Progresso - Pros and Cons please

[s2turbs]

As per the title - just trying to find out more about this little know product. (I am a current SIMS user 6yrs +)

 

Just a simple list of what you do / don't like about progresso would be really helpful :-)

[Ditto]

Hi @s2turbs

 

Do like

******

Cloud based - if you have an internet connection and browser - can work anywhere

SSRS - flexible reporting if you have/get the expertise

Parental portal

Census creation fine

Attendance, Behviour and Assessment tracking all OK

Import tool for bulk updates

Access control strong by role type

Mostly all-in-one product

High availability

Incrementally improving

 

Don't like

********

Too many clicks at times

Some areas too slow

Support needs to be stronger - a lot of new staff

Staff/HR/contract support weak

 

To be fair, it's the only school MIS I've used, so little basis for comparison

 

PM me if you'd like to visit and see it in action sometime - we are inside M25 and fairly short commute from central London

[djrscally]

Graham has pretty much nailed it, except I would put availability in "don't like" - it's down / running slow too often imo.

[NotSoFast]

I'd agree with everything Graham said. I'd add price, zero maintenance (in house) and a proper api to the pros. The main con is that it's not SIMS, so less well known. I would also agree that support has been less impressive of late, and I don't like the new support portal! We're in Norfolk if you want to visit.

[SimonRushton]

Nothing to disagree with what everyone else has said.

 

What is interesting about Progresso at the minute is that being, I think, the oldest cloud based MIS on the market it needs a UI/UX refresh which I believe it is due to receive in 2017. If they do a good job of that it will mitigate the support issues mentioned and make it much easier for the system to realise its potential because staff, parents, and yes ...even students why not?, will have access to an easy to access and comprehensive range of data. Could be the Holy Grail - an integrated information system that delivers the benefits of integration!

[Bromcom_Jay]

What is interesting about Progresso at the minute is that being, I think, the oldest cloud based MIS on the market

 

Actually Bromcom were the first cloud based MIS ever in 2001...

[geekgirl]

All I can say is stay with SIMS. I've used many different MIS in my career and Progresso is the current one I'm using. I struggled with it as a new user in March and my staff really don't like it as it isn't easy to use.

You really need someone trained as a specialist in Progresso, they provide training but each course is around £600 and there are 17 courses available if you wanted someone to know then system completely which would cost £10,200 if you went on all the courses.

 

Our experience is the system breaks every time they update it, they don't release fixes straight away as they do it in 6 week batches so you have issues outstanding long time and last year we had 7 instances of reporting & API integration go down during census, school report season and exam season not being able to report on/view our data.

 

The last day of term in Dec was a nightmare as they updated the system the night before (not ideal time for an update), it broke some stuff (still outstanding issues) and we couldn't use the system at all on the last day.

 

At the moment Progresso Support isn't great and a lot of cases have been left without any communication.

 

We are within the M25 as well so if you want to have a chat PM me and I'm happy to discuss our experience of the system.

[NotSoFast]

The last day of term in Dec was a nightmare as they updated the system the night before (not ideal time for an update), it broke some stuff (still outstanding issues) and we couldn't use the system at all on the last day.

 

Funny - we didn't have any issues at all. What did they break? I've felt that the maintenance has been well communicated and professionally executed generally (a big change from the initial period a couple of years back when Serco were still responsible).

Edited January 6, 2017 by NotSoFast

[SimonRushton]

