[sims] SIMS - email?

[andykemp]

I have been hunting around in SIMS for the last 30mins or so trying to find a way to 'message' or preferably email all the teachers of a particular student without having to look up their timetable and workout who each person is from their initials and the find their email address etc...

 

Please someone tell me SIMS can actually do this simple enough task, and that I am just being daft!

[matt40k]

Surely emailing would be insecure. Pretty sure you can message within SIMS all the teachers of a particular student, or was that a new feature in Autumn, or was that just for that day?

[Oops_my_bad]

Why not just do what teaching staff do and abuse the "all staff" facility by sending an email to everyone where really, 1 or 2 would have been appropriate!?

[andykemp]

Surely emailing would be insecure. Pretty sure you can message within SIMS all the teachers of a particular student, or was that a new feature in Autumn, or was that just for that day?

 

Email (if setup well) is no less secure and much more convenient then accessing messages in SIMS. That said I can't work out how to do this with SIMS messages either - They have a send message tool - but there is no option to select just their teachers...

 

If you have any insight into this though that would be much appreciated.

[andykemp]

Why not just do what teaching staff do and abuse the "all staff" facility by sending an email to everyone where really, 1 or 2 would have been appropriate!?

 

Indeed - desperate to find a better solution then either 'all staff' or spending 5mins working out who the teachers are everytime...

[Ric_]

If all the staff email addresses are in SIMS, you could create a report of these email addresses and then copy and paste the addresses into your mail client.

[PhilNeal]

The send message function does exactly what you want athough to an internal message. You need to have the message box enabled on the home page.

[andykemp]

I found the send message box - but it just gives me a complete list of all staff to choose from - I don't want to have to choose the teachers as I don't know who they are otherwise I woudl have just emailed them... What I wanted was an option to send a message (although I would have prefered an email) just to the teachers of a student without having to look them up...

 

Am I doing something wrong?

[PhilNeal]

There should be options to send to all teachers and possibly HoY/House - I'm on a train so can't check!

[andykemp]

There is an all teachers option - but that lists ALL teachers not just the teachers of the student which makes it no more useful than the standard email 'all staff' option...

 

When you get a chance to check I would appreciate it...

[Nickfinn1974]

Hi Andy,

 

You can select teachers associated to the student, as long as you are in a student focus screen. We added it within the August release, previous to the August release you could do this for HoY and Reg tutor of the child. The screen will then present you with a list of the teachers associated to the child for you to select from.

 

 

Kind regards

 

Nick

Edited November 11, 2009 by Nickfinn1974

[andykemp]

Thanks for the help - We are using the independent school version 7.122 (build 21) and I cannot see that option under student view 'send message' - Are we running an old version or has it not made it to the Indy version yet?

 

I get the following options: Head of Year, Reg Group Tutor, Head of House, Sen-cos, All Heads of Year, All Reg group tutors, All Heads of House, Teachers & Non-Teaching staff

[MattMitchell]

I tried this option (we're on build 7.122), and it works for head of year/head of house/reg group tutor, but if you select the teachers option it just shows all staff, and doesn't filter the list down!

[andykemp]

Glad it's not just me it doesn't work for!

[rpwillis]

I've set up exchange groups based on teachers of individual pupils for a few schools. Adds a lot of groups to the address book, but solves the problem of emails to all staff.

 

However, if you've got a learning platform which staff use as part of their day to day activities, then using alerts in there probably makes more sense.

[vikpaw]

I can't find the 'teachers associated with ...' option either.

 

But agree, it's much more convenient to email than send messages, as if they don't want to look there, don't have sims open, don't have the panel on the homepage (though you can force that now), it wont get to them quick enough.

 

Plus, if you want an audit trail, it's easier to use email. i think messaging is limited to a certain amount too, so after using it a lot, the inboxes will be full.

 

Anyway, i've been playing with reports for two weeks now trying to redesign the data collection form to include parental emails. So i've knocked a report up for you to do what you want. It seems it's a good idea and pretty useful for us too.

