At what time of the year did you move to Arbor?

[Sonic007]

Hi,

 

We are planning a move from Sims to Arbor and wondered at what time in the year did schools decide to do this and if you faced any challenges along the way?

 

Thankyou.

[Chris_Cook]

I think we moved at easter, but continued to use some modules like exams and timetable until the end of the summer holidays. There isn't a good time for exams. Payments etc we kept with parent pay, but just linked it with Arbor - this was to avoid too much change for parents in one go.

 

Things have developed since we moved, so issues would probably be different.

 

I'd suggest making use of the test migrations to see what happens with your data. Timetabling was an issue finding the best system for our timetable, but then ours is fairly complex.

 

Training was also a big thing for us. Staff engagement and lack of motivation to move is just difficult. Why do today what you can put of to tomorrow?

 

Its a big change and as has been said on here before - if you just want sims in the cloud then this isn't what Arbor or Bromcom is. Bits work differently and expecting to change and be at the same level of speed and efficiency your staff are with sims isn't realistic. It will take a year or 2 to become experts. Having said that - the differences are generally good, and the documentation I thought was much better and more concise. I understood a bits of sims after reading the Arbor docs that I never really understood in sims. Also, some of our school processes were linked quite closely with how sims works, so a willingness to be flexible to how Arbor works and accepting that Arbor might be better in some ways is key. Staff attitudes are difficult though, and no one wants to change just for the sake of it. 

 

There are still things we are figuring out like reporting and behaviour and how to use them best. Some of that is just because we have to manage these things differently that a few years ago. Its important to have support in place for staff. Its also a bit of a moving target as its getting more development than sims did. But this is one of the things that appealed to us - we wanted something that would continue to get better over time.

[Sonic007]

Thankyou Chris for your helpful reply. That is some good information there.

We are looking at possibly Easter or May half term so that away from the hectic start of term and past the census periods. 

Luckily we don't use timetabling. We use Parentmail at the moment but plan to get everything into Arbor to avoid parents having more than one App.

 

Anyone else made the move and have info to share?

 

 

Thankyou.

Edited December 4, 2025 by Sonic007

[AlistairB1983]

Similar to Chris, we also moved at Easter but kept some SIMS modules running (i.e. Exams) in the background. We'd already moved to using Timetabler for the timetable that year as we knew in advance we'd be moving then (and the SLT member in charge of the move was also responsible for overseeing the Timetable, so he knew from early on!).

 

I'd also agree that the hardest part is going to be staff buy in - getting them to understand that processes will work differently. And some things will simply not be possible to recreate, so people need to evaluate why they needed what they used previously and whether there are any alternatives that still give them that.

 

We moved in Easter 2024, and I would say that within 12 months the overwhelming majority of staff were happy we did. Sure, there's still the occasional grumble that X or Y doesn't work the same way that it did on SIMS, but there's more than enough other stuff that works way, way, WAY better that it's always a fairly easy sell to remind those complaining about missing features of all the new features they have in exchange.

 

One of the other schools in the area did move in September - they moved this September. I had a number of conversations with my equivalent (Data Manger, amongst other titles) over there and helped them get prepped before the summer and helped them navigate their first census (which, by all accounts, took them less than half the time it used to!) and they've managed it okay. That's not so say there weren't bumps in the road, but you'll get that with any MIS.

 

Personally, I would suggest over Easter rather than the half-term. It just gives you an extra week to be able to check that everything has imported correctly and looks good to go when everyone comes back. Over half term might only give you a couple of days to do this, as it'll take Arbor about 2/3 days to move everything over.

 

But their transition team was superb. From being given an entire workbook to work through in terms of what bits of data to 'tidy up' prior to migration, to being given a test site to check our data imports correctly, it really was straight forward. So straight forward in fact, that the school managed to navigate the roll out of Arbor in my absence as I had conveniently timed my paternity leave to coincide with the switch. And when I came back the school wasn't on fire, registers had been taken, and everyone was learning the new system just fine.

