[sims] Reports with MailMerge?

[OliverHeinz]

Hi everyone!

We are planning to switch to a new MIS and a possible candidate is SIMS. We were told that SIMS apparently creates the school reports in Word using Mail Merge. Is that true? Is there any other way to generate reports in SIMS, for example using SSRS? Our school reports are very complex and we are sceptical that Mail Merge will be able to cope with all of the various special requests.

Thank you for your contributions!

Oliver

[RootsSchImp]

Hi Oliver,

 

SIMS uses a Word add in that allows you to place assessment results in a Word Template along with a limited selection of fields from elsewhere in the MIS (Attendance %, Number of Lates, Behaviour Points etc.) There's not, as far as I'm aware, an SSRS plug in for SIMS so you might be out of luck there.

 

As for other alternatives, Bromcom also merges reports into Word but the Cross Domain Reporting feature allows you to access any field from the MIS. They are also developing an Advanced Report Builder (ARB), a project I'm consulting on, and that will deploy an additional, more powerful reporting engine to allow the creation of reports with the flexibility/complexity of SSRS. ARB will allow Data Items, charts and tables from multiple data sources, separately filtered and formatted, to exist in the same report as well as enabling the user to embed drilldowns and links to other parts of the MIS, making the reports dynamic resources rather than just static lists.

 

What data do your reports show, if you give me an idea of what they're like I can say whether they'd be possible in ARB. Otherwise, if you have time to wait and can get your school to send you to London in January, the BETT show is a good place to see what's out there.

 

Ed Cadwallader

Edited October 30, 2017 by RootsSchImp