Same here (in terms of things not breaking). On the subject of training/usability there are fascinating differences between organisations too. When we gave access to Progresso to staff (and parents) we provided no training at all. The short term consequence was of course that there was a lot of confusion which you might be surprised to hear we both expected and welcomed! That was what we wanted because people learn best by exploring and doing, helping and being helped, not by being 'spoon fed' out of context, off the page (or screen), training. The approach worked well for us because it reflects the ethos of the school - if you don't know then find out, learning starts when you get outside your comfort zone! There is of course a huge difference between what I've described for users who are interested in and need to know only a tiny subset of the system, and specialists (e.g. Sys admins, exam managers, timetablers, cover managers, report builders, etc, etc.). The specialists need training and as described that is available, the fact there is so much of it demonstrates the scope and scale of the system and would surely be expected of any serious enterprise level system? Maybe the difficult bit for schools used to SIMS is sort of in the middle group, I.e. not 'light touch' users (e.g. classroom, home based), not process specialist (e.g. exams, timetables, etc) but the 'office staff'? If so that does need addressing, for now, internally by the supplier. But, it's not a good reason for not choosing, or liking, a system and, as time goes by, will become increasingly irrelevant as people learn by doing, the system improves and, ultimately, the job changes in schools who will rely less on generic admin staff thanks to the increase of self service by those 'light touch' users who become data collectors, maintainers, providers, and even analysts.

[geekgirl]

Funny - we didn't have any issues at all. What did they break? I've felt that the maintenance has been well communicated and professionally executed generally (a big change from the initial period a couple of years back when Serco were still responsible).

 

We couldn't use any of our reports at all. Kept getting a system time out error for the whole day. Cases were logged of our various issues and was just told there are issues occurring so be patient...

Had to find information manually by going into every student rather than running a simple system report e.g viewing medical information or emergency contact information for a class.

Roll call reports stopped working and we couldn't see who had/hadn't taken their registers unless we checked each reg group manually.

[geekgirl]

Same here (in terms of things not breaking). On the subject of training/usability there are fascinating differences between organisations too. When we gave access to Progresso to staff (and parents) we provided no training at all. The short term consequence was of course that there was a lot of confusion which you might be surprised to hear we both expected and welcomed! That was what we wanted because people learn best by exploring and doing, helping and being helped, not by being 'spoon fed' out of context, off the page (or screen), training. The approach worked well for us because it reflects the ethos of the school - if you don't know then find out, learning starts when you get outside your comfort zone! There is of course a huge difference between what I've described for users who are interested in and need to know only a tiny subset of the system, and specialists (e.g. Sys admins, exam managers, timetablers, cover managers, report builders, etc, etc.). The specialists need training and as described that is available, the fact there is so much of it demonstrates the scope and scale of the system and would surely be expected of any serious enterprise level system? Maybe the difficult bit for schools used to SIMS is sort of in the middle group, I.e. not 'light touch' users (e.g. classroom, home based), not process specialist (e.g. exams, timetables, etc) but the 'office staff'? If so that does need addressing, for now, internally by the supplier. But, it's not a good reason for not choosing, or liking, a system and, as time goes by, will become increasingly irrelevant as people learn by doing, the system improves and, ultimately, the job changes in schools who will rely less on generic admin staff thanks to the increase of self service by those 'light touch' users who become data collectors, maintainers, providers, and even analysts.

 

No training at all? Yikes. That method wouldn't work here. Our staff doesn't really have the time to "explore" a system as it's quite a busy school, they need information quick and easy which Progresso doesn't give you.

 

If they don't get it straight away they won't waste their valuable time. We provide termly training drop in sessions but we also send out instruction guides so they can do it themselves to learn rather than wasting time stumbling around a system trying to find stuff.

 

They also have the guide for reference so they don't have to ask "how do I do this again?" which saves admins/IT support time. It also allows a control of quality as well if a certain process is documented and everyone follows the same instructions. If we left our users to do it their own way our system would be in such a mess as everyone processes data differently.

 

Thing is school budgets are being cut and cut over time by the government and some schools can't afford data collectors, maintainers and analysts industry salaries. Some schools have different department admins who have to learn these skills when they can and educate others in the school on top of their other tasks. Having a few super users or light touch users who only know the system can be risky as it can cause a skills gap if that staff member were to leave. I don't understand why some schools are afraid to share the knowledge of any system to all their users as it makes all levels of staff confident in the system they are using. It also combats the issue when a person leaves the school isn't left with that skills gap.

[s2turbs]

All I can say is stay with SIMS. I've used many different MIS in my career and Progresso is the current one I'm using. I struggled with it as a new user in March and my staff really don't like it as it isn't easy to use.

