Inventry Had its day ?

[mattysmith80]

After a year long battle to get Inventry to get Central working for our 35 School MAT I think Inventry has had its day, its reminding me of Sims, where they failed to innovate quickly enough and the other players in the market are hitting them hard.

 

They are desperating trying to get us to use their half baked, half way house cloud system that essentially does nothing for a Trust and still uses a pieces of software locally to have access to central staff records.

 

Add that to them then just adding a school thats not one of ours to our access over the weekend so we could then see all their staff and pupil info and have full admin rights to their system. How can we even trust them not to add one of our schools to someone elses access ?

 

I feel like its a company why are not prepared or ready to adapt to the cloud and offer a half baked solution to many of the bolt ons.

 

Really frustrated.

[Zoom7000]

I moved our schools to Sign In App for this very reason. A very bloated system full of things that the vast majority of users I've spoken to simply don't use and also, not having a "Cloud First" strategy in 2024 is just poor.

[Pottsey]

The best thing we did was move away from InVentry to Sign In App.

[ITGuyNW]

Do sign in app provide the equipment if needs be? or do you need your own ipad?

[mattysmith80]

We have been trialling Sign in App and works really well. You can buy an iPad and case off Sign in App or use your own..

[Scan099]

We moved to EntrySign for those same reasons, plus support took forever to get back to you. EntrySign support are amazing plus they answer the phone.

 

Looked at Sign in app but that didn't integrate with the Paxton Net 2 system we have.

[speakercon]

I see Inventry as very much the SIMS of the visitor/staff/student management system. But still seems well liked (by those who do not have deal with it's issues).

 

+1 for Sign in App.

[Rob_D]

Do sign in app provide the equipment if needs be? or do you need your own ipad?

They have options for you to buy or lease the hardware (iPad, printer, floor/desk stand, rf dongle thingy), in their "Full Package" options. As far as I've seen, the only additional costs you'd have to cover yourself would be the paper/labels for the printer.

https://signinapp.com/buy

[Zoom7000]

Do sign in app provide the equipment if needs be? or do you need your own ipad?

 

You can use an existing iPad or buy one from them. There are a few other things that you might want to buy from them to bring it all together as a full solution, but you can also find them cheaper online:

 

Boundpad Enclosure - There are several types to hold the iPad in different ways.

Sign In Tap - For tapping ID cards to sign in.

Printer - For visitor badges

Roll - Though you can buy these cheaper on Amazon

Badge Holder - Again, cheaper on Amazon

[kidpressingbuttons]

we've dropped inventry from some schools we inherited with a year left on the contract as the support has just been so bad. Sign in App just works!

[andy_b]

We moved to EntrySign for those same reasons, plus support took forever to get back to you. EntrySign support are amazing plus they answer the phone.

 

Looked at Sign in app but that didn't integrate with the Paxton Net 2 system we have.

 

You can get a reader that will read the cards - just in typical Net2 fashion it is a different number to the "paxton" one.

[synaesthesia]

Same here, inventry to signinapp. Just works. Self registration of cards works well, it's priced well enough that even going all out with 2 sets of stands, readers, ipads etc from them cost us less than a year of just "renting" that horrid Inventry kit. Can add kit as and where we need without extra cost. We use paxton heavily but the integration was never a necessity.

[TRSJon]

Has anyone seen a system that can "sit" on the Inventry hardware (so Windows touchscreen)? Prior to my arrival, three systems were purchased outright - so difficult to move without quite a capital write-off. If we can re-purpose the equipment, it would make it easier to swap. But most systems i've seen use ipads/tablets.

[synaesthesia]

Has anyone seen a system that can "sit" on the Inventry hardware (so Windows touchscreen)? Prior to my arrival, three systems were purchased outright - so difficult to move without quite a capital write-off. If we can re-purpose the equipment, it would make it easier to swap. But most systems i've seen use ipads/tablets.

 

It's not worth it. Even the most modern Inventry kit is behind the times and may also fall foul of any requirements for TPM & suitably secure windows versions. It may have been expensive back then, but it's next to worthless now.

[mthomas08]

+1 another for Sign In App.

 

Just works.

 

Buy the iPads, set things up and voila done. Very cheap annual fee.

 

Now using Mosyle and I've got two new ones tied down and ready to swap out.

[TRSJon]

It's not worth it. Even the most modern Inventry kit is behind the times and may also fall foul of any requirements for TPM & suitably secure windows versions. It may have been expensive back then, but it's next to worthless now.

 

Trouble is, they are only 2 years old - well 2 years from September - as purchased Sept 2022

[DrCheese]

It's not worth it. Even the most modern Inventry kit is behind the times and may also fall foul of any requirements for TPM & suitably secure windows versions. It may have been expensive back then, but it's next to worthless now.

 

I argued this with them when we had to refresh our hardware recently - Why on earth they were still putting out machines that came with no TPM & fell foul of the Windows 11 requirements.

Their logic is that it runs the Windows 10 IOT version, which is supported for much longer but it doesn't show much in the way of forward planning on their behalf.

 

The hardware they give out now is of much worse quality than the HP touchscreen kit they've given out in the past.

 

I completely agree with all the statements in this thread - They are now the SIMS of sign in systems. The backend at this point is rubbish. I can semi understand the need to run SQL on the local machine so it functions independently, but they could easily cache a cloud based system.

 

I am so tired of seeing so many edutech companies make a great product, then put their feet up & let the product wither.

[mavhc]

Half the time they didn't make the product, they paid someone external to make it, and they know nothing about how it works or how to update it

[kidpressingbuttons]

I found the support was far from useful. All was based abroad, Could barely understand English. I had my accounts password reset 3 times as all replies to a previous ticket would still show in the subject line as password reset request.

 

From a fire evac pov I just couldnt trust it anymore as lost faith in it entirely.

[I_just_work_here]

Does anyone use Sign In App for their Sixth Form? Interested to learn how well it works with signing them in and out, and writing back their mark to the MIS (specifically SIMS Connected).

[synaesthesia]

Yup, just works. Have a separate group for our 6th form. They have ID cards anyway, so they just tap in and tap out, either in our 6th form block or in main reception. Also options to allow them (or anyone) the ability to use a mobile app for manual or automatic signing in or out.

[Oaktech]

We have an action plan to move away from InVentry. It's been a headache from the get go, but at the time our options were limited.

 

We are however a little bit stuck with SignInApp because some of my schools are a federation with multiple MIS and DfE numbers and sites in different postcodes, but we operate as a single primary school. SignInApp's pricing model means we have to do 2 of everything and it suddenly it isn't actually cheaper to change ecosystems. I'm going to have to work very hard on our Business manager to explain that spending £2500 to jump ship to SignInApp is actually cheaper than spending £1600 on an InVentry renewal.

[synaesthesia]

That's quite an interesting financial setup!

[PotNoodleTech]

I'm going to have to work very hard on our Business manager to explain that spending £2500 to jump ship to SignInApp is actually cheaper than spending £1600 on an InVentry renewal.

 

How about: this extra 900 quid is money well spent out of our 4 million anual budget as Inventry is unreliabile with terrible support and is only going to get worse, cause more problems and cost us more and more money in the long term in both own own staff time troubleshooting, and external costs in possible fees/contracts/engineer visits?

 

If your BM isnt able to balance initial cost with value for money with long term costs with reliability and pick the right outcome then maybe they shouldnt be your BM.

[psydii]

On the other hand with all of you jumping ship, and our simple single site on-prem requirements, I've found Inventry support to be dramatically improved these last few months.