AnglianEdu

Hi, We have agreement from ESS to have our own web application to SIMS via an API and this has worked fine for the last few years. However now our systems are not connecting properly with the following message Does anyone know what the SEN Cache is and what that table does? It seems to be something new?

The problem with this is going to be what happens when they enforce it fully in July? The functionality doesn't even work properly, it just redirects to the timetable home page for pupils rather than takes you to the relevant student timetable. Also it's missing so many features compared to SIMS7 - no ability to email a timetable to students for a start, which is kinda a big omission as when we enrol people or change their timetables we need to email them an updated copy! Do these people even think about what schools want or do they just try and force us into it?

This morning both of our schools appear to have a silent update made to their Next Gen settings, enforcing all timetables have to be viewed in Next Gen rather than SIMS7. We did not command this and it appears that other schools have also had the same issue today which appears to be an attempt to force Next Gen adoption by stealth. The ironic thing is that even for those staff who did have Next Gen access, the link didn't work for any student or staff member anyway, as it either gave an error or took the staff member to the timetable search page rather than that student's timetable. We've since seen that you can disabled the redirect in the Next Gen admin console, but this only will take effect from tomorrow, which is not really what we are looking for. It is unacceptable in my view that ESS are forcing these things on people with these silent updates, and that's before we take into account the functionality actually does not work!!! Has anyone else had experience with this?

With us we looked at everything there was and decided to stay with Sims for our Sixth Form only provisions but go with Arbour for all through and Primary/Secondary schools.

We still can't download the latest SIMS version update to deploy across our sites, just gets stuck on verifying the download.

I've played with them all and currently we are using SIMS+Nova for two stand alone Sixth Forms where we have around 60 subjects being taught and 4 figures worth of students. I think my immediate superiors would ideally like to just use timetabler as other schools in our group do (which are smaller and not sixth forms), but I have been pretty strongly against it. The blocking system used by Nova is far superior and easier to use for an establishment like us. The automation and the 'helpful' things that TimeTabler tries to do for you I can see would be really helpful for smaller schools and secondary ones, but it actively works against me when I'm trying to design our timetable and in other ways forces me to do certain things I don't need to do in Nova to achieve others. A lot of the good about Nova is in how it can work for a variety of different approaches. It can do some of the stuff automatically, but if you know what you are doing and want to simply build a timetable on your terms, it's not going to place roadblocks in your way because it doesn't think you should be doing things a certain way. Now that's probably dangerous to someone who is new to the software as you can get yourself in all kinds of knots, but if you do know what you are doing, just being able to do it without having to fight something that thinks it knows better is far easier. I have chatted with the TimeTabler team and I have no doubt that they would be very supportive if we ever went down that road and the support they give us when we were looking into it was second to none. However most of our queries were answered and involved simply following a lot more steps than we would have to do in Nova to achieve the same thing because Timetabler had more rules in terms of how things must be done and also how the automation thinks you want it to be done. I've had a limited time in playing with EdVal, but the moment we talked to them about our size and being a stand alone Sixth Form they quickly lost interest which suggests to me that they don't have that much confidence in their product to meet their needs and the support if we ever went down that road would be lacking to say the least. On the other hand, I have colleagues in other parts of the trust who use Arbor and Timetabler every day for secondary and primary schools and it works like a dream for them and looking at their requirements, I can see why it would be better than Nova. But for us due to the student volume and the complexity of our curriuclum, it just don't have the same fit. Arbor can't even give our Sixth Form assurances that they can support us due to our size!

The latest patch from ESS is really pushing Next Gen There's now a top menu bar section for it and the usual SIMS splash screen has been replaced with an ad for Next Gen.

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Worth noting SIMS does actually work if you press remind me later, but the Statutory Returns / Census functionality isn't there. Everything else works mind.

Second Thursday in a row, clearly whatever it is doesn't like the day Thursday.

This problem is back again for us this morning, anyone else?

I can see on those pages it says SIMS Eligibility services are down, but I can't actually see the page with more details on as I don't have access. They pick a really great day to do it, GCSE day and also census day/

I guess it depends what you need from a timetabling package doesn't it? We're a Sixth Form only Trust (but that will change soon) and most of our Heads of Department work out where they put their staff and how they schedule their lessons themselves and normally it's then up to me to make it work from a rooming point of view and in a way that we can service our student's choices in terms of A Levels etc. Having tried Timetabler recently at the request of our SLT as we're reviewing Arbour as a possible future MIS, I found that Timetabler was more orientated to helping me solve timetabling problems, making stuff fit working out what subjects to put where and that kind of thing and working out the logistics of doing the department staffing, which we don't really need as we do all that on a devolved department basis and for a Sixth Form that really works for us. When I actually tried to basically build the timetable as we want it into Timetabler it felt very difficult in that it was always trying to help me do things or overcome problems or help me schedule things in a way based on rules when all I wanted to do is build an already designed timetable into the system so it can be used in the MIS system. That is really simple to do in Nova, but timetabler seemed to have a lot of extra 'fluff' and whilst that fluff is clearly well meaning, for the way we do things, it simply got in the way. It's my big fear about moving to be honest, it just feels that Timetabler doesn't fit well for Sixth Form only Trusts that work the way we do, whereas in Nova it's basic but you are in control and building everything in a structured way whereas in Timetabler it feels like it's trying to do the work for you to resolve problems etc, when I'd much rather manually build it. At some point I need to go back to Timetabler and have a further play with it to feedback further to SLT, so any suggestions helpful with that or any other packages that may come in handy. Compass is not something I've come across but any feedback on if that is more suitable to a Sixth Form would be helpful. We would be keen to get away from SIMS as well, but as the Trust timetabler, I guess I've probably less keen than most.

I know this is becoming someone of a Suffolk related thread, but I also work for a MAT in Suffolk! Out of curiosity for anyone here who has gone over to Arbour (another person based in Suffolk here), do any of you have a Sixth Form and if so how did you find it for timetabling purposes. How does Compass compare for that also? For me Timetabler looks a lot more complicated than Nova at least for our needs but probably it is a case of 'what you know' and what you are used to. If you needed support with the timetabling process, how did you get it, because I'm aware Timetabler don't provide phone support. We are also looking at potentially changing in 25/26.

Indeed, we've had a lot of people who have got the email throughout the course of today, including many people who we wouldn't expect ESS to send an email to. They really are going through the belt and braces approach. Did make me smile in some places though. Both in terms of some of the things they said in the later half of the email about data exports and the early bit about BETT, my colleagues recollection is different

I thought I was big and clever with this - I add a new academic year this lunchtime and it took about 30 minutes. Not too bad I thought. I was then told that actually we had wrong date on our school term dates I have been provided so thought that since it only took 30 minutes to add the year, changing a single date should be quicker than that. It's TWO AND HALF hours later and it's still running. How on earth can it take half an hour to add an academic year and so long to change a single date by one day? How long can I expect it to take? Not very popular right now as a couple of our staff want to use SIMS and the screen says very clearly that edit academic year should not be interrupted!