iSAMS Central for Dashboards?

[geekgirl]

Hi all, just wondering if any iSAMS schools are aware/interested about the new add on for iSAMS called iSAMS Central releasing in September?

 

With iSAMS Central, your school can benefit from a centralised platform designed specifically for generating reports and extracting essential information from various modules within iSAMS.

 

What sets Central apart is its ability to seamlessly connect with your existing database, ensuring easy access to up-to-date information. By configuring user permissions, you can empower senior leaders with controlled access to view reports for analysing different purposes across departments.

 

It seems to be PowerBi reports integrated into front user interface.

 

We are going to ask for a demo and pricing.

 

[RLR]

We're looking at ordering this now. We've been quoted around £2k.

[2ilent8cho]

I watched the demo, but I'm not really sure what data we would even want to see on it.

[dhicks]

Hi all, just wondering if any iSAMS schools are aware/interested about the new add on for iSAMS called iSAMS Central releasing in September?

 

Hmm, something to look at. I had a quick look at Google's Looker Studio at the ANME conference last week:

 

https://lookerstudio.google.com

 

It seems to be a quick way of getting data visulisations on to a shareable dashboard. In the case of iSAMS, you'd need to get that data out of iSAMS first, probably with an export to CSV via their API, so not as simple and one-step as iSAMS Central.

[ric_p]

Sadly iSAMS Central is iSAMS expensive propritery solution, that allows for very little cusomisation from what I'd previously seen.

 

I've got a lot of experience building Look Studio dashboards already and it's great when you have a big data set already spat out form iSAMS, but it's proving very difficult to build dashboards with live data. Has anyone got experience with connecting directly to the iSAMS database?

 

Hmm, something to look at. I had a quick look at Google's Looker Studio at the ANME conference last week:

 

https://lookerstudio.google.com

 

It seems to be a quick way of getting data visulisations on to a shareable dashboard. In the case of iSAMS, you'd need to get that data out of iSAMS first, probably with an export to CSV via their API, so not as simple and one-step as iSAMS Central.

[TechMonkey]

Sadly iSAMS Central is iSAMS expensive propritery solution, that allows for very little cusomisation from what I'd previously seen.

 

I've got a lot of experience building Look Studio dashboards already and it's great when you have a big data set already spat out form iSAMS, but it's proving very difficult to build dashboards with live data. Has anyone got experience with connecting directly to the iSAMS database?

 

I'd dispute bits of your first statement. It isn't proprietary but is built on general tech (MS data warehousing tech I think) and using Enterprise Power BI to allow things to be built. When I last looked it was pretty customisable. Also, through this project they give user friendly labels and views which is a massive time saver. Expensive is subjective.

 

I've done a fair amount of direct DB work. Have you got the school IP setup to be allowed access to the database? You need to talk to support and get this turned on, if it isn't already setup. If Look studio needs to access the live data direct, then you won't be able to unless it only ever comes from a single IP and this will lock anything else out from accessing the DB. Using PowerBI I had to setup a helper on site to access the data from the school site. I don't know if Look Studio has something similar.

 

Have you tried accessing the data via the API? Direct DB access is not really supported or recommended.

[dhicks]

Sadly iSAMS Central is iSAMS expensive propritery solution, that allows for very little cusomisation from what I'd previously seen.

 

It's going to depend on what a specific school wants to do, £2,000 (a year) sounds not-unreasonable for a pre-made solution - the alternative, if using Power BI, is going to need appropriate Microsoft licenses for staff wanting access (not sure if it's A3 or A5 licenses you'd need) and, of course, time spent setting it up. That's the part I can see actually costing schools more in time / effort, rather than the more-easily-tracked actual money - senior management staff's time spent fiddling around with Power BI / Looker Studio.

 

it's proving very difficult to build dashboards with live data. Has anyone got experience with connecting directly to the iSAMS database?

 

iSAMS have (somewhat confusingly), at least 3 different APIs available. From the Control Panel you can create an API key for either the Batch API or the Real-Time API. The Batch API actually gives you a data dump, in XML format, of whatever items you have selected for that particular API key. It's actually a pretty good way of getting a larg(er) amount of data out than making repeated API calls over HTTPS. The Real-Time API is intended for real-time applications, and I think is more designed with mobile apps and similar in mind.

 

There is now also the REST API. You can now manage REST API keys from the iSAMS Control Panel, although I think you might still have to request their creation via an iSAMS support ticket. This seems to be a standard-style REST API, by the looks of it made with a common tool such as Swagger. This is the API access you need if you want to be able to write back data to iSAMS. The API is a "proper" REST API - for instance, the "write" operation for pupil records is an HTTP PUT operation (as it should be for a genuine "REST" API), which means that any fields left blank in the PUT request get written to the record as blank fields, the record doesn't simply get ammended with new values. This means you have to read the current full record, make any changes, then write the full record back again.

