Do you use Options Online without using SIMS Student?

[David44]

Hi,

 

We currently use SIMS Student and Options Online. At the moment, students are sent an invitation from by us using admin.sims.co.uk, they go through the registration process which then takes them to SIMS Student. Within SIMS Student they see a link to Options Online. We are looking in to dropping SIMS Student but keeping Options Online. What is the workflow for students in that scenario? They receive an invitation, they go through the registration process and are then taken to...? The obvious answer would be to Options Online but I have a nasty suspicion that they would still be taken to SIMS Student and told that 'Your school doesn't subscribe to this service' or something similar.

 

Can anyone at a school who uses Options Online but not SIMS Student confirm either way?

 

Thanks

David.

[sjatkn]

We tried Options Online this year, though we do have, but do not use SIMS Student,, but gave up part way through. I cannot give you a definitive answer to where a student who signs up lands. I think in our case it was SIMS Student.

We came across a number of issues and ended up giving up and using MS Forms. The work flow we had to go with was.

 

• Send invitations out. Very easy.
  
• Students register. Tricky for students as it involved following instructions. By default when they create the SIMS ID they are now defaulted to creating username / password login, they can register against their M365 account, but it is slightly hidden. We preferred them to set up the M365 account because, they have one, there is a little less chance of forgetting the password, there is a little less chance they will use monkey123 as the password. We cannot force a default or require a specific sign-in method. We ended up unregistering and registering many students because they forgot the password. There is no way to bulk register them so they just go in using their M365 credentials.
  
• We wait for confirmation that they have registered successfully, so we give them permission to Options Online. Clicking on each student, one at a time. This is because of KB0022325.
  
• Students sign in again to complete the options process.
  

 

If we also wanted parents to approve the choice, so we needed to give them Options permission, one click at a time. Also, there is no easy way to filter for parents with children in a particular year group! So it's all parents (one click at a time) or get a list from SIMS and then search and select them manually. Also, because of KB0022325 we should really check to see if the parent has successfully registered for it to work properly.

You would think of course that you should be able to give permission to Options Online as soon as an invitation is sent, the permissions page lets you do that. No, of course not, KB0022325 says that we must wait for the user to be registered for SIMS Online Services first. Except there is no way to filter the list to show only registered users, all users with an invitation are listed. To do it properly we had to have a list of registered users on one screen and manually search and select them in the permissions. Repeating the process frequently as new users registered.

You would also think that to set permissions for Options that you could filter on year group. Again, no. We, as I am sure many do, prefix the students username with the year the cohort entered year 7 (or something similar), so we can filter on that. Then you have to tick each one of the (200+ in our case) students individually as there is not bulk select process. I checked this with ESS to make sure I was not missing something!

I raised these points with our ESS account manager and Paul Featherstone is apparently looking into them to see if they can be resolved (all with no promises!). How long that will take is of course not being revealed. I'm not holding my breath and I suspect we will not use the process again next year if we do not have guarantees of the process being made better.

[Andy2789]

We use SIMS Options without SIMS Students and have for a number of years.

 

As with the above, we send out the invitations on mass using admin.sims.co.uk and assign them access to Options at this point. The only issue as again eluded to above is students following simple instructions, that they have to accept their invitations before they can go to options online. If they don't accept their invitation first, they can login to options online, but it's a blank screen with just the purple bar across the top. We utilise the sync with O365, so when they click the registration they link up with their O365. If they click the invitation first and then go to Options online, the process works seamlessly and we are using Options Online now more and more for Taster days and other scenarios across the school.

 

The process for ours is:

- Receive invitation

- Click and accept invitation (Says invitation complete)

- Click a link on the letter sent to them / Link on our website to Options Online

- Do Online Options

 

As mentioned, the only issue we have is where parents and students read the letter about options, skip the first bit of the letter which says complete the registrations and skip straight to logging in.

[David44]

I'm not sure you can blame the users for the mess that ESS have created. People aren't used to using an invite system and it doesn't make sense for a system that they all have to use anyway. It's not clear why ESS insist on using it. Normally you can see the logic in their decisions, in as much as you can see how it benefits ESS, even if it makes things worse for users but I don't see how using an invite system benefits anyone in this case. Not the users who need to wait for the invite, not the school who have to send each one manually, not ESS when the system doesn't work properly and schools need to raise tickets.

 

It's hardly surprising that users just go to Options Online and try to use it. This is how decent, properly thought out websites work. Onboarding is a solved problem when it comes to online systems, you go to a website at a time that is convenient to you, enter your email address and click on the link to sign in and/or create an account. Another option would be to simply sign in with an existing account (Google, Microsoft etc). This is a workflow that people are familiar with. If ESS have a good reason to change this tried and tested process then they need to explain it to users. If users are seeing 'a blank screen with just the purple bar across the top', that is not the sign of a well designed and thought out system.

 

It is not possible to write simple instructions for users either. When they click on the link in the 'invitation' they are often taken to a screen asking them for a username and password (it's the SIMS ID user and password it's asking for, students aren't going to have SIMS ID accounts). Any instructions have to therefore start with, "Ignore this and scroll down to the button hidden at the bottom of the page and click that instead". Again, this is not the sign of a well designed or simple system although I can see this benefits ESS as it tricks students in to needlessly signing up for a SIMS ID account.

 

A decent system would allow the school to give students a link, they click the link and following the onscreen instructions (NOT a separate document that they won't read) are able to sign in and use the system without having to be given separate instructions.

 

Thank you for confirming that it works in an even less intuitive way without SIMS Student.

 

Currently in our case, when they click on accept invitation and select the third party to sign in with (Google in our case) they are taken to SIMS Student which has a link to SIMS Options. It sounds like you are saying that if we don't use SIMS Student, when they go through the registration process they are left at a dead end 'Invitation accepted' screen and aren't told what to do next (they actually need to go to a completely different URL, so hardly guessable). It really is a horrible system, so stressful for the students.

Edited April 4, 2022 by David44

[Coopstar]

We use options online for our own administration, students complete paper forms and I manually enter into options online. When the process is complete I transfer the data into sims.

We have never ventured down the route of student logins, I wanted to see how other schools managed to get on with it. Reading the latest feedback we will carry on as we are.

 

Just to add we use the Data Collection section of the Parent App and are very familiar with the login process for parents and the pros and cons of getting them to understand the login process.

Edited January 6, 2023 by Coopstar
more info

[MSGT]

After reading this thread, i think we may well end up doing the sam thing Coopstar!