conehead Posted September 25, 2008 Posted September 25, 2008 Anybody done the SIMS integration that establishes a connection between the users in Uniservity cLc and school SIMS system yet?
laserblazer Posted September 25, 2008 Posted September 25, 2008 We have Uniservity coming in to do a sales pitch to SMT on Monday. Anything you want me to ask them? 1
conehead Posted September 25, 2008 Author Posted September 25, 2008 We have Uniservity coming in to do a sales pitch to SMT on Monday. Anything you want me to ask them? I'm sure you will have plenty of questions yourself, but a couple that are interesting me. Why is the data sent from SIMS to Uniservity HTTP not HTTPS, and if it's encrypted, how? Plus I'm a bit nervous about how much and how detailed the info is, which is moved every night with the updates. username, firstname, surname, year group and whether they're a child or not is maybe understandable but phone numbers and addresses and anything else strikes me as overkill, if you really need this info you should be going into SIMS in school for it and I'm nervous about security and data protection issues with making this available on the Internet through Uniservity.
penfold_99 Posted September 25, 2008 Posted September 25, 2008 We have Uniservity coming in to do a sales pitch to SMT on Monday. Anything you want me to ask them? I have a few. when will uniservity be able to write back to sims? when will there be single sign on with the schools domain ie AD intergration? As these were promised to use months and months ago and they have yet to appear and so we dumped uniservity and stayed with moodle. When will the forums act like problem forums (text formatting is rubbish) Ask questions from a technical point of view not a usability one. Have you signed up yet?
penfold_99 Posted September 25, 2008 Posted September 25, 2008 Anybody done the SIMS integration that establishes a connection between the users in Uniservity cLc and school SIMS system yet? I've got the documentation but haven't done it.
Irazmus Posted September 25, 2008 Posted September 25, 2008 I've got a couple, but they're not SIMs related. Does the Uniservity database still hold user passwords in plain text? When is the promised templating system going to be implemented?
uniservity Posted September 26, 2008 Posted September 26, 2008 Thank you for your responses. I will try to answer them one at a time First "Why is the data sent from SIMS to Uniservity HTTP not HTTPS, and if it's encrypted, how?" The UniServity MIS client communicates with the cLc via a web service over SSL, all communication including auto updates are sent via HTTPS. Originally, when the first MIS integration client was released, some communication, such as the auto update communicated with the web service via a standard HTTP connection. However, any information sent via HTTP was always encrypted. If you would like to know further details please send a request to the UniServity Service Desk. Second "Plus I'm a bit nervous about how much and how detailed the info is, which is moved every night with the updates." I can confirm the following fields are transferred Pupil information Legal or preferred Forename (selected in the client software) Legal or preferred Surname (selected in the client software) Curriculum Year Date of birth Own email UPN - as an internal reference only Staff information (if the report is select in the client) Title Legal Forename Preferred Surname email Staff Code - as an internal reference Third "when will uniservity be able to write back to sims? when will there be single sign on with the schools domain ie AD intergration?" We are working on writing back to SIMS, but this is part of our product strategy and needs to fall in line with other items of work. We are also working on Active Directory integration and have made commitments to local authorities to ensure that this delivered in the coming months. Forth "Does the Uniservity database still hold user passwords in plain text?" Absolutely not. All passwords in the database are encrypted and stored. We have also added a number of additional security features around passwords to increase the security further. Fifth "When is the promised templating system going to be implemented?" Assuming this is referring to having template skins for schools? If so, this is will be addressed as part of a wider project being undertaken by UniServity although I can't provide you with a timeframe
alexbear1 Posted February 6, 2009 Posted February 6, 2009 has anyone actually got this to work fully not just transferring basic pupil data but real integration? we are thinking of buying capita's learning gateway thinking that might do the trick, but will it? will that link seemlessly with Uniservity? what are Uniservity telling people as we seem to be getting the message from them that it was never designed to do this, but contract with them says it does !!!! So what are the options? will Capita ever let anyone access their webparts or are all SIMS users doomed to failure and if so why did BECTA approve Uniservity? big questions I know anyione got any ideas or possible solutions?
Edu-IT Posted February 6, 2009 Posted February 6, 2009 has anyone actually got this to work fully not just transferring basic pupil data but real integration? At present all it seems to do is take user information from SIMS and put it on the cLc to create the users.
Tonyoung Posted February 9, 2009 Posted February 9, 2009 has anyone actually got this to work fully not just transferring basic pupil data but real integration? we are thinking of buying capita's learning gateway thinking that might do the trick, but will it? will that link seemlessly with Uniservity? what are Uniservity telling people as we seem to be getting the message from them that it was never designed to do this, but contract with them says it does !!!! AB1 - can you define the data you wish to write back to SIMS ? UniServity runs on a different platform to SIMS and is hosted remotely so getting data back to local school servers is going to be a challenge. The easiest option for Uniservity maybe to supply a web part that drops into the Capita learning gateway. What contract are you talking about ?