 

APIs like this are useful, but can be slow to work with, especially (as is probable) if there's a rate limit in place. APIs seem to be pointing you towards using Webhooks, where a change in the database triggers a call to your endpoint where the amended data can be dealt with - written to a local copy of the database, maybe. This means you wind up with an internal database at iSAMS' end, with a REST API defined on top, calling your tool via webhooks which then winds up creating its own local replica of that database.

[dmj]

Hmm, something to look at. I had a quick look at Google's Looker Studio at the ANME conference last week:

 

https://lookerstudio.google.com

 

It seems to be a quick way of getting data visulisations on to a shareable dashboard. In the case of iSAMS, you'd need to get that data out of iSAMS first, probably with an export to CSV via their API, so not as simple and one-step as iSAMS Central.

 

Late reply but getting the data streamed into BigQuery and then configuring looker for BQ would be the way forward here.

[ric_p]

Firstly, 3 responses since I posted this a couple of hours ago! Thank you all for your input, I only just signed up this afternoon after finding this thread when googling "isams" and "looker studio" so I'm genuinely grateful for the comments you've added.

 

 

 

For several years I've been running a VM on our network using Visual Studio and SSMS to access the Db for reporting purposes and writing simple queries. If I could somehow pull whole tables of data on a daily basis and upload them to BigQuery that would be the ideal. My next thought was an API and I've been experiementing a bit with using Postman, which is helped me get my head around REST api's a bit but I'm not sure where to go from here, to building one. Recommendations on tutorials or sites very welcome.

 

I'd dispute bits of your first statement. It isn't proprietary but is built on general tech (MS data warehousing tech I think) and using Enterprise Power BI to allow things to be built. When I last looked it was pretty customisable. Also, through this project they give user friendly labels and views which is a massive time saver. Expensive is subjective.

 

I've done a fair amount of direct DB work. Have you got the school IP setup to be allowed access to the database? You need to talk to support and get this turned on, if it isn't already setup. If Look studio needs to access the live data direct, then you won't be able to unless it only ever comes from a single IP and this will lock anything else out from accessing the DB. Using PowerBI I had to setup a helper on site to access the data from the school site. I don't know if Look Studio has something similar.

 

Have you tried accessing the data via the API? Direct DB access is not really supported or recommended.

[dmj]

For several years I've been running a VM on our network using Visual Studio and SSMS to access the Db for reporting purposes and writing simple queries. If I could somehow pull whole tables of data on a daily basis and upload them to BigQuery that would be the ideal. My next thought was an API and I've been experiementing a bit with using Postman, which is helped me get my head around REST api's a bit but I'm not sure where to go from here, to building one. Recommendations on tutorials or sites very welcome.

postman vs bruno

Once you have your head around the API's, you'll need to learn the BQ API . Then it's just a matter of knocking up a script in you favourite language to do the sync.

Python is well supported for this sort of thing.

 

some examples / tutorials here

https://realpython.com/tutorials/api/

https://cloud.google.com/python/docs/reference/bigquery/latest

 

You may find that if you opensource your scripts onto github, others will want to use them and improve them if you accept PR's.

[dhicks]

If I could somehow pull whole tables of data on a daily basis and upload them to BigQuery that would be the ideal.

 

The iSAMS Batch API should be just what you need here. Note that this isn't the REST API, it's more of a get-a-wodge-of-data operation. A very rough Python example:

 

#!/usr/bin/python
import os
import sys
import io
import ssl
import json
import urllib.request

# Reads the given file, returns the entire contents as a single string.
def readFile(theFilename):
inHandle = open(theFilename)
result = inHandle.read()
inHandle.close()
return result

# Handy utility function to write a file. Takes a file path and either a single string or an array of strings. If an array, will write each
# string to the given file path with a newline at the end.
def writeFile(theFilename, theFileData):
fileDataHandle = open(theFilename, "w")
if isinstance(theFileData, str):
	fileDataHandle.write(theFileData)
else:
	for dataLine in theFileData:
		fileDataHandle.write((str(dataLine) + "\n").encode())
fileDataHandle.close()

requiredConfigParameters = ["iSAMSAPIKey", "iSAMSAPIDomain"]

# Load the configuration file.
config = json.loads(readFile("config.json"))
for requiredConfigParameter in requiredConfigParameters:
if not requiredConfigParameter in config.keys():
	print("Error - required value " + requiredConfigParameter + " not set in config.json.")
	sys.exit(1)

