[scholarpack] SIMS export

[scholarpack]

We have recently acquired a school that used SIMS and they are trying to export their contacts for the pupils. SIMS CTF only exports 2 contacts per student which became quite a problem for the school as they had 4 contacts per student. On exporting the additional contacts separately the export file has a UPN on the end to match up the students. The UPN has exported wrongly. A pupils UPN is for example B909522005023 (from the ctf which is fine and it is recorded as this in SIMS, edited so wont validate) however in the contacts export it is A909522004004.(edited so wont validate)

 

Has anyone else had troubles with this issue or know how to fix SIMS to export the right contact information/upns?

 

Kind Regards

 

Jason

[matt40k]

Why not just run a SIMS report for the contacts with the UPN.

[scholarpack]

Hi Matt,

 

That's what the school did, and the UPN's came out different in the report to those stored in SIMS.

 

Jason

[matt40k]

Can you post the report?

[scholarpack]

For data protection reasons i'm afriad I cannot provide the report. The school we are dealing with has manually done it as SIMS didn't want to play nice with them.

 

Thanks for your time Matt.

 

Kind regards

 

Jason

[penfold_99]

This could be down to how the report has been created, as the contact could have multiple students in the school. Do the upns belong to siblings?

[matt40k]

I meant the report def not the actual export

[matt40k]

Quick one I boshed up works ok, I reckon they've selected the wrong field at a guess - ByUPN - Contacts.7z

[vikpaw]

Maybe they pulled in temporary ones, local, former UPN, something else altogether.

[scholarpack]

Ah right thanks for that Matt, ill get it across to the school. You may be right Vikpaw thanks for your time guys

[ntm1275]

I know this isn't going to help you, but the CTF specification should allow any number of Contacts, so as your getting this problem this is either a SIMS problem or the export is not being done correctly by the school

 

To SIMS users: Is this 'only two contacts' a standard feature when exporting a CTF file from SIMS

 

The reason I'm asking is that our contract with our current supplier will be ending soon, and changing to SIMS would be an option (as would Scholarpack), but if this 'two contacts' issue is standard for all CTF files, then that would be a big black mark against choosing SIMS

[vikpaw]

I haven't used CTF for a while, but there is no config i can see, only tick boxes to choose the data you want out, so i think it's just fixed in SIMS to only deal with 2.

Why is it such a black mark? I know it's a pain, but the import should be easy enough, as i would imagine, SIMS would help you with a transfer into their system, but helping pull in ALL the data you have.

With the export, yes it may be limited, but you can use a standard report if you do want to get all the details out.

[matt40k]

Doesn't SIMS only export the contacts marked as main or something for CTF?

[vikpaw]

Maybe only those marked with priority 1 / 2, or more likely those with parental responsibility ticked.

[matt40k]

Doubt it would be responsibility - as it's a field in the CTF

[vikpaw]

I wanted to try this for something else, so just had a quick play. Changing priority had no effect, and a priority 3 came through. Making an other contact priority 2 had no effect, but ticking parental responsibility pulled it through along with the now priority 3 mother. So it gave me 3 outputs, with the order tags 1,3,2 - which maps to the priority, but for whatever reason didn't order them in that way. So you should be able to get more out if they are ticked as responsible.

[scholarpack]

Ah ok, we never thought about limiting a number of contacts exported in a CTF, the default I would have thought would be you export them all, as a CTF file is meant to transfer all the data about a student to another school/system.

[vikpaw]

It seems it's only taking those with parental responsibility, which kind of makes sense. At least for us here, the rest of the contacts with priority above 2, are usually neighbours or possibly relatives, but may not be applicable when changing school, whereas you'd hope the parents or those responsible would stay the same or at least should remain on contact details.

[PhilNeal]

I'm pretty certain that our CTF output does what is legally required of it. CTF is a standard output that meets DfE standards - there is no flexibility.

[ntm1275]

The thing that concerns me here, is when a pupil transfers from a Primary School to a Secondary School

 

The pupil will still be living at the same address, and will keep all their contacts the same, which may be 3, 4, 5 or more contacts

 

So when the Primary school create the CTF file, it will not contain all the contacts in the file, and the Secondary school would have to re-enter them manually

 

If this is correct, then SIMS is not creating a Full CTF file as per the CTF specification

 

Having looked at the specifications of CTF version 11, there is no mention of limiting the number of contacts or anything else like Parental Responsibility (PR)

 

On average, our schools have at least three contacts - Mother (with PR), Father (with PR), Granny (without PR) - plus there may also be a Step Father/Mother (without PR)

 

All of these should be included in the CTF file

 

@PhilNeal

Can you check why SIMS is not including all contacts in the CTF file - is this Capita's interpretation of the CTF specs, or is it Capita's individual choice to not include all contacts

Edited October 26, 2011 by ntm1275

[PhilNeal]

CTF10 spec says parental responsibility + soical worker. CTF11 says everyone. SIMS goes to CTF11 in the autumn release.

[matt40k]

14th Nov before anyone asks.... why they wimped out of the 11th Nov I do not know - I think a 11/11/11 build would have been cool.

[vikpaw]

14th Nov before anyone asks.... why they wimped out of the 11th Nov I do not know - I think a 11/11/11 build would have been cool.

Probably cos there's no hope of an armistice yet