[sims] Emailing exams results from SIMS

[cgilmour]

Hi,

I just wondered of views on any automated systems people use to email exam "results" to students ( as opposed to parental comms) from SIMS ? We're using PSconnect for parental comms which has been around before my time at the school, but it's a bit clunky and doesn't appear to handle student contacts for a personalised email.

 

Given the COVID situation this year we're trying to avoid crowds at the school.

 

Regards

Chris

Edited June 11, 2020 by cgilmour

[jthompson]

Our exams officer asked about this yesterday. We use EduLink so can deliver results through that, but I reckon it would be worth having another option alongside it in case EduLink has a bad time of it on results days. We might have to work out some kind of mail merge or Google Docs-based approach, I think.

[FishCustard]

Yeah, I'd write a script to "mail merge" the PDFs to the students. Shouldn't be hard - let me know if you want help, I can put something together.

[cgilmour]

Thanks for the replies. So would you look to do this in powershell using some office 365 libraries for the emailing or use the inbuilt mail merge capabilities of office?

 

Cheers

Chris

[TechSail]

I'm actually shocked that SIMS doesn't do this. Sending MIS reports out directly to multiple students or parents is the bread and butter of other MIS systems.

[FishCustard]

Thanks for the replies. So would you look to do this in powershell using some office 365 libraries for the emailing or use the inbuilt mail merge capabilities of office?

 

Cheers

Chris

 

I would just write a script, because as far as I'm aware there's no way to merge individual attachments to a Word-driven mail merge.

[ajp233]

Capita were providing schools with free access to the SIMS Student/Parent App until 31 August 2020, if they were already using SIMS Parent Lite. It is possible to create a SIMS Assessment Individual Report using the exam aspects and then publish that report to the Student app (and Parent app). Students would then login to the app on whatever device they have and access the report showing their exam results.

[Al-84]

I have now been asked to look at this in school. Any ideas if we are expecting any guidance from Exam Boards. Standard practice is for schools to download results the day before the results day, but could this be flexible this year? It could be a stressful 24 hours, saving individual results documents and then encrypting.

[ajp233]

If you are a SIMS user you can get a SIMS Parent/Student App licence free of charge until 31 August, setup a SIMS Assessment Indivdual report for the exam results in advance, and then on the day you receive the results file, once they have been imported into Exams Organiser, generate the assessment reports and set them to publish in the student app for the following day

[bobsmith]

but not all exams results are available via EDI - so it would be awesome if we can take the student results report straight out of exams organiser and send it home.

 

Making the report for exams aspects is a pain in the bum.

 

Also signing parents up to the SIMS App has been an uphill struggle since we started - it's such an unhelpful interface and the fact it still doesn't even let us know what SSO provider they've selected for single sign on means we are constantly having to disable and reinvite them!

[FN-GM]

Can you get the data out in Excel? If so you could create an email mail merge and send results that way?

[mdrabble]

I’ve not looked at this myself but our exams person has said Sims Intouch has option to email or exam result - but she did say it requires some setting up - but didn’t elaborate on what needed doing.

[MkII]

I’ve not looked at this myself but our exams person has said Sims Intouch has option to email or exam result - but she did say it requires some setting up - but didn’t elaborate on what needed doing.

Our exams officer has just worked this out themselves and is all set to email out using InTouch

[CAM]

I have now been asked to look at this in school. Any ideas if we are expecting any guidance from Exam Boards. Standard practice is for schools to download results the day before the results day, but could this be flexible this year? It could be a stressful 24 hours, saving individual results documents and then encrypting.

 

As far as I can tell there is no change to JCQ guidance. Your results are not to leave the school site before 8am on results day (note this was changed from 6am but has nothing to do with the virus). This means if you use an app or other electronic interface you must set an embargo in Exams Organiser to prevent the results from propagating to those systems. This restriction also applies to postal deliveries, they must not be sent before 8am results day.

 

Failure to abide by this risks a malpractice investigation and the school forfeiting future early deliveries of results.

[bobsmith]

One issue someone raised after I discussed the various solutions was that we traditionally give the students their results - not their parents. The subtle distinction here is that if we email to the parents address then the parents then have the results BUT NOT the student. This would be wrong on many levels - particularly for the 18year olds of year 13.

