[sims] Goodbye Sims! Its been fun....

[timbo343]

I had a dedicated mailbox and account for this purpose. I didn't configure an onsite SMTP relay server though i was also using smtp-reply.gmail.com to send the mail.

[aicrd]

Try using Google's SMTP relay instead. It doesnt need anything onsite, you just need to setup credentials on the admin portal and then enter them as SMTP settings.

I think it has a limit of 10,000 emails a day so should be more than enough

https://support.google.com/a/answer/2956491?hl=en

Edited August 12, 2020 by aicrd

[mthomas08]

Very brave doing it now but glad its been smooth so far.

 

Our MIS is something I need to look at one day but the big jobs I wanted done this year has been put on hold. Finance/biometric/VLE servers to be replaced/migrated.

 

I'm glad this thread is here, it really helps those of us that are considering it.

 

One question: Whats the cost difference between SIMs hosted on site Vs Bromcom online? just a rough percentage is fine if you don't know the exact numbers.

[Bromcom_Support]

Hi Suportman

 

Glad you are loving Bromcom and thank you for the feedback you have provided.

 

If you raise support cases for the photos and MCAS android App and we will take a look for you.

 

I will feedback to the product managers about using the contacts email address to login to MCAS. With regards to seeing who has not used MCAS you can use the MCAS Accounts Report and filter by Enabled and Not in use. If this does not do what you need drop me a PM with the details and I can share this with the product team. We are currently updating the default roles in the MIS to give schools a better starting point and this will be included on all our future migrations going forward.

 

Once again thank you for the feedback :-)

[Bromcom_Support]

I'd be interested to know how and what you configured in Gsuite. I tried all sorts and everything i changed made no difference and the connection to Google kept dropping around 80 mail sends.

Hi timbo343

 

Hi hope the advice form Aicrd has helped you. We have also made it easy for schools to use our mail service, clicking on the Bromcom SMTP Service will let you send 3000 a month for free.

[paulkerton]

Yes. we've got it setup with the SMTP relay service like Aicrd has said. It works really well. Not had any issues.

[timbo343]

Try using Google's SMTP relay instead. It doesnt need anything onsite, you just need to setup credentials on the admin portal and then enter them as SMTP settings.

I think it has a limit of 10,000 emails a day so should be more than enough

https://support.google.com/a/answer/2956491?hl=en

 

I tried all the points in the article and the email still failed.

[kennysarmy]

Just sent our SIMS bak file to Bromcom this morning....that's it folks - no more SIMS, I've been here over 21 years - it's been a blast

[Reboot_IT]

We moved our primaries to Arbor in January from SIMS and it has been fantastic. The same is happening in our secondaries from September. Fingers crossed.

 

Covid allowed us to migrate slightly earlier so we've been partially live since Early July but it's the first time it'll be in full swing!

[supportman]

Some more notes on the not so good stuff with Bromcom:

 

- Bromcom activity timeout is ridiculously low. We've had to manually change it on 100 users to 120mins timeout individually as there is no global option that goes over 20mins. Literally every single teacher has complained about this as they like to leave it open during a complete lesson.

 

- Our implementation manager only ever gave us 1 call. This was disappointing especially as we had issues building the timetable and didn't get very far with support when it was urgent. We got there in the end by splitting up the csv imports but had to work that out ourselves!!

 

- MCAS user admin always defaults to student rather than parent search. Frustrating as mostly you are dealing with the parent rather than the student for access queries. No way to bookmark the page directly as its a dynamic button.

 

- MCAS No way to find how many engaged students there are (at least 1 parent logging in to MCAS for that student)

 

- Census just timing out each time we run it, no error messages just a spinning wheel! Not great on a brand new system. (Fix coming REF# CAS-136574-P6M2Z6)

 

- Permissions are incredibly confusing with 1,000s of tick boxes to complete. Defaults roles are poor and don't cover everything.

 

- The old version of Edge has issues such as missing buttons in the GUI. It looks like a permissions issue at first so we went round in circles for a bit until checking the browser the person was using. We are upgrading to the new Edge but it takes time so would have been nice if the small bugs with legacy edge were fixed.

 

- No single button to give someone full permissions, or full permissions minus staff personnel (pay, attendance and contracts).

 

- MCAS payments seem very flaky, I've had at least 10 complaints from parents about payments not working and just timing out. (Case REF# CAS-135612-Z1L1C3)

 

- Selecting a member of staff from the personnel list one after another always keeps the multiple tick box and gives an error when you click view. It should clear the last member of staff as multiple selections are not allowed.

 

- Speed of menus with large lists populating each time. This could be improved I'm sure with some more efficient lazy loading code.

I'll try to get together some positive stuff as well (of which there are many), just the negative stuff always gets noticed first

Edited September 16, 2020 by supportman

[DanSears]

@Supportman, sorry you have been experiencing issues with our system. Here at Bromcom we pride ourselves in supporting and resolving issues experienced by our customers as soon as we can, we want to ensure you get the best customer experience with all our products.

