SIMS.Net API and Dataset access

[aicrd]

Hey everyone.

 

I'm in the middle of getting my company setup with Capita as a partner so we can work on some software for a few of my clients (Basically a web portal that has read-only access to SIMS).

 

I do have access to a SIMS account but am I right in saying it would be against the agreement with Capita to install this on my work PC? (I'm a managed service provider, not a school) The SIMS account is registered in another institutions name.

 

Also how do partners gain access to SIMS datasets? I'm assuming it isn't free, otherwise all of the schools would just become partners and get free SIMS.

[HPlum78]

Normally when a company allows access to data via a restful API they have a sample data set for you to develop against. Don't know if this is the case for Capita and how they charge for calls against the API I would imagine its part of a schools licence agreement what that translates to for the development programme I have no idea..

[aicrd]

As far as I can see from Google, Capita charge £25 per site for read-only API access (Very reasonable) not sure if this is true and I'll have to wait for Capita to get back to me on that.

 

I don't really have the budget to be spending thousands on a training dataset so really hoping Capita don't make us pay full price or otherwise I'd likely have to develop on one of the school's PC remotely (Since the school have a SIMS licence) and there's a whole bunch of GDPR implications involved with that.

Edited September 9, 2019 by aicrd

[Meldrew]

When I looked into it, the cost was in the region of £2,500 inc. a compulsory training day, then a yearly cost, from memory sub £1000 per school. That however was for a school, for a profit making organisation it may be higher. You can of course get a lot of data out of SIMS via reports and the command line exporter tool. That doesn't require an API licence, but you would need a sample dataset which takes you back to speaking to Capita.

[aicrd]

My EdTech startup is going to be a seperate non-profit company owned by my for-profit company. This is mainly to get around MS Licencing on Azure as well as we don't actually need to make any profits.

 

Hopefully Capita have cheaper pricing for nonprofits. Capita's site does actually say API access is free as long as you can validate you own the organisation you are signing up. I'm willing to bet SIMS.Net is not free.

 

As for the reports I don't believe that will work for what we want. We need a live data sync between SIMS and our API (Similar to Salamander).

 

Also what I believe you are referring to is the SIMS Accredited Partner which is what they have on the site but not sure as I'm no expert.

Edited September 10, 2019 by aicrd

[ryan_lake]

The SIMS Partnership certainly was expensive but when I last enquired about integation to SIMS I was surprised to learn that their whole partner model had changed in regards to pricing and API access. If fact I was quoted as little as £15 per school for basic SIMS Data via somehting they call DEX ? - this seemed to offer a way to access data for School via the cloud ... There where other options around support services and access to SIMS Software and test datasets but there was a cost for these.. seemed quite a bit cheaper then their older model fro memory ..

 

There was also free to use test Sandbox enviroment? where you could register to access and test the API at no cost..

 

I also assume that a schools SIMS license agreement prob only covers for the purpose intended and not valid against developing soltutions. I dont think any school would allow an external person to access live data let alone to test a solution against it !

 

I did find the following website a few months back.. it was verified as a Capita SIMS sites on another thread when a queryied it.. http://www.sims-partners.com

[aicrd]

I got off the phone with Capita and they provided some very useful info. It is £25 per site for the api (Read and Write) and for SIMS dataset access it is £1000 upfront.

 

Basically the API is free for development but SIMS is not, pretty much what I expected.

Still haven't decided if going with Capita is the best idea since we're already way over budget but it's looking promising.

The person I spoke to said that partnering with Capita used to cost £6000 per annum so this looks like a pretty good deal!

Edited September 14, 2019 by aicrd