emivjah Posted April 1, 2015 Posted April 1, 2015 Hi IS anyone out there using PARS CONNECT in school rather than PARS.NET - Seems as if the new functionality is in CONNECT - all views gratefully received. Thanks Emivjah
Ephelyon Posted April 1, 2015 Posted April 1, 2015 Yes, we're using both with a heavy focus on Connect.
emivjah Posted April 2, 2015 Author Posted April 2, 2015 Thank you, Up til now, focus for us has been on pars.net, more functionality seems to be available in connect, just concerned it's slower. Planning a retraining inset for September and wondering if nows the time to switch to access that functionality...
Ephelyon Posted April 2, 2015 Posted April 2, 2015 PARS Connect requires a lot of resources on your IIS server (had to give ours 4 cores and 16GB RAM to get acceptable performance from it). Speak to Jenny, Liam and the team to find out more.
emivjah Posted April 16, 2015 Author Posted April 16, 2015 Hi Ephelyon Still mulling this over .... need to speak to Jenny still but in the meantime can I ask you a couple of questions How many staff do you have using PARS & how many students do you have in the school? Many thanks
Ephelyon Posted April 16, 2015 Posted April 16, 2015 We have just shy of 700 students and probably around 50 staff accessing it at once during the school day. @jenny_urey
emivjah Posted April 16, 2015 Author Posted April 16, 2015 Thanks Ephelyon - @jenny_urey spoke to Liam today and he suggested I try and speak to you....will email you again to discuss (Emma)
RichCowell Posted April 16, 2015 Posted April 16, 2015 We've had PARS and PARS CONNECT for just over a year, and have never been happy with the speed of PARS CONNECT, though Tasc have spent quite a long time trying to help, and the server's seriously over spec'd now, it's not improved enough that staff are happy, so the powers-that-be have made the move to Lesson Monitor & Teacher App, the deployment is being planned at the moment... From what I can tell we've been in the minority with the issues we've had, but it was enough to make them change the system...
emivjah Posted April 16, 2015 Author Posted April 16, 2015 Thanks for the insight. Much Appreciate it Can I ask how many staff & students and what spec did you have on iis server? Many thanks ....
Steven_Cleaver Posted April 16, 2015 Posted April 16, 2015 I have been using PARS.NET in two schools over the last 10 years and also using Insight and looking at another product they are developing called Cura and the products and support from TASC Software has been brilliant. We only recently upgraded to new version of PARS.NET as I had stayed on the old version for some time at the time we looked at PARS Connect but couldn't really see that the extra functionality unless we were looking at using the Seating Planner would be worth the additional cost as we were sort of being recommended PAR Connect for Teachers and PAR.NET for admin so would have mean't a fairly substantial increase in our yearly costs. Obviously the big benefit with PARS Connect was if staff want to be able to access PARS from home or mobile devices as is web based etc but if a school has its own remote access system this sort of isn't as much of a benefit. In regards to speed it did seem a little slower when we tried it as a test but I hadn't particularly beefed up the Server as we were only trying it with a few users.
RichCowell Posted April 16, 2015 Posted April 16, 2015 Thanks for the insight. Much Appreciate it Can I ask how many staff & students and what spec did you have on iis server? Many thanks .... 930 students, about 60 staff... I'll confirm the server spec tomorrow...
Edu-IT Posted April 17, 2015 Posted April 17, 2015 It does seem as though the PARS Connect is getting more attention but I'm sure TASC have said they're not going to end the desktop version. I'm not sure about that myself.. @jenny_urey can perhaps shed some light?
jenny_urey Posted May 13, 2015 Posted May 13, 2015 Hi Steve ..... lots of assessment analysis in Connect; being web based we can produce some really excellent residual data, performance tracking....seating plans as you say are there displaying key data; fsm, target grades.... many benefits via mobile (web view and NOT an app) ... example, pupil on trip, falls, hospitalised....staff have quick access to parent data/telephone numbers.... It really does depend on your Schools needs Steve. The new tracking saves money buying segregated grading software. Seating plans save Schools an extra £500ish a year. Speed; this is very dependant on your IIS Server; configurations etc. Let me know if you want us to pop over to re-demo Jen 1
jenny_urey Posted May 13, 2015 Posted May 13, 2015 It does seem as though the PARS Connect is getting more attention but I'm sure TASC have said they're not going to end the desktop version. I'm not sure about that myself.. @jenny_urey can perhaps shed some light? Hiya.... we can add more 'juicy' developments in Connect being a web based product than in .net which now is slowly becoming 'old skool' technology. We are having to move with the times and we are still updating PARS.net. It will be many years before we see this completely replaced with Connect. New Schools purchase PARS Connect and use that via desktop/laptop/touch/iPad/Mobile etc..... although when supplied, we do also give the School .net Client We've been approached reference offsite hosting also ... with Connect/web based ... feasible. Onsite hosting always first recommendation to ensure security plus you have to make sure you have a decent IIS Server to handle all the traffic! Hope this helps a little ... please feel free to call in the office if you would like a more in depth chat Thanks Jenny
jenny_urey Posted May 13, 2015 Posted May 13, 2015 We've had PARS and PARS CONNECT for just over a year, and have never been happy with the speed of PARS CONNECT, though Tasc have spent quite a long time trying to help, and the server's seriously over spec'd now, it's not improved enough that staff are happy, so the powers-that-be have made the move to Lesson Monitor & Teacher App, the deployment is being planned at the moment... From what I can tell we've been in the minority with the issues we've had, but it was enough to make them change the system... Hi Rich Did try and call. Sad to see you go when we never got to the bottom of the issue. PARS.net worked fine on your School site and performance was great .. in fact rather fast ... though I agree PARS Connect was dire. We have had a few Schools who have performance issues though we have resolved most over the phone quickly or after a couple of days (even though we are not IIS Server specialist / Networking guys..just mere software developers ) Issues have been a number of things....spec, Server config settings, incorrect port settings, bottlenecks, External hosting..... very had to pinpoint! I've also been on many Schools sites and Connect is extremely quick and no issues at all. An issue I have come across which IS related to PARS Connect software and not IIS Server is when a School have 10,000s or behaviour referrals and 10,000s notices sitting clogging up the system. These can be cleared automatically if configurations are set to do so ... which is a 2 minute 1 off job. Also, if a member of staff is receiving 50 behaviour referrals a day... then this is not configured correctly. A referral is sent not just to make a member of staff aware of an incident, it is about referring for a member of staff to DEAL with an issue. If staff do have 50+ incidents a day and not 'dealing' with the issues updating comments etc.... then they will not be clearing them. This means referral rules are not right for what you need. Behaviour Alerts is best for that! (i've added that for other readers) I'll catch up with some time Rick Cheers Jen 1
RichCowell Posted May 13, 2015 Posted May 13, 2015 Thanks @jenny_urey - I've always said our experience doesn't seem to be the norm when talking about it... I try to have as little to do with SIMS as possible, so the decision wasn't one I was involved with... I'm trying to keep as far from it as possible still now! Going to email you shortly about another matter that I think Ben's emailed you about before...
SpaceInvader83 Posted May 14, 2015 Posted May 14, 2015 We also use Pars.net and Pars Connect - The recommended specs for the pars connect server is ridiculous, we run ours with 8GB Ram, 2 Cores on a VM running Server 2008 r2 and it runs quite happily and is fairly snappy to use (1200 pupils + 90 Teaching Staff). The only major issue we ever had performance wise was when an update had a memory leak, since that was fixed the performance hasn't been bad at all.
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