vikpaw

Agree, the schema is complex. We have some dedicated report writers in-house as it's a lot for a school to pick up unless you have someone very interested/dedicated. Interested to know how you're running the powershell routine. Is it fully cloud, or does it need to be on a pc / vpc? We're looking at how to automate some emails because the built in method is ok, but you have to get them to set it up, and for every change, so it's not really self-service.

Qatar is nice, and pay will be good. Not sure about how 'chill' it is. I think it's a stricter place in general. As with all places it depends on exactly where you are the community you're in etc. Dubai is hectic and some people feel a lot of social pressure, so you'd certainly spend more (%) of your salary, as there's a load more to do. In that sense it might be considered more relaxed in Qatar. Wherever you are there's plenty to do, and i'd highly recommend the middle east. I've got friends in both places and everyone loves it. One minor thing to note is that Qatar, along with Saudi and Bahrain still operates a Sun-Thu week, if that matters. More if you've got family / things back home that you need to stay on top of. Never really bothered me. It could affect you if you wanted to do a quick weekend away which is very easy and nice to do from here.

iSAMS is defo big for international sector. I reckon they've got about 2000 schools. I think the parent company IRIS is building something else for local (UK) state sector.

Check if you can fully manage integrations yourself without having to make a support request to generate an API key. Otherwise it stifles progress and makes key cycling difficult.

You should be able to get SQL access for free (in order to write SSRS reports), albeit via IP Whitelisting. At least I thought it was free. Maybe it's included in our bundle.

The tech stack does need bringing up to date. I think it's a background task. I keep asking for the ability to create my own API keys as I want control, but it's back burner. Having said that, we've worked on a fair bit of custom dev and they've been really good and reactive. I guess it all depends on the powers that be and what direction the product is taking, how they are prioritising the features etc. Lots of energy ploughed in to make it fit for the US with curriculum manager. We're gonna give that a good thrashing.

We use it, I don't have experience directly, but seems to work well. Allows us to link out to our payment system and get data back in. Maybe you can push for new features now TechMonkey cos when we asked for stuff we were told it would only go into the new portal, as that's where the energy was focussed. I know we've been providing feedback on the admissions portal as we're keen to see it includes the ability to manage re-enrolments. They've also just announced a partnership with Stripe which is useful for handling payments. [Not sure if that's public knowledge yet].

Well, EHG kept 2/3 going under their banner for quite some time. I would imagine the best case scenario is they take the best of each and build a central, internationally suitable, core system which can then tap into any other add-on. Faria were/are looking to do similar, but haven't heard much on that front for a while.

Some spring time news. Tes has acquired Education Horizons Group, adding not one but three MIS to their portfolio along with some other products and a heap of customers. https://www.tes.com/for-schools/now-tes/education-horizons EHG who took over DoubleFirst some time ago, adding Engage MIS to their suite, also started work on their new MIS offering Zunia. I was involved in early stages of it and it was pretty amazing, built from the ground up, with a huge team of developers. Now Tes has taken a big step into the MIS market through this acquisition along with Synergetic, EHG's standing school management system, and the other complimentary tools such as Seqta a learning management tool. Engage was pretty all encompassing anyway, but now it has a whole suite of products at its doorstep which adds more choice for schools wanting best in breed add-ons with close integration. Engage || Zunia || Synergetic Exciting times for private and international schools.

100% this ^ . Custom fields can also be tricky as you need to know the ID, but doing a read will pull that down for you. We use this {{baseUrl}}/api/students?page=1&pageSize=1&expand=customFields One school as 30+ custom fields and though we ask for some to be created as standard across the group, they all get a different ID (per instance), so we have to do a read based on field name, before we can update. If you can and it's affordable, i'd ask for a test system where they can clone your data for you. So you can experiment. Most of the work we've done has been on applicants, not on-roll students, so the endpoints are different. I think that custom data might need updating separately. It should all be in the docs. Watch out for field types, and how they might need to be enclosed in quotes or not, and any special characters in your data that could throw out any automated conversion.

