moodymj1982 Posted January 21 Posted January 21 So, we are currently looking at options to move away from SIMS.Net. SIMS Next-Gen is nowhere near a viable product in its own right and the loss of market share is alarming! Does anyone have any feedback in their experiences in moving away from SIMS, what you've chosen and where there are things that you miss from SIMS?
MrEprise Posted January 21 Posted January 21 We ended up with Arbor, though our hand was forced a bit with that as ScoMIS had their contract taken away from them for SIMS support and so forth so we had to look at other options. It was a smooth-ish transition but for whatever reason that although I had permissions to pretty much everything in SIMS, when our DB was transferred to Arbor I lost everything except very basic access so trying to help other Staff and connecting services via the API's became very difficult initially. Things I miss from SIMS: I knew my way around it a lot better than with Arbor, even setting permissions seemed easier in SIMS than Arbor as I set what seems logical but in the end isn't quite what I'm after. I also can't see a way of publishing a cover list like we had from Nova-T6 which isn't so great but other than that, we were probably right to move away from SIMS. I'd would have liked to have seen Bromcom and how that compares but it wasn't up to me what we went with, so Arbor it is I guess. 1
Gongalong Posted January 21 Posted January 21 Just to add, Next Gen isn't a replacement yet for the SIMS 7 client. I suspect it will take years before everything gets moved over so that it's a fully cloud based MIS. We're still with SIMS, and I've seen some folks sing the praises of other cloud MISs, and others not so much. There's no perfect product.
nicholab Posted January 21 Posted January 21 I left Education in 2019 and Next Gen was already years behind. Arbor, Bromcom, and iSAMS all seemed good. 2 1
Devaleth Posted January 21 Posted January 21 Moved from a SIMS to Bromcom two years ago. It works, but not convinced it's as big of an improvement that others might say it is. Whilst it can do a lot more as a baseline, some elements are a downgrade even from SIMS, let alone from competitor addons (like roombookingsystem, SISRA, 4Matrix etc). You might come away from demo's thinking that you will be able to save a lot of money with cancelled licensing - you will save some but not as much as you think if you want workable solutions. Both starts of year have been really poorly supported due to Bromcom's public technical difficulties. Longer term I worry about the size of the saved pupil reports (there is a relatively low cap on Bromcom servers and additional capacity is expensive compared to cloud storage pricing generally) and how we will archive for longer term storage of student records. Overall it's a bit of a hodgepodge of a UI with most modules falling into either an old or a new style of interface You will likely have persistent issues with double period attendance registers not being taken by staff for the second (or later) parts Cover is a chore Room/resource booking is incredibly basic Homework is dreadful to use wTimetable is awful to use Assessment analysis is basic at KS4 and little more than an exams report at KS5 2FA implementation is heavy handed (in my opinion) The built in reports are overly formatted and trying to use them in place of csv exports adds time to tasks I sometimes need to do (I really miss the "period to a cell" exports from SIMS/NT6) Pluses I will say though that the scheduling of reports and behaviour workflows is an improvement on SIMS where these are almost non-existent. Being able to pull data through PowerBI is also great. Viewable audit logging of changes is also another plus. On the fly timetable adjustments are easy MCAS and the Student App are decent Teachers seem to find it ok. No complaints from their side although they were using a web interface that hooked into the SIMS database before this so anything would have been an improvement.
jthompson Posted January 21 Posted January 21 Switched from SIMS & EduLink to Bromcom last term. I guess it's 'okay'. From my POV as a user admin more than anything, I've noticed the following: Menus are all a bit confused, with things living under different top-level items. Especially for sysadmin items. e.g. Modules > Setup > System Users and Config > Setup > Roles and Permissions. It likes to load full lists of groups, students, staff, etc before then giving you filters to search down. That adds lots of friction, and presumably is less than optimal. The web UI is not responsive, so can't really be used on mobile. Even on laptops with smaller screens, taking a register involves users really needing to zoom the page out prior to opening their register. Given that it looks like it's built on Bootstrap, I found that gobsmacking. It basically forces some teachers to need to use the mobile app, when ideally they wouldn't. The mobile apps are very odd. There are three (parents, students, teachers) with no coherent branding or naming. The SSO capability of the web app isn't carried over to the mobile apps, so the teacher app for instance authenticates by scanning a QR code from the teacher's web browser on another machine, with no visibility or management of those sessions by admins. Onboarding of students feels like a afterthought that was subsequently forgotten about. Email features are not as good or intuitive for staff as in EduLink. Whilst scheduling of reports is more straightforward than with SIMS, there's no "don't output this if there are no results" option, meaning that I have empty reports sent to me each week when really I would just need to know about the odd times when they're not empty. The positives for me: You can add pages to a Favourites section of the menu, which helps on the unintuitive menu structure front. The global search box is useful for quickly surfacing individual student, contact or staff records, which was lacking in SIMS. You can search for contacts via email address, which is a welcome upgrade for me. We've just about managed to not have to continue paying for EduLink. SSO into the web app via MS or Google accounts works well for staff, with no end-user steps required in the first instance. That was helpful during the migration. SIMS Connected made an absolute meal out of SSO, by comparison. Bromcom did a thorough job project-managing the migration, including supporting our data migration from SIMS really well. Ahead of the go-live, we had access to a fully-functional test instance of Bromcom, so that we could test pretty much everything using a copy of our real data first. Overall, I think it was definitely worth migrating away from SIMS, but its idiosyncrasies will become apparent quite quickly and begin to grate.