NewOrder Posted February 9, 2009 Posted February 9, 2009 I don't know the university system but the reply from university leads me to assume that if there are class groups in uniservity you have to provisison them yourselves. From the data supplied the provisioning of class groups cannot occur! Pupil information Legal or preferred Forename (selected in the client software) Legal or preferred Surname (selected in the client software) Curriculum Year Date of birth Own email UPN - as an internal reference only Most systems take from MIS class lists and put students in to class groups for sites, activities and so on. Some do this dynamically so when a student changes class in the MIS it occurs the following day in the learning Platform.
Edu-IT Posted February 9, 2009 Posted February 9, 2009 I don't know the university system but the reply from university leads me to assume that if there are class groups in uniservity you have to provisison them yourselves. From the data supplied the provisioning of class groups cannot occur! Pupil information Legal or preferred Forename (selected in the client software) Legal or preferred Surname (selected in the client software) Curriculum Year Date of birth Own email UPN - as an internal reference only Most systems take from MIS class lists and put students in to class groups for sites, activities and so on. Some do this dynamically so when a student changes class in the MIS it occurs the following day in the learning Platform. I'm not sure if I'm on the right track here but if pupils are in classes in SIMS then these classes are automatically imported.
Guest kerlj001 Posted February 10, 2009 Posted February 10, 2009 Sorry to hijack but i've successfully done the SIMS > Uniservity integration too. My issue is this: My students, staff AND Classes are successfully being automatically read from SIMS. What isn't being done is the mapping of items against SIMS Classes - that is to say, class 8FrFr2 is a year 8 French class taught by 'Mr Rennee' Sims told uniservity it had a user called 'Mr Rennee' Sims told uniservity it had a class 8FrFr2 Sims told uniservity class 8FrFr2 was a French class Sims told uniservity class 8FrFr2 was a year 8 class Why cant the system create the subject areas and associated permissions for me as it already has all the info? I want pupils to logon and only see links relevant to them? TIA Jody
danIT Posted February 10, 2009 Posted February 10, 2009 so it only assigns the teacher to the class not the pupils?
Edu-IT Posted February 10, 2009 Posted February 10, 2009 so it only assigns the teacher to the class not the pupils? No. Teachers are put together with their classes. You get separate classes imported, year groups as a whole and staff as a whole. Classes - 7FrFr2/8FrFr2/9FrFr2 etc Years - Year 7/Year 8/Year 9 etc Staff - Needs no explanation Why cant the system create the subject areas and associated permissions for me as it already has all the info? I want pupils to logon and only see links relevant to them? I'm guessing the system doesn't know that FrFr2 is a French class and plus you may want to show other pages to the pupils too. I think I'm right in saying that no other VLE will automatically create the areas on the site, like you want, using the data imported from SIMS but I am not entirely sure of this so correct me if I am wrong.
danIT Posted February 10, 2009 Posted February 10, 2009 So then the teacher picks the class that should be assigned to there class?
Edu-IT Posted February 10, 2009 Posted February 10, 2009 So then the teacher picks the class that should be assigned to there class? I'm not sure I follow. If you then create a page for 7FrFr2 all you have to do is assign the profile set 7FrFr2 to that page and everyone in that class will have access.
danIT Posted February 11, 2009 Posted February 11, 2009 Sorry I understand now, the groups get created but arent assigned to the course until its created?
Edu-IT Posted February 11, 2009 Posted February 11, 2009 Sorry I understand now, the groups get created but arent assigned to the course until its created? Yes, that's exactly it.
mleighton Posted February 13, 2009 Posted February 13, 2009 Not sure about how Uniservity integrates with SIMS, but most integration with SIMS is one way - involving reading csv or xml files generated from SIMS. Those of you asking about SIMS Learning Gateway web parts and integration with a VLE on a read/write basis, I can confirm that SIMS web parts integrate seamlessly with SharePoint, and allow users to write back to SIMS also. If you want to see an example then look at Example Solution Architecture: Blatchington Mill School
mleighton Posted April 12, 2009 Posted April 12, 2009 I think I'm right in saying that no other VLE will automatically create the areas on the site, like you want, using the data imported from SIMS but I am not entirely sure of this so correct me if I am wrong. If you use the SIMS Learning Gateway web parts in a SharePoint environment, then you can get all the provisioning you want - classes from SIMS, together with the requisite students and teacher. We have this information automatically created fior us, and updated every night. It also takes care of the permissions - which are transferred from SIMS - and we can even have the sites in SharePoint automatically set up for us if we want to. Combined with the fact that this system also writes back to SIMS, I think it is providing most, if not all, of what we as teachers are wanting. Students and parents can access as much or as little of SIMS as we want them to. You can see more information on this, together with a gallery of screenshots from schools, at The Kraal If you want any further info just let me know....
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