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

[DanSears]

Hi @supportman, if you raise your feedback on our support website in the development section, our product owners can take it into the enhancement review process.

[supportman]

Thanks, seems that the speed problem with attendance has been fixed by the developers now.

 

Its been a while since I updated this thread so wanted to post about progress.

 

I'm really impressed with recent additions to Bromcom such as the Office 365 Integration (both single sign on as well as user provisioning).

 

Another good feature I did a webinar on is the new quick report feature. Not only has it matched Sims for making quick reports but, I think it has surpassed it adding the formulae and conditional formatting features so we don't need complicated excel spreadsheets.

 

On the not so good side we had to go with another 3rd party timetable product as the Bromcom one didn't really fit our needs and was not cloud based (yet).

 

We've also had some good discussions with Bromcom about improving the room booking side of things. Its great to see they are listening as this is the biggest part of Bromcom our staff have asked to improve.

 

Overall in the school Bromcom is fully settled in now and Sims is a distant memory. Teachers taking registers on mobile devices, live reporting in meetings, all parents and now students using the MCAS app and portal.

 

Its been great and a huge improvement to the school!

[supportman]

Ahh the joys of the last day or term without having to rush in a Sims summer upgrade!!

 

We also are going to hopefully sign up for the beta A2C exam transfer service just introduced by Bromcom. This should mean no more drama using the A2C exam results transfer app and all its proxy fun.

 

Class rollover looks easy enough to complete as well next term. The future is cloud!

 

Some Huge improvements that make my life easier and that of our users.

[kennysarmy]

For those who have moved away from SIMS.

 

How long did you keep your SIMS Server running for? Our is still running even though we moved to Bromcom last Summer (2020)

[LeMarchand]

3 or 4 months. Used Solus to thin down clients before shutting down the SIMS VM (or services, depending on the school setup). Let everything in place "just in case", but have a note to check with the heads after 3 years before complete removal as I'm guessing that it can't be kept indefinitely for GDPR reasons.

 

SIMS can be accessed on request, but I think I've done it once so that evidence could be found of someone who was on Priti Patel's hit-list being schooled in this country.

[kennysarmy]

3 or 4 months. Used Solus to thin down clients before shutting down the SIMS VM (or services, depending on the school setup). Let everything in place "just in case", but have a note to check with the heads after 3 years before complete removal as I'm guessing that it can't be kept indefinitely for GDPR reasons.

 

SIMS can be accessed on request, but I think I've done it once so that evidence could be found of someone who was on Priti Patel's hit-list being schooled in this country.

 

Mine is still being accessed a couple of times a week by the Data Manager!

[LeMarchand]

Mine is still being accessed a couple of times a week by the Data Manager!

 

Mine are all KS1/2 so don't have fancy people like Data Managers.

[supportman]

A very smooth start to the year with Bromcom, certainly better than any year we had Sims.

 

No performance issues on the 1st day, capacity seemed good and the system was responsive.

 

Great communication from Bromcom about all the things that needed to be done for the new school year. Our admin staff had it all done very quickly without any intervention needed.

 

We imported the timetable in the from Keith Johnsons timetabler and then exported to Bromcom.

 

Our MCAS logins worked well for new parents and the student logins are going out next week for the student portal. No issues whatsoever with payments into our cashless system or seeing their timetables.

 

Timetables are synced with Outlook(via salamandersoft) and the MCAS system so students and teachers had their timetables ready to go on first day of term.

 

Class seating plans seemed to have worked well when I sent the teachers the guide from Bromcom. Some teachers did mention that saved seating plans didn't carry forward but wasn't a big issue, just could have saved some time for repeat classes.

 

As always, Some parts that I think could be improved:

 

- Sending out MCAS logins can be done from the MCAS menu OR the comms menu. It would be good to make the comms menu template a bit more clear as I had completely forgotten about that feature.

- Rollover of saved class seating plans as above

- Cloud based Timetabling software would be very useful so we didn't have to buy a 3rd party.

- Would be nice to have a report on the MCAS logins filtered by say Year 7 or year 12

[nicholab]

I see you been quoted on LinkedIn!

 

Timetabling seem to why Woodgreen Academy Sandwell went back to SIMS in 2015. It seemed the training on Broncom was never there. Do you have any plans how you will train staff in years to come?

Edited September 9, 2021 by nicholab

[supportman]

I see you been quoted on LinkedIn!

 

Timetabling seem to why Woodgreen Academy Sandwell went back to SIMS in 2015. It seemed the training on Broncom was never there. Do you have any plans how you will train staff in years to come?

 

Regarding training, Bromcoms initial training webinars and document centre are excellent. We generally copy the video of the initial training webinar to our video server and then send staff to the docs center for specific questions.

 

Bromcom – Documentation Centre

 

The rest of the system is pretty intuitive and hasn't required any training for teaching staff.

 

One thing I would love to see is more full public YouTube training videos. I think its the best way of learning these days.

Edited September 9, 2021 by supportman