 

Getting the kids set up on the student app while they are remote studying would be a herculean task - but we have to come up with a way of getting the results to them directly surely?

[jthompson]

Our school is planning to do a traditional onsite results day with students collecting results on paper in person (socially distanced, obv) unless they opt to have them posted home. So I'm standing down on any special email preparations.

[BKGarry]

We use Edulink One and the results will be available there. But we also have the SIMS InTouch Module which can email out the exam results, so we are doing that too (thanks to salamanders add on of SIMS Write back all the students email addresses are in SIMS)

[SFergusson]

Do you know how soon the documents become available after publishing (if you publish them on the day)?

[coolhands]

we use intouch. All students have their own email address here which is in sims so it gets sent to that. That way it is secure cos no one else can open it (eg aunties uncles or whoever). I sent them mid-morning last year. When sending large number of intouch messages it takes a while I did each year group separately to stop it screwing up. Get that sorted in the set up. then it takes maybe 10 mins or something before they show as sent. they are pending for a while.

Once you've done all the set up nonsense on the day you go Reports>Exams>Send Exam results and choose the groups you have previously set up (eg "2020 Y11")

[jthompson]

Although we have EduLink and are planning to have students pick up results in person, I'm still going to work out a method of doing it using Google Drive just incase we have to distribute them online and EduLink has a bad day.

 

I'm thinking:

• get exam results as individual PDFs suitably named with candidate numbers (easier said than done from SIMS)
  
• Dump them all onto Google Drive
  
• Use GAM to extract the Drive file ID for each file
  
• Construct a suitable CSV of file IDs and student email addresses (based on candidate number)
  
• Use GAM with the CSV to share each document accordingly.
  

 

Quite a bit of work for something we hope to not have to use.

[nickjelly]

Although we have EduLink and are planning to have students pick up results in person, I'm still going to work out a method of doing it using Google Drive just incase we have to distribute them online and EduLink has a bad day.

 

I'm thinking:

• get exam results as individual PDFs suitably named with candidate numbers (easier said than done from SIMS)
  
• Dump them all onto Google Drive
  
• Use GAM to extract the Drive file ID for each file
  
• Construct a suitable CSV of file IDs and student email addresses (based on candidate number)
  
• Use GAM with the CSV to share each document accordingly.
  

 

Quite a bit of work for something we hope to not have to use.

 

We are considering using OneDrive to deliver results. The above method of using GAM to identify the ID of each file is what we want to be able to do in One Drive, rather than right clicking each file and copy and pasting the file link several hundred times. Is there a way of discovering file IDs in One Drive in bulk?

[mullet_man]

I would just write a script, because as far as I'm aware there's no way to merge individual attachments to a Word-driven mail merge.

I've heard rumblings we are planning on emailing results out this year so will no doubt need to advise and ultimately help do this, we don't have InTouch so can't use that.

 

How easy is scripting this? The email would need to have some personalisation on it to each person I would guess?

 

We would need a folder with all files in?

Pupil1.pdf

Pupil2.pdf

Etc

 

Can we easily attach more than 1 file if needed?

 

Can we CC in the other parent?

 

Do the PDFs need to be secure?

 

Going to be quite a challenge this I think?!

[willtech]

How easy is scripting this? The email would need to have some personalisation on it to each person I would guess?

 

Might need something like:

 

one to one:

Merge Many To One

 

MAPI lab Mail Merge Toolkit:

https://www.mapilab.com/blog/mail-merge-attachments-outlook/

 

But I personally would not really go down this route.

Edited July 1, 2020 by willtech

[Seb1780]

Can we CC in the other parent?

 

This should be going to the students, not the parents.

 

And yes, you do need to consider the security implications. We are e-mailing to the students' school e-mail address as one mitigation.

[jmak]

Is it worth sending an email to all pupils (school email address) and all parents now telling them that results will only be issued to school accounts and that they need to make sure now that they have access to the account?

 

That'll give you six weeks to reset 80% of the passwords, this only leaving 20% to do on the day [emoji57]

 

Edit: If you're using Teams or GSuite, would it be easier to upload a document to reach of their accounts and send a notification with a link? That way the email doesn't have to be customised and it's more secure than emailing attachments.

Edited July 2, 2020 by jmak