LeMarchand Posted January 21 Posted January 21 2 hours ago, MrEprise said: I had permissions to pretty much everything in SIMS, when our DB was transferred to Arbor I lost everything except very basic access so trying to help other Staff and connecting services via the API's became very difficult initially. The only thing I miss about SIMS is my lack of permissions. How did you overcome this?
hallamke Posted January 21 Posted January 21 We switched from SIMS.net to Arbor in 2023. We began the project of setting everything up after the Easter break with an anticipated go live at the end of the Summer Term ready for September. Wasn't as painful as I expected with the data migration being managed by the Arbor team quite well. As with others we ha d a live demo site to play with as we moved along. The project management was a bit flakey (we went through 3 primary contacts in as many months which was painful). The documentation was done through a Google Sheet. This worked but was a bit clunky. Staff have been hit and miss about the change as you can imagine (genarally anything different is bad 🤣). Full training was provided and the Arbor help system is reasonably good. Ive not missed the thrice yearly updates that inevitably broken things and would require database patches up the wazoo to fix. We had switched from FMS the year before (PS Financials) so dodnt have that nightmare to migrate. From an admin side we've not looked back. I hated SIMS and its many quirks (doing my own server / SQL upgrades didnt help much 🤣🤣🤣 ). Overall its been mainly positive. I'm not so sure I would have like to do a mid-year switch as others have done. I guess its down to when you can get the migration all booked in. We had ours order with Arbor processed in the latter part of The Autumn Term 2022 to secure the Summer switch over 😉
nicholab Posted January 21 Posted January 21 I would say with a lot of these systems you need a permission matrix and may need to build custom permissions groups. Bromcom the permissions are there you just need to build customer groups and you need to be a top level admin.
jthompson Posted January 22 Posted January 22 Yup, creating and assigning all the various roles and permissions was somehting our data office did, rather than me. They started out with the OOB "Class teacher" and "Admin" roles in Bromcom, and built out from there. In terms of timing of a migration, the two main constraints for us were the SIMS renewal date and exams. Finding a time in the year that didn't land in the middle of something exams-wise was almost impossible. We went live during the October half term break: avoiding going live right at the start of September, but ahead of as much other stuff as possible. 1
moodymj1982 Posted January 22 Author Posted January 22 19 hours ago, Gongalong said: Just to add, Next Gen isn't a replacement yet for the SIMS 7 client. I suspect it will take years before everything gets moved over so that it's a fully cloud based MIS. We're still with SIMS, and I've seen some folks sing the praises of other cloud MISs, and others not so much. There's no perfect product. Absolutely, the main issue is we are in a position where we are being urged to move to cloud-based technology and the reports on hosting our current (MASSIVE) SIMS database in the cloud are major concerns. The other problem is that we are trying to assess alternative products in the market and SIMS/ParentPay are trying to maintain what they have and develop a new product with unclear timelines of when things are going to move to the cloud. Census goes this summer, but no clarity on what's next. All we know is that we need to rebuild the behaviour system to use Next-Gen and we have no clarity on reporting function, timetabling and exams. Plus, SIMS is losing so much market share at present, there's an argument that in another 3 years they won't be a viable option.
