Arbor Report Card vs SIMS Individual Reports

[ee31ag]

Hi all, we are currently investigating moving MIS and Arbor seems good on many counts. But I have some concerns about the functionality of the "Report Cards" and marksheets generally.

 

Currently we use Individual Reports on SIMS to create termly reports to send to parents. Some of this data may come from calculated columns in marksheets (which I gather are not available in Arbor but I think I can live without that).

 

My concern is that the format that data is presented on Arbor's report cards is rather restricted and not as customisable as on SIMS Individual Reports where I can modify the Word-based template to my own requirements. Does anyone here have experience of Arbor report cards and can give me their opinion on this?

 

One option would be to export report data from Arbor and then create individual student PDFs using Excel or Python (or something). But I then can't see how I could distribute these via Arbor.

 

I'd be grateful for any advice! I haven't looked at Bromcom as much but it seems that their reports might be more closely modelled on

SIMS' marksheets + Individual Reports and hence more flexible than Arbor at the present time.

 

Thanks,

 

Andy

[Ditto]

I'm afraid I don't have any specific advice, but I think it's an important area to look at when comparing MIS. When I used Progresso (Cloud School), because of the ability to use SSRS I could build to almost any request - wasn't always easy, but could be done. I believe iSAMS is similar. I know Arbor has a report builder. There is is usually a trade off of on usability versus functionality and complexity. SSRS is powerful, but it's not an end user tool. The best applications offer both, so I'm interested to hear others experiences. You might need to reach out to other forums as when I did this work, I was primarily a Data Manager and whilst there are a few here, there are more elsewhere. I also know from experience, who helps with reporting varies a lot in schools. In an all-through school, the senior head had me do it, with data checking by him. We emailed parents PDF's. It worked well and visually was good. However, the primary lead couldn't get to grips with systems way of handling the primary assessment data. Result was endless spreadsheets and Google docs, piles of paper and envelopes on the floor and a lot of stamps. It chewed up huge amounts of teachers time, Office and SLT time. Another school, a big secondary, just the very dull standard SIMS report - they'd never been exposed to anything better!

[paulkerton]

You hit the nail on its head. Yes, flexibility and configurability of assessment and behaviour models is for me what puts two companies apart. We use Bromcom and it has been excellent for us for these reasons. There is a blog which talks about the Harris Federation experience of the same two MIS products and extract below where problem also exist for primary schools: https://link.medium.com/HIYsoEoGDgb

 

“I have in the recent 12 months had hands-on experience of working and supporting Arbor for our primary school. Having had a good experience with Bromcom previous 5 years I can clearly see that Arbor’s assessment framework cannot provide us with the level of flexibility and sophistication that exists within Bromcom.

Bromcom allows us to create completely customised assessments, with total control of Assessment types, grade set and collections we are able to collect as much information as we want as often as we want. Similarly, the flexibility of the behaviour module in Bromcom is completely customisable to individual needs.

The critical advantage though is that Bromcom’s assessments allow us to create built in calculations, using multiple criteria, that update results as data is entered. Reducing the need to process data outside of the system before or after entry.

I also think Arbor would really struggle to cope with our secondary assessment requirements in much the same way as with our primary school.”

[howartp]

Hi all, we are currently investigating moving MIS and Arbor seems good on many counts. But I have some concerns about the functionality of the "Report Cards" and marksheets generally.

 

Currently we use Individual Reports on SIMS to create termly reports to send to parents. Some of this data may come from calculated columns in marksheets (which I gather are not available in Arbor but I think I can live without that).

 

My concern is that the format that data is presented on Arbor's report cards is rather restricted and not as customisable as on SIMS Individual Reports where I can modify the Word-based template to my own requirements. Does anyone here have experience of Arbor report cards and can give me their opinion on this?

 

One option would be to export report data from Arbor and then create individual student PDFs using Excel or Python (or something). But I then can't see how I could distribute these via Arbor.

 

I'd be grateful for any advice! I haven't looked at Bromcom as much but it seems that their reports might be more closely modelled on

SIMS' marksheets + Individual Reports and hence more flexible than Arbor at the present time.

 

Thanks,

 

Andy

When I started looking last year, before TAGs put a brake on things, I was very interested in the "live data" from Arbor, meaning we can use Word to mail-merge absolutely anything we want from the live data, and it be refreshed every time we open the document. We haven't got anywhere near a demo/trial or speaking to salespeople yet so I don't know whether i'm way off the mark.

 

You hit the nail on its head. Yes, flexibility and configurability of assessment and behaviour models is for me what puts two companies apart. We use Bromcom and it has been excellent for us for these reasons.

That's very interesting and useful to know; thank you.

[Ditto]

You hit the nail on its head. Yes, flexibility and configurability of assessment and behaviour models is for me what puts two companies apart. We use Bromcom and it has been excellent for us for these reasons. There is a blog which talks about the Harris Federation experience of the same two MIS products and extract below where problem also exist for primary schools: https://link.medium.com/HIYsoEoGDgb

 

Oh yes, building your own calculations, I forgot I did that with Progresso! I'm increasingly thinking ESS should buy Advanced's product, shouldn't cost much based on market share, invest in that - it'll be a quicker route to having a cloud based solution than any other plans I've read!

[ee31ag]

Hi, thank you for all the replies. It does seem like Bromcom is more advanced in this respect e.g. by allowing calculated columns in marksheets.

 

The live-feed in Arbor does look convenient and may give me the flexibility to create reports outside of Arbor. My only concern, then, is how to distribute and documents that I produce.

