Cost of giving parent access to SIMS

[CarolBooth]

Can anyone help with ideas on cheaper ways of giving parents access to SiMS data (like attendance, assessment and timetable) without buying the Capita SIMS web parts?

 

I want to leave the Learning Gateway offered by our LA and have Moodle happily covering the VLE side but just got a quote for 15k from Talmos to set us up 2 servers with the web parts on. I believe the web parts themselves cost 5800. THe LA are telling us that we will get SIMS web parts included in their offering (which costs about 3K per year).

 

Are there any open source solutions?

 

Carol

Edited October 1, 2008 by CarolBooth
left off name

[meastaugh1]

The installation costs for SLG sounds about right: 6-9k.

The annual maintenance sounds a bit out though, we have SLG2 with profiles and I'm fairly sure it's <1k.

 

An alternative Capita service is Parents Gateway, which a hosted solution that doesn't require anywhere near such a significant outlay.

 

I can understand the reason for passing up the LA offering for students/staff, but is it not feasible to use it for parents, or does that still require significant licence costs?

[CarolBooth]

Hi and thanks for that. Maybe the Parents Gateway would be the way to go. I just had a look at the site but couldn't get it to give me any information or get a rep to call me. Do you have an idea of cost (we have 900 pupils).

 

I think the 5800 is a one-off payment for the web parts. I haven't had the quote breakdown yet so don't know what the licensing is.

 

Carol

[PhilNeal]

Sorry we are about to end Parents Gateway as most users have gone to the SIMS Learning Gateway (SLG) - we are literally now writing to the remaining 6 customers.

 

I would recommend looking at whether your LA can host SLG for you as that means you can share the cost of the hardware and software. We can offer a hosted solution if they can't.

[dhicks]

Can anyone help with ideas on cheaper ways of giving parents access to SiMS data (like attendance, assessment and timetable) without buying the Capita SIMS web parts?

 

Write reports in SIMS that produce the data you want, then use the CommandReporter tool to export that data from SIMS and re-present it how you want. I'm sorting out our system getting usernames / group membership from SIMS to AD/LDAP today.

 

--

David Hicks

[Quackers]

I've got a Capita's engineer here now doing SIMS Learning Gateway install, and it has cost 8000 for Software , install, and training.

 

Although the housekeeping looks a little

[steve]

Sorry we are about to end Parents Gateway as most users have gone to the SIMS Learning Gateway (SLG) - we are literally now writing to the remaining 6 customers.

 

I would recommend looking at whether your LA can host SLG for you as that means you can share the cost of the hardware and software. We can offer a hosted solution if they can't.

 

Hmmm, I wonder if we are one of those six Phil.

 

Strange that every time we asked "are you going to kill off parents gateway" we were assured not......

 

No clues on the roadmap either.

[PhilNeal]

Sorry Steve - it will be supported through to the end of the current renewal.

[CarolBooth]

Thanks for that David. I haven't used CommandReporter - will it allow me to schedule reports to run every day at midnight (for example)?

 

cheers,

Carol

[CarolBooth]

I've got a Capita's engineer here now doing SIMS Learning Gateway install, and it has cost 8000 for Software , install, and training.]

 

Does the SIMS learning Gateway need another server to run on or does it sit on the SIMS server?

 

thanks! Carol

[Domino]

Don't forget there may also be a time and personnell cost, especially if your data needs to be changed.

 

For instance - our behaviour logs all mentioned, if kids had had a fight, both kids involved. But if you allow this data to parents, you have to remove all references to students which are not their own.

 

We had our behaviour support team going back through and rewording and rewriting all our beahiour logs to get inline with this.

[dhicks]

Thanks for that David. I haven't used CommandReporter - will it allow me to schedule reports to run every day at midnight (for example)?

 

CommandReporter is just a command-line tool that spews out the results of a report as a bunch of XML data. You'll have to run it from a script or application of some kind to do anything with that data. I've written a small Python-based web server to turn CommandReporter in to a "web service" - the XML just gets served up by a web server, so you can have other scripts and whatnot access it from other machines. This server currently lacks security and any way to stop it running as a service.

 

--

David Hicks

[CarolBooth]

CommandReporter is just a command-line tool that spews out the results of a report as a bunch of XML data. You'll have to run it from a script or application of some kind to do anything with that data. I've written a small Python-based web server to turn CommandReporter in to a "web service" - the XML just gets served up by a web server, so you can have other scripts and whatnot access it from other machines. This server currently lacks security and any way to stop it running as a service.