moodymj1982 Posted January 22 Author Posted January 22 18 hours ago, Devaleth said: Moved from a SIMS to Bromcom two years ago. It works, but not convinced it's as big of an improvement that others might say it is. Whilst it can do a lot more as a baseline, some elements are a downgrade even from SIMS, let alone from competitor addons (like roombookingsystem, SISRA, 4Matrix etc). You might come away from demo's thinking that you will be able to save a lot of money with cancelled licensing - you will save some but not as much as you think if you want workable solutions. Both starts of year have been really poorly supported due to Bromcom's public technical difficulties. Longer term I worry about the size of the saved pupil reports (there is a relatively low cap on Bromcom servers and additional capacity is expensive compared to cloud storage pricing generally) and how we will archive for longer term storage of student records. Overall it's a bit of a hodgepodge of a UI with most modules falling into either an old or a new style of interface You will likely have persistent issues with double period attendance registers not being taken by staff for the second (or later) parts Cover is a chore Room/resource booking is incredibly basic Homework is dreadful to use wTimetable is awful to use Assessment analysis is basic at KS4 and little more than an exams report at KS5 2FA implementation is heavy handed (in my opinion) The built in reports are overly formatted and trying to use them in place of csv exports adds time to tasks I sometimes need to do (I really miss the "period to a cell" exports from SIMS/NT6) Pluses I will say though that the scheduling of reports and behaviour workflows is an improvement on SIMS where these are almost non-existent. Being able to pull data through PowerBI is also great. Viewable audit logging of changes is also another plus. On the fly timetable adjustments are easy MCAS and the Student App are decent Teachers seem to find it ok. No complaints from their side although they were using a web interface that hooked into the SIMS database before this so anything would have been an improvement. That's a really helpful list! I know that both Bromcom and Arbor are pushing their "one size fits all" options. I am under no illusion that module specially built for certain functions - like room booking and 4Matrix are going to be almost impossible to replace with these. So far, we aren't looking at culling the outlying modules that work - but will look at them as part of the process. Loads of really bad reports on the Arbor parent app, but apparently this is being redeveloped, so we aren't ruling out keeping our SchoolComms package just yet!
moodymj1982 Posted January 22 Author Posted January 22 17 hours ago, jthompson said: Switched from SIMS & EduLink to Bromcom last term. I guess it's 'okay'. From my POV as a user admin more than anything, I've noticed the following: Menus are all a bit confused, with things living under different top-level items. Especially for sysadmin items. e.g. Modules > Setup > System Users and Config > Setup > Roles and Permissions. It likes to load full lists of groups, students, staff, etc before then giving you filters to search down. That adds lots of friction, and presumably is less than optimal. The web UI is not responsive, so can't really be used on mobile. Even on laptops with smaller screens, taking a register involves users really needing to zoom the page out prior to opening their register. Given that it looks like it's built on Bootstrap, I found that gobsmacking. It basically forces some teachers to need to use the mobile app, when ideally they wouldn't. The mobile apps are very odd. There are three (parents, students, teachers) with no coherent branding or naming. The SSO capability of the web app isn't carried over to the mobile apps, so the teacher app for instance authenticates by scanning a QR code from the teacher's web browser on another machine, with no visibility or management of those sessions by admins. Onboarding of students feels like a afterthought that was subsequently forgotten about. Email features are not as good or intuitive for staff as in EduLink. Whilst scheduling of reports is more straightforward than with SIMS, there's no "don't output this if there are no results" option, meaning that I have empty reports sent to me each week when really I would just need to know about the odd times when they're not empty. The positives for me: You can add pages to a Favourites section of the menu, which helps on the unintuitive menu structure front. The global search box is useful for quickly surfacing individual student, contact or staff records, which was lacking in SIMS. You can search for contacts via email address, which is a welcome upgrade for me. We've just about managed to not have to continue paying for EduLink. SSO into the web app via MS or Google accounts works well for staff, with no end-user steps required in the first instance. That was helpful during the migration. SIMS Connected made an absolute meal out of SSO, by comparison. Bromcom did a thorough job project-managing the migration, including supporting our data migration from SIMS really well. Ahead of the go-live, we had access to a fully-functional test instance of Bromcom, so that we could test pretty much everything using a copy of our real data first. Overall, I think it was definitely worth migrating away from SIMS, but its idiosyncrasies will become apparent quite quickly and begin to grate. That interesting that you mention this. I thought that Bromcom has shown plenty of its own "quirks" in the demos we have seen already. The comment about taking registers is very helpful. We haven't done any in-class testing as yet, but I'll make sure we evaluate how a register is taken in a classroom (alongside the other usual class teacher activities).
Wizard101 Posted January 22 Posted January 22 IMO, Bromcom is less work for us as IT. Previously had SIMS and had constant tickets relating to SIMS. For teachers, there are some inconveniences/irritations with reports and UI. Bromcom is working to implement features they lack and improve their system based on feedback and have a roadmap you can view. I think in about 2/3 years Bromcom will be a solid choice for both IT and Teachers. As of now, I think it's just annoyances with previous features staff were used to having in SIMS which are not available in Bromcom as of yet.
