't easy figuring out how.