 

Andy

[Arbor_Daniel]

Hi,

 

Im pleased to let you know that Arbor's report card functionality has recently been improved further following feedback from our users. You can learn about the improvements that are in the final of testing here on the "working on page" of our product Roadmap: https://portal.productboard.com/arbor-education/1-arbor-development-roadmap/tabs/6-working-on-now. Also, having recently released calculated fields into the Custom report Writer, we are also actively building this into mark sheets at the moment too.

 

Dan from Arbor

[kxv2020]

The individual reports feature in SIMS is the one I miss the most. There is no mail merge to Word at the moment and it isn't helpful at all.

[howartp]

our product Roadmap: https://portal.productboard.com/arbor-education/1-arbor-development-roadmap/tabs/6-working-on-now.

Dan from Arbor

Dan, can you explain how that roadmap page works?

 

I see items there posted in September 2019 that you are "Working on now".

 

Is this correct or is there a date discrepancy? I'm imagining if you started working on something in September 2019 that it would have reached fruition by now?

[kxv2020]

Hi,

 

Im pleased to let you know that Arbor's report card functionality has recently been improved further following feedback from our users. You can learn about the improvements that are in the final of testing here on the "working on page" of our product Roadmap: https://portal.productboard.com/arbor-education/1-arbor-development-roadmap/tabs/6-working-on-now. Also, having recently released calculated fields into the Custom report Writer, we are also actively building this into mark sheets at the moment too.

 

Dan from Arbor

 

I would ask that you push individual mail merge to Word as a feature. I've done it several times.

[howartp]

I would ask that you push individual mail merge to Word as a feature. I've done it several times.

 

Are you asking for this feature to be implemented, or for this feature/ability to be highlighted as really useful that can be done but users don't know about it?

 

(I'm not yet a customer, but hoping to be within 12 months - and this is certainly a feature we'll be wanting to use regularly. I presume(d) it already exists within the Live Feed area)

 

Peter

[kxv2020]

Are you asking for this feature to be implemented, or for this feature/ability to be highlighted as really useful that can be done but users don't know about it?

 

(I'm not yet a customer, but hoping to be within 12 months - and this is certainly a feature we'll be wanting to use regularly. I presume(d) it already exists within the Live Feed area)

 

Peter

 

No it doesn't exist and functionality isn't there. It needs to be.

[RichP]

I suppose it depends how creative you are with your Word mail merges and who they need to go to. You can design a Custom Report in Arbor and then use it's Mail Merge feature to email or generate a PDF with the data from the report in it. If you do fancy things with tables and other more advanced layout features there is nothing to stop you exporting that data to an excel file as a live feed and then using that as the source for the Mail Merge in Word.

We moved to Arbor in January of this year, having been a long standing SIMS customer and we've found that the ease of communication for any group in Arbor has replaced some of the lengthy merges we used to have. Simple things like the ability of class teacher to select some or all of their class and email their parents in matter of moments has transformed some of our communication processes. That said we did come from using InTouch...

[RichP]

I suppose it depends how creative you are with your Word mail merges and who they need to go to. You can design a Custom Report in Arbor and then use it's Mail Merge feature to email or generate a PDF with the data from the report in it. If you do fancy things with tables and other more advanced layout features there is nothing to stop you exporting that data to an excel file as a live feed and then using that as the source for the Mail Merge in Word.

We moved to Arbor in January of this year, having been a long standing SIMS customer and we've found that the ease of communication for any group in Arbor has replaced some of the lengthy merges we used to have. Simple things like the ability of class teacher to select some or all of their class and email their parents in matter of moments has transformed some of our communication processes. That said we did come from using InTouch...

 

I realise this is digressing from the original post! We too had concerns about individual reports in Arbor and admittedly there is still work to be done but we have found a perfectly acceptable way of doing the reports, and being able to publish them quickly on the Parent Portal is a plus. Worth noting that there is push within Arbor to develop this area further I believe.

[ee31ag]

Thanks for that, RichP - that's really helpful. I am concerned about the seemingly rigid format of the Report Cards but it's hard to know all the ins and outs before having a live system to play with. In particular, it looks like we wouldn't have much control over the placement of marks entered as "Ad Hoc" assessments.

 

You can design a Custom Report in Arbor and then use it's Mail Merge feature to email or generate a PDF with the data from the report in it.

 

Does that work well with assessment data and not just basic facts about a student e.g. names, form, attendance figures? I couldn't tell if we could put the merge fields into tables or whether it is essentially just straight text.

 

If you do fancy things with tables and other more advanced layout features there is nothing to stop you exporting that data to an excel file as a live feed and then using that as the source for the Mail Merge in Word.

 

I think this is probably the only way to get some of the functionality of SIMS' Individual Reports. But how would we share the output with parents? Would we have to print them out and put them in an envelope? I don't think we could attach them all to separate emails in some bulk way, could we?

 

Thanks so much - I think I'm getting closer to understanding how Arbor works with all this!

 

Andy

Edited November 25, 2021 by ee31ag

[ee31ag]

I've been alerted to some good news on this front: Arbor has added a facility to bulk upload externally generated reports (as long as the filenames are identifiable e.g. contain the student number or UPN).

 

This means that reports could be mailmerged outside of Arbor and then distributed via Arbor. More details here: https://support.arbor-education.com/hc/en-us/articles/4404406648349-Import-and-send-out-External-Report-Cards#how-to-import-your-external-report-cards-0-1

 

It's not quite the same as SIMS "Individual Reports" + calculated marksheet columns but it could be more flexible in certain circumstances.

 

-Andy

[kxv2020]

Thanks Andy, useful ... But we still need SIMS Individual Reports - so we can edit in Word the format and merge out!