Progresso newbie

[RogueOne]

Hi all,

I have recently changed schools and am now in a much larger one, with 6th form, that uses Progresso.

I approached Progresso with an open mind (after 5 years+ of SIMS), even after hearing the staff here call it 'Depresso' (partly down to an appalling installation here).

But I do have numerous frustrations with it. I would love to make contact with more experienced Progresso users who would be happy to talk to me (as getting through to/getting the right level of Support from Advanced is a chancy business at the moment, due to so many new staff in their support centre).

If anyone is not too far from Cambridge, I would love to come and visit too!

I have immediate questions about adhoc room bookings (how do you manage it) and shortly will have lots of questions about markbooks.

Cheers.

[djrscally]

Welcome to Progresso.

 

Depresso is a pretty common nickname here too, quite amused it's so widespread.

 

I worked at Advanced Learning on their support desk for a couple years and have been the Data Manager of a Progresso school for 2.5 years now so can probably help. You're more than welcome to visit too but my school is in Bradford which I imagine does qualify as too far from Cambridge!

 

Ad Hoc room bookings:

 

1) If you're just moving an existing lesson for one period, use manual event override and set a date range

2) If you're turfing a lesson out of a room to use it for something else, add a Room Unavailability in Cover and then assign a new room to the lesson you turfed out using the Assign Cover window.

3) If it's just being used for something that's not a lesson, use manual event override and add an ad hoc event. Again, make sure you set a date range (otherwise it assumes you want to block that period out forever)

[RogueOne]

Hi there djrscally,

Thanks for replying. Unfortunately I am not the person doing the room bookings, and she does not have access to manual event override or Cover, although the Cover manager helps out as required. They are currently using Outlook, but have to look up rooms first in Progresso, and the Free Rooms report is just unusable. It all takes far, far too long to do.

I don't think we can separate out manual event overrides just for room bookings can we, as far as user permissions go, can we?

I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that we don't have any choice but to look at a room booking package?

To be fair to Progresso, we used one of these in my last SIMS school too....

[djrscally]

You can't separate Manual Event Overrides no - people either have it or not. The room bookings person here manages afaik to do it entirely within Progresso, we've never had a problem with the level of access to MEO and cover that she has. I think she actually uses the out of box report too - why's it unusable for you guys? Speed or just the lengthy format?

[carwardinet]

I have been using Progresso since September - still very much picking things up as I go along. I have a catalogue of user manuals though which I can send to you if you will find them useful

[SimonRushton]

Hi,

 

We use Progresso but not for room booking. There's no shame in not using an MIS as a room booking system (for the supplier or the school) it's a case of horses for courses. On that basis (especially if you want to maximise commercial use of your space) have a look at Room Booking Plus from Kajima, it's not well known but is very well thought out, powerful but simple. Not linked to any MIS (which is a bit frustrating) but worth a look nevertheless.

 

On the 'depresso' front it's a shame that people feel the way they do because the truth is that whilst the system has its foibles it is coherent, robust, rapid, it's just that being a big beast it takes some getting to know and managing. From an end user perspective: I hear that the UI/UX is up for a major overhaul in the not too distant which is to be expected given Progresso was the first cloud based MIS. The fact that the system is now being rolled out in the AET monster MAT is interesting - means the company will be under pressure but also means they have the incentive to press on which is timely given that SIMs is, it seems, about to re-enter a period of change like the one when they moved to .NET. The grey heads amongst us will remember that's when Facility (predecessor to Progresso) went rapidly from 0 to hundreds of schools - there being no better time to jump ship than when your current supplier is going to make you do so anyway, one way or another....

[djrscally]

On the 'depresso' front it's a shame that people feel the way they do because the truth is that whilst the system has its foibles it is coherent, robust, rapid, it's just that being a big beast it takes some getting to know and managing.

