SalamanderSoft - Singing Praises :)

[Marshall_IT]

I just thought I'd come back and add another round of praise!

 

I saw last night on Twitter that they've added a new feature of you have sims write back, where it can now create sims users, assign permissions and mark accounts inactive for leavers.

 

I though this was amazing and so fired off an email straight away for it to be added to my site.

 

Well as of 11am this morning it is now completely up and running.

Thank you All at SalamanderSoft for providing such a great product and service.

 

The only thing you may need to improve is your marketing and notifying of customers of the new features.

 

Anyway, just thought I'd let everyone know.

[Liam]

Its pretty obvious we like salamander..

 

But as every organisations needs are different i wonder.... what are you using it for..can we share some good practice / ideas

 

E.g a cool feature that we now use is the ability for our staff to email the teachersofjoebloggs / of email class groups that are all pulled from our MIS...this is a massive time saver.

 

Thanks

[jamin100]

Ive never heard of this ! . . don't know how.

It sounds like a really useful set of tools. Just hoping they support Progresso (many suppliers don't)..

 

Do they have a web demo / demo video etc ??

[mullet_man]

I just thought I'd come back and add another round of praise!

 

I saw last night on Twitter that they've added a new feature of you have sims write back, where it can now create sims users, assign permissions and mark accounts inactive for leavers.

 

I though this was amazing and so fired off an email straight away for it to be added to my site.

 

Well as of 11am this morning it is now completely up and running.

Thank you All at SalamanderSoft for providing such a great product and service.

 

The only thing you may need to improve is your marketing and notifying of customers of the new features.

 

Anyway, just thought I'd let everyone know.

 

That sounds amazing, am going to see if I can get this done for us as that sounds perfect.

[Sagima]

Its pretty obvious we like salamander..

 

But as every organisations needs are different i wonder.... what are you using it for..can we share some good practice / ideas

 

E.g a cool feature that we now use is the ability for our staff to email the teachersofjoebloggs / of email class groups that are all pulled from our MIS...this is a massive time saver.

 

Thanks

 

We use it for the following

 

Importing pictures from mis into outlook/ad

Setting up new users in ad based on mis

Setting up class group emails

setting up controlled assessment accounts

Disable leaver accounts

Importing student emails from ad to mis

[plexer]

They've been to a previous ANME meeting and I was really impressed with everything it does - sadly I've not yet convinced the powers-that-be to let me get it, but showing more and more teachers so hoping the message goes back showing enough demand...

 

 

 

They wouldn't be able to charge the annual fee if you could update it yourself each year

 

Of course they could as the annual fee is a licence for using the product as well not just for updates.

 

Ben

[mullet_man]

Its pretty obvious we like salamander..

 

But as every organisations needs are different i wonder.... what are you using it for..can we share some good practice / ideas

 

E.g a cool feature that we now use is the ability for our staff to email the teachersofjoebloggs / of email class groups that are all pulled from our MIS...this is a massive time saver.

 

Thanks

 

We have this setup too, we also have it setup so that it creates parent email groups based on classes. Pulls the emails from SIMS and creates them as contacts in our AD. The groups and contacts are all hidden from the address book so pupils are unable to email them.

 

For the price, it's a priceless bit of software.

[Marshall_IT]

Creating users and disabling them when they leave (this last part is so very important as we quite often don't get notified when staff leave)

populating staff exchange calendars with the timetable

Populating staff exchange calendars with cover at 8:30

e-mail distribution lists for classes

moving user folders to an archive location.

adding exchange e-mail address to SIMS.net as a work e-mail

*NEW - creating SIMS.net users for staff

 

I'm sure there's something i'm forgetting...

[7UD9]

Creating users and disabling them when they leave (this last part is so very important as we quite often don't get notified when staff leave)

populating staff exchange calendars with the timetable

Populating staff exchange calendars with cover at 8:30

e-mail distribution lists for classes

moving user folders to an archive location.

adding exchange e-mail address to SIMS.net as a work e-mail

*NEW - creating SIMS.net users for staff

 

I'm sure there's something i'm forgetting...

