Producing ID badges for All Staff from SIMS.Net

[_techie_]

Hi,

 

I have been given the task of producing ID Badges for Staff for September 2010. We have SIMS.Net at the moment, and would ideally like new badges to be made inhouse if possible, so that if staff name change, new staff come in etc, we can easily make a badge for said new staff.

 

Cost is not really going to be a problem. Is there an easy way to make badges using a third party software product from SIMS.Net. What type of materials for cards do people use, and would we need a specialist printer to print them on, if it is a credit card style card we use?

 

Because of the nature of schools layout (very open), this is a must for September 2010.

 

Thanks for any pointers/advice/products!

 

I have posted about this in the past, but would ideally like it to be as simple as possible, so that our reception team do not need us for assistance at every step to produce them!

 

Thanks,

 

_techie_

[Dancer]

I looked at this a couple of years ago and one of the sims partners (Vericool i think but I can't find any info on the website when I just had quick look) had a product that linked to personel and produced id cards. The offering is focused on biometric identification of students so it was quite expensive just to produce id cards so we didn't go with it. Edited June 16, 2010 by Dancer

[vikpaw]

We use a card 5 system, which is specialist for this, and uses special cards like credit cards. There's a big outlay for this, but there may be other systems on the market. The downside to our system is that it's in Access and needs manual updating with data from SIMS, this is a huge pain as we also make student id cards.

 

Card Five ID Printing Software for ID Card Printers - CardFive ID Software - The specialist printer shouldn't be a problem from them i guess. It does have to reside on a dedicated PC however, and has a USB activation key, that must remain in there.

 

We then attach a camera, to put photos into the ID system, and i then export to file and import these into SIMS manually for staff and by import routine for students.

 

Someone posted on Capita's SupportNet about an SQL database, that just pulls the data out of SIMS automagically and makes it available for Card 5. I've done a test, and it is possible to hook Card 5 up to talk to SIMS, and see the info, however that's against the rules. So i want to look at this method of extracting data into another sql database, maybe in the summer if i have time.

 

Also, @losojos; - joshjohnson on SupportNet has a tool that exports all the photos from SIMS into an Access database, but it could be SQL too using command reporter. Search this forum for the thread.

 

In addition, @bantonia; - Will (Bill) Antonia (SupportNet) has just released a JAVA api tool that works with command reporter.

 

A combination of these methods would be very powerful. Perhaps we could all collaborate and become a Capita Partner....?

 

Even without card 5, the automated methods i've mentioned could be very useful for any school, just to produce cards in house, they could easily be printed onto prepared card templates of the Avery ilk, and / or laminated for a very low cost solution.

[_techie_]

Just to update this thread, we finally went with a company called securit... They will be providing us with a printer, software, badges, lanyards, etc etc!

Hope this helps anyone!