Bulk import of all info for new starters

[CarterUSM]

Hi

At the start of each new academic year, we request parents/guardians of new students to manually complete a pupil admission form (PAF). The information from all completed PAFs then has to be input manually into our MIS, and as you can imagine, it is an incredibly laborious and time-consuming task. It takes forever and a day to physically type in all info contained within the PAF, just for one single student.

I am asking if anyone is aware of an app/tool/software which will enable us to request parents/guardians to provide all information currently requested within the PAF, by means of completing an online form which can subsequently be linked to/imported into our MIS, rather than having to do everything manually. Obviously, confidentiality between all respondents will be required.

Many thanks in anticipation of your assistance.

[Alex0x7F]

I'm not sure how appropriate using Microsoft/Google Forms would be for this but it's the first thing that came to mind.

 

It is the responsibility of our Administration team (doesn't fall on IT) to collect and keep up to date pupil records and contact details. I know the admin staff send out a paper form half way through the academic year for children to bring back with any updated details.

[lmrogers]

I've looked into this a couple of times and the package I keep coming back to looking at is Admissions+ but I have never been given the budget to buy it and make it happen. It pretty much lets you publish the forms you want to gather all the information and then can generate you a file to import into the MIS from memory.

[howartp]

With the Spring update to SIMS, you can bring in a lot more data from the ATF than previously (and can de-select what you don't want, just like CTF).

 

Therefore you could do what we've done for many years which is a PHP/HTML form to capture the data and save it to MySQL, then output an ATF with all the data.

 

However last year and this, we imported the ATF to get the basic records there, then we're copy/pasting from a Google form. Far quicker than manually typing but still allowing the office staff (3 of them) to gate-keep the data as it is entered, versus taking the mishmash that parents have provided and importing straight in.

 

We have also looked at Admissions+ but it still has the inherent problem of taking parent-entered data as gospel.

[David44]

Therefore you could do what we've done for many years which is a PHP/HTML form to capture the data and save it to MySQL, then output an ATF with all the data.

However last year and this, we imported the ATF to get the basic records there, then we're copy/pasting from a Google form. Far quicker than manually typing but still allowing the office staff (3 of them) to gate-keep the data as it is entered, versus taking the mishmash that parents have provided and importing straight in.

 

Just out of interest, what's stopping you adding a layer to the PHP/MySQL product that allows an admin person to approve and/or edit the data before it goes in to the ATF(s)?

[howartp]

Just out of interest, what's stopping you adding a layer to the PHP/MySQL product that allows an admin person to approve and/or edit the data before it goes in to the ATF(s)?

Hehe, we actually did - each field was presented as something like:

 

ATF Data: $fromATF

Parent Data: $fromParent

Auto Suggested Data: if($fromParent != "") : tidy(trim(properCase($fromParent))) else (tidy(trim($fromATF)))

Manual override: [Entered by Admin]

 

with a radio-button to choose which data was carried through, but at that time the admin person doing that process barely gave it a glance. The current admin (newly formed data team) could indeed use it to do that.

 

However SLT feel there is is too much dependence on me and my coding skills; if I go under the proverbial bus and the CTF/ATF schema/validation changes each year (which it theoretically does) then school are stuck.

[Seb1780]

We looked at Admissions+ for this but then went with Operoo which has been "interesting". Both systems require some data, including e-mail addresses, in the MIS (SIMS in our case), this did not come with our ATF. Operoo claims to offer the ability to validate parent responses before writing to SIMS.

 

I have had a play about with XML files created in Excel to the point where I can build an ATF with the fields I want from the kind of info collected in MS Forms, this will populate enough data for Operoo to do its stuff.

[CarterUSM]

Hi

 

Just to clarify, our MIS is Bromcom; does this have any bearing on the best solution for this particular issue?

 

TIA

[lmrogers]

https://applicaa.com/integrations/

 

Admissions+ does integrate with Bromcom but never used it and only looked at it from a view of integrating with SIMS.

[steveg]

Does Bromcom allow parents to update their own info?

 

We use Arbor and pull in basic info provided by the LA to a pre-admission group which gives the parents access to the parent app, they then enter their own info in here which comes through for the admin team to authorise.

[Bromcom_Support_2]

Does Bromcom allow parents to update their own info?

 

We use Arbor and pull in basic info provided by the LA to a pre-admission group which gives the parents access to the parent app, they then enter their own info in here which comes through for the admin team to authorise.

Hi SteveG

 

Yes you can define what student information/contact details parents can view/edit. This is detailed in the following guide; https://docs.bromcom.com/knowledge-base/how-to-set-up-student-contact-details-configurations/

 

Kind Regards

Bromcom Training

[CarterUSM]

Thanks for all of your responses so far.

It looks like we could be going down the Microsoft Office Forms route to import bulk data for new students. To this end I've started a prototype form, and completed a dummy entry (the form is of course subject to change). I've attached copies of both.

 

The question I have is: how do I link the column headings in the Admission Form generated from the survey, with the appropriate fields within Bromcom?

Any assistance would be gratefully appreciated. Thanks in anticipation.

St John's School Admission Form - from Office.docx

St John's School Admission Form - from Office copy.xlsx

[Bromcom_Support_2]

Thanks for all of your responses so far.

It looks like we could be going down the Microsoft Office Forms route to import bulk data for new students. To this end I've started a prototype form, and completed a dummy entry (the form is of course subject to change). I've attached copies of both.

 

The question I have is: how do I link the column headings in the Admission Form generated from the survey, with the appropriate fields within Bromcom?

Any assistance would be gratefully appreciated. Thanks in anticipation.

 

Hi CarterUSM

 

Thank you for raising this question. It's not currently possible to link the data in the forms to the Admissions Form however you can in Microsoft Forms convert the responses into an excel spreadsheet and then you could then use the Manual Data Import process in Bromcom to bulk update the information from the forms. See How to do a Manual Data Import and Manual Data Export – Bromcom

Basically the Manual Data Import process creates a spreadsheet of data for the students selected and then you can add the data you have collected from the forms into that spreadsheet.

Kind Regards

Bromcom Training

[supportman]

Hi CarterUSM

 

Thank you for raising this question. It's not currently possible to link the data in the forms to the Admissions Form however you can in Microsoft Forms convert the responses into an excel spreadsheet and then you could then use the Manual Data Import process in Bromcom to bulk update the information from the forms. See How to do a Manual Data Import and Manual Data Export – Bromcom

Basically the Manual Data Import process creates a spreadsheet of data for the students selected and then you can add the data you have collected from the forms into that spreadsheet.

Kind Regards

Bromcom Training

 

Link was broken when I google searched this, so here is the corrent one

 

How to do a Manual Data Export and Manual Data Import – Bromcom

 

Does anyone got any other options for admissions automation with Bromcom as I would rather not go down the excel route?