Geoff Posted June 19, 2009 Posted June 19, 2009 I've become more involved in the Sims/PARs side of things lately. I've noticed that PARs can Email Pupils/Staff about various incidents and I'd like to implement it. However to do so requries that the Email field is filled in for the Staff/Pupils in question. I'm new at this, but is there any way to bulk upload this sort stuff into Sims?
penfold_99 Posted June 19, 2009 Posted June 19, 2009 hi geoff, The simple answer is no. If you were able to use SIMS.net business objects to writeback SIMS.net then it's possible. The easiest way is to ask for the parental email as part of your data collection process in september then your admin staff can update all the records in the same process. On a side note where are you parental emails currently stored? We are currently testing a email parent system i have created in moodle that also allows parental access. 1
apeo Posted June 19, 2009 Posted June 19, 2009 So annoying I've looked into trying to import data into SIMS .Net before and the short answer is I can't.
Geoff Posted June 19, 2009 Author Posted June 19, 2009 Darn. So manual data entry is the only way to do it then?
enjay Posted June 19, 2009 Posted June 19, 2009 If you could persuade Capita to let you have a database map, you could presumably script a bulk update - doubt they'd give it up though...
penfold_99 Posted June 19, 2009 Posted June 19, 2009 If you could persuade Capita to let you have a database map, you could presumably script a bulk update - doubt they'd give it up though... Just get them to release plain English documentation with an example on how to get data when using there business object, that would be great!! but this is even less likely than the above option
TimH Posted June 22, 2009 Posted June 22, 2009 Just get them to release plain English documentation with an example on how to get data when using there business object, that would be great!! but this is even less likely than the above option Coincidentally I created a supportnet ticket with SIMS on Friday 19th, asking about the rumoured "Business Objects", and received what I assume is the stock reply, that they would not want any of their customers editing the database directly. We are a school completely new to SIMS having used an in-house system for years and I was looking at a method for getting SIMS to email (sets of) students, which our old system could do. I managed to create a report which uses Outlook to send mails, so now need to get all of the student email addresses into SIMS. I used student email address as an example of what we want to enter but there are several other bits of data that need to be entered. We have basic student info entered via ctf, assessment data via csv but lots of stuff has no magic method for import, we are having to do a heck of a lot of manual data entry. If anyone know of any shortcuts to entering anything, I'd love to know - when I try to find out about such things google usually leads to the various threads on edugeek !
matt40k Posted June 22, 2009 Posted June 22, 2009 RE: Business objects: SIMS partners introduction - Capita Children's Services
dhicks Posted June 22, 2009 Posted June 22, 2009 If anyone know of any shortcuts to entering anything, I'd love to know Spare dedicated workstation dedicated to running SIMS tucked away in your server room somewhere running an AutoIt script to fake mouse moves and keyboard entries to enter data. -- David Hicks 1
TimH Posted June 22, 2009 Posted June 22, 2009 RE: Business objects: SIMS partners introduction - Capita Children's Services Thanks for that, trying to make contact and find out more. Anyone, as a school, using this ("business objects")?
webman Posted June 22, 2009 Posted June 22, 2009 Spare dedicated workstation dedicated to running SIMS tucked away in your server room somewhere running an AutoIt script to fake mouse moves and keyboard entries to enter data. Twenty-first century educational software at its best.
TimH Posted June 22, 2009 Posted June 22, 2009 Spare dedicated workstation dedicated to running SIMS tucked away in your server room somewhere running an AutoIt script to fake mouse moves and keyboard entries to enter data. bit scary, would it really work (reliably) ? Tim
dhicks Posted June 22, 2009 Posted June 22, 2009 I've noticed that PARs can Email Pupils/Staff about various incidents and I'd like to implement it. You could take the opposite approach - get SIMS to export a report about incidents, then have a script parse that report and send emails off. -- David Hicks
Geoff Posted June 22, 2009 Author Posted June 22, 2009 That doesn't work because we're using PARs. There is insufficent space allocated in the SIMS database for PARS to record all the incident data. Thus it uses it's own fields and tables. So if I do an incident export from SIMS, stuff is missing.
localzuk Posted June 22, 2009 Posted June 22, 2009 Thanks for that, trying to make contact and find out more. Anyone, as a school, using this ("business objects")? I had a look at it, but decided the NDA was far too restrictive and didn't use them in the end. I would advise looking at it from the angle mentioned by dhicks - export and use your own software to do what you want.