You really need someone trained as a specialist in Progresso, they provide training but each course is around £600 and there are 17 courses available if you wanted someone to know then system completely which would cost £10,200 if you went on all the courses.

 

Our experience is the system breaks every time they update it, they don't release fixes straight away as they do it in 6 week batches so you have issues outstanding long time and last year we had 7 instances of reporting & API integration go down during census, school report season and exam season not being able to report on/view our data.

 

The last day of term in Dec was a nightmare as they updated the system the night before (not ideal time for an update), it broke some stuff (still outstanding issues) and we couldn't use the system at all on the last day.

 

At the moment Progresso Support isn't great and a lot of cases have been left without any communication.

 

We are within the M25 as well so if you want to have a chat PM me and I'm happy to discuss our experience of the system.

 

Very interesting reading your post.

 

You say you have only been using since March so a perfect "new user" to give me the right kind of honest feedback.

 

Can I just ask what type of school/college you are (size primary secondary?)

 

Thanks for your post

[markberry]

We've been running it for some time now but are now looking elsewhere as it doesn't provide us with the data analysis we need.

 

The technology it is built in is great and it had so much potential but it has never materialised.

 

There are great reports but they are categorised into specific areas, attendance, behaviour etc. What we need now as an organisation is much more complex. For example being able to report on poor attendance then drill down into other areas such as behaviour, assessment etc and see how one area is impacted by another and be able to make informed descisions about intervention.

 

SSRS is great but you need quite skilled and experienced staff to get complex reports out of it.

[SimonHooker]

Just throwing this out there from point of view of someone that has integrated Progresso into a third-party product. I like that they have a fairly complete API. Unfortunately that same API can be very slow for some requests, and the documentation for the API is not always accurate and the precise methods you are looking for are not always where you might expect. Many methods get bundled into their "Miscellaneous" endpoint, for example.

 

The speed concerns with the API are most likely why the frontend also appears slow at times.

[bigdannyb79]

that kind of sums up progresso. Right idea and looks good on paper but execution is poor. . .

[SimonRushton]

Maybe Advanced will beat Capita to the draw in providing a cloud-based system with the 'right ideas' that doesn't just 'look good on paper'! They do have a big head start and '000s less diverse, dyed in the wool schools, to migrate!

 

Also, I think it is fair comment to say that aside from UI/UX issues, which are acknowledged by Advanced, Progresso is remarkably fast, robust, forgiving, flexible and, in the area of every schools' core business (attainment and progress), has the potential to be an extraordinarily powerful tool. True Report Builder is a beast, but the out of the box report library is developing rapidly, and the pool of people able to use the tool is growing as it gets more traction and is easier to use. Going back to the subject of what will, one day, eventually, be SIMS online, it will be interesting to see what their system uses....

[bigdannyb79]

So we've already heard the API is cumbersome, reporting is very complex and the out of the box reporting is only just getting close to what you would expect 5 years from launch and AL themselves admit the user interface isnt great and overhauled 50% of it 2 years ago and seem to have forgotten about it since. The power of Progresso is in SSRS which is above and beyond most school personnel and can be achieved by plugging any MIS into any genuine BI product if you have that level of skill so I dont see much in favour of Progresso as an MIS ?

 

And if you had tried Bromcom, ISAMS or Integris you would know as a web based MIS it is very slow in comparison and the bug bear of most users I have ever spoken to and that is when there's no performance issues of which there are far too many . . .

 

I've backed progresso from the start but the initial development was shockingly bad and they've been trying and failing to play catch up ever since.

Edited February 22, 2017 by bigdannyb79

[RogueOne]

I have been using it since last September, after 5 years in a SIMS school.

I was excited to learn a new MIS, but that excitement has diminished quite considerably.

To be fair, our school suffered from a bad implementation (migration from CMIS) about 3-4 years ago and that was down to the previous data manager in a large part. The teaching staff here still call it 'Depresso' as a hangover from the term when it was basically unusable. I have also had a lot of help from the Advanced Support Team, as a new user, and their helpdesk has dramatically improved since September, where they were suffering from their move from Derby to Birmingham, losing many of their experienced support staff in the process.

