Forced Redirect for Timetables on SIMS 7 To Next Gen

[AnglianEdu]

This morning both of our schools appear to have a silent update made to their Next Gen settings, enforcing all timetables have to be viewed in Next Gen rather than SIMS7.

We did not command this and it appears that other schools have also had the same issue today which appears to be an attempt to force Next Gen adoption by stealth. 

 

The ironic thing is that even for those staff who did have Next Gen access, the link didn't work for any student or staff member anyway, as it either gave an error or took the staff member to the timetable search page rather than that student's timetable.

We've since seen that you can disabled the redirect in the Next Gen admin console, but this only will take effect from tomorrow, which is not really what we are looking for.

 

It is unacceptable in my view that ESS are forcing these things on people with these silent updates, and that's before we take into account the functionality actually does not work!!!

Has anyone else had experience with this?

[Boredguy]

If you have the Admin access for your SIMS Next Gen, go to the Admin Console, and at the bottom is the SIMS 7 Redirect link.

You can set Timetables, Conduct and Registers to take effect at the end of term instead of right now.

It won't take effect straight away, but will for tomorrow.

 

There was a post about this yesterday here hence we know where to change the setting (and just had to do this for one of our schools where it was redirected overnight and causing a nightmare as wasn't publicised well)

[AnglianEdu]

The problem with this is going to be what happens when they enforce it fully in July?

The functionality doesn't even work properly, it just redirects to the timetable home page for pupils rather than takes you to the relevant student timetable. 

Also it's missing so many features compared to SIMS7 - no ability to email a timetable to students for a start, which is kinda a big omission as when we enrol people or change their timetables we need to email them an updated copy! 

Do these people even think about what schools want or do they just try and force us into it?

 

Edited June 17 by AnglianEdu

[Boredguy]

I've set my site to not take effect until the end of term, but we'd already sent Next Gen login details out to staff last May, and redid it again.

 

If it wasn't for the fact that Linked Documents don't work, I'd have enabled the student profile redirection.

 

PPG don't really think about timing and users, case in point the FMS nightmare people are having in other threads

[colly72]

We got an email about this in the middle of May, so were able to disable the redirects until the end of this term but it will automatically start redirecting in September, which is extremely annoying, as we're moving to iSAMS next Easter, so we're going to end up in some hybrid half-arsed solution for 6 months.  It's just another example of the botch that is SIMS Next Gen, that reinforces our decision to move away from it.