Hosted Sims - Your latest thoughts please

[Sonic007]

Hi everyone,

 

So, I'm looking at getting rid of our Sims Server and going down the Hosted route.

 

Can those who have done this chip in with what they think? Is it worth it? Have you had any problems?

 

Many thanks.

[jthompson]

We switched to SIMS Connected during last term, and it's worked well. The performance for end users is better than it was when it was when on-prem, and we've not knowingly encountered any outages. It posed no issues during exam results days.

 

Our EduLink agent sync is taking a lot longer now, but that's seemingly oweing to the nature of some of our exams data, and is an active case that we're expecting to be resolved, eventually.

 

I'm absoutely loving not having a SOLUS/SIMS server to manage and backup now. Well, apart from the VM with the third-party connector and various sync agents (it would be nice if those could be cloud-cloud).

[Sonic007]

Thankyou, It sounds like it has gone well for you.

What is the VM you have running? Do you still need that to run Hosted Sims?

[jthompson]

It's a VM that's not required as such to use SIMS Connected, but in reality you're likely to have third party sync agents that will require such a setup.

 

The VM we have is just a Windows Server VM cleanly provisioned for the task. ESS installed and configured their third-party connector utility on there. That comprises a VPN endpoint (OpenVPN iirc) and an instance of SIMS .net configured to connect to the database hosted by them (i.e. accessible via the VPN link). ESS also then provide the database server details. We then have the various sync agents (EduLink, Wonde, GroupCall, InVentry) installed on that VM too, configured with those new database details. They need to be on the VM that has that VPN link configured, so that they can communicate with the database server.

 

ESS won't themselves configure your various third party sync agents, so you'll need to reach out to the suppliers of those and factor that in to any migration. It was pretty straightforward though, I seem to remember.

[jthompson]

One more thing to add is that SIMS ID is a bit of an added layer of complexity on the user management front, but we're at a point now where our staff are SSOing in off the back of their existing Google accounts now, so they're not needing to worry about an extra set of creds for SIMS ID.

[supportman]

Really... if you are going to do this its worth looking at both Arbor and Bromcom.

 

Sims hosted is a terrible solution if you compare it with modern native web MIS's

 

The changeover is really simple and it will probably save the school money as well. Its a no brainer in my mind having done the migration a few years back.

[Sonic007]

Really... if you are going to do this its worth looking at both Arbor and Bromcom.

 

Sims hosted is a terrible solution if you compare it with modern native web MIS's

 

The changeover is really simple and it will probably save the school money as well. Its a no brainer in my mind having done the migration a few years back.

 

I get your point but when staff have been used to Sims for donkeys years then re-training them to a new MIS can be a challenge.

[supportman]

I get your point but when staff have been used to Sims for donkeys years then re-training them to a new MIS can be a challenge.

 

Yeh we had the same nonsense views when we changed, particularly from one or two older data mangers or experienced teachers.

 

We did it anyway and staff were absolutely fine, took them about 30mins to work it all out. It really was a non issue.

[jthompson]

Really... if you are going to do this its worth looking at both Arbor and Bromcom.

 

Sims hosted is a terrible solution if you compare it with modern native web MIS's

 

The changeover is really simple and it will probably save the school money as well. Its a no brainer in my mind having done the migration a few years back.

 

I do agree on the whole, but the collective decision here has been to continue with SIMS. The significant amount of change it represented to workflows all across the school meant that it couldn't be considered a no-brainer.

 

We've got a lot of use out of the Wonde API, which kinda makes up for not having direct API access to the MIS. Hopefully, developing our stuff on that basis will make switching MIS underneath Wonde more of a no-brainer in future.

[Zammo]

I get your point but when staff have been used to Sims for donkeys years then re-training them to a new MIS can be a challenge.

 

 

I find this to be a variant of the sunk cost fallacy. There is no doubt that SIMS is clunky and hard to navigate and use, as well as lacking in some of the modern features native to other systems

 

Every day staff persist on using SIMS time and energy are being lost. Yes, switching MIS will create a dip in productivity for a short while, but it wont be long before the benefits of a more modern MIS more than make up for it

[Theblacksheep]

I get your point but when staff have been used to Sims for donkeys years then re-training them to a new MIS can be a challenge.

 

A register is a register and it can be done on any device with SSO logins. So for teachers it's much better. Some admin or senior staff staff, things are different, most things are better, a few are worse but different isnt worse.

 

What will they do in another school? - learn it. What will they do if you change? learn it. If only their was an entire profession, that was built around teaching others close to hand.

 

It will improve the school.

[jthompson]

I find this to be a variant of the sunk cost fallacy.

 

That's exactly the phrase that always pops into my mind when considering that inertia related to switching away from SIMS.

 

As mentioned, we are making use of the Wonde API to overcome some of what SIMS is lacking, and EduLink gets used by lots of staff as a more accessible option for the core 20% of features that allow them to do 80% of their stuff, so SIMS .net itself is seeing less use anyway and slowly disappearing under a layer of third-party tools. MIS provider could be switched out underneath that without end users noticing particularly. It's areas like exams where the other MIS options were not apparently on feature parity with SIMS: that wouldn't be my judgement to make tbh, so I leave that to colleagues.