 

You should be able to import it and give it ago. It returns work email for all staff that teach filtered student. It can contain duplicates if for example the same teacher teaches them for different lessons, however Outlook filters them out.

 

I've used this method before and just copied the list straight into a distribution list in outlook, and it accepts them fine. It should work the same straight into the To box, as making lists is pointless as you have to keep updating them.

 

Let me know if it works, i've never shared a report before. [attached]

 

The best bit is, that if you don't want to run the report and do the filtering, you can from the student focus click on Reports on the links panel on the right and choose the report. It will automatically filter for that child and give you the spreadsheet.

 

I wonder if this is what Nick meant and there is a built in report already to do this...? i couldn't find one. so happy reporting

BISJ - Teacher Emails for a student.zip

[Nickfinn1974]

Dear all,

 

You should have in your list of roles 'Class Teacher' these are the teachers associated to the student. I accept this isn't intuative and I'll look into this.

 

Kind regards

 

Nick

[andykemp]

I don't have that role listed - what version was this added in? We are running Independent School Version 7.122

[andykemp]

Did a little digging and it seems the reason none of us can find it is that it was included in the release that came out yesterday (7.124)!

 

Capita Education Support Services

 

Digging through the release notes p16 says:

"An additional option has been added when sending a message to filter by those teachers associated with the students today"

 

So I guess when this gets installed (which will probably be Christmas) we shall see if it will do what I need!

[TimH]

I have been hunting around in SIMS for the last 30mins or so trying to find a way to 'message' or preferably email all the teachers of a particular student without having to look up their timetable and workout who each person is from their initials and the find their email address etc...

 

I was surprised that SIMS can't do email, so when we started using it in September I put together some reports which throw out email addresses of people, with output set to Excel containing macros which create a pre-addressed email in Outlook.

 

E.g. we have email "teachers of given student", run report from student details page or enter name when run from reports, Excel appears with list of addresses, starts Outlook with "To" box filled in Excel then disappears

 

and "email students in given" class etc.

 

A bit cumbersome as it involves the Excel stage between SIMS and Outlook, wouldn't it be nice if SIMS could run the output of a report into an arbitrary application/script?

 

Obviously no good without Excel/Outlook/email addresses/(Exchange) server etc.

 

tim

[vikpaw]

That reports even better than mine. Macro sounds really good.

Please share...

[smiths75]

Yes you can do this in SIMs

Select the students then on the right hand side under links click “Send Message”

In the “Recipient” section click “Add” then you can add the teachers you want to send the message to. Followed this by typing your message in the message field click send .

That’s it simple

[MattMitchell]

Yes you can do this in SIMs

Select the students then on the right hand side under links click “Send Message”

In the “Recipient” section click “Add” then you can add the teachers you want to send the message to. Followed this by typing your message in the message field click send .

That’s it simple

 

I think the OP wanted SIMS to identify and select the teachers related to a child, rather than have to hunt for which ten teachers out of 120 teach a given student!

 

There is a way to do this, although it isn't quite doing what I'd expect (might be our system, we're still looking here), which is the "Class Teacher" role selector in the search box. For some reason, it's only showing some of the teachers for a given student on our site at the moment. But it's good in principle!

[bjohnny42]

I was surprised that SIMS can't do email, so when we started using it in September I put together some reports which throw out email addresses of people, with output set to Excel containing macros which create a pre-addressed email in Outlook.

 

E.g. we have email "teachers of given student", run report from student details page or enter name when run from reports, Excel appears with list of addresses, starts Outlook with "To" box filled in Excel then disappears

 

and "email students in given" class etc.

 

A bit cumbersome as it involves the Excel stage between SIMS and Outlook, wouldn't it be nice if SIMS could run the output of a report into an arbitrary application/script?

 

Obviously no good without Excel/Outlook/email addresses/(Exchange) server etc.

 

tim

 

That sounds just like something were looking for. Any chance of a copy?

[MattMitchell]

I think I might be inclined to go the report route as well - the next feature in SIMS will only pick up teachers the student has *today*, so isn't so good for a round-robin type message. It sounds like this is how it's staying too. :-(