 

A lot of staff's negative opinions about Progresso are, I agree, a hangover from a couple years past when there was a lot more wrong with it coupled with the fact that for Teaching staff particularly there are some things that they're used to doing easily in SIMS that might take a bit longer in Progresso, but there are also problems that are not the result of user inexperience and they do include speed and reliability. Indeed at the moment those are the main problems that we have with it.

 

NB: That's not to say it's bad necessarily - I think the vision is right, but it can be really frustrating at times.

Edited December 12, 2016 by djrscally

[SchoolCloudSystems]

We offer the Room Booking System which is fully integrated with Progresso. It picks up the timetable, cover swaps and room closures too.

Either speak to your Progresso Account Manager or contact us directly for more information - we sponsor this very forum.

 

There are plenty others here that use us already!

[djrscally]

We offer the Room Booking System which is fully integrated with Progresso. It picks up the timetable, cover swaps and room closures too.

Either speak to your Progresso Account Manager or contact us directly for more information - we sponsor this very forum.

 

There are plenty others here that use us already!

 

By "fully integrated" do you mean "It pulls data from the API without user intervention", or do you have to do CSV uploads from Progresso to drop in the Timetable and whatnot?

 

EDIT: Ooh, did you also used to be PEBS?

Edited December 12, 2016 by djrscally

[SchoolCloudSystems]

By "fully integrated" do you mean "It pulls data from the API without user intervention", or do you have to do CSV uploads from Progresso to drop in the Timetable and whatnot?

 

EDIT: Ooh, did you also used to be PEBS?

 

Yes, it pulls all the data from the Progresso API. Anything which affects room availability in Progresso should be synced to our system. No CSV files here!

We make both Room Booking System and Parents Evening System, both of which fully integrate with Progresso.

[RogueOne]

Hi,

On the 'depresso' front it's a shame that people feel the way they do because the truth is that whilst the system has its foibles it is coherent, robust, rapid, it's just that being a big beast it takes some getting to know and managing. ....

I really have given it a good go, with the view that it is a different beast and I just had to get used to it. But there are definitely things that make me extremely frustrated. I can do you a full list if you want.

But there are a lot of stupid little things that annoy me, such as why every drop-down list is different (by surname, by surname with checkbox, so you can't jump ahead to the appropriate letter, and my least favourite - by forename including the pupils middle name), and how the calendars start on different days of the week depending on where you are in Progresso. and why you have to save on every tab in Pupil records, then click ok, then wait for the next tab to load, and repeat. I lost several hours the other day watching the 'blue wheel of despair' going round and round as I was on a major correction-of-data exercise.

I was extremely happy to have an Import Data tool, but even that has issues as it doesn't overwrite some data and manual corrections then have to be made to remove the original data.

And then there are Reports, my current bug-bear. I don't know SRSS, and Advanced have cancelled the last two Level 1 and Level 2 training courses I could have reached, so I've spent a term without the ability to create custom reports. In SIMS I could build a complicated report up and have the data on my desktop in under 5 minutes, all without training as it was so intuitive. I need 4 days (!) of training courses to be able to do the same in Progresso.

 

I am very much looking forward to the promised major over-haul, as I know they have been working hard on that, and hopefully lots of my little niggles will disappear then.

Does anyone know when this is likely to happen?

[djrscally]

SSRS does have a learning curve but once you nail it it's really powerful. If they're being slow skip Advanced's training and go somewhere else - SSRS is a Microsoft tool so there are tons of consultancy companies for it. WiseOwl do great training and also do a Youtube series that's pretty good:

(nb in the video they use Visual Studio / BIDS to write reports. Generally Advanced push Report Builder, but you can use either)

 

The only mildly irritating thing is that the nature of Progresso forces you to use the report models instead of direct SQL query, but it's not a major obstacle.

 

Can't remember offhand when the UX/UI changes were being finished. I know there's some good changes to the timetable section UX/UI in the pipeline but I forget when they're due.

[RogueOne]

My next question -

Next term I will be taking over Assessment, as this is still in the hands of a senior leader who simply did not have time to train me on it this term.

