ARBOR MIS

[Leia]

Has anyone on this forum had any experience of Arbor Education MIS? One of our schools is thinking about using it and we've no experience? any information at all please.

 

Yours,

Desperate in Staffordshire

[vikpaw]

They had a great gimmick at last year's BETT, fancy little RasPi cases.

The idea was that when you applied for a trial, they would send you a RasPi in their fancy case, and you could plug this into your network and provide it SIMS details and it would export enough data into the cloud to create a live working demo of Arbor.

 

It looked and sounded good, though they didn't have any working demos only slides. I've still not seen it in action though have been promised a look. It's supposed to be launching here across a number of colleges.

 

They are a friendly bunch so get in touch and they'll help you out with whatever you need.

 

I met a head at a school who was going to take it on and was very keen with what it could do - maybe get in touch with them, Sevenoaks Christian School.

[Leia]

thank you vikpaw, the school are looking to use this as a replacement MIS from Facility, they want a copy of the SQL db. Ive read that its only demo version, was wondering if anyone on here used a live version. It looks fab on the slides that ive seen anyway - just like Progresso did!

[vikpaw]

It sounds like it ticks all the boxes. The only thing i wasn't keen on was that they don't offer it as a hosted solution, it has to be in the cloud, because it is supposed to do lots of data analysis for you (the management) and take out a lot of the hard work and for this reason it has to be hosted off-site. At least that was one of the reasons.

[HWSWB]

In my search for an e1 replacement someone recommended Arbor but as I couldn't find anyone using it I've ignored it. We can't afford (financially or time-wise) to be a guinnea pig for a new MIS. We also want to avoid an potential e1 situation with the company withdrawing from the market suddenly.

[GREED]

They have some great potential and the company delves into lots of other areas, so i think you will take the same risk as anyone else. with the exception of one nameless giant i don't think you can guarentee any player will always be around these days.

[moriartythemundane]

Did you ever get to take up on this Arbor MIS? We are actively looking at this in Wolverhampton now and I would love some feed back?

Nick

[vikpaw]

The list of possible features on CloudStore is massive , i guess they have to make it all-inclusive, but an interesting to read, especially that there is a 'FREE' version of Arbor....

[GREED]

Is it free, freemium, trial period only? Wonder if it actually has all the features to allow a school to just 'run'?

[vikpaw]

Possibly just free access to the harvested school data in a pretty format?

[GREED]

The free version looks to be for pre opening free schools who need to manage an intake before the school opens. A really good idea and very useful for these schools. Its not a free MIS though, you still need to pay for the rest of it when it is open.

 

I know many a free school who would have/would love this though!

 

Where is James to respond to this thread right now!

[vikpaw]

He's a lurker

[GREED]

He's a lurker

 

I'm glad you typed that carefully

[JamesWeatherill]

Hey Vik, contrary to your belief I'm actually not a lurker. I just didn't have a username and password. To clarify confusion, it is a free Lite version of an MIS for new schools that helps them to securely manage their intake, define their catchment area and migrate them to any MIS they choose, meaning they don't start with blank data when they open. Yes you still have to pay for Arbor once the term begins, but you can export the students to another MIS should you wish.

 

Look forward to catching up, and sharing future plans.

[vikpaw]

As requested, posts that went off topic and into the realms of other MIS, Due Diligence and security have been moved to here http://www.edugeek.net/forums/mis-systems/134105-mis-due-diligence-security.html

 

hopefully both threads still make sense.

[fresher]

We have been using it for over a year and it's a pain. Lots of extra work for staff. Buttons such as "upload an excel file" cost more money etc. As we didn't pay for these upload buttons, it takes an age to upload housepoints / detentions.

 

In short: Lots of clicks to do very simple things.

 

They're still quite new to the MIS market and are constantly improving their product, but to be honest anything that creates so much extra workload for staff probably isn't worth it yet. The way the data is downloaded is not particularly useful either.

 

I'm not sure how great the in-built analytics are, we download the excel sheets and do our own data analysis.

 

Hope that helps.

[NicholasNovak]

Hi Fresher,

 

 

I am sorry that we have let you down. While our team updates Arbor regularly based on school feedback, typically twice each day, I know there is always room for improvement. Our rapidly growing list of Arbor schools, both across the UK and around the world, means that we are constantly evolving the platform based on the needs and priorities of a diverse range of educators.

 

 

I want to make this right. If you are willing, I would welcome the chance to discuss the needs of your school in greater detail. I will followup with you via PM.

 

 

Nicholas Novak

Chief Customer Officer

Arbor Education Partners