Bromcom Web Merge Problems

[ssouth]

Hi All

 

Do many Bromcom Schools use the Web Merge Reports for their termly Assessment reports? We are having terrible problems getting them to run properly. When you run the report it basically just times out after a few minutes, if you select more than 6 students. Bromcom support has been useless and we have had a ticket open with them for a month. The reports aren't even that complicated, just pulling in 6 or so assessment fields - FFT, Forecast Grade, etc.

 

At first I thought it might be our Internet Speed or just lots of Schools using the Bromcom cloud during the day. But I've tested it later on an evening and whilst it is marginally better I still can't select many students before it falls over.

 

Any Bromcom users use this feature and experienced the same issue?

 

Thanks in advance for any comments

[noelmm]

We use the Web Merge option to do our assessment reports and had this problem to begin with. The problem with us was while the web merge document only required a certain amount of fields our data officer was putting every piece of data into the Bromcom report, this made the processing time incredibly long and always timed out.

 

Have you tried creating a basic Bromcom report and web merge just pulling the basic student info out such as name, tutor group etc? This may help show you if there is a problem with the report you're currently running or a Bromcom problem.

[panosthegreat]

We use it for our termly reports and haven't had any problems at all with web merges.

Maybe try exporting them to the DMS rather than download a local copy and leave it running a little longer? Just to see if it does eventually generate anything or not.

Also try running the report (from the page before you click web merge) to check the data for the merge is pulling through OK

[Bromcom_Support]

Hi @ssouth

 

I'm sorry that we haven't been able to resolve the case you raised with us regarding this issue, if you could send me a direct message with the case reference number I will get this looked into further as soon as we can.

 

Kind regards

Bromcom Support

[ssouth]

Hi @ssouth

 

I'm sorry that we haven't been able to resolve the case you raised with us regarding this issue, if you could send me a direct message with the case reference number I will get this looked into further as soon as we can.

 

Kind regards

Bromcom Support

 

PM Sent to you

[ssouth]

Here is the screen it just sits on. As a test I've stripped out everything from the Word document, logos, extra text etc. The Word doc is now only 19k

 

Edited November 26, 2020 by ssouth

[ssouth]

And here is the error message I get after it tries to load after about 5-10 minutes.

 

[ssouth]

We use it for our termly reports and haven't had any problems at all with web merges.

Maybe try exporting them to the DMS rather than download a local copy and leave it running a little longer? Just to see if it does eventually generate anything or not.

Also try running the report (from the page before you click web merge) to check the data for the merge is pulling through OK

 

If I just click Preview and not the Web Merge button it also just sits there forever - 20 minutes and counting at the moment.

[DODICT]

you need to filter the report to only bring in the assessments required - sounds like you loading every assessment record in your database . . .

[ssouth]

you need to filter the report to only bring in the assessments required - sounds like you loading every assessment record in your database . . .

 

Hi - Yes, we were told that by Bromcom and we applied the filters they suggested (Shown below)

 

[DODICT]

if you select say one pupil and run it and go to preview are you just getting the data your expecting to see in the report ?

 

are you running it for a single year group ? why do you have year 10 & 11 on do you use both those in the report - otherwise for year 11 your pulling in a load of data you arent going to use ?

Edited November 26, 2020 by DODICT

[ssouth]

if you select say one pupil and run it and go to preview are you just getting the data your expecting to see in the report ?

 

are you running it for a single year group ? why do you have year 10 & 11 on do you use both those in the report - otherwise for year 11 your pulling in a load of data you arent going to use ?

 

Hi - yes if we run it for one student, the data previews in a few seconds.

 

I understand what you mean about why we have 10 and 11 in the filter. Maybe its wrong but we are pulling out the forecast grade, which was entered when they were in Year 10.

[DODICT]

yeah I get you - I import things like targets to both years to avoid having to do this but still wouldn't it expect it to die if your just running it for single year group. that said your internal firewall can have a bearing on this - depending on the timeout. I have had this before and worked fine for me at home but in school the web request was getting killed in school after a set time, anything over this time was just failing. I'd filter to just year 11 to see if that is causing an unreasonable load - worst case it would only take you an hour to whip our the forecast grades and reimport them to 11 to avoid this issue while bromcom investigate.