[Bromcom_John]

I get your point but when staff have been used to Sims for donkeys years then re-training them to a new MIS can be a challenge.

 

@Bromcom onboarding 99% of your staff will take around an hour.

The heavy users get full training that can be repeated as often as you like at no extra cost.

 

It is a challenge, but it is a challenge that we (and by that I don't just mean us at Bromcom) have been delivering against for years now.

[LucieP]

We moved to SIMS Connected during the holiday and it has been nothing been trouble. We could not take any registers during registration on Tue and Wed this week at all. It crashes for all users at various points of the day. Some times you are told the VPN is too busy and to try again later. Our experience of Connected has been woeful at best.

[supportman]

We moved to SIMS Connected during the holiday and it has been nothing been trouble. We could not take any registers during registration on Tue and Wed this week at all. It crashes for all users at various points of the day. Some times you are told the VPN is too busy and to try again later. Our experience of Connected has been woeful at best.

 

I mean, the very fact that is uses a technology from 20 years ago tells you everything you need to know.

 

A VPN can be very unreliable and slow. Any solution based on that is going to have issues.

[PotNoodleTech]

We moved to SIMS Connected during the holiday and it has been nothing been trouble. We could not take any registers during registration on Tue and Wed this week at all. It crashes for all users at various points of the day. Some times you are told the VPN is too busy and to try again later. Our experience of Connected has been woeful at best.

 

We are being pushed into SIMS Connected too.

 

The comments I read on here like the above fill me with dread.

 

I'd move to a new MIS tomorrow if it was my decision but sadly I am no where near my headship :-/

[jthompson]

I've found this page helpful when trying to manage user expectations this week - https://parentpaygroup.service-now.com/csm?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0037319

 

I've subscribed to it so that ought to give me a sense of the number of issues throughout the year.

 

The service seemed fine for us on results days, but it's been patchy this week.

 

Still happy to have the server off my hands, though.

[3s-gtech]

It has been canine excrement since the start of term. Slow, crashy and frustrating. At least we have plug-ins for lesson registers etc.

[atcoates]

We had this at two sites and nothing but frustration for staff. Since they switched to Arbor a few years ago they both been a lot happier and learning curve didn't seem that high as they all quickly grasped the changes.

[Beduffshirl]

If you think it's bad now, wait till ESS have FORCED every school using a perfectly adequate, and probably cheaper, locally hosted solution on to Sims Connected. My prediction is it will die by the 2nd or 3rd LA/group of schools that they bring on.

[gaz350b]

We started with sims connected last week. (Which was fine) but past few days with more schools coming back and there are no words to describe how bad things have been.

We probably lost a full days access in total over 2 days.

 

Seems more reliable today but logins are still on the long side with the odd RDS is busy message which suggests too many users being allocated to the application server.

 

We have 2 separate schools sharing about 40+ staff across the 2 schools. We know we are an edge case but setting up staff who work at each school is soooo painful sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t. It was such a bad experience for staff I now personally set passwords on new staff and test to make sure they have access to everything without any errors.

 

Little things like admin/teaching staff who work at 3 schools all need to be staff members at each school. This creates 3 sims ID’s but because the email is the same this causes all sorts of issues. You then have to invite the chosen Sims ID to each of the other 2 schools. Wait for the user to accept the invite. Then approve their account again at each school.

 

You then have to assign a security group to allow the sims app for each school to the user.

 

After some hours you can go back into Sims at each school and link their accounts in system manager to the same SIMS ID.

 

If you are lucky you get a working account if not then you have to tell the account to resync with sims ID but you have to find which school the SIMS ID belongs to and do it there!

 

It’s such a faff…..

Edited September 7, 2023 by gaz350b

[HereIGoAgain2601]

I am sorry to say that this was our experience for 12 months. It was terrible from the day we started till the day we left. We luckily managed to negotiate our exit from SIMS connected and have gone back in house over summer. Best thing we ever did. There have been the usual sims issues this week where people have forgot the password, but nothing major and our in house team sorted it all in a reasonable timeframe. What you are describing with sims connected was our experience for 12 months on and off. Some weeks were better than others but they were all worse than before. Good luck!

 

My gut feeling is that ESS don’t have a clue what they are doing and will end up losing a shed load more schools as soon as the 3 year contracts are up. Even the stragglers who want to stay with SIMS are doing so because they are scared of change or functionality issues in some areas and just love the old SIMS console. If/when ESS eventually finish next GEN and want to force everyone over, these people will also be naffed off and look to change anyway given they may as well consider options now the status quo is disappearing.

[3s-gtech]

One of my least favourite things of all is that people still come to me when it messes the bed. When we hosted it, I could do something about it (or moan to our data manager about running a routine!)

 

Now, I say there’s nothing I can do (other than email support) and you can see the irritation this causes. Great - I love being made to look useless.

 

We could build a better MIS ourselves. We almost did.

[supportman]

Have you all signed up for new 3 year contracts then when moving to Sims hosted?

[3s-gtech]

Probably, not sure with our LEA. Two years left anyway.