Is there anyone here who uses markbooks? Because nobody I have spoken to yet does.

This school paid for a consultant from Advanced to create markbooks for one of our departments to be used as a test-bed, so then we can hopefully get all the departments using them and have all the data in one place.

My last school used Go4Schools, which I really liked, and Progresso should in theory be able to do everything that this program can, or so I'm told.

BUT the consultant himself said markbooks were not up to scratch and he created everything as assessments instead. And of course assessment screens can't be fed into reports, so I have to export all the relevant data from the markbook assessments and upload them into the report assessments.

And as I can't sort the assessments into categories, we now have tons of assessments clogging up the assessment screen views and we have to go hunting for the report assessments - now ok I can do something about that by being stricter about the naming of each as the markbook assessments all seem to have different names....

But why are markbooks not fit for purpose in the first place? I haven't had time to play with one yet, that's my Christmas holiday job, so I'd appreciate any insights.

 

Thank-you.

[djrscally]

My next question -

Next term I will be taking over Assessment, as this is still in the hands of a senior leader who simply did not have time to train me on it this term.

Is there anyone here who uses markbooks? Because nobody I have spoken to yet does.

This school paid for a consultant from Advanced to create markbooks for one of our departments to be used as a test-bed, so then we can hopefully get all the departments using them and have all the data in one place.

My last school used Go4Schools, which I really liked, and Progresso should in theory be able to do everything that this program can, or so I'm told.

BUT the consultant himself said markbooks were not up to scratch and he created everything as assessments instead. And of course assessment screens can't be fed into reports, so I have to export all the relevant data from the markbook assessments and upload them into the report assessments.

And as I can't sort the assessments into categories, we now have tons of assessments clogging up the assessment screen views and we have to go hunting for the report assessments - now ok I can do something about that by being stricter about the naming of each as the markbook assessments all seem to have different names....

But why are markbooks not fit for purpose in the first place? I haven't had time to play with one yet, that's my Christmas holiday job, so I'd appreciate any insights.

 

Thank-you.

 

I confess we also don't use the markbooks, but I don't understand why you think ordinary assessments couldn't be fed into the report assessment screens? If you have an Assessment Template set up to be used as a markbook and another to be used for reports, you can have the report template automatically calculate grades based on the data entered in the markbook assessment template pretty easily.

[RogueOne]

You can't separate Manual Event Overrides no - people either have it or not. The room bookings person here manages afaik to do it entirely within Progresso, we've never had a problem with the level of access to MEO and cover that she has. I think she actually uses the out of box report too - why's it unusable for you guys? Speed or just the lengthy format?

OK, so we are a huge school with many, many rooms. We don't let our departmental administrators have access to Manual Event Override, so adhoc room bookings are done on Outlook, but they have to look up on Progresso first and then the free rooms report is just unmanageable for a quick look, as one period can overlap a screen and when you drop down you lose sight of the column headings, so you have to memorise them.....and if you export to excel there are loads of extra columns and the period 'marker' is one big merged column which overlaps several pages and makes it hard to navigate.

There is a lot of back and forth to check individual room timetables at the moment, a job that should take less than a minute is taking tens of minutes...

 

Maybe once I can use SRSS I can design a better report?

 

But there is no visual view. The room booking system I used at my last school, I could select a bunch of classrooms, and it would easily display who was in what classroom and which periods were bookable, all in bright pretty colours that our teachers could use as well as admin staff.

 

 

Advanced themselves say they don't have a built-in room booking module, so I really think that is something we are going to have to buy in.

[RogueOne]

We offer the Room Booking System which is fully integrated with Progresso. It picks up the timetable, cover swaps and room closures too.

Either speak to your Progresso Account Manager or contact us directly for more information - we sponsor this very forum.

There are plenty others here that use us already!

