[sims] SIMS - email?

[Sivadam]

Eee bah gum lad! I gonna miss thee wen tha's gon!

 

I'll be on my own again!

 

 

Still........

.......... that never shut me up before!

[GREED]

I'll still be on here, I'm still in 'education' even if it ain't educating Children.

[marshharrier]

Not sure why Mr Neal felt the need to post and then retract? I haven't seen any comment on this thread suggesting it was difficult to integrate with SIMS (which was the gist of his 'removed' comment?) .... very odd.

 

With regard to balance .... I like to see it and will wherever I see blatant examples (it's easy to prove this point by looking back at certain members' previous posts!) of individual promotion of one product will do my best to help others see a range of information so that they can make a balanced decision.

 

It should be normal that people look at various products/services, choosing the one that works best for them. This doesn't make any product better than any other, just better for them.

 

Unfortunately the education sector often doesn't work in this way, with huge commercial operators exerting massive leverage in obvious and not so obvious ways, such as part (or whole) funding of 'outsourced' IT departments for Local Authorities, who then tell all their schools to use particular products only (or they won't support them).

 

I'll probably get banned for this comment, but it is a disgrace and needs to be stopped.

Edited December 17, 2009 by marshharrier

[Mcshammer_dj]

Not sure why Mr Neal felt the need to post and then retract? I haven't seen any comment on this thread suggesting it was difficult to integrate with SIMS (which was the gist of his 'removed' comment?) .... very odd.

 

I think that Phil may have been commenting on comments made in the press recently by another company, which has been discussed on other threads recently.

[Sivadam]

He may also have been following the lead of others, who in my opinion, are sailing very close to the wind in terms of advertising their products!

The last time that I intimated that then, I got my wrist slapped, so maybe I will again! Seems that it is happening less now though, so maybe somebody did take the point.

Glad to see that Phil is not doing this, although he must be very tempted indeed when he reads some of the Posts!

[marshharrier]

Now that's hysterically funny ... to suggest that some of these massive companies are somehow claiming the moral high ground by 'resisting the urge' to promote their products unfairly after so many years of getting away with it totally unchallenged ... that's the best joke of the year

 

Worryingly they seem to have gotten away with convincing some people already.

 

It would be 'just so' and 'on form' if they now started to use their massive influence to complain about it.

[Sivadam]

Tiny, Small, Medium, Large or Massive ............. If you have a MIS that does everything (well nearly - I always want summat new!) then you are going to support it........ arn't you?

That doesn't mean that you are knocking others!

[marshharrier]

As long as you don't complain when you only have one choice in the market ... and the price keeps going up!

 

At that point there will be nothing you can do about it.

 

It's called competition and it's healthy ... it's the only thing that ensures that a genuine 'marketplace' remains!

[MattMitchell]

TruancyCall seems pretty good - I've seen SchoolComms in action (at Handsworth...) and that also seemed very effective. The reason we picked TC was the facility for phone calls as well as texts.

 

If anyone else uses Exchange for internal email, I was going to make a report that adds emails based on name lookup rather than SMTP email - would anyone else have a use for this?

[GREED]

In the spirit of 'might get banned or slapped wrists' posts, might I just make the point that no one seems to 'comment' on the effectiveness or lack of for other products here... If one is happy with the MIS they have whoever makes it, then there is no worries!

[marshharrier]

In the spirit of 'might get banned or slapped wrists' posts, might I just make the point that no one seems to 'comment' on the effectiveness or lack of for other products here... If one is happy with the MIS they have whoever makes it, then there is no worries!

 

The most dominant product in any sector will always receive more attention especially from those who happen to think that such dominance is of unhealthy proportions.

 

Fundamentally 'choice' in the market keeps suppliers 'honest' and when choice is very limited and difficult, then suppliers tend to become arrogant and customer service levels decline rapidly. After all "there's no need to keep customers happy ... where else are they going to go!"

[Mahonls]

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

 

Yes, this option is a great addition. However, for what is most useful (all of a pupil's timetabled teachers) it only serves up the teaching staff for that particular day. Is there a setup somewhere to get the teaching staff for the entire timetable(week)?

Thanks

[vikpaw]

There are a couple of reports attached in the thread which will show all teachers of that student. I now use a modified version of the one with a Macro that takes the emails and puts them into Outlook.

 

I checked the Send Message feature, and still cannot see an option that will only show Teachers of the day, so i guess it didn't make it to the independent version or i'm not following the correct route.

[Mahonls]

There are a couple of reports attached in the thread which will show all teachers of that student. I now use a modified version of the one with a Macro that takes the emails and puts them into Outlook.

 

I checked the Send Message feature, and still cannot see an option that will only show Teachers of the day, so i guess it didn't make it to the independent version or i'm not following the correct route.

 

Thanks Vik for such a prompt response to a post added to such an aged thread! And one that had I read more carefully then I would've seen several other people bemoaning the class teachers being today's only.

 

Thanks for reports too!

[vikpaw]

One word of warning, by default on our system staff are not allowed to see emails of other staff as they are stored in the personnel section. The report worked for me with the email output, but for anyone without permission it fails. I eventually realised this and modified it so it brings out the first and last name, concatenates then and drops them into Outlook. This then relies on the outlook directory look up. You can just click Check Names to speed it up, and usually it finds them all. The only time it gets funny is when people have decided to change their known by name, which actually happens here a lot. e.g. Steve prefers to be called Rob etc.

[skunk]

We use VB.net to create an exchange address list for each child. It calls command reporter which runs a list of each child and each of their teachers. It then calls a second report which lists all the students and their form tutor/s. It then matches the teachers names to their AD account and adds them to the list in a separate address book in exchange. It has just been re-written to work with AD2008R2 and Exchange 2010, because the exchange upgrade broke the previous system.