SIMS CommandReporter tool equivalent in Arbor?

[cn198]

Hi all,

 

I'm currently working with a school that uses SIMS, and we extract data from SIMS by using the CommandReporter tool (via Windows Command Prompt) to run reports, that then returns back an XML file with all the data. I then have some code to read in the file and put the data into Excel. However, is there anything of an equivalent nature to the CommanReporter tool in Arbor, as the school is in a trust and the other schools are interested in the system I've developed, so just wondered if there are options to run reports in Arbor, say via the command prompt, just like I can with SIMS?

 

Many thanks,

 

Chris

[steveg]

You can do a live feed into excel from a custom report, would that achieve the same thing?

 

https://support.arbor-education.com/hc/en-us/articles/360008595254-Using-Live-Feeds-to-export-data-out-of-Arbor

[cn198]

Hi there,

 

That sort of does some of what I want. But the problem is I can't define then exactly what I want when I ask for data. In my custom SIMS report I have aspect names for data, which I have selected need to be specified at runtime. When I run the commandreporter tool I supply an XML file that defines these parameters, effectively telling SIMS what aspect names I want at that moment. Doing it this way means that I can have many different systems asking for data from SIMS, but I only need one report in SIMS that can supply various bits of data to each of these systems.

 

Going down the Live Feed route, I'm guessing I'd need many different reports in Arbor to then supply data to these systems.

 

Chris

[andy_b]

This potentially sounds like an MIS agnostic data extractor would be better, e.g. something like Wonde.

 

Certainly if you are trying to market this to multiple schools.

[dhicks]

is there anything of an equivalent nature to the CommanReporter tool in Arbor, as the school is in a trust and the other schools are interested in the system I've developed

 

I'd also recommend looking at Wonde - I haven't used it from a developer point ofview myself yet, but there was a similar thread a couple of weeks ago where people were looking at pricing. Turns out it's quite affordable, you pay per-school, it's the kind of thing you can scale as you add schools using your system.

 

What is it you are writing - something that processes data from an MIS in some way to produce graphs / charts of some kind?

[jthompson]

I've been able to do some cool automations off the back of querying Wonde from Google Apps Script projects. Once I began to get the hang of it it's much neater than working with file output from command reporter. Hugely powerful.

 

If you register yourself as a Wonde developer, that would be your route to setting yourself up with API access to your schools' MIS data, and your projects would work the same regardless of which MIS a school was using.

 

There's obviously a bit of a learning curve and cost there in terms of setting it up and working out the basic Powershell functions or whatever to begin exploiting it in your projects (and there's always ChatGPT to help), but if you're a coder at all I would consider it.

[Jonah]

There’s also the possibility to query via the Arbor API directly - we do this for our provisioning tools.

[cn198]

Thanks everyone, I will certainly investigate Wonde, that's definitely a potential path.

 

 

So basically what I'm doing is building what we call "trackers", that track results of pupils in both primary and secondary, and allows us to colour code their academic journey, helping us to easily identify pupils who are not where we expect them to be. But I do this all in Excel, which gives an easy platform for teachers to use, and allows them to do all kinds of filtering with the data (via autofilters) to analyse the data, especially in subgroups, like PP, FSM, SEN etc... I've written code via VBA in Excel to access a bespoke (but generic) SIMS report, that the tracker itself can define what data it needs. Once SIMS delivers back the XML file with the data, I then have code (again via VBA) to read in the file, process the data and dump it back into the Excel file. The end result is that the teacher has a data analysis file (aka the Tracker), that they can click a button to get the latest data from SIMS, and it's then instantly analysed and colour coded. Meaning they spend no time collating and processing data, and more time actually doing something with the data. But because the SIMS report is generic, I can have many different tracking systems (i.e. one for English, one for Maths, or even one for all of Secondary) all using that same report, because via the commandreporter tool, the tracker can tell SIMS what pupil data it wants. We've even built tracking systems for pupil attendance and a staff SCR. So it all works really well, but obviously it's all just inherently linked to SIMS. We kind of liken it to putting a skin on SIMS. Trying to work out if it's possible to do this outside of SIMS is proving challenging, and will definitely require a different approach.

 

There’s also the possibility to query via the Arbor API directly - we do this for our provisioning tools.

 

API could also be a good approach, thank you, definitely worth investigating too.

[psydii]

I would also strongly recommend you look for more platform agnostic tooling than VBA. At some point VBA will be more of a hassle to customers than a 3rd party product is worth. (SIMS requires them and if they've moved off that there is a good chance your product is the last thing that requires them).

[cn198]

I would also strongly recommend you look for more platform agnostic tooling than VBA. At some point VBA will be more of a hassle to customers than a 3rd party product is worth. (SIMS requires them and if they've moved off that there is a good chance your product is the last thing that requires them).

 

Yes, very much agreed on that!

[dhicks]

I would also strongly recommend you look for more platform agnostic tooling than VBA.

 

It might be worth a bit of collaboration here - I'm currently writing some very similar-sounding functionality, getting data from an MIS (iSAMS in our case) and writing out a bunch of CSV / Excel files ready to be further processed (in this case by PowerBI). I'm writing that in Python, which is generally quite cross-platform, and I have a server that provides a basic user interface and handles security.

[cn198]

It might be worth a bit of collaboration here - I'm currently writing some very similar-sounding functionality, getting data from an MIS (iSAMS in our case) and writing out a bunch of CSV / Excel files ready to be further processed (in this case by PowerBI). I'm writing that in Python, which is generally quite cross-platform, and I have a server that provides a basic user interface and handles security.

 

I'm kind of flipping that though, I have a complex tracking system built in Excel, which itself can pull the data into. This gives a completely self contained system that the teachers can run themselves with just one click of a button. If at all possible I'm trying to mimic that. So the main process here is getting the data out of the MIS (in this case Arbor), and Wonde or API access can hopefully give that. Longer(ish) term, trying to ditch VBA, I'd like to again keep things as contained as possible, so I'm hoping MS will pull their finger out and decide what they are going to do in having a cross platform (i.e desktop & web) language to script in, and port over to that.

[DODICT]

Could you not just use the BI connector directly into Excel and use power query - the connector is an extra cost but a scalable and efficient means to access any data you want from that point. The user experience would be better to replace Excel with Power BI but appreciate that potentially has licensing implications but I think thats prob the tool I would be looking at longer term if you wanting to provide self sufficient interactive analysis to teachers etc.

[cn198]

Could you not just use the BI connector directly into Excel and use power query - the connector is an extra cost but a scalable and efficient means to access any data you want from that point. The user experience would be better to replace Excel with Power BI but appreciate that potentially has licensing implications but I think thats prob the tool I would be looking at longer term if you wanting to provide self sufficient interactive analysis to teachers etc.

 

Yeah working in a school environment I am limited in what I can utilise, and what budgets will allow. Office is a great tool in that respect because it's free for educational use, hence me trying to use it to the max. Plus most teacher are pretty decent with using Excel as part of their job, so picking up using the trackers is a shallow learning curve.

[DODICT]

As I said the connector can be accessed via Excel and then with very little time or effort from that point in terms of accessing the data even if you wanted to stick with excel as the reporting tool its worth a look. Over time its going to offer value to support your efforts.