SIMS vs CMIS

[spc-rocket]

We had the demo of CMIS the other day and from what i saw it looks very good. I like the idea of having it all on one DB - a weak point of sims.net/capita because they bought other companies' products (nova, assement manager etc) and are now trying to integrate etc. into SQL a long and complicated thing.

 

The person from secro did demo on the latest version which they showed at BETT and it looks very good, both e-portal and Facility Admin.

 

We are also going to a conference in sheffield (Notre Dame school) where they will be talking about specialist technology collages related stuff and also a lot on the Facility CMIS.

 

I don't mind copping the cost of extra server to host the portal, it is recommended by them and makes sense to be honest. Looking at this thread and others is that they may have installed both on the same server and maybe that's why the e-portal runs slower?

 

The guy made it clear that it takes planning and there are 5 stages to transition and may take 4-5 months for the whole thing to be completed. Some may think this is too long of a wait but if you think about it, moving from one MIS to another is not easy for various reason and thus project management is utmost important.

 

Strange really that in this thread that many people says they have moved from sims.net to CMIS but not the otherway around. Hmm...maybe we know the reason.

 

Ash.

[SilverFox]

looked in to different systems and stayed with SIMS that then became SIMS .net.

 

We retain our goal of one IMS and giving all staff immediate access to any information that they have permission for.

Got a new IT teacher this year who was previously at a CMIS school and she reckons there is no comparison because she can access so much more and faster and whenever and wherever, including remotely.

 

I could go on and on but I sleep well having not wasted time convincing the Governors to spend considerable sums of money changing IMS followed by all the pain of transition, only to change back a few years later. Meanwhile we focus on "improvement"; and I mean for the students.

[limbo]

If we ignore the last upgrade to CMIS, which was not exactly great, then CMIS does not cause too many day to day problems anymore.

 

We use eportal for collecting attendance and assessment data and pretty much everything else is done in the main system by the office.

 

We have not gone down the CMIS route for acedemic reports because when we looked at it a couple of years ago it just was not flexible enough for us so we export the assessment data to another system that is then used to add teachers comments from statement banks. (I will not mention the other system at this stage as we are having a lot of problems with it and I neither want to recommend or condemn it at this stage).

 

The biggest weakness with CMIS is getting data out. The report generator it quite limited, but not so simple that it is easy to set up a report. So to get anything more complicated than a set list or attendance report out (although those are not working at the moment thanks to the afore mentioned upgrade) I have to use a seperate report generator (MSAccess usually).

 

But this brings me to CMIS's biggest strength - all the data is in one SQl database (but is scalable so could be access for a small school or Oracle for an huge on).

 

Some of the way data is stored in the tables is a bit wacky, but with a little persistance there is not really any data you cannot get out, including timetable and finance data.

[GeorgeFaux]

Academic reports is I think one of the best features of CMIS, if just becase it saves so much collation. Comment banks can be added directly into the system, the only bad news is designing the report.

 

I ran them for a few years at a school, provided you have inhouse report designing experience (at at least a calculated variable level) or are willing to get someone in for a day to do it for you I reckon it saves time and money in the long run.

 

Certainly it freed up admin staff, the main problems I found was because the spell check in e-portal doesn't run a little red line under the misspellings or auto correct errors were up appalingly.

 

That however is more a staff literacy than CMIS issue.

[SilverFox]

SIMS .net Profiles 7 "leap-frogs" CMIS here as well, then.

[kxv2020]

We're using Profiles 7 - there are no problems using the "polished" features of MS Word to create a fantastic school and assessment report We even added the student photo to the front cover of the report last year ... and to see the faces of Year7 when those reports came out Although we thought we wouldn't embarass them this year!