My main issue is how slow the damn package is. SIMS, even hosted on a County site, was instantaneous. The lag between screens drives me insane. I often have Progresso open on two different browsers at the same time, doing two different jobs, so I am not just sitting there watching the 'blue wheel of despair' turning. And before anyone says it, it is not our internet connection, I experience the same issues when working from home on a high speed fibre optic connection, and our IT department has done a full analysis on this.

Advanced are working on this issue and are just about to move from fewer large servers to more and smaller servers. I wait with baited breath, and fingers crossed.

In particular the Report Server causes the most problems, and many functions in Progresso rely on this. Assessment report data regularly take 4 hours to cross to the Report Server, timetables take an age to produce (even a single timetable for 1 student takes around 5 minutes), and our Attendance Officer takes hours to produce letters to parents which would have taken minutes in SIMS. Cover is also a huge problem, as the pages don't load or refresh or just plain crash and our Cover Supervisor is fed up and threatening to look for another job since she can't do hers properly here.

Report creation in SIMS was basic, quick and intuitive. You need 4 days of training to run SRSS Report Builder to use with Progresso. Markbooks are just rubbish and we are about to buy in a different package to compensate for this (to be fair my last school did this too as we didn't particularly like SIMS Assessment Manager either). Don't even think about using Progresso to do ad-hoc room bookings, it is a nightmare. I have a huge list of problems I have been documenting since about December, so I could go on....

I think Progresso could be an amazing product, but it is unfinished. The menu structure alone demonstrates this, and it is not intuitive. Advanced is the third company to own Progresso since my school bought it, and the indications are that they are putting the investment in to improve it. But I'd give it a year or three before even looking at it.

[SimonRushton]

Curiouser and curiouser!

As Alice in Wonderland would have said - how can a cloud-based system behave so differently in two places and it not be caused by the difference between the connectivity of the locations? We have dozens of staff using the system every minute of every day on iPads, Chromebooks, Macs, not PCs (relevant perhaps?).

Teachers are taking registers in class, entering behaviour records on the fly, updating formative comments in assessments alongside children. I've just looked at the audit trail on (on a wireless Mac at home) and it tells me there have been nearly 1400 entries since 8 this morning with no reports of any holdups at all. Of course, there are issues sometimes but they are by far the exception, not the rule. If that were not the case we would not accept it but I don't see how we could reasonably Advanced accountable. Somebody, somewhere is not giving you the service you deserve but it's simply not Advanced.

 

Whilst on the subject @bigdannyb79 your comments are, in my 'umble opinion, a tad unfair....

Commenting on the launch of Progresso something like eight years ago is like blaming Tony Blair for what happened in Copeland!

Performance? See above but mention of Integris is entertaining (if days gone by are fair comment) and, I can only repeat, Progresso is fast enough for the vast majority of the time and (like all systems) it will get faster.

SSRS is hard because proper reporting is hard. Blaming a system that uses it is barking up the wrong tree. The truth is if SSRS is good enough for other sectors it's good enough for Education but too many managers in education won't spend enough money on recruiting, or training, people to master it. The consequence is they (the managers) don't have the information they need, then they blame you (the system administrators) and you blame them (the system developers) when in fact they (the managers) should go look in a mirror to see who to blame (all a bit Alice again, sorry).

If you know about 'plugging any MIS into a genuine BI product' and getting new meaningful information, as a result, would you like a job?

Everyone agrees the UI/UX needs updating, it's coming, it's true. (Donald making an appearance, but it really is true!)

Out of the box reports are pretty comprehensive - the past is the past - seems to me that the people reading this thread are looking for information about their future choices

The API, you're right is increasingly important and a REST API is... a REST API.

 

Genuinely sorry your head seems to be down and equally sorry that has steered the dialogue away from what really matters which is that an MIS, any MIS, should play a significant, and direct role, in a school's ability to enable children to achieve their potential. That can be said of what Progresso does for Plymouth School of Creative Arts and that's why we endorse it.

