[isams] Bulk Extract of Data from Double First (Engage) - Moving to ISAMS

[dedejoko]

Hi,

 

We have taken the decision to move from Double First to ISAMS. I was wondering if anyone can offer any advice.

 

We have the SQL scripts provided by ISAMS that can be run on the system to extract the bulk of the student and staff data and this works (moderately) well, but this doesn't account for anywhere near all the data in the system. File paths to linked documents, SEN, medical, behaviour and achievement, previous schools etc all awol.

 

Did anyone do this and have script that success to extract from double first (Engage) to Isams? that would really Help.

I heard Salamander software do data extraction / moving MIS, anyone has experienced with them ?

 

Any help would be very much appreciated.

[dhicks]

I heard Salamander software do data extraction / moving MIS, anyone has experienced with them?

 

SalamanderSoft are excellent, and really know their stuff. You do need to plan / book well in advance of work being done, and I imagine they are very busy right at the moment. iSAMS themselves should also be able to provide help in extracting data from other MIS systems, although again I imagine they have a backlog right at the moment.

 

We moved from School Manager to iSAMS. Data was moved accross generally okay, although with the current work we're doing on getting iSAMS to sync with GSuite we're finding a couple of areas where we need to spend some admin time cleaning up some of the data. We're finding staff Roles within iSAMS need sorting through (iSAMS has imported lists of existing staff roles as text, resulting in a number of mis-spelt / duplicated Roles), as do pupil parent contact details (same kind of thing). All the data is there okay, it's just that some of it is catagorised in a way that isn't quite right - probably as much an issue of how the data was put in the original database more than anything else, but worth paying attention to during the transfer.

[vikpaw]

DMS will likely be in encrypted / obscured folders.

Medical data is split into a variety of locations - conditions, vaccinations, allergies, medication, first aid (which could be in a variety of places depending on your usage - daybook, incidents, other lookups).

SEN is also split up into it's own section and behaviour/achievements will depend on whether you use the default incidents or customised daybook.

The more daybook was used the harder extraction will be as it is effectively a user created area of 'events' along with bespoke lookups so there is no standard template. There are a number of built-in reports to extract data though.

Previous schools should all be in one table, but the address might be separate.

 

Generally speaking the database is well organised and follows first normal form, but you still need to know where to look and how things relate in some of the user customisable areas.

 

If you have the import templates from iSAMS you can try to build reports within the system and extract to Excel then edit as required. The best option is to either use a table in the report definition, or a single data cell with comma separated fields which you can then open in Excel as a CSV. Otherwise the standard presentation layer may affect the export with spacer columns. With built-in reports you can improve results by just choosing to export data only when you save to Excel.

 

Depending on urgency, it might be an option to request bespoke reports from Engage.

Edited April 7, 2020 by vikpaw

[vikpaw]

By the way Salamander don't offer a migration service, or didn't in January. It was something I wanted to talk to them about at BETT but didn't get time to go back and visit Richard.

We move a lot of schools to Engage so it's a service that would be handy.

Edited April 7, 2020 by vikpaw