dhicks Posted June 22, 2009 Posted June 22, 2009 export and use your own software to do what you want. Or use someone else's - both me and Penfold_99 seem to be writing the same kind of system, although his seems rather better thought out and somewhat further along than mine. -- David Hicks
TimH Posted June 22, 2009 Posted June 22, 2009 Spare dedicated workstation dedicated to running SIMS tucked away in your server room somewhere running an AutoIt script to fake mouse moves and keyboard entries to enter data. Thanks for that, OK so it's a horrible solution but it worked. I gradually built my way up from AutoIt entering a couple of kids to doing whole tutor groups, tomorrow I'll try in year group sized lumps. Export kids from SIMs in default order, look up via script (Python in my case) their email address from the network, dump this to a file (this then matches when hitting "Next (ctrl >)" on entry page). Get Focus-Student on first student, AutoIT reads email addresses and does all the presses to enter one address then skip to the next. The only little problem (apart from playing so that things weren't positioned right) was that SIMs tends to die now and then when entering lots of data, apparently a know problem without a solution! Oh what fun.... tim
TimH Posted June 22, 2009 Posted June 22, 2009 Or use someone else's - both me and Penfold_99 seem to be writing the same kind of system, although his seems rather better thought out and somewhat further along than mine. Yes, thanks, I noticed that, was going to visit when I need to do something complicated - our old system would email students their timetables, so it would be nice to do so with SIMS - but as we don't yet have a timetable in our SIMS then I'll have to wait ! Plus, someone is going to say can we get it to talk to moodle at some point ! tim
dhicks Posted June 22, 2009 Posted June 22, 2009 our old system would email students their timetables, so it would be nice to do so with SIMS - but as we don't yet have a timetable in our SIMS then I'll have to wait! Hey, we just have to figure out timetable creation and you don't have to store timetables in SIMS in the first place. -- David Hicks
Guest monkeyx Posted June 22, 2009 Posted June 22, 2009 Hey, we just have to figure out timetable creation and you don't have to store timetables in SIMS in the first place. -- David Hicks Linking the timetable to this MIS has all sorts of advantages though. See http://opensourceschools.org.uk/houghton-kepier-learning-platform.html We also link behaviour and reporting to the timetable.
mac_shinobi Posted June 22, 2009 Posted June 22, 2009 Saw this mentioned elsewhere so not sure if its useful or not but just thought I would post this and you lot can post back with feedback etc but what about ecopy ? SIMS.net Connector for eCopy Desktop™ not sure if any of the other ecopy products / solutions are any good. On that note .....
dhicks Posted June 23, 2009 Posted June 23, 2009 what about ecopy? I think it was their scan-to-SIMS product we saw last week at Sharp's showroom. It integrates a scanner with SIMS - you use a small LCD panel attached to a photocopier/scanner to pick a student and enter some details ("note from home", etc) then scan in a document that is attached to that student's SIMS record. Nice, and it looked like it worked well, but it did strke me that you could make a system like that very easily. Just get a list of students from SIMS, make each one a folder on a computer somewhere, then hook up a scanner to a dedicated PC with a small touch-screen panel attached and write a program that asks for a student name and drops scanned documents into the appropriate folder. -- David Hicks
localzuk Posted June 23, 2009 Posted June 23, 2009 I think it was their scan-to-SIMS product we saw last week at Sharp's showroom. It integrates a scanner with SIMS - you use a small LCD panel attached to a photocopier/scanner to pick a student and enter some details ("note from home", etc) then scan in a document that is attached to that student's SIMS record. Nice, and it looked like it worked well, but it did strke me that you could make a system like that very easily. Just get a list of students from SIMS, make each one a folder on a computer somewhere, then hook up a scanner to a dedicated PC with a small touch-screen panel attached and write a program that asks for a student name and drops scanned documents into the appropriate folder. -- David Hicks The data is then in yet another location, and not attached to a student record in SIMS. We use another product to do that - called Managed Scan (we get it from Portrayal). Not quite as functional as eCopy in the whole (it is smaller, cheaper and aimed purely at SIMS.net and not extra other document management systems too). The idea is that everything about a student should be in one place, to remove the cases where someone forgets to check 1 location or other for information.
MattMitchell Posted June 26, 2009 Posted June 26, 2009 Or use someone else's - both me and Penfold_99 seem to be writing the same kind of system, although his seems rather better thought out and somewhat further along than mine. I'm running up against a few limitations in SIMS (can you say "plot assessment results against attendance" anybody?) and am considering the roll-your-own method; really, though, it's frustrating because I'd much rather do it all within SIMS. After all, if it's worked in the main system everything's a lot more integrated and simpler, especially if they have a major re-working that breaks external software...
dhicks Posted June 26, 2009 Posted June 26, 2009 I'm running up against a few limitations in SIMS (can you say "plot assessment results against attendance" anybody?) and am considering the roll-your-own method I'm now writing some charting software to take exam results and spew out pie charts and so on, if that's any help. -- David Hicks
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