[sims] Data Warehouse and Office Links

[CAM]

Just a quick question to ask if this is possible.

 

Currently our staff enter data into collection marksheets and it is imported by hand into a very large Excel sheet for each year group containing past assessment grades and some other details like FSM, KS2 scores, etc. It's a handy backup in-case I cannot access SIMS for any reason but I generally am not a fan of it since I inherited this huge thing knowing it isn't the best way of storing data as things like classes used for filtering are out of date very quickly!

 

Heads of department are then taking bits of the sheet and putting it into their own department trackers.

 

I'm wondering, is it possible to replace the huge sheet with a SQL database that can easily add student classes, essential details, etc. Then some way of importing grades from Assessment Manager? They aren't raw XML files when exported but some odd Office-XML sheet.

 

Then is it possible for subject leaders to connect to the database and drop student data into their own tracker sheets alongside their own data?

 

 

 

EDIT - I can connect to the existing Excel sheet as a data source in a test spreadsheet, but if I put any data next to it then it doesn't remain in the same row as the student should the row order change (due to sort, update to data source, etc).

Edited January 17, 2017 by CAM

[matt40k]

Might be worth getting someone like David Pott in to see if folks could use SIMS better. I suspect you've either got a lot of strong characters who can do some amazing work and SIMS is letting them down and you'll need to "buy in" another product and just accept that SIMS will have just the summary (at best) or you've got alot of silo'ing going on with people trying to build an empire.