[sims] Self hosting SLG

[Ecclesbury]

Hi all,

 

Just a general question. Is it possible/advisable for a school to self host SIMS learning gateway?

 

If yes, any pointers/pitfalls/advice? Would it require a hefty server to do the job?

 

Is it even worth it over going with Capita hosted SLG?

 

Any recommended alternatives to SLG?

 

OK, that was more than one question. Sorry!

[teejay]

Capita hosting was pretty poor for us, but we ended up ditching SLG altogether rather than self hosting. If you are looking at the self hosting route, you do need someone on your team with strong Sharepoint skills. In fact I would say the only time I've seen SLG work is when a school has a strong existing Sharepoint based infrastructure and integrate SLG into that.

Have you really looked at what you are going to use it for, there are other products that integrate with SIMS to provide parental access etc that are much easier to manage and do a better job in my opinion. For staff access to SIMS, a proper remote access solution providing access to the full version of SIMS works much better than SLG and is certainly more reliable.

Have a look at the products available from TASC, Bromcom and Groupcall etc, they all intergrate with SIMS extremely well, are cheaper, much easier to set up and maintain, provide a much better end user experience.

[Quackers]

Get Insight from Tasc software instead of SLG.

[Ecclesbury]

Thanks all,

 

All things being equal I would love to start from scratch with something new, but it's not as simple as that. You know what schools are like, they don't like change! I'm just making sure I have every possibility covered before I take anything to the powers that be so that I'm in a stronger position to argue for some new software!

 

Sorry, next question. One thing our staff use (or used) SLG for was writing their reports in assessment manager. Does anyone know if Insight, or similar, allow this functionality? Or is it only SLG that will write back into SIMS? I know that there are other and better ways round this, and I don't want to go into all the detail, but if I know of another product that would allow this it would be useful.

 

Cheers.

[vikpaw]

One of the TASC products does that, as does the Bromcom product.

[Ecclesbury]

Belting! That's the answer I was looking for (but wasn't expecting.)

 

Time to find out their BETT stand number me thinks.

[vikpaw]

I don't think Bromcom will be at BETT. TASC are, the app is pretty up to date, Apple or Android. Plus you can save your to do list and add notes.

[number34]

Using Insight is a no brainer when it comes to the cost and the level of support. You can easily host it on your own IIS server. My only caveat would be about the wiki-based documentation; it is not always easy to find what you want.

[Ecclesbury]

I've got to say, Insight is looking brilliant. If teachers can use it (or a bolt on) to do their reports from home/on their MACs then it's a winner.

[Steven_Cleaver]

I've got to say, Insight is looking brilliant. If teachers can use it (or a bolt on) to do their reports from home/on their MACs then it's a winner.

Another vote for Insight has been Excellent here and have had a couple of schools in our borough take a look and move from their previous systems to Insight, you can also allow kids access to this and link this to their AD accounts as you can display, Time tables, Exam info including seating numbers, results etc set embargo's so data is only released when you want even though it may have been uploaded to SIM's earlier you can also display reports etc on their although is just linked through SIM's. The system is very configurable and is very easy to use to Tech, Students, Staff and Parents. Probably the only thing I am also not keen on as someone has mentioned is their Wiki but their support is second to none by phone or support ticket most things are answered or fixed in a few of minutes. Even sorted some of my SIM's related issues out.

[Sylv3r]

Can't knock Insight as it's a great product, but we are a hosted SLG school and have very little if any problems. We have one server which hosts our Sharepoint SQL Database, one server which hosts our Sharepoint site and associated SLG provissioning tools and another server for SIMS.

 

The spec if pretty much average and is nothing majorly over the top - we have 1,500 students and all of our parents have access and reguarly logon to our SLG site to view their Son / Daughter details - we don't print any tracking or school reports now and make them all available online other than 12 families who opted out of electronic correspondance.

[GREED]

I gotta say I have had nothing but positive responses about Insight in all my school dealings. A perfect example of a specialised product focussing on one aspect of MIS delivery and getting it spot on right, not trying to do too much out of their comfort zone. Hats off to them!

[Ecclesbury]

Thanks Sylv3r, that's exactly the info I was after, really useful.