 

We use all of the above, their support is always spot on too, very quick to resolve any issues.

[jamesrhart]

We had our install just before Christmas and it all went well, very happy with how Salamander work to fit in with our specific requirements, highly recommended.

[Liam]

So salamander users ... What do you do for those staff that change their name? Eg married/divorced? Manual process?

[Wubbalubbadub]

Manually change there name in AD. Edited February 7, 2016 by Wubbalubbadub

[jamesrhart]

Our salamander install just syncs the change from the MIS automatically - school initials (which is our usernames) would stay the same (unless the user requests that change), but display name etc gets automatically updated.

[FN-GM]

So salamander users ... What do you do for those staff that change their name? Eg married/divorced? Manual process?

 

Automatically updated.

[Liam]

Yes I'd need upn, email, username, work folder. I'm a bit ocd over it.

[FN-GM]

Yes I'd need upn, email, username, work folder. I'm a bit ocd over it.

 

Salamander can do that no problem.

[Marshall_IT]

It gets done automatically from SIMS for me. The only issue I have sometimes is with office 365. I'm not sure why but occasionally when a UPN changes I have to do office 365 manually with powershell. Also screws up the onedrive permissions too.

[Liam]

Ah I know mine doesn't at present. I'll look into it.

[mukz]

We do everything Marshall_IT said, plus the following:

 

Staff & Student Timetables linked into Exchange Calendars

 

SIMS Diary into a shared calendar for all staff to see

 

Email Distribution for the following:

Subjects

Classes

Form Groups

Year Groups

*now doing reachers of x student*

 

The greatest thing i love about Salamander is there 100% support from them. Its not a product you buy and expect to be configuring it yourself.

Give them a call and within a few days if not the same day your request will be actioned.

 

For a school who uses SIMs Partnership Exchange, Salamander AD is a godsend for creating students accounts who are Guests within SIMs and always floating.

[sparsonsCHS]

+1 from me too!

 

We do most of the things that have been posted here and have also recently purchased the online reporting solution to replace our SLG. Also very impressed with their support.

[enjay]

Agreed. They're awesome. The software has saved a lot of man hours, ensures accounts are always available when students start (generic passwords built around date of birth, so tutors can tell the students their password), leavers are automatically deleted, Google Apps mailing groups. Staff like having their timetables in their Google Calendars.

 

Another big benefit is that you know the account name is spelled correctly. It was not uncommon for us to have to to delete accounts because the admin person had mistyped their name when emailing us about the new starter. Not any more.

 

As others have said, their support is awesome. They have made so many tweaks to our config for us, and almost always the same day.

[howartp]

Stuart ( @TheScarfedOne ) from Salamander did my install last week.

 

Can't praise it highly enough, particularly with the number of tweaks I kept requesting!

 

I wasn't expecting them until summer, so hadn't planned any amount of time to work with them last week, but Stuart just got on and did it. Few emails here and there and it was basically done.

 

I'm already finding new uses for it

 

Peter

Edited June 10, 2016 by howartp

[eddyc]

We bought Salamander before we broke up for the summer holidays and Stuart ( @TheScarfedOne ) did the install for us before we broke up.

 

Originally we bought it to automated populating Google Classroom as we were moving away from Frog. We have actually found the product to be brilliant already and well worth its cost.

 

The Year 7 logins are already set up and are back in our UDF in SIMS with no intervention what so ever.

 

A quick SIMS report enables me to print the sticky labels for each students planner with their username on.

 

Really impressed.

 

Also, very pleased with the support. Nothing seems to be too much trouble. We've had a few minor tweaks since the install and it's always done very promptly.

 

Ed

[howartp]

Ditto - though I suspect Stuart is getting fed up with me coming up with extra ideas! Chris and Jon have done their share of quick tweaks as well.

 

I've already got more lined up once things settle down.

[mullet_man]

Stuart is the man, always helped me here when I've asked for a tweak.

 

Would be interesting to know what tweaks you've done @howartp in case others could use them too.