Fronter and Serco Facility

[cheredenine]

This might be a long shot, but does anyone out there have both Fronter as a VLE and Serco Facility as their MIS? More to the point does anyone have the two communicating?

We have Facility and its looking likely we'll end up taking Norfolk CC's offer of Fronter, but I'm trying to do some homework first - I'd like to know how the link works and what data is/can be transferred between the two?

[dbsocs08]

Hi,

I have worked as Fronter Trainer and know quite a few people who are using Serco Facility as their MIS system. Fronter now have better Facility setup notes from Fronter 82. I would suggest you give them a ring to see if you can get some information regarding the process involved.

 

dbsocs

[adamf]

Up until Septemebr I was using Fronter and Facility (we switched to SIMS this academic year). Firstly you need to create a connection within Fronter (you give tell it what MIS you using, theres a few options such as generating simple or complex password, if you want addresses, emails address, phone numbers exported fromm your MIS etc...) in turn you are given a web service URL.

 

There are 2 reports that Fronter provided us with which export 4 csv files (2 for students and 2 for staff) and there is also a utility (you give it the web service URL so it knows where to send your data) which reads the csv files and sends the data to Fronter for importing.

 

In terms of the data it exports:

 

1st Student CSV: Firstname, Lastname, DOB, UPN

2nd Student CSV: UPN, Teaching Groups

 

1st Staff CSV: Firstname, Lastname, DOB, Staffcode (or something unique)

2nd Staff CSV: Staffcode, Teaching Groups

 

In all 4 csv files the school name is appended to the start and end of each record.

 

The biggest problem I had was finding a way to have the 4 csv files generated automatically instead of having to run the reports in Facility whenever there were changes. Once you've got the data out, you can run the utility automatically with a scheduled task

 

Thankfully, we were using as a pilot and it wasn't so important that all the data was accurate.

 

I've got a pdf guide on setting up an MIS connection and the report that we used to get the data out - pm me (before tuesday - i'm away after that) if you want them.

[cheredenine]

Cheers guys - very helpful!

 

Adamf - Pm heading your way...