SIMS Parent / Student Apps

[mhw1970]

Just keen to hear of anyone's experience in using these - how easy to manage and what kind of response from parents/students

 

Thanks very much

 

Great community by the way!!!

[FN-GM]

They seem to have given up on Android. They are only developing the iOS version.

[MkII]

They seem to have given up on Android. They are only developing the iOS version.

Seriously?! [emoji852]️

[FN-GM]

Yep. It's what prompted me to open this

 

https://www.edugeek.net/showthread.php?t=194607

[MkII]

We're just signing up for it so that's pretty annoying

[FN-GM]

They will keep what they have but nothing new is coming.

[MkII]

Hopefully fully focusing on version 8? The SIMS rep just told us that's 3 or 4 years off. Very mixed messages.

[FN-GM]

Hopefully fully focusing on version 8? The SIMS rep just told us that's 3 or 4 years off. Very mixed messages.

 

The app team are focusing on the iOS app. Apparently more people use it.

[MkII]

The app team are focusing on the iOS app. Apparently more people use it.

Ugh

 

Not in my school. It's about a 70/30 split Android/IOS

[DSapseid]

We have just launched it to parents last week after a couple of weeks of testing with 2 staff members who are parents. The overall response from everyone involved is its great. I showed all the staff yesterday morning they all thought it was a good idea as well. We reckon it will save us £3,500 a year on postage as we will send out progress checks/reports via this platform rather than post and also send links to letters on the website.

 

I have a working party of a dozen students trialing the student app and again they love it. I am going to launch fully next year as currently all the students do not have school email addresses. I hope Capita will be adding more to the student app soon as well, namely attendance and maybe conduct.

[bobsmith]

They seem to have given up on Android. They are only developing the iOS version.

 

Can you clarify? - I know the Teacher App has dumped Android support - but the parent and student app were still supported as of friday last week.

 

Sure you're talking about the right app?

[DrCheese]

but the parent and student app were still supported as of friday last week.

 

Supported yes, actively developed no.

 

Tho in general I find all of the "Letters home" apps rarely get updated on any platform. Schoolcoms & groupcall messengers are still built for iPhone 5 screens (So it looks naff on anything 6 and up)

[Greg]

They seem to have given up on Android. They are only developing the iOS version.

Do you mean Teacher App, Android support was dropped for that.

Parent App is currently available on Android, iOS & Windows, we're testing it on all three platforms.

[bobsmith]

Supported will do for me, unless Capita are planning on buying overpriced Apple gear for all my parents...

[pete]

Given the increased cost of an iDevice, wouldn't this reduce opportunities for parental engagement for poorer families?

[PhilNeal]

I would be astonished if Capita had dropped Android support for parents & pupil apps. Support was dropped for Android on the teacher app as only small numbers of schools were using android tablets. The phone market is dominated by android so the case is different.

[mjk]

Support was dropped for Android on the teacher app as only small numbers of schools were using android tablets.

but Chromebooks run android apps. they are massive in education. How do senior people at Capita get to keep their jobs ?

[Lonix]

Supported yes, actively developed no.

 

This is one of the biggest issues I have with Apps. For no logical reason has Capita decided to stop development on Android. Android still holds a good portion of the mobile device business. All the market stats I've seen would indicate it's iOS vs Android. I have been considering a plan to present the Parent/Student App to leadership at some point but if they have given up on Android, I don't see a point. If you give a good working App to a Parent with iOS but tell the Android Parent sorry it's not being updated no more.. you've got a large portion of angry Parents. Most of our kids that walk in the door have an Apple or Android device.

 

We looked at the Teacher App (slightly different) for our PE staff... didn't work so well on a Windows 10 laptop. The staff don't fancy carrying around laptops and Android tablets. Assuming that will follow the same path of cancelling Android development. And I've already seen old dated Apps suddenly stop working on new OSs.

[Lonix]

but Chromebooks run android apps. they are massive in education. How do senior people at Capita get to keep their jobs ?

 

Agreed.

 

We have Android tablets and I know many schools that rely on them plus the Chromebooks. My only guess is, Capita have cut down the development team/budget and decided to pick a single iOS to develop.

[mjk]

Agreed.

 

We have Android tablets and I know many schools that rely on them plus the Chromebooks. My only guess is, Capita have cut down the development team/budget and decided to pick a single iOS to develop.

 

I think they've just put all their dev into the next iteration of SIMS.

[MkII]

My only guess is, Capita have cut down the development team/budget and decided to pick a single iOS to develop.

 

Why wouldn't they just develop a responsive web page instead?

[mhw1970]

Thanks all for contributions - seems that overall positive although platform information bit blurry (best emoji I could find on the glasses front!)

[PhilNeal]

@MkII At the time you couldn’t do notifications through a responsive web page.

[MkII]

A response from our SIMS contact just now:

 

Given the importance of this issue to you, I have got for you a formal statement from Product Management at my end. It reads :

 

SIMS Parent App continues to be supported on Android devices (as well as Apple) for the app and website. One of the reasons that there is a website for SIMS Parent App is that provision of a site that will re-size itself for any screen size is the only way to be truly device agnostic. The App version is, as it has been since release in 2017, supported on Apple and Android. If there are any changes to this we would have updated the documentation on myaccount for customers and done the same on the product intranet

 

Does "support" mean that bugs will be fixed? I presume it doesn't mean fixing the app for future OS updates.

Edited March 28, 2018 by MkII

[mjk]

@MkII At the time you couldn’t do notifications through a responsive web page.

 

Pretty sure Google have been using AJAX notifications in gmail since about 2005.