Welcome from Arbor!

[Arbor_Maddie]

Welcome to the MIS Systems forum! We’re your sponsors this term so we wanted to introduce ourselves.

We’re Arbor - the UK's fastest-growing MIS (Management Information System). Our platform is used by over 1,700 schools and 180 MATs, and helps Senior Leaders, Teachers and Support Staff to work more easily and collaboratively, with intuitive tools designed to make a difference.

If you’d like to find out more about Arbor MIS, we’d love to chat to you. You can book a free demo here or get in touch with us directly at [email protected].

Alternatively, for a quick introduction to the system, why not join one of our free webinars this term where you’ll be able to ask any questions of our friendly Partnership Managers. Find out what’s on and book today.

Look out for our team on EduGeek: Arbor_Matt, Arbor_Daniel and Arbor_Maddie!

Edited May 20, 2021 by elsiegee40

[supportman]

Great!

 

Welcome, We looked at Arbor and found it overall a great product.

 

It would be good to hear about recent features you have implemented and future roadmaps.

 

I think a lot of people are moving away from Sims and knowing what MIS providers plans and pace of innovation is incredibly important to the purchasing decision. This forum gives you a good platform for that.

[Arbor_Matt]

Hi Supportman!

 

Thanks for the welcome message

 

Some of our recent product releases include:

My Classroom - the all-in-one classroom management tool (Including pupil attainment information to be added later this term)

My Homepage - personalised dashboard for Teachers helping you to stay on top of things and act fast

Microsoft Office 365 and Google Classroom integration - sync your data automatically to your digital learning platform

Microsoft Power BI Connector - visualise your data any way you want to

 

For MAT users, we've developed the following into our group MIS platform :

 

Group MIS assessments - Allowing you to standardise how you manage assessments across your Multi-Academy Trust and push frameworks down to your schools

Group MIS communications - Give your MAT team the ability to communicate centrally across your whole school community

 

We have an extremely large development and support team so there are upgrades, UX/UI improvement and new feature developments happening all the time. If you or any colleagues want to set up a quick call to go into the roadmap in more detail then feel free to ask and we would gladly talk it through with you.

 

Speak soon,

 

Matt

Edited May 7, 2021 by Arbor_Matt

[Ditto]

Great to have you here as a sponsor. I met you at BETT and was impressed, as much by the cultural stance of the organisation as the product. I do have a questions about a controversial dispute that kicked off with a 70+ MAT and a competitor last year. I realise that you may not be able to say anything, but has there been any progress with this or is it ongoing?

[JamesWeatherill]

Hi @Ditto,

 

I'm James, the co-founder and CEO of Arbor, great to meet you! I'll be keeping an eye on this forum and posts from now on so if you or anyone else has any questions at all about Arbor or MIS just shout, I'm super happy to help!

 

Unfortunately on your particular question I can't say much - I respect the legal process and don't think it's right to comment on my personal feelings publicly. I believe you can catchup with what others think online, in the press and via the court documents if you're interested. I can however clarify a few facts about Arbor:

 

- We're an incredibly mission-driven company who want to transform the way schools work for the better. I hope this came accross in your interactions with us!

- We have never brought legal action against any school, Trust or Local Authority and I have no intention of doing so

- We lose some tenders, and when we do, we learn and work hard to improve our product and service to be the very best it can be

- A lot of people don't know that we have 198 secondary schools and 180 MATs who have deployed Arbor across all their schools. Our fastest growth area is secondary schools and mixed-phase MATs like the 70+ MAT you mention, who despite the difficulties you've read about, are happy customers (you can ask them).

- The MIS market is really opaque, with everyone claiming they do a great job. It's really hard to sift through this as a customer. The ultimate metric I watch most closely is our net promoter/satisfaction score. If it's high, presumably we've done a good job for you! I'm happy to say that the data shows our Net promoter/satisfaction is very high across primary AND secondary

 

Let me know if you have any other questions, unsurprisingly I can talk about Arbor endlessly!

Edited May 7, 2021 by JamesWeatherill

[LeMarchand]

 

All 3 of my sites now on Arbor. (I encouraged the second two to make the leap after it went down so well in the first one).

 

My favourite thing? I rarely have to do anything with it!

 

I did vote on a couple of items this week, though: Better filter options and more granularity in permissions, but both are more "make my life easier" rather than "OMG!!! Why isn't this working?"

[gh5000]

Moving one of our schools this term. From my point of view the API access is one thing I'm looking forward to taking advantage of.

[JamesWeatherill]

Will be interested to hear how you find it @gh5000 - we've built up a lot of integrations out the box, have a PowerBI connector to get you up-and-runinng, and have some SDKs if you're interested in building something yourself.

[RootsSchImp]

I'd like to echo @Ditto 's comments about Arbor's culture having worked with them to create power bi resources and promote the MIS's BI connectivity. It's not only a really friendly company, there's also a deep commitment to understanding and improving schools.

[vikpaw]

@JamesWeatherill and the rest of the Arbor team. Great to have you here.

[SMunson]

Hi there @Arbor_Maddie

 

We have been advised that our MAT will be taking us over to Arbor soon.

Having not been involved in such a major transition before I'm a bit nervous! All of the forums & blogs I have found & checked seem to be positive.

 

I have got one big/burning question that specifically relates to one of my biggest individual tasks...we currently use Go4Schools & EVA for more in depth analysis (we were using 4Matrix). I just wanted to check if Arbor can provide subject level P8 demographic analysis? I can't seem to find a definitive answer to this question anywhere.

