ISAMS - New Cloud Parent Portal

[APMerry]

Any isams users making use of the built in parent portal? They've released a new cloud parent portal that is honestly just as bad as the previous one.

 

Wondered if anyone had anything good to say about it.

[TechMonkey]

Seen a demo, I've not had hands on and won't be. Not enough, nowhere near in time.  I've been on at them to allow us to give parents a bank or utility provider style experience, to allow changes, view data and submit information for just under 10 years.  The school decided to go to My School Portal instead.

[vikpaw]

We use it, I don't have experience directly, but seems to work well. Allows us to link out to our payment system and get data back in.

Maybe you can push for new features now TechMonkey cos when we asked for stuff we were told it would only go into the new portal, as that's where the energy was focussed.

I know we've been providing feedback on the admissions portal as we're keen to see it includes the ability to manage re-enrolments.

 

They've also just announced a partnership with Stripe which is useful for handling payments. [Not sure if that's public knowledge yet]. 

[TechMonkey]

Just now, vikpaw said:

Maybe you can push for new features now TechMonkey cos when we asked for stuff we were told it would only go into the new portal, as that's where the energy was focussed.

I was told that these were the features that were coming to the new Parent Portal.  It was going to give so much more functionality and give a whole new level of interaction to Parents. & from the demo I saw it was the same as the old Parent Portal, just better looking and with widgets.  I know they will continue to develop it and add more but it is too late for us, we have invested in an external system.

 

iSAMS really need to get their skates on with development as they have been left behind.  I'm hopeful if they keep to some of the time frames we were told about at BETT, but timeframes have a consistent knack of slipping with iSAMS.  So we shall see.

[vikpaw]

The tech stack does need bringing up to date. I think it's a background task.

I keep asking for the ability to create my own API keys as I want control, but it's back burner.

Having said that, we've worked on a fair bit of custom dev and they've been really good and reactive.

I guess it all depends on the powers that be and what direction the product is taking, how they are prioritising the features etc. 

Lots of energy ploughed in to make it fit for the US with curriculum manager. We're gonna give that a good thrashing.

[APMerry]

For me it's just how limited the customisation is. We don't actually use a fair amount of the features and it's quite hard to hide what you don't use and looks bad. We were also hoping for a calendar feed that can be linked to your outlook as many parents ask for it. There's a suggestion for this feature on the isams ideas portal from 15 years ago that's just marked as a 'good idea'.

Edited June 6, 2025 by APMerry

[FloraDora]

We set up the cloud portal a couple of months ago due to iSAMS stating the "legacy" portal will be deprecated at the end of August.

 

LOTS of issues, particularly with styling, incorrect filtering on things like Exams (i.e. all exam cycles displayed in the drop down instead of those applicable to the pupil), unable to view academic reports, Medical Centre displaying very odd Condition Types which are displayed in the Visit Type field etc

 

The homepage displays the widgets but you don't need to be logged in to view that page.. literally just need a login screen and the widgets displayed behind that security.

 

Interactive forms menu no longer exists.

 

Statement of Account & Pay Invoices - Unable to view any statements of accounts and no ability to pay invoices.

 

My biggest bugbear is "View as Other" has disappeared... got a weak response from iSAMS.

 

Everything above was reported to iSAMS back in March.. am still waiting for a meeting with them to discuss these problems and have not had an answer about deprecation plan for end of August....

[rbjames]

We will probably move away from them next year - I'm fed up with being charged huge amounts for a lot of legacy modules which haven't kept up with the times along with their reluctance to allow is direct access to our own data. HUBMIS is the one we're currently favouring.

[APMerry]

20 minutes ago, rbjames said:

We will probably move away from them next year - I'm fed up with being charged huge amounts for a lot of legacy modules which haven't kept up with the times along with their reluctance to allow is direct access to our own data. HUBMIS is the one we're currently favouring.

Interesting, does HUBMIS have a parent portal or would you need to use a 3rd party for that?

Edited June 11, 2025 by APMerry

[rbjames]

It's quite a young system. It appears to handle the core aspect of pupil/staff/parent details, timetabling, some analytics, admissions and finance but leaves a lot of the other services to 3rd parties. They seem to be concentrating on integrations so we can choose other systems which will integrate. The pricing is about a third of isams. It's early days and I still have a lot of questions to ask but I'm looking forward to streamlining a lot of what we do.

[APMerry]

I'm definitely going to keep an eye on it. isams is expensive for what you get.

[TechMonkey]

1 hour ago, rbjames said:

... along with their reluctance to allow is direct access to our own data.

I've never had this issue.  We have access direct to the SQL database and the API.

 

I'll take a look at HUBMIS, sounds interesting.

EDIT:  Ohh, it is WCBS. I'll keep an eye but that does not fill me with joy.

Edited June 11, 2025 by TechMonkey

[rbjames]

3 minutes ago, TechMonkey said:

I've never had this issue.  We have access direct to the SQL database and the API.

 

I'll take a look at HUBMIS, sounds interesting.

 

Maybe I should revise that to 'reluctance of our bursar to pay for access to the API' 🙂 The data I'm working with doesn't change often so just exporting manually and feeding the file into a power automation is sufficient at the moment.

[vikpaw]

On 11/06/2025 at 13:47, rbjames said:

 

Maybe I should revise that to 'reluctance of our bursar to pay for access to the API' 🙂 The data I'm working with doesn't change often so just exporting manually and feeding the file into a power automation is sufficient at the moment.

You should be able to get SQL access for free (in order to write SSRS reports), albeit via IP Whitelisting. At least I thought it was free. Maybe it's included in our bundle.

[vikpaw]

On 11/06/2025 at 13:01, rbjames said:

It's quite a young system. It appears to handle the core aspect of pupil/staff/parent details, timetabling, some analytics, admissions and finance but leaves a lot of the other services to 3rd parties. They seem to be concentrating on integrations so we can choose other systems which will integrate. The pricing is about a third of isams. It's early days and I still have a lot of questions to ask but I'm looking forward to streamlining a lot of what we do.

Check if you can fully manage integrations yourself without having to make a support request to generate an API key. Otherwise it stifles progress and makes key cycling difficult.

[coolhands]

according to whichmis they only have 0.4% of the market. For me I only want to go mainstream which has to mean sims, arbor or bromcom. Integris and scholarpack are being moved onto arbor so they'll be gone. That way it's much easier to find if you can / can't / how to do something (eg like write report or whatever) and not be left on your own.

Edited June 13, 2025 by coolhands

[PotNoodleTech]

I agree to be very warey about 1 man band MIS companies - they signed up to a few of those over the last 20 years and each one ended up dying/being dumped at some point.  Stick with the big 3 or 4.

[rbjames]

Thanks - WCBS who develop it have been going for years and PASS was their old MIS we used before isams but certainly worth bearing in mind.

[midweek]

1 hour ago, coolhands said:

according to whichmis they only have 0.4% of the market.

Isn't that data for maintained schools so not really applicable to iSAMS?

[vikpaw]

iSAMS is defo big for international sector. I reckon they've got about 2000 schools.

I think the parent company IRIS is building something else for local (UK) state sector.

[Danp]

On 11/06/2025 at 07:34, FloraDora said:

Interactive forms menu no longer exists.

 

Yes it does.

 

The new portal is better than the old one, but it is free. If it something that had to be paid for then I wouldn't have it. At my schools, it's basically used for reporting an absence and accessing reports.

 

The old portal is no longer going this summer, it's been extended until 30 April 2026