[double first] Double First Engage

[tben2505]

Hi folks,

 

We use this system at our school.

 

I hate it.

 

Anyway, does anyone know if there's a quicker way of importing new students rather than manually typing them in individually...? Some kind of import from Excel?? Doesn't seem to be...

 

Did I mention I hate it?

 

Tom.

[Alloy20]

I think you did mention that yes.

 

I work at a school in the Middle East and we were one of the first adopters of Engage in the region and I feel your pain, or at least our registrar does. We have probably reported and discovered more bugs than anyone else and have built up a bit of a rep with their support as we are in communication daily.

As far as I am aware no there is no way to import kids yourself, if you are talking about a migration from another MIS this was fully handled by Double First when we made the cross over from Phoenix which at the time wasn't supported for migration so they had to write it from scratch for us.

 

On a side note about Engage, is it just me or does this still feel beta-ish to you? Our latest issue has been with the timetable module, after being told that there was no timetable it couldn't handle, we threw 15 minutes lessons at them and discovered that there is apparently a 20 period cap on it. Who knew? haha

[DoubleFirstChair]

Hi Tom,

 

Having seen your post I am obviously concerned at your comments. We have many schools as well as the major schools groups (UK and International) using Double First Engage, so I would be keen to know exactly what the issues are about which you have concerns.

 

Do please feel free to contact me either by email or mobile. I assure you we will investigate the issues thoroughly and report back to you.

 

Regards,

 

Piers du Pre

Double First Chairman

[email protected]

m 07971 171 171

[DoubleFirstChair]

Hi Alloy20,

 

May I make some comments regarding your post, please?

 

First, I agree that you and your Bursar found more 'bugs' and 'feature requests' than any other school since Engage was launched which certainly took us by surprise. However, I would like to think that we supported you tirelessly through each of the issues, making frequent visits to the school as well.

 

We recently learnt of further issues the Registrar was having. However, since then we have been advised those specific issues have been redressed. Is this not the case?

 

Regarding the Timetable, our own research (and that of the timetable experts we employed at the time) never suggested 15 minute lessons may ever be required. Hence, it wasn't planned for and the upper period limit was set at 20. But I believe your Bursar is now working on another potential scenario which may be possible.

 

Once you are able to use our Timetable, or indeed TimeTabler from Keith Johnson which fully integrates with Engage, you will benefit from,

 

1. All classes, staff, rooms and pupils only have to be entered once

2. Timetable draws from the curriculum models already set up in Engage. This means that one set of curriculum models serves the timetable, assessments and attendance – one point of maintenance

3. The timetable creation is seamlessly linked to the timetable printing system, meaning that individual pupil timetables and room, staff and subject timetables can be created.

4. The timetables can been seen in the staff, parent and pupil portals

5. The timetables can be used to set lesson plans

6. The timetables are used to set staff cover

7. There is a locate pupil and locate staff option that show where the person is right now, or at any time/date in the future

8. A facility to 'Find a Free Room or Staff Member'

 

As I said to Tom in my previous reply, do please feel free to contact me either by email or mobile.

 

Piers du Pre

Double First Chairman

[email protected]

m 00 44 7971 171 171

Edited July 3, 2011 by DoubleFirstChair

[tben2505]

Hi Piers,

 

Your team have very kindly contacted me to see if we can look into making the process potentially more efficient - for which I am very grateful and impressed.

 

Thanks for being so responsive and willing to help - much appreciated.

 

Cheers,

 

Tom

[SnapReg]

Hi folks,

Just wondering if Double First now has an import function? Will it take a CSV file? I'm hoping there may have been Engage developments since this thread came to be; an import function would definitely help to reduce manual data entry of new students (not from migrating or changing MIS).

Thanks!

[Scoox]

It doesn't have an import function by design (because they provide a paid bulk data import service), which for a database program is pretty embarrassing.

[vikpaw]

Well, it has an export/import function , this would work for Engage to Engage transfers as it's a proprietary format and encrypted.

I've just asked if there is more that is possible around it.