 

With this in-mind I have already reached out to try and set up a meeting to resolve your specific issues. I'm sure that we will be able to iron out the problems you are experiencing, with such a large user base using the system in anger I'm sure we will be able to find resolutions to your problems.

 

Dan Sears - Education Consultant and MAT Relationship Manager

[paulkerton]

Dan's the man! He'll get you sorted @supportman

[supportman]

Another couple of issues that have come back from teachers today with Bromcom:

 

- One teacher came into my office raging that he had been asked to complete a survey by Bromcom, when he needed to quickly do the register. No way to cancel apparently.

- The site timeout is still causing havoc in our organization school wide. Every day we are getting a complaint which means I have to log in and change their timeout to 120 manually.

- New edge chromium seems to have missing buttons on the Room Booking system for some reason.

- Room booking system is poor in comparison to roombookingsystems.co.uk that we previously used. Teachers would like to see a simple grid view of IT rooms available for the week on a single screen. Single click the empty timetable lesson to book. Current system is clunky and not a great UI although it does work.

- Having to pay extra for higher SMTP usage seems a bit of a barrier to us using the system more.

- The new documentation site is lovely to look at and a welcome improvement but severely lacking in content. For example searching for "Room booking" brings up zero results.

- The help videos available are excellent but again very lacking in content. For such a big system I would hope to see hundreds of tutorial videos on their YouTube channel.

- Student UPRN was never migrated from Sims

 

On the positive side I've had various feedback as well:

 

- Parents loving the MCAS app (we have 1,400 parents on it now 2 months from launch)

- Payment timeout seems to have been fixed

- New seating plan feature looks good and saves time

- System seems quicker that last week on longer loading pages such as attendance

- Reporting is awesome

- The Covid dashboard is very useful

- Census issues have been fixed and the overall process is much better than Sims

- Admissions process seems clear and easy to do

 

- Salamandersoft integration working really well using the Bromcom API

 

Bromcom have reached out to talk about our issues which is a plus as well and shows they are listening. I cant remember Capita every doing that

 

Just as a reminder, I still think Bromcom is far superior to Sims and anyone reading this and thinking about making the jump should not worry. These problems are all easily fixable I think.

Edited September 23, 2020 by supportman

[DanSears]

Hi Supportman,

 

We are sorry to hear that you have been having some issues with Bromcom. I would like to take the opportunity to thank you for you ongoing support and try and answer some of the areas that you mentioned.

 

With regards to the survey, teachers should have been able to see an ‘x’ in the top right hand corner that would have closed down the survey, we are sorry if this is not the case. We can investigate why this was not an option of the user within your school.

 

At the moment you do have to change the timeout for each individual user, we will consider adding this as a site wide update for future releases. If you would like us to set all users within your school to have their timeout as 120, please log it on the support portal and we will be able to action this for you.

 

With regards to your issue on Edge Chromium can you let us know on the support desk know some more detail we will be able to investigate it.

 

Thank you for your feedback regarding the room booking system. We would welcome the opportunity for our Product Owner to discuss your enhancements with you – we can then include them for consideration in future developments.

 

We are working very hard to ensure our new documentation site is full of information that is useful to our customers. You’ll see the banner at the top letting you know it’s a new site and we want customer feedback to update it. Please use the comments boxes at the bottom of the pages to report any areas in which we are lacking information and can ensure that the site is populated with relevant content. You can also use the comment boxes to let us know if there are any areas that you think additional help videos would be useful. The team here is constantly updating and releasing new content and any areas of specific focus would be welcomed.

 

We are sorry but UPRNs are not part of the current scope of the SIMS to Bromcom migration. Following on from your feedback we will be looking to see the possibility of including this in the future. This is the first time a customer has raised this with us and appreciate you letting us know. If the requirement is to ensure validated addresses, then this feature is included within the MIS.

 

Please feel free to email me to discuss any of the areas I have mentioned above. For me it is really important that Bromcom takes on board feedback from customers as this is pivotal for making our products better.

 

Dan Sears - Education Consultant and MAT Relationship Manager

[CyBeRkId2002]

Hi Suportman

 

Glad you are loving Bromcom and thank you for the feedback you have provided.

 

If you raise support cases for the photos and MCAS android App and we will take a look for you.

 

I will feedback to the product managers about using the contacts email address to login to MCAS. With regards to seeing who has not used MCAS you can use the MCAS Accounts Report and filter by Enabled and Not in use. If this does not do what you need drop me a PM with the details and I can share this with the product team. We are currently updating the default roles in the MIS to give schools a better starting point and this will be included on all our future migrations going forward.

 

Once again thank you for the feedback :-)

 

Id like to second the improvements on the sign-in process for MCAS.

 

This is one area I feel SchoolComms absolutely nailed it and copying their sign-in process would certainly not be a bad point to start.

 

Parent accounts are accessed by using parental email (from the MIS), with a text sent to the parent for verification. It is good as it is super secure (essentially giving their account MFA) and has rthe added benefit of helping the school keep contact details up to date... If they want access to the system it is important we have the latest email/phone number.