[ssouth]

Well, 3 months down the line and we are no further forward. Bromcom support dragged their feet, came up with a few minor suggestions and then closed the case! Basically then the web merge reporting is useless to us and we can only run it with around 10 students at a time. I can only surmise that the Bromcom reporting engine is totally inefficient and not up to the job of running reports of this nature for a large secondary school.

 

Anyone's continuing feedback would be very welcome.

[park_bench]

Hi @ssouth. In my old school, I would create fairly complex Trackers for 1000+ students using Webmerge so it is definitely capable of running these types of reports. I now work as a Product Owner for Bromcom and look after the development of Adhoc Reports. I can assure you that there are a lot of great enhancements coming to reporting this year but you should be able to create your Webmerge reports right now without any issues - I'm sorry that you haven't had a satisfactory resolution so far. I'll DM you my details - let's get in touch and get this sorted!

[Bromcom_Support]

Hi @ssouth

 

We caught up with your colleague today and had a look at the report in question. We removed the data item called Preferred Full Name. When using this in the report it will check the Groups that a Student is in (Any Group e.g. Year Group / Reporting Group(s) / House / Teaching Class etc etc) > Find the Associated Staff for that Group > Checks their Preferred Full Name Per Result.

 

This means that, for example, if a Student had 1 Result, but was in 10 Groups, and each Group had 1 Staff, it would show 10 Rows. (i.e. Staff Name per Group, per Result). If a Student had 1 Result, but was in 20 Groups, each with 2 Staff, it would return 40 Lines.

 

When running the original Report, this was causing the Preview of the Report to show 192 Pages of Results, per Student. When run for all Students in the Year Group at once, this resulted in almost 51,000 Pages of Data being returned. This would get to Stage 2 of the WebMerge Process, but took >15 Minutes or in some case timed out.

 

As you were not using this data Item in the report output, this has been removed from the report design. When ran for 1 Student, only 12 Pages of data was returned. When re-ran, for the all the Students in the Year Group, the system got to Stage 2 of the WebMerge Process in less than 30 seconds. So a vast improvement.

 

While on the call we also advised on some filtering on other reports that are being used to limit the data being pulled and improve performance.

 

If you need anything else please let me know and we can arrange another call.

 

Regards,

 

Bromcom Support

[ssouth]

Hi @ssouth

 

We caught up with your colleague today and had a look at the report in question. We removed the data item called Preferred Full Name. When using this in the report it will check the Groups that a Student is in (Any Group e.g. Year Group / Reporting Group(s) / House / Teaching Class etc etc) > Find the Associated Staff for that Group > Checks their Preferred Full Name Per Result.

 

This means that, for example, if a Student had 1 Result, but was in 10 Groups, and each Group had 1 Staff, it would show 10 Rows. (i.e. Staff Name per Group, per Result). If a Student had 1 Result, but was in 20 Groups, each with 2 Staff, it would return 40 Lines.

 

When running the original Report, this was causing the Preview of the Report to show 192 Pages of Results, per Student. When run for all Students in the Year Group at once, this resulted in almost 51,000 Pages of Data being returned. This would get to Stage 2 of the WebMerge Process, but took >15 Minutes or in some case timed out.

 

As you were not using this data Item in the report output, this has been removed from the report design. When ran for 1 Student, only 12 Pages of data was returned. When re-ran, for the all the Students in the Year Group, the system got to Stage 2 of the WebMerge Process in less than 30 seconds. So a vast improvement.

 

While on the call we also advised on some filtering on other reports that are being used to limit the data being pulled and improve performance.

 

If you need anything else please let me know and we can arrange another call.

 

Regards,

 

Bromcom Support

 

Thanks very much for your help with this, bit of a strange issue that 1 field would cause such an issue, but the reports are working far, far better now.

 

Thanks again.