 

There is no generic user available CSV import, but when first setting a system up Excel import is the default option. It's relatively straight forward, so if there was a batch of new students that needed to be pulled in, you could log a ticket and ask support to help do it for you.

 

I can't see much use for this, how do you amass lots of data for bulk import? Our only new data is from admissions and we input them manually as and when they drip feed in.

 

There is a web based admissions system where the applicants can fill a form in and this can be piped straight into the Prospective Student section. Quite a bit of work being done around that area to fit with different school requirements such as upload of supporting documents, charging for the application etc.

 

If there is a strong argument to have this function made available to end users and you're an Engage School, create an 'Idea' on the Double First Share Ideas site and I'll up vote it. I'm sure we can get a few votes, there a many lurkers here

[bobsmith]

does Double First have CTF import?

[vikpaw]

does Double First have CTF import?

Not that I know of.

The web import for admissions brings data in ready for review in the system.

They also have a form of API for linking to other systems.

 

Generally, I'm not sure when you would need to do bulk imports, other than from an MIS migration or for linking to another system. I'm guessing here, but for most independents there isn't a large volume of transfer documents coming in all at once, for say the lowest year, else they would have built something to manage it.

 

Certainly for us as an international, people apply willy nilly, they aren't transferred in bulk. Also many schools are K12 so there is no feeder school as such and if there were, they would be many and disparate. We prefer to enter our own data and make sure it's valid and of good quality.

[vikpaw]

Just heard back from Double First and it's pretty much as I expected.

 

They can merge data into an existing database using the same spreadsheet method they use for new school setups, but the school has to take responsibility for de-duplication and making sure the data is clean.

 

I know it's straight forward but can be plagued with issues e.g. if a field e.g. Nationality isn't in the relevant lookup table then it needs to be added on the fly. As it's a flexible system this can be really useful if your data is clean, or a pain if it's not - I've seen it go wrong and a system ends up with US, U.S.A, America and American! It's funny how many databases I've seen where the nationality is entered as the county - UK, France etc. Screw ups like this can affect reports and dynamic filters in the system. On initial setup, it's something we looked for, but on an ad hoc import you might not be as thorough in checking for these sorts of issues.

 

So it can be done, but as expected, this is a service you have to request from the support centre and could be chargeable depending on your support level and stage of implementation.

 

We're coming up to 3 years of usage and we've not found a need for it so far.

[Scoox]

After wasting tens of thousands of pounds on this clunk of an application, the school I used to work for recently stopped decided to stop using it. Funny that when you google "Doublefirst Engage" this forum thread is the fifth search result.

[vikpaw]

Not sure what your point is. Everything on EduGeek is very highly ranked. You've just assisted the ranking by posting in this thread!

[Scoox]

Did you read the first post?

[vikpaw]

Did you read the first post?

Naturally, except it doesn't help decipher yours. It's the third result for me in a Google search, so it looks like you've really helped to raise their profile

[Scoox]

The first post reads:

 

Hi folks,

We use this system at our school.

I hate it.

Anyway, does anyone know if there's a quicker way of importing new students rather than manually typing them in individually...? Some kind of import from Excel?? Doesn't seem to be...

Did I mention I hate it?

 

If I was thinking about shelling out thousands of £££ to buy an expensive piece of software the first thing I'd do is try to find independent reviews on Google, and quite frankly finding those comments on the third Google search hit wouldn't exactly give me confident, now would it? Furthermore, Google was able to find hardly any independent and unbiased detailed reviews on this package, which is a sign that very few people are probably using it, further undermining my confidence in the product.

[vikpaw]

I'd be interested to see the independent and unbiased detailed reviews for all MISes. If you find a good source please do share.

 

I'm an Engage user, very happy with it. I know of schools that tried it and didn't like it. Each to their own.

 

You're right that it's little mentioned online; here or elsewhere. Most Engage users I know on here are lurkers. Relatively speaking the number of negative posts here is nothing compared to the rants about SIMS or other systems. I checked every post here before changing to Engage at my last place and it didn't put me off.

 

So where do you work now? Still in a school? What's the MIS. I know the OP is happily using SIMS now and spends a lot of time on here gathering and sharing info.