[sims] Onboarding new Yr 7 - Parent details, medical etc

[Andycat]

Hi, after a particularly fractious start of year due to new staff in both Office Manager and Data Manager posts, we're looking at a better (paperless?) way of onboarding new Year 7s.

 

For info, we have SIMS (sorry), Synergy on top, we also use Firefly for parent messages etc. We once had School Comms too, maybe still have...

 

At the moment, we get the CTF files in, but manually get forms filled in by parents confirming addresses, medical issues etc. and then these get typed into SIMS by ever decreasing office staff. Is there a better way of doing this, are there products or bolt ons that can do this all electronically? Send out a request then have the info synced into SIMS?

 

We (IT) only get involved once the pupils are in SIMS, Locker does the account creation etc and it's quite slick once the correct info is in SIMS; this is the blocker at the moment!

 

Any advice gratefully received!

 

Andy

[pete]

Our current approach that replaced the paper forms a few years ago is:

 

Mail-merged email to new parents with a unique code per-parent and a link to the "Pupil Record Form Sep 2024" Microsoft Form.

 

Parent puts unique code in top of form.

 

Parent fills out form.

 

Spreadsheet from form is copy-pasted into pupil records.

 

Once the initial rush is over, Power Automate routine will alert office staff to new rows on the spreadsheet for mid-year joiners.

 

Is it perfect? No. Is it faster with fewer transcription mistakes? Yes. It knocked days off the Y7 bulk entry.

[ITGuyNW]

I believe our admin staff use Applicaa for this Home - Applicaa

 

Admissions+ - Applicaa

[jmak]

Edit: first answer below. I've never come across Applicaa before, but it looks like the answer to your prayers!

 

Original answer:

 

There was a workaround documented on here which allowed you to convert spreadsheet to a ctf which could be imported and quite a few people reported success.

 

However, there's nothing supported by SIMS. The best we did was get parents to submit a form and then office staff were at least copying and pasting rather than retyping from illegible handwriting. Speed was only a small improvement. Accuracy was transformed.

Edited October 30, 2024 by jmak

[Andycat]

I believe our admin staff use Applicaa for this Home - Applicaa

 

Admissions+ - Applicaa

 

This looks exactly the thing... are they happy with it?

 

Ta,

 

Andy

[ITGuyNW]

Yeah they seem to be and any issues they've had have been swiftly resolved by their support.

[DrCheese]

Yes, we've used Applicaa for the past 4/5 years. Works really well.

 

Only headache is the odd parent not filling in the forms at all but that's no different than the paper based way - Always the annoying stragglers.

[Maria_Admicity]

If you’re still looking for a solution (and your school hasn’t changed MIS since this post was made last year), Admicity is the simplest way to onboard your new intake!

 

Admicity will create the SIMS applicant record and sync all the registration data automatically. It has a continuous two-way data exchange, so the information is visible in SIMS in real time shortly after  it’s been entered into Admicity by parents. It keeps data up-to-date for on-roll students as well as automating the whole admissions process and other admin workflows. www.admicity.co.uk