[aicrd]

The Pin code SchoolComms uses can be changed by the user and is only a temporary pin. You only get it text to you on initial user setup or if you forgot your existing pin, unless they've recently changed it?

[Ditto]

Re @DanSears post - can't really say fairer than that, and this level of engagement with customers has to be applauded. Keep up the good work and I can see further progress in to the market share.

[supportman]

Its exactly why I am writing this thread, Bromcom seem great at taking feedback.

 

I'm yet to see too many actual coding improvements, but I know they are reading this thread with interest

 

All I want is the best MIS out there, taking these points on board and hopefully fixing them will make Bromcom the number one choice I am sure. The market is ripe for disruption and I would not hesitate to recommend Bromcom already.

[supportman]

Couple more comments on issues that have come up after a few weeks usage:

 

- Parental consent is confusing parents. The option in the MCAS app says "No image on the website" but then parents must click "I consent" or "No I do not give consent". We've had a couple of parents complain that this is not clear.

 

- For some reason we only have one "English" on our marksheets rather than "English Lit" and "English Lan". Not sure if this is a Sims migration issue or timetable thing.

 

- Parent feedback on MCAS saying the payment function is too hidden (you have to scroll to the bottom of the index page to see it). They would prefer a nice big button to make payments somewhere prominent.

 

- Parents using MCAS can't delete announcements past or future they just show as unread all the time

 

- We still have issues with attendance pages taking minutes to load instead of seconds. Someone from Bromcom observed this happening and has gone back to the developers to look at it. Maybe a Sims data migration issue?

 

As always these are just a few comments from parents and staff that I thought were worth pointing out. A lot of this is a really easy fix I think.

 

I hope @Bromcom_Support and @Bromcom_support2 can take these and feed the developers and project managers. I just looked at the latest September newsletter and didn't see any real progress on the MIS side of things.

Edited October 1, 2020 by supportman

[DanSears]

Hi @supportman,

 

Thanks again for your valuable feedback. As previously, I thought it would be useful to look at each point you raise in turn.

 

1. You can configure what message comes up regarding the consent section. If it is left blank, that is why it will show “No image on the web site” If you need a hand to set this up, please contact the helpdesk.

 

2. If you have created an English class within your timetable where both Lit and Lang are taught you will only be able to see English as one subject. One way to solve this is to create a separate English Lit marksheet (can be copied from the existing sheet) and assign this to an unused subject within the MIS, then you can easily pull off grades for both subjects, the helpdesk should be able to support you in getting this working.

 

3. Thank you for the feedback on the payment function. I will feed this back to the development team.

 

4. The new version of the parent app that was released last week allows read announcements to be marked as read. It might be worth checking that the parent has the latest version.

 

5. I’m pleased that the issues you are experiencing with time for attendance pages to load has been reported and that the team are looking into it. I’m sure they will be back in contact soon.

 

Feel free to contact me directly at Bromcom if you need and further clarity on my answers.

 

Dan.

[supportman]

Dan you are definitely the man, thanks again for the quick response.

 

Its fixed a couple of issues right away

[mavhc]

We are sorry but UPRNs are not part of the current scope of the SIMS to Bromcom migration. Following on from your feedback we will be looking to see the possibility of including this in the future. This is the first time a customer has raised this with us and appreciate you letting us know. If the requirement is to ensure validated addresses, then this feature is included within the MIS.

 

Are those different to UPNs and ULNs and UCIs?

[Ditto]

Are those different to UPNs and ULNs and UCIs?

Yeah, just a little - so four 'unique identifiers' - how novel. I suggest the DfE invents a new unique identifier that keeps tracks the four other unique identifiers.

[supportman]

So some more positive stuff to report, as I get round to it..

 

3rd Party products we have recently cancelled as Bromcom has the in built functionality:

- Schoolcomms

- Roombookingsystem

- Tucassi Payments

- TASC insight parent portal

- 4 Matrix

- Medical tracker

 

And replaced software

- Groupcall exporter (We have moved to Wonde for some other products)

- Ruler.co.uk (We moved to Salamandersoft)

 

All of those add up to a substantial saving in total, so great work from the Bromcom team for making those available!

 

Its not just cost either, its the synchronisation issues we used to have between the systems and time spent fixing them...

[supportman]

We've noticed the cover admin takes a lot longer on Bromcom than Sims used to each morning. Here is the feedback from our cover supervisor.

 

Bromcom Cover Module Issues: available staff needs to reflect working pattern/part-time hours (does this not feed through from Personnel?) - available staff needs to be able to be ordered by best fit (rules determined by cover manager) - 'Other' staff need to be only those who provide cover (SIMS had a checkbox in Personnel about this) ie. not admin staff - when allocating cover, it would be useful if it automatically moved onto the next lesson needing covering - Cover allocated doesn't show up on absent user's timetable so they dont know a) that I've marked them as absent b) who is covering their lesson

 

Any ideas how to improve this @DanSears?