 

I can safely say we won't be self hosting if we do stick with SLG.

[Ecclesbury]

Hi all,

 

Not sure if this is allowed or not, but would anyone be willing to share the information on how much Capita hosted SLG costs? We are a school of approx 1350 students. A private message would be ideal.

 

I would normally try to do this through proper channels, but I've got a meeting with the Head in 20 minutes and could do with the info to hand!

[zag]

Hi all,

 

Not sure if this is allowed or not, but would anyone be willing to share the information on how much Capita hosted SLG costs? We are a school of approx 1350 students. A private message would be ideal.

 

I would normally try to do this through proper channels, but I've got a meeting with the Head in 20 minutes and could do with the info to hand!

 

About 4k a year I think they costed it for us.

 

Totally ridiculous pricing if you compare it to the 1k a year cost of TASC insight which is a far superiour product.

[Ecclesbury]

Thanks Zag, that's really helpful.

 

While I agree with your sentiment (although I'm keeping my cards close to my chest at this stage!) it's worth pointing out that the functionality that we need from SLG is not covered by Insight on it's own. However, the combination of Insight and PARS (with the online capability) does give this functionality. This brings the costing more in line with SLG, but I think still marginally cheaper and with a whole host of extra functionality.

 

Does anyone know how the hosting of PARS/Insight works? Would there be any server spec upgrades to consider in the costing of this? Or is it just a second database that sits on the SIMS database, like Discover?

[zag]

Capita seem to have no real plan for SLG. It's not a good parent gateway or a replacement for Sims on the desktop. Its rubbish at taking registers and integrating with AD.

 

It kind just sits in the middle not doing anything very well.

 

I'm not sure about PARS but Insight on a server took 10mins to setup and only requires IIS. It uses very minimal resources.

[Steven_Cleaver]

Thanks Zag, that's really helpful.

 

While I agree with your sentiment (although I'm keeping my cards close to my chest at this stage!) it's worth pointing out that the functionality that we need from SLG is not covered by Insight on it's own. However, the combination of Insight and PARS (with the online capability) does give this functionality. This brings the costing more in line with SLG, but I think still marginally cheaper and with a whole host of extra functionality.

 

Does anyone know how the hosting of PARS/Insight works? Would there be any server spec upgrades to consider in the costing of this? Or is it just a second database that sits on the SIMS database, like Discover?

 

As you have guessed PAR's sits on the same same Server as SIM's and these seem to run fine togther, I have Insight on a seperate Virtual Server but this is just how I set it up and any web facing Servers have to be Https council requirement if using as web facing Servers but makes sense and I am not sure I would want my SIM's Server directly accessible over the internet as I think our LEA would have concerns about that.

 

If you are looking at registers online so staff access these online as it were I think you would need Pars Connect as well or used to but not 100% sure this is still the case. We tried Pars Connect as a demo and seemed to work fine but we use our own Gateway for access to anything internally and use an Encrypted App for access to anything MIS so Dual factor encrypted Authentication to MIS systems.

Edited February 5, 2013 by Steven_Cleaver

[PhilNeal]

Capita seem to have no real plan for SLG. It's not a good parent gateway or a replacement for Sims on the desktop. Its rubbish at taking registers and integrating with AD.

Please see Stuart's blog on this site!

[Steven_Cleaver]

Please see Stuart's blog on this site!

 

Cheers Phil very interesting will deffinately keep an eye on this as I did look at the SLG along with other systems before we settled for Insight, but completely agree with this statement below off the blog.

 

"One of the biggest drawbacks of SLG has always been the very data driven view it offers. Now, in most systems, this would be great - but in this case, remember the target audience. Sadly, the viewpoint has been from most "users" that it is unfriendly and not very pretty or inspiring."

 

This is one of the main reasons I went with Insight as felt the interface was very user unfriendly and sorry to pick out just one point as their is some very good positive points raised in the blog, but would just need to see the end result.

 

Obviously if this were to change I would deffinately be interested in looking again at SLG as I am looking at Lesson Monitor although we use PAR's and if things change or systems develop you need to revisit these.

Edited February 6, 2013 by Steven_Cleaver