 

Hi Marcus - already got a quote from you on Friday! A

[RogueOne]

If they're being slow skip Advanced's training and go somewhere else - SSRS is a Microsoft tool so there are tons of consultancy companies for it. WiseOwl do great training and also do a Youtube series that's pretty good:

(nb in the video they use Visual Studio / BIDS to write reports. Generally Advanced push Report Builder, but you can use either)

Oooh, thank-you, that is very useful!

[RogueOne]

I confess we also don't use the markbooks, but I don't understand why you think ordinary assessments couldn't be fed into the report assessment screens? If you have an Assessment Template set up to be used as a markbook and another to be used for reports, you can have the report template automatically calculate grades based on the data entered in the markbook assessment template pretty easily.

 

Thank-you for this, I believe this assumption came from the Advanced consultant and no-one has queried it yet, so now I know it might be possible I will investigate and see if I can get that to work. At the moment I am pulling data out of about only 4-5 of the columns in the markbook assessments, so I would need the ability to pick and choose which need to be included in the report template. I hope that is possible.

[djrscally]

OK, so we are a huge school with many, many rooms. We don't let our departmental administrators have access to Manual Event Override, so adhoc room bookings are done on Outlook, but they have to look up on Progresso first and then the free rooms report is just unmanageable for a quick look, as one period can overlap a screen and when you drop down you lose sight of the column headings, so you have to memorise them.....and if you export to excel there are loads of extra columns and the period 'marker' is one big merged column which overlaps several pages and makes it hard to navigate.

There is a lot of back and forth to check individual room timetables at the moment, a job that should take less than a minute is taking tens of minutes...

 

Maybe once I can use SRSS I can design a better report?

 

But there is no visual view. The room booking system I used at my last school, I could select a bunch of classrooms, and it would easily display who was in what classroom and which periods were bookable, all in bright pretty colours that our teachers could use as well as admin staff.

 

 

Advanced themselves say they don't have a built-in room booking module, so I really think that is something we are going to have to buy in.

Yeah maybe. I do actually like the look of the one posted above...I tend to use Scheduler's Free Resource tool to find rooms quickly but letting teachers sort it all themselves is pretty tempting...

[djrscally]

Thank-you for this, I believe this assumption came from the Advanced consultant and no-one has queried it yet, so now I know it might be possible I will investigate and see if I can get that to work. At the moment I am pulling data out of about only 4-5 of the columns in the markbook assessments, so I would need the ability to pick and choose which need to be included in the report template. I hope that is possible.

 

I am definitely under the impression you can do it like this:

 

1) Edit the reporting template

2) Go to "Formula Definition", which is the Fx button top right

3) Pick the column you want the data to pull through to

4) In the "Choose Function" picklist set "COPYFROM"

5) In the "select template for additional columns" field pick your markbook templates

 

All the columns from the markbook show up, and you can just pick the one you want it to drag through from. We don't actually use this but I can't see why it shouldn't work.

 

Side note; calculated columns like this only actually calculate after a set period of time (maybe 15 mins...I forget) or when you press the "Calculate" button on the assessments entry window.

[Lissydoll4]

Anyone that can help with attendance on progresso we are having some issues and letters etc thanks

[MIS]

Hi all,

 

I am a Progresso newbie

Does anyone know if you are able to run reports from a previous academic year? for example ...view class data for 2016/17 Yr10 English who are currently Yr11?

I dont know if this is an option within Progresso....

 

Thank you

[djrscally]

Hi all,

 

I am a Progresso newbie

Does anyone know if you are able to run reports from a previous academic year? for example ...view class data for 2016/17 Yr10 English who are currently Yr11?

I dont know if this is an option within Progresso....

 

Thank you

 

Yes, provided you have a report that's set up to do so (with the proviso that you can't currently view the Year a student was in in previous Academic Years, but you can view the classes. Advanced are working on a method for the Year too.)

 

If you PM me an email address I can send you a report that will do it - or if you explore the reports in the Data and People sections there's almost certainly one with an Academic Year parameter that will do it too.