[bigdannyb79]

Simon - each to their own then if it works for you enjoy.

 

But talking about the where it started is valid when the product hasn't come that far in the years since. The pace of development is the same slow pace now. It took over two years to allow proper use of widgets, the USP of the product, I'm referring to be able to centrally deploy them, EVERY user spotted it this straight away, firstly how did they develop it without real world application it in mind and secondly why did it then take 2 years to resolve? The UI has had half a revamp 2 years ago and hasn't been finished off again this just isn't acceptable. The only rapid development I've seen was recently when they threw a great bell at the top of the screen which was apparently an Emergency alert - users weren't notified and you couldn't turn it off which created bedlam for days as staff panicked they had triggered some alarm. More worrying there could have been cases where people felt they had alerted others where in reality we were trying to figure out where the great big bell came from ?! I would have been annoyed if it wasnt so laughable.

 

The assessment screens have only recently become usable for more than a few columns and again this was acknowledged in the first year of use. These are core areas of the system that are only just being tweaked to be usable and accessible. In that time other products have moved forward where as progresso has spent months/years trying to resolve usability and functionality flaws. Maybe I am tainted by the past but there are enough very present frustrations that means I wont be forgetting all the problems anytime soon.

 

Despite the fact the product was launched with the 'API at the core of an open system ready for integration' it was replaced after a couple years for a supposedly better API which was then developed without key parts of the database included. VIVO were told to use it only to find out part way through integrating with it Behaviour wasn't fully included so they couldn't pull the positive info from that. So time and time again the steps that are made forward are offset by a stumble backwards.

 

I don't dispute you are happy with the product but that certainly isn't the norm and so I feel most potential users would benefit from my thoughts echoed by Rogueone. Great idea but check back in a couple of years if its still going (AL customers are declining rapidly) it may have finally got something close to the 'intelligence at your fingertips' I bought into years ago. I said the same to contacts at the Harris federation a couple of years ago and they have recently gone to Bromcom after realising Progresso didn't fit their needs and I'm afraid my message remains the same - I wouldn't endorse it right now and struggle to see it being a best fit solution for many schools anytime soon.

 

And I'm good for a job - I'll be joining a outstanding MAT shortly overseeing the data and ICT systems across the trust and I like to think my understanding of what primary, secondary and six form colleges need from an MIS product help me land the role. And I'm afraid, for now, Progresso doesn't cut it for me.

 

I'll be delighted if Progresso does fulfill its potential one day as the more competition the better in the MIS market but I doubt SIMS are worrying losing much market share to Progresso anytime soon.

 

I'll finish by acknowledging every school's needs are different so its essential an MIS fits those needs and any school considering a product should get out and about and see a few schools using different products and just take any demo as an mere introduction. I'm not suggesting for one minute there aren't schools out there that might decide Progresso is their product of choice but of the tens of schools I have worked with over the years I couldn't think of one I'd recommend it to right now.

[pcstru]

Curiouser and curiouser!

As Alice in Wonderland would have said - how can a cloud-based system behave so differently in two places and it not be caused by the difference between the connectivity of the locations?

Any number of reasons from different instancing leading to different routes, through how they scale the product (are you on a server with all schools that begin with a B or some other arbitrary manual, automated or database managed partitioning) and how that can then affect the DB (are you perhaps on a system with a school with odd data that is skewing indexing or perhaps uniquely exposes 'missing' indexes). In short, unless you know a lot of detail about the systems architecture, you can't rule out the root cause of a performance issue at the providers end just because they called it 'cloud'.

[deshills]

I said the same to contacts at the Harris federation a couple of years ago and they have recently gone to Bromcom after realising Progresso didn't fit their needs and I'm afraid my message remains the same - I wouldn't endorse it right now and struggle to see it being a best fit solution for many schools anytime soon.

bigdannyb79 you're quite right, we did move to Bromcom, but only after extensive exploration of Progresso, to such an extent we worked with them for a number of days in their offices in Derby.

