[sims] Automatic Message Triggered by Behaviour Points Total

[CAM]

Is it possible to tell SIMS to automatically send our designated officer a message when a student reaches a set number of behaviour points?

 

I'm seeing stuff for InTouch but we don't have the money for another module and changing our messaging system for one feature is overkill.

[bobsmith]

Generally the answer is no, but a work around if you can figure it out is to set up a discover group and make your "designated officer" a supervisor of the group.

 

I use this for our Persistent Absentees and it lets me know when someone joins or leaves it.

[Esteban_Child_of_the_Sun]

Yes Discover Dynamic Groups are what you need to generate SIMS messages for students getting more than X behavior points. As bobsmith said, you just need to select the option when setting the group up, and make the user who wants the messages a supervisor.

[CAM]

Can I make multiple people receive said message from Discover? Might have to look at getting this set up.

[bobsmith]

Yep - multiple supervisors is straight forward - I tend to include myself when I first set them up so I can see them working.

[CAM]

Discover is up and running, hurray!

 

But I now have a problem with the behaviour point intervals. They only go up in equal steps, regardless of what I change them to in the administration page (eg, 1-10, 11-20, 21-30 and so on). Our behaviour system has steps at unequal intervals (5, 10, 15, 25, 40, etc).

 

How do I set custom intervals as the equal intervals in the administration screen are not suitable for our school?

[bobsmith]

You broke SIMS!!! Don't ask for anything special - it gets grumpy and stops working!!!

 

I think you've found the limitations of the system I'm afraid.

 

BUT!!! There is a solution - even if you are going to do most of the hard work yourself.

 

1. write a report to output the behaviour points for every student.

2. get command reporter to run it daily for you.

3. Chuck in some macros to do the heavy lifting, and you can even get it to send emails with the information in!

[Esteban_Child_of_the_Sun]

You need to build a custom graph using the groups provided, so you'd start with an interval of 5 and add the first 3 data points to your graph, then create a discover group to combine point 20 and 25 to make your 16-25 and add that to you graph, etc. We have created a lot of those sort of graphs over the years for our schools, though mostly for Attendance.

[CAM]

I found I can save the intervals as custom venn diagrams then alter the scale in the administration tool and it will retain the original scale in the saved graphs. Thanks.

@PhilNeal: Any chance for more control over Discover graph intervals? Allow regular expressions like >40 points, etc? It's a bit of a faff doing this workaround!

[PhilNeal]

@CAM, there isn't an active programme on Discover at the moment I'm afraid.

[bobsmith]

@CAM, there isn't an active programme on Discover at the moment I'm afraid.

 

Hopefully because the awesome power of discover will be an integral part of SIMS 8?