Is anyone using www.schooltrends.net/

[tosca925]

Is anyone using this company for your web site. I have been asked to look into this company for using them to do one of our local Schools websites for their Sports Partenships.

 

From whati can gather i thing they mainly focus on Sports COlleges and Specials Sports Co-ordinations.

 

 

Can anyone give me any feedback on them please?

[webman]

One of the sites in their portfolio doesn't validate against the W3 and parts of the pages don't display properly in FF2/Win.

[tosca925]

Just checked it webman, i see what you mean......!

 

Anyone else used them?

[ranj]

can i ask that no one touches them with a barge pole.

 

We had our website done by bluespheres who are now school trends and they must be one of the worst companies i have ever dealt with.

 

At my last school and at this school, there support is non apparent. they always try to con you when you buy the product, they offer you an additioaal years worth of support but its not worthy of anything.

 

STAY AWAY!!!

[_Bat_]

Another great thing about being able to post comments about companies like this on a forum as popular and closely related as this one, is that the company themselves will no doubt spot the comments and if they are at all professional, try and do something about it.

[CHR1S]

The backend is somewhat easy to use if you ONLY use there software, if you like to mix up and add your own HTML it gets messy. They are currently "working" on IE7/Firefox/Mozilla complianace but ill beleve that when I see it.

 

There sales are second to non they could sell snow to Eskimos but there support is shocking! It takes weeks to get simple things done! People come and go from the company so often even there own staff dont know who they are working with!

[webman]

The backend is somewhat easy to use if you ONLY use there software, if you like to mix up and add your own HTML it gets messy.

 

Sounds like Frontpage!

[_Bat_]

They are currently "working" on IE7/Firefox/Mozilla complianace but ill beleve that when I see it.

 

I don't understand that. Any company who claims they do "professional" website design surely must include cross browser compatibility? Otherwise how can it possibly be professional? I always considered cross browser compatibility to be a major factor in designing a website. Any company who misses that bit out must be ripping you off, they are cheating and hoping you won't realise?

[Guest]

Seems to have some basic sercuity issues.

[webman]

I'm amazed :shock:

[_Bat_]

What the heck does that give access to? Everytime I try I get taken to a template admin area, but not for that site I tried it on. I will e-mail them and tell them if it is a big security flaw, but only if someone who tried it can access the backend of the live websites.

 

I think it is something they give out anyway as a demo?

[Irazmus]

It seems someone's caught on, as admin / admin worked a few minutes ago, but now it's not being recognised. Either that or someone here was feeling evil and changed the admin passwords :twisted:

[_Bat_]

Yeah - I realised that account had full access to every single website on there. I saw a list of user accounts - one for each website. I could edit passwords etc. Not good, so I phoned their technical support. I have also e-mailed them to confirm. Appears they have responded though, which is good news.

[GrumbleDook]

Folks ... if you spot a security hole can you please not post it on here immediately. Please feel free to say that you have found on but make an attempt to contact the company and warn them.

 

If anything was to happen to the sites we do not want a naff company coming back and trying to sue EduGeek or any members (which would be stupid really ... and would obviously mean that *everyone* would want to use their product!)

 

This has been a common sense announcement on behalf of the "is it Christmans yet?" party ...

[_Bat_]

Folks ... if you spot a security hole can you please not post it on here immediately. Please feel free to say that you have found on but make an attempt to contact the company and warn them.

 

If anything was to happen to the sites we do not want a naff company coming back and trying to sue EduGeek or any members (which would be stupid really ... and would obviously mean that *everyone* would want to use their product!)

 

This has been a common sense announcement on behalf of the "is it Christmans yet?" party ...

 

Yeah, thats why I phoned them. I'm pretty sure none of us on here would do any damage, but I was worried that some student lurking around the site might eventually see it and find it funny to deface them.

 

The password was changed immediately after I spoke to one of their technical support, I'm guessing therefore it was them that changed it. He seemed a bit shocked himself as I was talking to him, I guess he assumed I had hacked into the site or something. I e-mailed them to confirm afterwards, but not received a reply yet.

[_Bat_]

Grumbledook - I sent you a PM, not sure if you got it because it comes up with an error, but it is important. Cheers.

[STAdrian]

Hi To all who have posted here.

 

Ranj, I will be in touch after the break to try to sort your issues out asap, sorry you are having problems.

 

As well as the Partnerships we have supplied 200 secondary schools and colleges FE. We are currently working hard with the Specialist Schools to ensure we build solutions to get best use of the internet for schools, parents, teachers, SMT and young people.

Customer service from Schooltrends

 

Bluespheres did not become Schooltrends, we were aquired by them.

 

Schooltrends are well known to a lot of schools already, in fact Schooltrends have nearly 6000 accounts with schools in uniform supply. They have been trading for 18 years and are fiercely proud of customer service.