# Go and get the data from the iSAMS API.
print("Getting data from iSAMS.")
requestURL = "https://" + config["iSAMSAPIDomain"] + "/api/batch/1.0/xml.ashx?apiKey=" + config["iSAMSAPIKey"]
try:
response = urllib.request.urlopen(requestURL, context=ssl._create_unverified_context()) #, data=urllib.parse.urlencode({"startDate":"2020-01-01T03:00:00","endDate":"2020-04-01T03:00:00"}).encode())
except urllib.error.HTTPError as theHTTPError:
print("Error calling the iSAMS API:")
print("URL: " + requestURL)
print("Error Code: " + str(theHTTPError.code))
print("Reason: " + theHTTPError.reason)
print("Headers:")
print(theHTTPError.headers)
print("Content:")
print(response.read())
sys.exit(1)
writeFile("iSAMSData.xml", str(response.read())[2:-1])

 

The above expects to find config values in a JSON file called "config.json", something like:

 

{
"iSAMSAPIKey":"YouriSAMSBatchAPIKeyGoesHere",
"iSAMSAPIDomain":"YouriSAMSDomainNameGoesHere"
}

 

but I'm not sure where to go from here, to building one.

 

You're not looking to try and build an API, just consume one - I think the REST API documentation has copy-and-paste-able examples.

[ric_p]

Amazing. I wish I foudn this community earlier. Thank you both @dmj and @dhicks for your detailed suggestions and advice. I'll be spending my afternoon on this.

[TechMonkey]

Do you have an iSAMS identity account? If so you should be able to access the Developer Documentation. If you haven't got access contact support and they will be able to give you access.

 

They have an example application you can test the batch API with.

[jo_ha]

On 14/03/2024 at 15:38, ric_p said:

Firstly, 3 responses since I posted this a couple of hours ago! Thank you all for your input, I only just signed up this afternoon after finding this thread when googling "isams" and "looker studio" so I'm genuinely grateful for the comments you've added.

 

 

 

For several years I've been running a VM on our network using Visual Studio and SSMS to access the Db for reporting purposes and writing simple queries. If I could somehow pull whole tables of data on a daily basis and upload them to BigQuery that would be the ideal. My next thought was an API and I've been experiementing a bit with using Postman, which is helped me get my head around REST api's a bit but I'm not sure where to go from here, to building one. Recommendations on tutorials or sites very welcome.

 

 

ric_p did you manage to set up a way of getting data daily into BigQuery? Keen to hear if this is something you're doing and how it's been going for you! 

[ric_p]

On 11/12/2025 at 10:27, jo_ha said:

ric_p did you manage to set up a way of getting data daily into BigQuery? Keen to hear if this is something you're doing and how it's been going for you! 

 

At the moment we've connected our current BI tool (Looker Studio) to Snowflake, by subscribing to Central Connect. We started using iSAMS Central but the pre-built dashboards didn't suit our purposes, and didn't offer enough configurability.

 

I'd like to Connect snowflake into BigQuery, as this will allow us to query it with our non-ISAMS data seamlessly. I've been working with the team at iSAMS and feel we're quite close, though there seems to have been a winter hiatus in progress. When and if we get this running, I'll post an update here.

[jo_ha]

5 minutes ago, ric_p said:

 

At the moment we've connected our current BI tool (Looker Studio) to Snowflake, by subscribing to Central Connect. We started using iSAMS Central but the pre-built dashboards didn't suit our purposes, and didn't offer enough configurability.

 

I'd like to Connect snowflake into BigQuery, as this will allow us to query it with our non-ISAMS data seamlessly. I've been working with the team at iSAMS and feel we're quite close, though there seems to have been a winter hiatus in progress. When and if we get this running, I'll post an update here.

We are basically doing the same at the moment. I do find the data views available in Snowflake to be quite limited though. Sometimes even more so than Central! Whats your experience? 

The additional functionality in Power BI Desktop vs Central is a huge plus though

[ric_p]

1 hour ago, jo_ha said:

We are basically doing the same at the moment. I do find the data views available in Snowflake to be quite limited though. Sometimes even more so than Central! Whats your experience? 

The additional functionality in Power BI Desktop vs Central is a huge plus though

Yeah, iSAMS Central was dead in the watwr as soon as we got access to Data Share.

 

You can ask for access to the raw tables, which are also available though snowflake, so you can basically recreate any of your previous SQL queries in there.

[jo_ha]

7 minutes ago, ric_p said:

Yeah, iSAMS Central was dead in the watwr as soon as we got access to Data Share.

 

You can ask for access to the raw tables, which are also available though snowflake, so you can basically recreate any of your previous SQL queries in there.

I was hoping we could get access to the raw tables in snowflake. Glad to hear its posisble! We recently were given access to create new views as the standard access was just read!