ID / Photocards

[GrumbleDook]

I am on the lookout for an ID Card solutions that I can tie into SIMS.

 

I have spoken with both Capita and the local support team, and have a few suggestions but i am interested to see if others use a system at the moment.

 

Here are the criteria.

 

We are *only* looking for photo IC Cards. We do not have cashless catering (and unlikely for the next 5 years due to no permanent cafeteria), we are not going down the access control route yet (2-4 years).

 

This means we do not need swipre cards, smart chips or proximity cards.

 

We want to be able to pull photos and basic info from SIMS, and maybe a few user-defined fields too.

 

Answers on a postcard too ....

[kxv2020]

Hello

 

We use a very polished .rtf report which pulls the photograph and other basic details from SIMS into Word [Name, Tutor Group, Year Group, DOB]. We then use those and stick them into Sealable Credit Card Style self seal Laminate cards and we've done Pass Outs.

 

Works well, looks professional and is cheap!!!

 

Good Luck

[Ueline]

Kiran - That sounds fantastic!!! Any more details? Willing to let us have a copy of the .rtf file?

Please

[ind13]

the finance department at my place went out and got a card printer (zebra p110) and the software from some random company.

 

the software is rubish. ill see if i can find out what it is called.

 

the main problem your gonna have is photo's

 

yes you can export the photo's from sims but only into a word document.

the software we had needs the photo's in a folder, (any one know how to save all the pics off a word document and put them into a folder???)

 

over the last few years when the photo's have been taken, all we receved back from the photographers was a cd will all the photo's in, all numbered, but no student list to match it up, so the office had to get students to go through it and name all the kids.

 

the card printer is fairly good, what you can do is design your own template in word and then just use a mailmerge and print to the card printer.

[apeo]

@ind13: Don't think there is an easy way to export the pictures out of word but what you could do is to save the word file as a webpage and pull the pics out of the directory it creates to hold the images. The images are will probably be named sequentially so it wont be too hard to identify which kid goes with which image.

[NetworkGeezer]

yes you can export the photo's from sims but only into a word document.

the software we had needs the photo's in a folder, (any one know how to save all the pics off a word document and put them into a folder???)

 

Good grief you don't have to do it that way.

Here's something I picked from the support.net forum. Apprarently Nova-T 4 caches all student pics in a folder S:\SIMS\SNOVA\Pictures.

You have to remember to use Referesh Student Photos from SQL option from the file menu.

 

The files are saved as a .bmp so you may need an automated rename from a CSV or TSV.

[apeo]

@NetworkGeezer: If nova has a cache of the picture, arent you doubling the amount of pictures stored?

[GrumbleDook]

The way it works is that you have a folder *somewhere* in the SIMS share and then you import it into SIMS.net against their record (usually via a batch import which requires a licence key that your photographers get from Capita for you).

 

It is alway a good idea to leave this folder and its contents where they are ... and then just link to them when needed.

 

At the moment we print out the ID style cards in on labels that fit inside business card sized laminating pouches ... but this is done from a mail merge of data we have exported from SIMS. The photos bit is just a link to a UNC for the photo and when you merge the doc it puts the pics in (a bit of a fiddle to set up actually) ...

 

But we would like something that can just get the photo and other details straight from SIMS and away you go ... and on something a bit more substantial than a laminated pouch.

[NetworkGeezer]

@NetworkGeezer: If nova has a cache of the picture, arent you doubling the amount of pictures stored?

 

I guess so but it's only about 200MB if that. That's probably less than a single daily backup zip file.

 

In many cases photo reports are much easier to do from Nova-T then from SIMS.net reporting.

[ind13]

the card printer we have is fairly good,

its just a case of creating a decent report in sims.

 

which can be a pain.

exporting to excel is easy and useful, but never been able to create decent looking word templates.

[kxv2020]

Kiran - That sounds fantastic!!! Any more details? Willing to let us have a copy of the .rtf file?

Please

 

@Ueline: I not in the office until Wenesday ... But can export the rtf for you then. Hope thats ok.

 

Another thing that I've used is that you get ready made ID card Labels I think from Avery [but haven't seen them for a while] with Self Seal laminate on the paper, you print them and seal; these have the added bonus off not needing to cut the paper out and place in my laminate pouch seperatley, but i haven't seen many around.

 

Kiran

[SpuffMonkey]

In a previous life - I used to run a system fron these guys

 

http://www.id-data.co.uk/

 

which are based in Corby - so you might be able to cut a deal, Tony 0 they were helpful and did about everything in this sphere.

 

Cheers

[GrumbleDook]

Kev, you are a treasure and I owe you another beer.

 

I'll catch up with them when I get back to work on Thursday.

[Ueline]

Thanks Kiran that would be great.

[Ric_]

I know our magical system NEDAP is more than you want Tony, but as part of it we use a piece of software called Badgemaker. We don't export the photos from SIMS, instead we take new ones when the little darlings join us.

 

We then print their proximity cards using a great big thermal transfer printer (make and model escapes me).

[kxv2020]

Hi

 

I finally got round to exporting the report - please bear in mind to remove logo's etc, and change the year filters [as its currently only set to 12/13/14].

 

Thanks

 

Kiran

16__pass_year_12__blue_strip_.zip