SIMS NEXT GEN (SNG) - tips and tricks?

[MSGT]

I am about to dive fully into SNG (as an admin person not a teacher) as we're being moved over from SIMS7, and I am not finding things very intuitive or user friendly. It seems very teacher focussed and I am struggling to find things/use things in the same way as I currently do. Any tips and tricks that any one has to share, would be fab! As an example, currently I oversee the behaviour logs and I access this simply by focus, behaviour management, maintain behaviour incidents and then can view things really easily but in SNG it absolutely isn't as easily viewable or filters in the same way.  Many thanks all! 

[Gongalong]

You might get a better response on this Facebook group, if not already posted there, although there's a fair bit of negativity about Next Gen https://www.facebook.com/groups/905528349568586

[Boredguy]

Tips

Don't start using it as if it's SIMS.Net.  Treat it the same as any other new platform you've been asked to use, as it is designed more for Teachers so information isn't where you'd expect it to be as an office based role.

 

[MSGT]

26 minutes ago, Boredguy said:

Tips

Don't start using it as if it's SIMS.Net.  Treat it the same as any other new platform you've been asked to use, as it is designed more for Teachers so information isn't where you'd expect it to be as an office based role.

 

Yes I have quickly realised that its not designed for admin users - but its tricky navigating round it all. For example, i cant seem to find Lesson Monitor, edit marks... Which i use a lot in SIMS7. 

[MSGT]

42 minutes ago, Gongalong said:

You might get a better response on this Facebook group, if not already posted there, although there's a fair bit of negativity about Next Gen https://www.facebook.com/groups/905528349568586

School blocks fb but will look on my own one to see what they say - do you have any opinion on SNG?

[Gongalong]

We have EduLink One as well, and when I've used it for comparitive functions e.g. searching for student data, I've found EduLink so much quicker to use, and better laid out. Very few staff here are using Next Gen, but that's partly because they're used to SIMS7 and EduLink. ParentPay have tried to force usage Next Gen by redirecting parts of SIMS7 to it instead. You could opt out, but the communication and handling of that was and still is a mess. I haven't been following it, but the SLT staff here involved with reviewing Next Gen have said that ParentPay aren't keeping up with their timeline of feature implementation. We're planning a second look at Arbor this year, ahead of our SIMS renewal in a year or so.

[Boredguy]

16 minutes ago, MSGT said:

Yes I have quickly realised that its not designed for admin users - but its tricky navigating round it all. For example, i cant seem to find Lesson Monitor, edit marks... Which i use a lot in SIMS7. 

Thats because Lesson Monitor doesn't exist within SNG yet.
I still have out office based staff using SIMS.Net, and it's only the teachers using SNG for registers

 

[MSGT]

2 minutes ago, Gongalong said:

We have EduLink One as well, and when I've used it for comparitive functions e.g. searching for student data, I've found EduLink so much quicker to use, and better laid out. Very few staff here are using Next Gen, but that's partly because they're used to SIMS7 and EduLink. ParentPay have tried to force usage Next Gen by redirecting parts of SIMS7 to it instead. You could opt out, but the communication and handling of that was and still is a mess. I haven't been following it, but the SLT staff here involved with reviewing Next Gen have said that ParentPay aren't keeping up with their timeline of feature implementation. We're planning a second look at Arbor this year, ahead of our SIMS renewal in a year or so.

Ah ok - i havent used edulink but will see if i can find out some info on that. Also the forced redirect and opting out was turned off by the end of the summer... 

[Gongalong]

We forward dated the redirects to 2036, but ParentPay's comms suggested there would be a hard deadline beyond which redirects would be forced. I asked support this and couldn't get a straightforward answer, hence my mention of "mess". We had an email yesterday from ParentPay telling us there were issues with our redirects that "muts be resolved", but no clear detail on what. I raised that with support and have been told that nothing's wrong. Suffice to say, ParentPay's SIMS product management aren't doing themselves any favours.

[David44]

1 hour ago, Boredguy said:

Tips

Don't start using it as if it's SIMS.Net.  Treat it the same as any other new platform you've been asked to use, as it is designed more for Teachers so information isn't where you'd expect it to be as an office based role.

 

Any other new platform would have gone through an internal process to decide if it was the right product for the school. This is being forced on schools in an incomplete form that would never have passed that process.