[Mrluckhurst]

Just another vote for Easter - started the process in January for staff training etc. and then moved over at the end of term 4. We then delayed the parent app for a month to allow us to iron out what we needed to before it all went live. 99% of staff have never looked back.

 

Federation of Junior and Infant school - about 1000 pupils

[FragglePete]

We did ours over the Christmas break, just seemed the quietest time in the school calendar with nothing major going on and then have everything setup to use in Exams, etc in the New Year.

 

However, timing was key - as obviously being Christmas and getting all the third parties lined up was the tricky part with them shutting down; things like cashless catering and wonde was the main worry.  You had to book well in advance for some and even then they wouldn't allow you to book a slot until the was fully complete.  I was 'transferring' our data to Arbor on the Friday afternoon last day of term when all staff where enjoying the Christmas festivities before they went home.

 

Staff came in the New Year on a new system and generally it went very well - but you really need your key data players involved from the very start.

Pete

[Linfit]

We moved from SIMS to Bromcom at Feb half term. We picked this as the quietest period - wanted to avoid xmas as 3rd party support not available, and Sept as too much else going on - and it means all the training has to be before Summer holidays and then there is a long gap before implementation. No major census due and mock exams done. We did exam entries in SIMS as we knew these would carry through, but the lead time was enough for the EO to manage the summer exams in Bromcom with support from me. The key is in the prep - if your data is in a good state the transition is easier. I spent the whole of the Autumn term working on this (and training, especially for key players - exams, attendance etc). Had no major issues in the end. 

[daturum]

You need to check you will get a choice - Arbor had so many schools migrating to them last year, many were being done over a weekend because the holidays had been fully booked.

 

We got in before that and booked for our primaries to go over at Easter and our Secondaries over the Summer. The latter was more problematic, as things like the timetable have to be exported to SIMS and courses set up despite the fact you are not going to use them in SIMS. 

[KK20]

September started process, January go-live, coinciding with inset training (for the masses, key people were already onboard beforehand).  Then we decommissioned SIMS in time for April renewal.

[emmaburt26]

On 04/12/2025 at 11:47, daturum said:

You need to check you will get a choice - Arbor had so many schools migrating to them last year, many were being done over a weekend because the holidays had been fully booked.

 

We got in before that and booked for our primaries to go over at Easter and our Secondaries over the Summer. The latter was more problematic, as things like the timetable have to be exported to SIMS and courses set up despite the fact you are not going to use them in SIMS. 

I know this is an old post but jumping in here as we are migrating to Arbor from Sims in the summer, our migration starts on the last day of the academic year but I can't fully get clarity as to whether the timetable for next year, if we have it imported into sims before the migration, would actually move over, our project lead in Arbor says no but others in the Arbor community site say yes. 

Please say it worked for your secondaries!

[Sylv3r]

Our 5 secondaries all moved over for September and yes, we used Nova-T for the timetable and imported into SIMS initially, then that transferred over fine as part of the Arbor data migration.

 

However, if you just need to make minor timetable tweaks then you will be able to do that within Arbor itself from the go live i.e. room / staffing changes, however if you are wanting to make major timetable changes, you will need to create everything again in Timetabler etc.

 

I know Timetabler is now part of the Arbor family, so there may be better integration and data may flow both ways then there was a few years ago.

 

 

[emmaburt26]

that's perfect!

 

thanks so much for coming back to me.

 

Yes we have Timetabler, we're just worried about getting up to speed with it in time to get our timetables built in it ready for September, we're should all be able to get it imported into Sims before migration date and then yes small tweaks like a staff member change could be managed in Arbor until we can get it the timetable into Timetabler properly.

 

 

[Sonic007]

Thought I'd update my post:

 

We've just migrated to Arbor and did it the weekend before half term. This gave us a few days to test the system before the  children and teachers come back.

Very smooth sailing and Arbor have been great answering any little issues we had.