 

Part of the decision to become part of the Schooltrends group was that we had a very fast success with Create in schools, and it made it hard to support everyone properly. We are aware of this and would not try to deny that we have had software and customer service issues. Instead we are dealing with it seriously.

 

Our support team now has an additional tier of management, new programmers, a separate training department, helpdesk and customer service separate from fulfilment. This combined with all of the experience of the Schooltrends company will improve communication immediately and as far as our quality control, and ultimately customer satisfaction it is a key strategic item on our agenda.

 

Staff turnover is quite low in fact and I think it will be even better as Schooltrends are number 51 in the Times 100 best companies to work for.

 

IE7 and Firefox are being addressed now, I am confident there will be every reason to expect success.

 

A new version of Create launches in January and any existing users can upgrade without charge. Simply PM or email me if you wish to go quickly or we will be in touch with all customers before the end 1st quarter. Following that patches and security updates will be available automatically from the internet.

 

Actions speak louder than words it is true, so we will have increased the team from 14 to a total 36 (as part of company of 150) by end 2007.

 

We are also keen to develop along the routes that schools may require and so we are forming a user group, all are welcome let me know if you would like to join. Your views will be taken very seriously and we are looking at all sorts of areas including VLE, MIS links, video streaming, podcast, CMS and more. Your guidance would be gratefully received.

 

Our mission is to get top quality product and customer service smoothly delivering to schools in the UK. We will not stop until we have very high customer satisfaction, so if you have issues please get in touch, we will respond immediately.

 

Adrian Jones

Schooltrends.net

[buzzard]

It's nice to see a company getting an answer to or comments!

[CHR1S]

Hi Adrian,

 

Firstly we would like to thank you for addressing our concerns and taking the time to reply here. We had Jonathan and Matthew visit us today who efficiently sorted out all our outstanding issues; they also took the time to explain some of what you posted here which reassured us considerably.

 

We would also like to stress that the improvement in such a short time and the professional way in which we and the comments here were dealt with has impressed us considerably.

Perhaps we were harsh to comment in the way we did without giving you the opportunity to prove us wrong but as with everything in education we were under pressure to get a resolution.

 

I hope that fellow edugeekers read this and reconsider their opinions and other companies take note that listening to the customer and working to an amicable solution isn't difficult and produces fruitful results.

 

So once again thanks to Adrian, Jonathan and Matthew for all your help!

 

Chris & Ranj

[STAdrian]

Chris and Ranj

 

May I thank you for the opportunity to fix the situation, your time and efforts have also been crucial to fixing the issues and Jonathan and Matt tell me that you were very helpful today, just shows how teamwork can resolve most things!

 

Adrian

[tarquel]

Just had a very lovely lady turn up to our school today from Schooltrends.

 

I'm fairly impressed [no - not on about her now *rolls eyes*] but I cant help but think that she was promising to much in the speel [i'm sure that ain't spelt right either but there we go].

 

A few things tho - that need answering quickly

 

Can it intergrate with e-registration systems such as Bromcom for example?

 

She didnt really answer it, but what assurances do you have for privacy and the safety of the data of the pupils [given the single sign in aspect that she talked about]?

 

How much of this is down to the end users with regards to layout and stuff? At what point would the helpdesk team say "sorry - that is up to you to set up"?

 

And, quite a evil one here but can you really provide any sort of bilingual system? as without it, you are very much less likely to get a sale in alot of welsh/bilingual schools.

 

And is the lady who's name I didnt get single? [rhetorical of course - my partner *will* kill me lol]

 

Nath.

[tosca925]

Probably the same lady we had visit us................! Imagine her to be quite dirty...........

 

Dark hair by any chance?

[tarquel]

brown hair tired back - not too long. Midlands accent - not too strong tho. Tall woman [well... taller than me but most ppl are I am *the* shortass of the town heh] ... nice tan.

 

I'll leave the details at that lol

 

But anyway... can anyone answer the above questions?

 

Nath.

[STAdrian]

Hi Nath

 

I am glad that you liked Debbie, we do too.

 

Answers,

 

We can integrate with all web based tools easily and store passwords in a gateway scenario. This means we can link to many different tools, automatically log in the user and so on.

 

 

Other tools like Bromcom, SIMS, CMIS and so on which need to be secure because of the nature of the info we can link to without opening them to the external world, that is no ports need to be opened on firewall. I don't want to go into to much detail here because of security, suffice it to say it can be done with no risk to your sensitive data.

 

Multi language is no problem, the site is created in either language in the Content Manager, it replicates all of the pages in the other language version and sets the pages in progress, so not visible. They go into a todo list until someone edits them and saves and approves in moderation. Anyone viewing the site can toggle between languages whilst staying on the same page, or stay in one language set.

 

I will give you a call later to confirm any more details that you may need.

 

Adrian

[boosting]

We looked at bluespheres we're going with inco software instead. found bluespheres too pushy.