Yep, DNS entries are in as they requested and validated. They don't ask for SPF anymore, but gonna try and whitelist a bunch of domains and IPs however we can. EDIT: on second check, SPF is not a requirement as it's covered by using a bespoke subdomain as the return address. Will look into VERP a bit more.

Looked at HVE and it’s only in preview and still quite limited and throttled. its also designed for internal email and external is limited to 2000 I think. The bulk of our user base are in schools who all use their own domains. So class as external. Managed to get a few to route out to Gmail via SMTP2Go thru kindly gave me a limited trial to do a PoC. But some Microsoft filters on our end and at one of the test schools are blocking the routing and sending back a soft bounce so trying to work out what’s going wrong there. Something is impersonating the outbound account as the bounce message is being sent out via the SMTP relay and allowed back in but the original email is blocked. 🙄

Not on prem. All in the cloud, which is why it's harder. The challenge is which smtp relay we use. and if its via a connector, they don't support basic auth. It mentions a smart host could/would work, but wants to challenge via a test email. Currently trying out SMTP2Go who purport to accept relay based on mailbox From email address and an IP whitelist. But i think the connector is interceding as the From and it's not going through.

Tell me more, and will the talk be recorded. Unlikely to make it to glasgow. A few posts have mentioned ACS, but it still seems to be getting the wrong end of the stick. The issue is we want a user to go to their outlook, select two distribution lists (large number of recipients) and hit send. It should be routed out via our chosen SMTP relay (because Microsoft don't support bulk / high volumes). I can see we can build apps, and using code send mail out via the apps, or use Graph etc. Maybe i'm missing something. Is there a worked example out there somewhere....

It supports it via API methods I think. Not sure how to get an app to pick up all sent mail , it gets fiddly. Dynamics is an option but it’s ugly and we wanted something simple for our users. Can it be hooked up as the outbound route on Outlook or would we need to use the UI just benefit from the contacts being in sync?

But is that going through Microsoft smtp? My issue isn’t devices it’s real users wanted to mass email so we’re trying to use an external SMTP service. When we configure the connector to route to a partner it doesn’t accept credentials. Which leads to the Unauthorised error. Trying to find a partner that works in this way for routing is a challenge or we’re using the wrong search terms.

Trying to setup external SMTP relay with Microsoft 365 to allow high send rate. Looking at services like SendGrid, MailGun etc. but struggling with the fact they all use basic auth and Microsoft is actively blocking this. Ideally want to set this up so a handful of users can be given access to the Comms / Marketing email and do a mail shot to 15k+ recipients. Avoiding them using the SMTP service’s UI so they don’t need to upload and maintain 15k+ contacts. Unless someone knows of an automated integration the can sync the global directory. Outlook client doesn’t allow manually editing SMTP when you’re using cloud exchange. Mail on a Mac was the same. IMAP doesn’t work as Microsoft don’t really support it well. Even if we put in bypasses and policies to try and make it work we’re getting auth failure during validation so can’t set the account up. Same issues with PC and Mac clients, otherwise could set up manual SMTP. Tried building a Mail Connector but that too fails to authenticate as it doesn’t validate the SMTP service because they don’t allow you to enter credentials even for outbound connections. So the service just responds with a 550 error. Ignoring the failed validation, can push messages out but the SMTP servers reject any attempt as unauthorised. Ideally need an SMTP relay that supports modern authentication. Failing that a way to sync the Exchange address list into the Contacts section in the SMTP system would make life way easier. Low code options require the contacts to by in the mailboxes My Contacts for sync. It won’t look at the directory. Looked at low code integrators that could possibly take an inbound email and forward it on to SendGrid but that would only work with a fixed recipient list and we want to use dynamic subgroups so triggering from an inbox event isn’t ideal. Otherwise it’ll have to be an app that we create which will get very messy and require a UI and it quickly becomes complex. You’d think this would be a common problem that’s solved for big enterprises already. Currently got a hack in place using HubSpot marketing tools but needs manual upkeep of the contacts which is a nightmare. Any ideas welcome.