 

--

David Hicks

 

That sounds workable. I have used php a bit but I'm not sure how I tell php to send commands to the SIMS server. I don't suppose anyone could point me in the direction of documentation or a nice techy word to search for?

 

THanks!

Carol

[Quackers]

I've got a Capita's engineer here now doing SIMS Learning Gateway install, and it has cost 8000 for Software , install, and training.]

 

Does the SIMS learning Gateway need another server to run on or does it sit on the SIMS server?

 

thanks! Carol

 

It needs to run on a sharepoint server, so if you do not have one then yes you will need another one.

[CarolBooth]

What should I expect to pay for a SharePoint server and do I really need 2? TALMOS want 10K for this.

 

Carol

[Quackers]

What should I expect to pay for a SharePoint server and do I really need 2? TALMOS want 10K for this.

 

Carol

 

It works on the free version of Sharepoint called Sharepoint Services.

[meastaugh1]

If you Windows Sharepoint Services with the internal SQL database, then you only need pay for the hardware, Windows server licence, and Windows CALs (such as per-user CALs for staff, and Windows external connector for parents), plus the cost of SLG and annual maintenace.

[DMcCoy]

For MOSS2007 Server

 

MOSS 2007 Server license

MOSS 2007 For internet sites license

MOSS 2007 CALs for Staff users

Windows Server CALs for Staff users

Windows External Connector (covers non employees - students, parents)

 

For the Sims server

SQL per proc license (or express)

Windows Server CALs for Staff Users (if bought per user above then this will cover all internal servers accessed from outside)

Windows External Connector

 

Internal servers are covered by the multiplexing licensing requirements, so if users are authenticated and access a *Windows* server even through sharepoint (or anything else) then you will still need the relevant CALs and external connector licenses.

 

We want to use the exchange integration too so only need some per user CALs for it as only staff will have access.

 

For our site (150 staff, 1100 students) it's around £9k for MS licenses alone.

 

The break even point between just getting Sharepoint CALs for all users (staff, students (parents free when students are licensed) and the For Internet sites licenses is around the 400 student or so level.

[CarolBooth]

David, pardon my ignorance but will this allow me to use reports to provide information only on the child of the parent who is logged in? The information I'm going to get out of SIMS is for all students, so what are you linking the student SIMS IDs with? Can you give a bit more information about what you're doing with AD?

Carol

 

Write reports in SIMS that produce the data you want, then use the CommandReporter tool to export that data from SIMS and re-present it how you want. I'm sorting out our system getting usernames / group membership from SIMS to AD/LDAP today.

 

--

David Hicks

[penfold_99]

Write reports in SIMS that produce the data you want, then use the CommandReporter tool to export that data from SIMS and re-present it how you want. I'm sorting out our system getting usernames / group membership from SIMS to AD/LDAP today.

 

--

David Hicks

 

Hi David,

 

we currently have integration between sims.net and active directory. I have put in place a script that checks all students against AD, if the student doesn't have an account it will create them one.

 

We are currently packaging up our scripts, so we can release them with a howto on integrating SIMS.net and moodle.

Edited October 9, 2008 by penfold_99

[penfold_99]

Can anyone help with ideas on cheaper ways of giving parents access to SiMS data (like attendance, assessment and timetable) without buying the Capita SIMS web parts?

 

I want to leave the Learning Gateway offered by our LA and have Moodle happily covering the VLE side but just got a quote for 15k from Talmos to set us up 2 servers with the web parts on. I believe the web parts themselves cost 5800. THe LA are telling us that we will get SIMS web parts included in their offering (which costs about 3K per year).

 

Are there any open source solutions?

 

Carol

 

Hi Carol,

 

I have created a moodle block which displays the student or staff timetable.

it shouldn't be hard to pull attendance or assessment data, i will be looking into this next.

[ZeroHour]

For MOSS2007 Server

MOSS 2007 Server license

MOSS 2007 For internet sites license

MOSS 2007 CALs for Staff users

Do you have rough per user rates etc for each of those as I am looking at MOSS right now.

[DMcCoy]

Do you have rough per user rates etc for each of those as I am looking at MOSS right now.

 

Server £570

For internet sites £5280

Standard Sharepoint CAL £12.80

[JeremyColburn]

Hi Carol

 

2 servers for SharePoint one SQL and one Web, for either MOSS 2007 or WSS 3 would be a minimum recommendation where you are expecting significant usage. Often customers also consider using ISA server to publish SharePoint over the internet for more flexibility and added security.

 

When choosing a solution I would also factor in the support requirements of SharePoint against having SharePoint and SLG hosted for you.

 

All the best, Jeremy