 

I have signed up for the next couple of webinars & we have not had our transition training as yet, but I want to know if I need to flag up the need for retaining EVA before our license expires!

 

Many thanks

 

Sarah

Edited May 13, 2021 by elsiegee40

[Arbor_Daniel]

Hi @SMunson,

 

I can confirm that Arbor does indeed provide the Progress 8 analysis you have asked about. I have direct messaged you with more information on this and to also give advice on who best to talk to and how we can help!

 

Many thanks

Dan

[gh5000]

Will be interested to hear how you find it @gh5000 - we've built up a lot of integrations out the box, have a PowerBI connector to get you up-and-runinng, and have some SDKs if you're interested in building something yourself.

Thanks James. Yeah we (outsourced IT) have signed up as a developer. Been extending the usefulness of SIMS using Google tools (sheets, docs merges, data studio, webapps) for the last few years so just getting ready to recreate some things that Arbor doesn't have - first on my list is you can't set comment banks (snippets) globally in bulk on Arbor.

 

But I reckon that should be pretty simple to sort. Export all global snippets to a Google sheet. Change on the sheet and then update/create in Arbor API.

[SarahJC]

I have just moved my 4 school MAT to Arbor all at the same time - some people may call me mad but it has been the best thing we have done for a long time

Just need a few extras on the Group MIS and all will be perfect :-)

[Arbor_Daniel]

That's great to hear Sarah! And any feedback and ideas for further development in the Group MIS are most welcome! There's a lot of exciting developments planned in that area already! I'll DM you the link to where you can see what's coming and make suggestions!

[HughR]

Hi there,

 

My school will be moving over from SIMS to Arbor over the summer holidays. We have some fairly complex Assessment Management templates set up on SIMS and I was wondering how I would go about implementing these into Arbor.

 

For our KS3 Cohort, we're not using 9-1 outcomes, but instead a Ranked Progress indicator comprising a percentage test score upon which the rest of the cohort is ranked and categorised as a percentile (and colour-coded accordingly) as well as being assigned a progress indicator (BEP, EP, AEP... Below Expected Progress, Expected Progress and Above Expected Progress).

 

Most of this is managed within SIMS, though there are some calculations that are done in Excel, such as the Percentile score caps (which have to be calculated externally and entered into a Nested IF THEN ELSE which then calculates the five possible Percentile outcomes (as well as Colour-coding appropriately).

 

So it's a question of how much of we're currently doing in SIMS Assessment Manager can be replicated in Arbor.

 

There is an additional complication - being that I am currently 12 days into my 4 week notice period (moving onto pastures NHS) and I'm trying to get something set up before I go that my colleagues can roll with. The templates I have set up on SIMS are pretty complex from my perspective and I don't think this fact is fully appreciated by our SLT, so ideally I would like to know how much of what we're currently doing can be continued, some elements might even be easier... which would be great... but we just don't know.

 

I can provide examples of the types of formulae we are using and the logical steps that are taken to achieve the data outcomes our SLT expect to see.

 

Kind regards,

 

Hugh

[Arbor_Maddie]

Hi Hugh,

 

Many thanks for your question. The assessment experts in our Support Team will be happy to advise you on setting up your assessments in Arbor. You can get in touch at [email protected] or call 020 8050 2087.

 

All the best,

 

Maddie

[kxv2020]

The feature that needs significant work is mail-merge for assessment in table format - so it's better than other products. You should take note from medical software such as EMIS web - and the workflows for a doctor/patient and input from bloods, etc. It's so important we get workflows, like the NHS.

[Arbor_Maddie]

Hi Kiran, thank you for your feedback. It would be really useful to us if you added a comment to our public-facing Product Roadmap - https://portal.productboard.com/arbor-education/1-arbor-development-roadmap/c/89-assessment-improvements . This goes directly to our Product Managers who review all feedback before planning the improvements and new features they work on each term.

 

All the best

 

Maddie

[gh5000]

Hi @Arbor_Maddie,

 

On the roadmap give us your views page can a section be added for everything else. I was trying to add an idea for the lesson dashboard and couldn't find a relevant page. Maybe a catch all section that you guys could prune afterwards would work.

Edited July 14, 2021 by gh5000

[Arbor_Maddie]

Hi @gh5000, it's great to hear you have ideas for how we could develop Arbor. The best way to share new ideas that are not connected to projects we're working on is to come along to our Termly Feedback Forums where we collect suggestions from Arbor users. Look out for next term's dates and invite links by email. We'd love to hear from you!

 

All the best,

 

Maddie

[Moomin1974]

Hi James. I'm intrigued by your Power BI connector and SDKs, especially as I am building BI/data solutions for a number of schools. Where can I find more details on these tools?

[kxv2020]

Hi Maddie - we need search by Date of Birth - it's quite a big thing !!

[SimonWindisch]

Hi there,

We are moving from SIMS to Arbor, and I've been asked to help with the "Primary Onboarding - Pre Migration Data Checks"

Are there any pre-written RptDef files for SIMS, or do we all have to build our own. I can't find the start and end dates for FSM eligibility etc.

Thanks - Simon

[alpha_waves]

Hi Arbor,

 

We are looking at moving to yourselves from SIMS but I have a couple of questions regarding Arbors like for like replacements to SIMS functionality.

 

1: What is your timetabling solution and can it take Nova-T imports?

2: Is your reporting system able to take SIMS rptdef files?

3: Do you have a communication module like SIMS InTouch for messaging parents on behaviour, attendance etc?

4: Do you work with 3rd party providers such as parent pay, school cloud, wonde etc and are you sync tools easy to use?

 

Thanks