Hosted SIMS for a primary school

[Sheridan]

Has anyone here been involved with/works in a primary school that has opted to have Capita hosted SIMS? We have a few that are wanting to seperate from the lea for sims support and only have a handful of SIMS users in school (<6)

 

Hosted SIMS may be overkill but it removes a lot of the obstacles the lea put in their way.

[TwistedHelixis]

Can't help but was just about to ask the same. Getting away from lea would be great, and the fact the onsite sims needs MS Office and we are a gafe school has been on my hit list for a while.

[Sheridan]

Can't help but was just about to ask the same. Getting away from lea would be great, and the fact the onsite sims needs MS Office and we are a gafe school has been on my hit list for a while.

 

Yeah on of the primaries is heading down the GAFE route as well, so hosted SIMS makes even more sense. I guess the cost will be the biggest issue!

[abaxter2]

One of my schools uses the hosted version of Capita Sims from Aug 2016, at first a few / lot of problems but over the last few months is on the up. Back in Aug 2016 the support team for the hosted product was too small and Capita admitted that they did not expect so many school to go hosted, but since then I am happy with how it is working.

 

Pros: remote access out of box / Free SLG and Free teacher app and soon to be released parent app / All Sims updates are done automatically / once setup not a lot of work for the network managers (unless of course they do data input) / Can still use the 3rd party connector - using the 3rd party connector does need a local installed Sims client, but this is done when first setting up

 

Cons: Does need good broadband / at current to launch the Sims ID website / the remote app is recommended via Internet explorer / can be slow at times / to add files / docs you have to launch a separate remote app IE: you cannot save from the local device, you have to copy and paste.

 

Overall the hosted platform is on the up and once you get your data managers / staff use to using Sims remotely all works as it should. In my opinion good for primary / small school

[dry]

SIMS 2 (or whatever Capita's codename for it is) can't be far around the corner! I spoke to our ex account manager at BETT this year and although they couldn't give any official details, many cryptic eyebrow raises were happening.

 

We looked at hosted SIMS but I think our BM was put off by the cost. Now our network is in much better shape than it once was, I've found onsite SIMS to be ok, and it hasn't caused many major headaches.

 

You can configure onsite SOLUS3 to automatically deploy updates (if you're brave).

 

Some SIMS users use DirectAccess here to access it whilst offsite. Works well from what I've heard.

[matt40k]

I'd switch to ScholarPack, you can switch back to Capita next decade when SIMS8 is matured.

[FN-GM]

Yeah on of the primaries is heading down the GAFE route as well, so hosted SIMS makes even more sense. I guess the cost will be the biggest issue!

 

If you're using ChromeOS they will provide a teacher app and you can install Android apps on many Chromebooks nows. They are back porting as well so if your existing devices don't support it they should do some time soon.

[vikpaw]

Please note posts regarding SIMS 8 have been moved to their own thread here: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/mis-systems/182092-sims-8-press-release-30th-march-2017-a.html

 

Thanks, : )