Sims Learning Gateway

[RichB]

Just started a school that are going to be using SLG by september..... have a few questions as i've never heard/used this before:

 

*Capita have installed it, at whatever cost* so can access it....

 

How do I add users? parents?

How to the parents get emailed? is one set up or do we collect the emails?

How do I lock certain areas down?

 

I know these questions are very general but this is where my knowledge is....

[alan-d]

How far into the project are you?

 

Before even contemplating adding parents you need to have a few things in place, such as, have Pastoral staff, SMT, Governers etc decided what is to be made available via the SLG. For example, we have witheld some of the behaviour aspects.

 

Has a roll out plan been decided? What year groups are being rolled out and when? No point staring with Yr7 as they have little info to show and Yr13 leave shortly.

How have parents been informed and have they provided email addresses?

How are parents going to be given access details such as Logins and passwords, is there a guide for it's use or do you plan formal sessions for parents.

 

A whole host of issues before you even start I'm afraid.

[vikpaw]

Download the manuals from SupportNet.

 

Ask for training - Sharepoint is massive!

 

Users are 'provisioned' from SIMS. There is a separate server / service that will regularly (overnight) look for users that you have provisioned and add them to Active Directory. This is for all types of users : students/staff/parents. There is some config available that allows you to control it a little and specify naming conventions. You can run it manually as well if need be. There will be a webpage for all this part of ADP (active directory provisioning). the provisioning part from SIMS is just a menu route can't remember what right now.

 

I guess there is a built in report for new provisioned users that you can run, and email to parents. It's down to you how you choose to do it. Some schools email, username and password separately. Others hand out the details at parents evenings. whatever suits you.. having an SLG machine available at parents evenings to help get parents started is a good idea.

 

If the Sharepoint install is on site you should have access to control permissions that different users have in different areas. If you went for Capita hosted then you'll have a lot less control. I'm assuming the basic setup is fairly secure. Have you seen it? There aren't really a lot of things that can be broken, just whether or not you want certain functions to appear or not for certain users.

 

Hope that helps.

[vikpaw]

good point alan-d, you've reminded me there's a really good document called SLG pre-requisites. I can't see any notes on it about the source but i'm certain it's from Capita, so maybe try supportnet for it.

 

its not technical, but more practical things in terms of, making sure all the data you have is accurate, start thinking about policies on what you want to show, e.g. behaviour as alan mentions. data protection, do you want one parent to see the name of another student involved in an incident. lots of good stuff. if you can't find it, i'll go in to the office and scan it for you when i can.