[sims] Report out of SIMS for MS SDS

[woody]

Hi

 

I currently have a report which outputs a csv showing classes and external ID for the teacher linked to each class for the purpose of MS SDS.

 

It goes as follows:

 

Data Area: Class

 

Data Fields: for supervisors of each class: External Id of the teacher, Class ID. (Supervisors has no filter and 'Display first record only' is ticked.)

 

Filter Classes where:

Academic year is 2016

and Class name is not null

 

Sort order: ID, Class name

 

Default Output: Text

 

 

Ok, the issue is, some classes have more than one teacher assigned, ie one teacher teaches 1 lesson, different teacher teaches second lesson. Therefore, I would want two lines in the csv, the 1st showing the Class ID and 1st teacher and 2nd showing the Class ID and 2nd teacher. If I untick 'Display first record only', not only do I get a separate line for the second teacher (what I want) but I also get two entries against every class for the same teacher (based on the 'Main' field containing an entry for both true and false for each teacher). I also get historical teachers who have taught that class during the current academic year.

 

It started out seeming such a simple thing to achieve but I can't get my head around it, so any suggestions or pointers would be welcome.

 

Many thanks

 

Mark

[Esteban_Child_of_the_Sun]

Would it work better if you turned it around and did a Staff based report with a class sub-report?

[Esteban_Child_of_the_Sun]

Would it work better if you turned it around and did a Staff based report with a class sub-report?

[mrnoisy]

Let me know if you work it out, I tried when it first came out and gave up, I just ended up with a lot of subjects in 365 and found it incredibly frustrating

[mrnoisy]

Let me know if you work it out, I tried when it first came out and gave up, I just ended up with a lot of subjects in 365 and found it incredibly frustrating

[matt40k]

Could save yourself alot of hassle and buy SalamanderSoft. Pretty sure it can do SDS (among alot of other things)

[Cache]

Haven't looked at it yet, however Ruler seem to have a free SDS client too Ruler SDS | Free School Data Sync Tool

[matt40k]

That's pretty cool, anyone know if data for the assignments is still stored in US data centres?

[woody]

Thanks for replies so far. I have tried turning the report around starting with a staff focus and then attaching classes but you get the same problem: it only shows the main classes by default, so if you share a class, only the teacher set as 'Main' in NT6 for that class appears in the report against the class.

 

Adding Lessons works and shows all lessons timetabled for a teacher whether main or not, but of course that puts an entry for the same class multiple times depending on how many lessons that class is taught through the week. So you end up with a duplicate problem.

 

I have seen the Ruler SDS and have also been introduced to EduBoard who offer a free sync tool. Don't know about Salamander but at the moment we are trying to save money. Hopefully these companies have already worked out the problem. However, I prefer to go vanilla on this and understand what is going on under the hood. What happens if these companies fold or they abandon their sync tools or start to charge for them? Also, is their sync tool doing anything else in the background? What is in it for them? What IDs are they using for class, student and teacher and could these cause duplication issues if more than 1 school are under the same tenancy as is my case? All questions to be considered.

 

I know Microsoft are looking at integration with SIMS here in the UK so I would rather hold out for that. In the meantime, I think I will attach 'Lessons' to my report and deal with the duplicates using Powershell. That should give me what I want.

[matt40k]

I know Microsoft are looking at integration with SIMS here in the UK so I would rather hold out for that

 

We're talking about Capita here, it'll be an £ add-on.