[isams] MIS Move

[Taylor1]

Interested to hear comments from any school who has migrated from PASS to iSAMS pros and cons to consider etc.

 

Thanks in advance.

[TechMonkey]

PM'd you

[PlantHead]

I would also be interested in this

We are largely WCBS at the moment and it is really a bad product.

[TechMonkey]

I guess for completeness I should post here and for future generations:

 

Migration was OK, as ever I think their support is imperfect, but I don't think I have found any large company that has hit the sweet spot everytime. On the whole teaching staff are much happier and find it works, we are happier as we have less support load. There are some odd decisions, like staff records can not be searched as comprehensively as student records from the UI, but these are few and far between. Never had major issues getting a hold of them and they have opened another support office to follow the sun. One issue I now have is if your ticket gets picked up by someone in an international support office, maybe I sent it later working at home, then the responses appear to then be stuck on International time, rather than go back in the queue for someone on my time zone to followup on. I can understand them having ownership but it can be frustrating.

 

We moved to iSAMS 2017, migrating in the February with a complete change over in the summer ready for Academic year 2017/18. We moved from WCBS PASS (old version, not 3SYS)

 

Transition was a bit fraught as there appeared to me to be decisions needed before we understood why, just being told that training will deal with the understanding of that. Nothing went wrong but at the time I felt a bit... concerned. This may have just been due to it being a little stressful and it weighing a little on me. I would have liked more help from them to transition, we had a guy to talk to but he seemed to mostly just want the data in the spreadsheets and for me to get on with it, he was completely backend so had no working knowledge of how iSAMS worked from a users point of view. Other systems had offered to migrate for us or give us scripts, I eventually got a bundle of unsupported SQL scripts from iSAMS by asking and then adjusting myself. But I can understand how they don't want to get bogged down in someone else's SQL world of pain.

 

We didn't start using iSAMS until it was all ready to go. So we did an initial migration ready for training and so we could play around and get used to the system. We then did a second migration around the middle of August and PASS was disabled to staff so nothing could accidentally be updated on the old system. Our Finance team could still access it as they were doing bills and the like.

 

I tried to make as much of it reproducible, so created SQL scripts that could be run as needed. I probably spent more time than I should have get those as good as I could, though I still seem to recall I had to fiddle a bit. Although we did 2 migrations I remembering having to export quite a few times as the migrator wanted something slightly changed.

 

My recollection is that I exported documents via an SQL script that output the document into a folder structure with the correct name that iSAMS could import it.

 

Hope I don't seem to down on iSAMS. I am thoroughly impressed with iSAMS and also with where they are going. Coming from PASS it will seem light years ahead and so agile and spritely it will be unbelievable.

 

Hope that helps and feel free to ask more questions.

[benIT]

I guess for completeness I should post here and for future generations:

 

Migration was OK, as ever I think their support is imperfect, but I don't think I have found any large company that has hit the sweet spot everytime. On the whole teaching staff are much happier and find it works, we are happier as we have less support load. There are some odd decisions, like staff records can not be searched as comprehensively as student records from the UI, but these are few and far between. Never had major issues getting a hold of them and they have opened another support office to follow the sun. One issue I now have is if your ticket gets picked up by someone in an international support office, maybe I sent it later working at home, then the responses appear to then be stuck on International time, rather than go back in the queue for someone on my time zone to followup on. I can understand them having ownership but it can be frustrating.

 

We moved to iSAMS 2017, migrating in the February with a complete change over in the summer ready for Academic year 2017/18. We moved from WCBS PASS (old version, not 3SYS)

 

Transition was a bit fraught as there appeared to me to be decisions needed before we understood why, just being told that training will deal with the understanding of that. Nothing went wrong but at the time I felt a bit... concerned. This may have just been due to it being a little stressful and it weighing a little on me. I would have liked more help from them to transition, we had a guy to talk to but he seemed to mostly just want the data in the spreadsheets and for me to get on with it, he was completely backend so had no working knowledge of how iSAMS worked from a users point of view. Other systems had offered to migrate for us or give us scripts, I eventually got a bundle of unsupported SQL scripts from iSAMS by asking and then adjusting myself. But I can understand how they don't want to get bogged down in someone else's SQL world of pain.