Congrats @ZeroHour what an effort!

That WAS the old licensing model that many of us 'grew up' with, but it's changed, and they're pushing new products and methods now. So it depends on the contract. Only recently they kicked up a fuss about the SQL database having proprietary IP so even keeping a copy of that will have them frowning at you. I would say, use basic reports and exports to extract any data you want to keep for a longer period. Not sure how the migration process works, if they're just pulling data out from SQL, i'd defo just ask them to process more even for a fee. Even if you don't import all of it, it's worth having it extracted into a usable format, cos you really don't want to be running SQL queries at the last minute to find some important nugget of info.

We opt for cloud first, and have done a few migrations from on-prem to cloud. Generally, it goes well - better for schools that weren't used to having deep links to the server, so defo worth planning out all the touch points and how you will manage them. The support team handle it all, and plan the transfer etc. Generally, very happy with cloud, as it's hands-off. Things to think about during migration - what URL do/will you use. Get it in place, DNS changes, certificates etc. Config of bulk email via send grid if you've been doing it in-house. Creation of any API keys that you'll need, both REST and BATCH. I'm pretty sure they don't just migrate existing ones, though i have cloned one instance cloud2cloud for test purposes and it kept the creds, but it was on the same host. Not sure about triggers off the DB but you could get in another service, such as Salamander Software or similar to do that, or try to build something in-house with APIs, but both are more likely to be checking for actions on a schedule. Not sure if there are web hooks or triggers available via the API, but it depends on the specific ask. Quite doable though, using create dates, if nothing really needs to be truly live. You can get access to the DB for report writing and any other query you want to build, so request that up front as it takes time, and you need to provide a fixed IP that will be accessed from, so having a proxy / VPN will help if you need this for more than one user. You use this for PowerBI and potentially even building triggers if you can schedule some outputs to be synced to another DB, though you may as well use the batch API if you can wait 24 hours. Also, getting new API creds takes time, you have to log a ticket and it gets passed to the tech team. It is purportedly on the plan to allow users to create their own in the UI, but it's in a later phase of API system improvements. Big advantage is getting updates just done for you. If you want, you can request to be in a try it first group, or a do-me-last group which is handy. Generally speed and reliability are good for us and a big boon, especially for home / remote access as you're not relying on school networking infrastructure.

Great to see relatively good notice period, though tying in to end of academic year would have been nicer - say August 26. I wonder how much flexibility there will be... Interested to see how this develops. Particularly the interpretation of 'material change' - i'm assuming it's more contractual and service related than feature focussed. If you're getting a free upgrade and more features, you wouldn't mind if there was little to no cost. If schools are happy to proceed - all good, or, will some want to find out their options and explore options to switch product? A rare opportunity for a supplier to really show how open and collaborative they can be with their customers.

Ohh, I wouldn't trust a timeline from SIMS. They might still be phasing it out in 10 years, while they're phasing in the 'new' NexterGen. Not sure if EdVal was the one I was thinking of, it's part of TES and I thought this other one was independent. Quite a few have KJ Timetabler, but it's quite complex to learn (though super powerful). We have a couple of schools using GP Untis, but for ease of use ACS still seems to be the lead.

We find ACS is popular with out users, and there was also a new cloud based one, but can't remember the name and not experience of it.

To me this was the interesting part : I’m not a fan of the litigation (repeated) approach because it’s clearly not having an effect other than scaring people going into tenders. They win some, they lose some. Focus on the wins…? If you’re financially stable (purportedly better than the rest), have a chunk of market share and are gaining customers. Put all the effort and legal funds into making the existing customer base happy. Fix issues and give better support. I’m a firm believer that a happy customer will do a way better job promoting a product than any marketing team, ever! Just a humble thought.

#15 alongside vulnerability scanning is vital if you want to be PCI/DSS compliant. Depends on exact workflow and underlying links (not sure if it's been mentioned before), but at some point the question might arise if you need it, or if someone requests that you have it, even if you're just a springboard to an externally hosted PSP