Gongalong Posted January 22 Posted January 22 46 minutes ago, moodymj1982 said: Absolutely, the main issue is we are in a position where we are being urged to move to cloud-based technology and the reports on hosting our current (MASSIVE) SIMS database in the cloud are major concerns. Understood. I was fortunate at our school because we looked at what *objectives* we wanted to achieve with the MIS, and it was decided that SIMS still met those, and the cloud solutions didn't (of those, Arbor looked to be the favourite). We will continue to review here as it feels like the MIS landscape is still in flux, and will see what happens...
jthompson Posted January 22 Posted January 22 56 minutes ago, moodymj1982 said: Loads of really bad reports on the Arbor parent app, but apparently this is being redeveloped, so we aren't ruling out keeping our SchoolComms package just yet! My children's school uses Arbor, so I'm a parent end-user of Arbor. Not a great experience. My #1 bugbear being that it's forcing password changes at 180 days and offers no kind of MFA. The next is that messages recieved in Arbor don't get copied or notified to me via email, which is unhelpful. 1
Devaleth Posted January 22 Posted January 22 18 hours ago, jthompson said: The web UI is not responsive, so can't really be used on mobile. Even on laptops with smaller screens, taking a register involves users really needing to zoom the page out prior to opening their register. Given that it looks like it's built on Bootstrap, I found that gobsmacking. It basically forces some teachers to need to use the mobile app, when ideally they wouldn't Specifically on this note, if you have laptops or monitors that recommend 1080p @ 150% scaling this will cause you issues even beyond not seeing much on a page. Menu items will be entirely missing Timetables will not display key information such as rooms Changing to 125% scaling mitigates most of this, but 100% is preferred. Sadly this is a struggle for staff with weaker eyesight.
MrEprise Posted January 22 Posted January 22 19 hours ago, LeMarchand said: The only thing I miss about SIMS is my lack of permissions. How did you overcome this? The final migration was done right at the start of the Easter holidays which meant waiting for someone who had the permission to set permissions and at the same time, teach them how to set permissions as they didn't know how to. Basically waiting 2 and a half weeks to get the permission to set my own permissions and in that 2 week time period, I could have sorted API access to a lot of stuff but just couldn't. 1
LeMarchand Posted January 22 Posted January 22 1 minute ago, MrEprise said: The final migration was done right at the start of the Easter holidays which meant waiting for someone who had the permission to set permissions and at the same time, teach them how to set permissions as they didn't know how to. Basically waiting 2 and a half weeks to get the permission to set my own permissions and in that 2 week time period, I could have sorted API access to a lot of stuff but just couldn't. It was decided to cut down my permissions (good principle) but it means I can't automate a staff starter or leaver report in case I look at staff details.
TooOld4This Posted January 22 Posted January 22 One thing to bear in mind is that Arbor (can't comment on Bromcom) no longer uses the old .bak file restore method of migration. They now use the Groupcall API to obtain the data and it has proved to be a little problematic with some data missing. Also, as soon as your SIMS contract is finished you have to delete all of their software from your system, so leave yourselves plenty of time to ensure the data is correct.
Dusty_Jacket Posted January 26 Posted January 26 This is a very timely thread. I’ve seen SIMS nextgen, and I’m not all that impressed, less impressed with the pricing and uplift to cloud. Has Arbor’s savings made the change worthwhile?
Sonic007 Posted January 28 Posted January 28 Sims has always just been patched here and there and is based on a very out dated system. We looked at BromCom, Arbor, and Compas, and settled on Arbor. Lot's of primary schools seem to be using Arbor and I noticed more secondry schools using BromCom.
Dusty_Jacket Posted January 28 Posted January 28 (edited) Yeah, I haven’t had too many dealing with ParentPay, but the bits I have, I can’t say I feel it seems like it’s moved on much from the Capita days, it seems a big clunky siloed organisation. I can’t wait to get rid of it. Edited January 28 by Dusty_Jacket
AnglianEdu Posted January 30 Posted January 30 With us we looked at everything there was and decided to stay with Sims for our Sixth Form only provisions but go with Arbour for all through and Primary/Secondary schools.
Sonic007 Posted January 30 Posted January 30 I got fed up of Sims when they started confusing evereyone with On-prem Sims, Next Gen Sims, Hosted Sims, and whatever else.
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