 

We didn't start using iSAMS until it was all ready to go. So we did an initial migration ready for training and so we could play around and get used to the system. We then did a second migration around the middle of August and PASS was disabled to staff so nothing could accidentally be updated on the old system. Our Finance team could still access it as they were doing bills and the like.

 

I tried to make as much of it reproducible, so created SQL scripts that could be run as needed. I probably spent more time than I should have get those as good as I could, though I still seem to recall I had to fiddle a bit. Although we did 2 migrations I remembering having to export quite a few times as the migrator wanted something slightly changed.

 

My recollection is that I exported documents via an SQL script that output the document into a folder structure with the correct name that iSAMS could import it.

 

Hope I don't seem to down on iSAMS. I am thoroughly impressed with iSAMS and also with where they are going. Coming from PASS it will seem light years ahead and so agile and spritely it will be unbelievable.

 

Hope that helps and feel free to ask more questions.

 

Great post. Thanks

 

Are you an independent school, if so did you move fees billing from WCBS?

 

Have you still got access to PASS in a frozen state just in case need anything not exported?

 

Thanks Ben

[Danp]

Interested to hear comments from any school who has migrated from PASS to iSAMS pros and cons to consider etc.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Signed the paperwork today to do exactly this. No idea if we have enough time!

[Danp]

Great post. Thanks

 

Are you an independent school, if so did you move fees billing from WCBS?

 

Have you still got access to PASS in a frozen state just in case need anything not exported?

 

Thanks Ben

 

We are staying with PASS for finance. PASS will still working for us, just no more 3SYS

[Taylor1]

Hi, whereabouts in the country are you would be good to hear how things go for you.

[TechMonkey]

Great post. Thanks

 

Are you an independent school, if so did you move fees billing from WCBS?

 

Have you still got access to PASS in a frozen state just in case need anything not exported?

 

Thanks Ben

 

Yes Independent, and yes all accounting went to Sage 200 with a plugin for iSAMS produced by Solutions for Accounting.

 

PASS database is still sitting somewhere just in case, mainly because of the financial data and the need to keep it for 7 years (or thereabouts).

[Taylor1]

@Danp can you remember what notice period was for ending contracts - I'm searching documentation but so far unable to find.

[Danp]

@Danp can you remember what notice period was for ending contracts - I'm searching documentation but so far unable to find.

 

WCBS? It may be different, but we had to give 30 days before renewal period. If you renew on 01/09 then get it all done in July

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Hi, whereabouts in the country are you would be good to hear how things go for you.

 

Sorry, only just seen this. We are in Worcestershire.

[Hercules]

I'm going to be responsible for leading the transition from PASS to iSAMS this academic year in a medium-size independent. Can I ask what your timescales were please from initial iSAMS visit to key staff to going live with it? My thinking is that PASS is a real dog product for us now and it's barely used other than out of necessity for attendance, reports and student database.

 

Using iSAMS is reasonably intuitive so I think most of the time will be spent sorting out the info to transfer over, training staff on the very basics and then rolling out additional features following training.

 

I would be hugely grateful for any thoughts or advice. Thank you to those who have already shared their experiences as it's been helpful.

 

Cheers!

[0x9h3]

Have you not migrated to HUB?

[Hercules]

No and we don't intend to!

[0x9h3]

WCBS are bringing out a new and improved HUB2 next year. It is supposed to be the all dancing new MIS. What issues are you having with 3Sys/pass ?

[Taylor1]

We plan to go live next September so we have a full year ahead of us to make the move. From initial iSAMS visit I think it was about 2 years before an actual decision was made to make the move. However, we signed up around June/July servers etc are all set up should be getting the install this month and have already started looking at data extracts to transfer across. I think our main issue will be getting all staff to buy into the fact they will have to play a part in the transition, checking data extracts for their areas and that it won't all be done for them by the Data Manager.