As i have said on these forums before quite openly, Bromcom has been a really good move for us, not without issues of course, but i feel they are someway ahead of Progresso in terms of what their system can do and their willingness to take it forward.

 

Cloud MIS is definitely the future, and we recognised this early on, so we invested a lot of time and effort on exploring Progresso to the full.

However, after I/we found so many niggly issues/gaps in their system, it was their reluctance to listen to feedback and ideas to move the product forward that was ultimately prohibitive.

 

Some people have commented on SSRS capability, and its true that when utilised properly, it would be a fantastic tool to use for reporting.

However, serious consideration needs to be given to this by any potential users as you would need to invest properly in current/new staff to fully appreciate all that it can do (which is not necessarily a bad thing, but again could be prohibitive to those on smaller budgets!)

 

I have always said i was a huge fan of Facility CMIS, so was excited to see what they could do with a cloud based system.

However, i really don't think they took advantage of the head start they had on other non cloud competitors for it to ever really be the solution they hoped it would be.

[carwardinet]

I have been using it since last September, after 5 years in a SIMS school.

I was excited to learn a new MIS, but that excitement has diminished quite considerably.

To be fair, our school suffered from a bad implementation (migration from CMIS) about 3-4 years ago and that was down to the previous data manager in a large part. The teaching staff here still call it 'Depresso' as a hangover from the term when it was basically unusable. I have also had a lot of help from the Advanced Support Team, as a new user, and their helpdesk has dramatically improved since September, where they were suffering from their move from Derby to Birmingham, losing many of their experienced support staff in the process.

My main issue is how slow the damn package is. SIMS, even hosted on a County site, was instantaneous. The lag between screens drives me insane. I often have Progresso open on two different browsers at the same time, doing two different jobs, so I am not just sitting there watching the 'blue wheel of despair' turning. And before anyone says it, it is not our internet connection, I experience the same issues when working from home on a high speed fibre optic connection, and our IT department has done a full analysis on this.

Advanced are working on this issue and are just about to move from fewer large servers to more and smaller servers. I wait with baited breath, and fingers crossed.

In particular the Report Server causes the most problems, and many functions in Progresso rely on this. Assessment report data regularly take 4 hours to cross to the Report Server, timetables take an age to produce (even a single timetable for 1 student takes around 5 minutes), and our Attendance Officer takes hours to produce letters to parents which would have taken minutes in SIMS. Cover is also a huge problem, as the pages don't load or refresh or just plain crash and our Cover Supervisor is fed up and threatening to look for another job since she can't do hers properly here.

Report creation in SIMS was basic, quick and intuitive. You need 4 days of training to run SRSS Report Builder to use with Progresso. Markbooks are just rubbish and we are about to buy in a different package to compensate for this (to be fair my last school did this too as we didn't particularly like SIMS Assessment Manager either). Don't even think about using Progresso to do ad-hoc room bookings, it is a nightmare. I have a huge list of problems I have been documenting since about December, so I could go on....

I think Progresso could be an amazing product, but it is unfinished. The menu structure alone demonstrates this, and it is not intuitive. Advanced is the third company to own Progresso since my school bought it, and the indications are that they are putting the investment in to improve it. But I'd give it a year or three before even looking at it.

 

Out of curiosity which third party packages are you looking at for assessment manager?

 

Agree SSRS does come across as daunting if you have never used it before. Coming from a SIMS background, I couldn't get my head around how difficult is is to pull basic reports when I started using it. However the more I learn, the more satisfying it is to use. Not to mention it's a great skill to have as a data manager and you can build almost anything if you have the skills.

[ReidyBoy]

As per the title - just trying to find out more about this little know product. (I am a current SIMS user 6yrs +)

 

Just a simple list of what you do / don't like about progresso would be really helpful :-)

 

Academies cannot host the data themselves, and the cloud hosting tarrifs are very expensive.

[NotSoFast]

Academies cannot host the data themselves, and the cloud hosting tarrifs are very expensive.

Progresso was MUCH cheaper than SIMS when we did our research, including the hosting. Unless SIMS has come down by several thousand per annum since then...