[sims] Parent App Lite

[MattG92]

Hi all,

 

Apologies if these questions have been asked before, I did have a search but didn't find the answers I need.

 

We are just setting up the parent app lite in our school and all the pupils and their parents appear on the web portal, but they do not have an email address listed despite it being on SIMS. When I view a parents contact details I have noticed that the email they have listed is not set as their main or primary, is this stopping them from being pulled through? If that is the case, what is the easiest way to change this on all the pupils in the school?

 

How often is the data refreshed on the app, we are hosted by the LA so have no control over SIMS Service Manager so wondered if there was a standard refresh time?

 

Thanks!

[Esteban_Child_of_the_Sun]

Yes, only Primary Email addresses filter through.

There is a patch and report you can run to output all the email addresses in SIMS to Excel for each person, you then set which ones you want as the Primary (easy if they only have one as you can just select the whole column and fill down). Then put the file on the server and run the patch. As you are hosted you can do the report part of it and your SIMS support will need to do the patch side.

By default email addresses get syncronised hourly, but again check with your SIMS support if they have changed that.

Edited January 30, 2019 by Esteban_Child_of_the_Sun

[David44]

It's worth mentioning that the field that shows the email address in the 'Reinvite Users' screen is called 'Sent To' and doesn't update until you have sent an invite again. So, if a parent has an email address of [email protected] and you send them an invite but the email address is later corrected to [email protected] in SIMS, the 'Sent To' column will still say [email protected] because that's where the invite was sent to. If you send the invite again, assuming the SIMS Sync has run (which you have no real way of knowing) then it will send an invite to the correct address and update the 'Sent To' field.

 

I am actually not sure what the 'Invite New Users' screen shows. You might find that it too doesn't update the email address until an invitation has been sent.

 

Also, the whole system is rubbish by design, doesn't work properly anyway and Capita seem unable to fix it. Good luck.

[bobsmith]

but the App is quite easy to use once you've got it.

[MkII]

Also, the whole system is rubbish by design, doesn't work properly anyway and Capita seem unable to fix it. Good luck.

 

How true

[David44]

but the App is quite easy to use once you've got it.

 

I wouldn't know, Capita don't offer the ability to see what parents see or for anyone who isn't a parent to see what the app looks like or how it works. I suppose even Capita couldn't mess up a simple app like SIMS Parent though. That's assuming parents can get past SIMS ID and never want to change the third party social media account they sign in with because Capita have decided that that process should involve the parent having to notify the school and the school having to send a new invitation code, and assuming Capita haven't been sending out invitation codes that are invalid for the past few days for some reason and assuming that the parent hasn't already registered for SIMS Agora and so SIMS Parent tells them they are already registered but doesn't let them log in with their existing SIMS ID linked social media account and the only advice Capita can offer after having a ticket open for several weeks is to unregister them from SIMS Agora, send them a new SIMS Parent invitation, which gets stuck on 'processing' for half an hour, then have the parent register with SIMS Parent then send them another SIMS Agora invitation so they can register with that again and finally they can see their child's attendance percentage which doesn't match with what they have been told by the school because the attendance figure in SIMS Parent is displayed termly rather than by academic year to date like it is everywhere else, that's if the parent doesn't have their font size set higher than the default on their device because then the app will not only look terrible but will display the wrong date for some reason and Capita only seem interested in closing and merging tickets rather than resolving the problems reported or escalating the tickets to someone who can. I could go on.