[Danp]

We signed mid May this year and I have it ready for start of term. It's been hard work but doable.

 

Any questions, feel free to PM me, I'm not on the forums much but I'll get the email notification of a PM.

[Hercules]

Improved wouldn't be hard. Over a long period of time we have experienced a huge issues WCBS PASS have not been able to solve for us. Pretty much every fix brings a new problem. Tired of being told that issues will be solved in the new version coming next year - it's always supposed to be the all dancing new MIS and always falls short.

 

As my initial post says I would be grateful for any advice concerning the transition period rather than questions as to why we are moving from PASS. They could offer it to us for free and I wouldn't want to keep it.

[TechMonkey]

We signed Feb for a September start, but had been talking to iSAMS for quite a few years before that. The Feb time period included training and doing two data migrations, both full data imports. Be very clear with the migrator what you want to do as I had said from the beginning that we wanted to do an initial migration for training and then a fresh migration to remove any errors that would introduced while people got used to the system. This allowed me to assure people to play and not worry about breaking the data. When it came to the second full import the migrator was a bit unhappy that I wanted a full import, even though I had said that previously, as they were busy. Stuck to my guns and it was done but there was a definite annoyance from then on.

 

I have spoken to some schools that have done it in less time but you need to bear in mind that once Summer starts it is harder to get people in for training and to get decisions on important things that management should decide.

 

If you go ahead I have some SQL scripts that I used to extract the data. I won't guarantee that they still work, as we were on the old PASS system, not 3SYS, and I have no idea if the Database schema has changed, but as a basis they may save you some time. Give a yell and I'll get them over to you.

 

EDIT: Link to my previous commentary on iSAMS migration

Edited August 28, 2019 by TechMonkey

[Hercules]

Thank you so much for your helpful advice TechMonkey; your time and effort is very much appreciated. I definitely want to do the same as you with two data migrations, especially as many of our staff lack confidence. I may well give you a yell when we get to extraction as we haven't entirely moved to 3Sys. I know there will be more than a few challenges ahead but I can't wait to get started so we finally have a modern MIS which allows effective communication!

[Hercules]

Many thanks that's very kind of you. I think I will be in touch as I want to push this through as realistically quickly as possible for the sanity of all of us!

 

Cheers!

[Hercules]

Many thanks, interesting to see that you're taking your time. We don't have a Data Manager so at least there's no expectation from that point of view! I suspect that decisions such as what to transfer in terms of previous years' data will be discussed for a while. I feel that my colleagues will be so pleased to see the back of PASS that they'll want to get the data right - although I could be wrong! I hope all goes well for you with your changeover.

[NinjaRob]

HUBmis is WCBS complete rework of PASS & 3SYS & SchoolPortal - I don't think it's live yet, still under development, but it does look sweet! Sneak Peaks available here: https://www.wcbs.co.uk/hubmis-sneak-peek-series/

[Data_source]

Hi, some really good stuff here! We’re moving too! Just wondered if anyone went through systems rationalisation. Having moved to isams, did you manage to get rid of any 3rd party systems. If so, which ones?

[midweek]

Hi, some really good stuff here! We’re moving too! Just wondered if anyone went through systems rationalisation. Having moved to isams, did you manage to get rid of any 3rd party systems. If so, which ones?

 

We ditched Groupcall for text messaging. We added the SMS module for iSAMS but it is really very limited compared to Groupcall (albeit much cheaper). Your SMS messages have to be incredibly generic as it doesn't allow any variables.

We used text messages to report absences to parents but this isn't really viable anymore (can't do "%childsname% is absent today" and only "your child is absent" as a generic alert. If the parents have several children this is confusing).

I suggested using push notifications to the app as this is automatic but it was felt there was too high a chance of false alerts when teachers flag the child wrong during registration.