Devaleth

Hi Kenny - I'd refer to this https://docs.bromcom.com/product-portfolio/what-is-office365-integration/. Unless I'm misunderstanding, I don't think the Group Provisioning part is what you need, it would be the User Provisioning/User Sync?

BenW Your intentions are laudable but I'm not entirely sure what gap this is filling? Right now our nurse teams ask for a list of names and contacts. Completing this has never been problematic. However, we often then get returns from them with students who have left terms/years ago, so clearly, data handling on their end is poor. Additionally, as a secondary, how could we expect nurses to understand what all our classes are? Students are in upwards of a dozen different classes and they way they all interact on the timetable aren't always obvious from the naming. Is the intention for nurses to come in with a schedule they have devised based on the class lists? If so that would be a non-starter for us due to the chaos it would cause. If you're just after the basics, then a pull from Wonde as suggested above is definitely the right approach.

In our move to Bromcom, we downloaded the PDO's for all students and staff, and did our best to replicate the document server - realistically this ended up being things like report cards more than other documents due to naming conventions. We've got a schedule to then delete these as they fall out of retention windows. Not helpful if we were ever to need to interrogate historic data in bulk that hasn't already been looked at, but has been fine for singular data requests.

If you need a bit more you could also do a quick report with student details + contact email addresses and match with the overview exports? Would take about 5 minutes max using a vlookup?

Hi Gareth For last access you can see this via Modules -> MCAS -> Overview. You'll get name of parent, email address and last login time with a number of filters (e.g. it defaults to the last week). You can also see a list of app installs on the same screen. Same thing for students (minus the app install) -> Modules -> Student Portal -> Overview All this info is exportable via excel. You'll then need to match parents with students to get your breakdown. There is also an option to look at inactive users (both parents and students) if you need to target those who aren't logging in.

100% agree. Bromcom school - I wish our outages were handled like this.

The honest answer is that you will likely need to reach out to ESS...but I am not sure if I would advise that. The complication here is that on ending our contracts with SIMS, we are told to delete all installs, databases etc as part of that process. They would otherwise have had to made some other contractual arrangements to retain this. Obviously the attitude (and ownership) of SIMS was in a different place 6 years ago as to how it is now, but I would be concerned that this could open the school up to potential legal action the moment they get in touch with ESS.

You may also consider FFT Aspire? If you already have that service as a school for targets/benchmarking, there is a school attendance report that has exactly this kind of data readily available. This can be downloaded as a CSV or excel, or viewed live on the website. Other than that, simpsonj's approach definitely works. You'd want to have two columns per week - one counting all the attendance codes that are included in attendance figures (e.g. not Y codes!), and then a second counting the present and AEA codes (and then do the attendance % calculation itself in excel or similar). I'd caution that this kind of report could be quite performance intensive to run due to the amount of data you're pulling from the system. I certainly wouldn't setup a report that pulled every school week at once - probably no more than one half term at a time. I've also checked the DfE's VYED site and I don't think it'll do what you need, at least on a student level. If you wanted to look at year groups etc it would work fine.

Sadly, yes. I'd suggest looping in whomever on SLT who leads on things like duties, timetabling etc before taking any action and have a proper sit down to talk it through before agreeing a decision. I'm not very familiar with the wTimetable implementation of this. It may end up being a better solution for you but you've have to recreate the entire timetable in wTimetable. Even more work now, but maybe less work later?

We have a similar system (although for us the year groups get split in half, rather than it be whole year groups by Key Stage). There are essentially two approaches you can take I think. Solution 1 Take your whole time for period 2/period 4 (e.g. 10:00 to 11:25) and split it in two. Then have a 2a and a 2b of roughly equal lengths (maybe 40 + 45 minutes). This is the simplest way of showing it but there are some downsides. You will need to be careful with cover (you could technically assign somebody to both 2a and 2b if not careful, which obviously overlaps) You system times won't be accurate for either break or the KS4 lessons Assigned cover time will also be inaccurate (40-45 minutes rather than an hour) We tried this for a year and didn't like the feel of it. Solution 2 Take your whole time for period 2/period 4 and split it into three. E.g. 2a = 10:00 to 10:24, 2b = 10:25 to 10:59, 2c = 11:00 to 11:24. This is the most accurate way of showing it but comes with different downsides. More work for your timetabler (you'd have to manually duplicate those periods in the timetabling software before import) You'll need to train staff carefully to properly take the new double registers you've created (KS3 P2 = 2a+b, KS4 P2 = 2b+c). Bromcom will default to showing them the first register only. If teachers go to their timetables first before selecting registers it will then show them the correct double column register to complete Some things might duplicate (e.g. if you have an internal truancy mark that is used in registers, if you have that linked to a behaviour pathway such as a detention, this might generate two detentions for the same lesson if the truancy mark was used in both halves of the "double") Your timetable might get too long to fit on a single side of A4 for students NB when you set this period structure up in Bromcom you'd have to use all lessons for period type - don't class any of them as lunch/break as period type. Also note that none of the break/lunch periods you have setup in your NT6 model should be present in the final import. Personally I would go with Solution 2. Your NT6 model would then be Reg, 1, 2a, 2b, 2c, 3, 4a, 4b, 4c, 5, 6.

Yep I think this is something that you will need to track at your reception with whatever sign in/out systems you use. We don't allow our sixth form to go offsite for lunch (no local provision) but if we did we would simply have a sign-out reason (for us on InVentry) that indicated they would return which could then be cross-referenced if required against sign-ins. To be honest I would suggest that once the students have left the school site, assuming that you have appropriately informed parents (ie. arrangements agreed in advance), it's not really on the school to be checking if they've not returned unless they are then missing some kind of timetabled activity. Definitely take a look at your learner agreements etc and firm that up if necessary.

Using the Bromcom credit system - I think we bought into the 30k additional package, of which we probably use about 20k in an average month. We went for a bit more to avoid running out in a busy month, especially when we understood how many are generated behind the scenes beyond just messages home. The cost felt insignificant in the long run when compared with the potential time (and costs) of managing it or other connectors ourselves.

Not sure the context around schools deleting records and then needing to restore them (from a Data Protection PoV that sounds like a mistake had been made by the school) but I can understand why that wouldn't fit within normal expected working practises and incur additional costs. From Bromcom's side this might not be a simple job of spinning up a backup and replacing like for like, they'd have to spend time identifying the relevant sections of data within logs or backup of the database and then merge into live, possibly even testing first in a different environment. I would argue the fact that it isn't mentioned in your contract lends credence to the idea this isn't something they support as normal business. And this is coming from someone who is critical of Bromcom as a whole.

Assuming that you have no need legal basis to retain the data, I can't see an issue with deleting their student profile from your MIS. As always, check your retention policies and discuss with your data protection officer (whomever that is). However I could see a world in which this wouldn't necessarily fix your problem and you might actually need to approach it from the other side - delete and recreate the member of staff as a new MIS record, unlinked to the old student one. It's likely that would lead to a brand new email address which comes with it's own issues... I might be misremembering, but I believe there there is documentation about this on the Bromcom help site, where mixing records up isn't recommended (e.g. the same person should have separate records if they are change from student to parent, or student to staff, or parent to staff etc).

Cautiously optimistic? I note that the DfE is telling schools not to renew before September 2027, and instead request short extensions so they can take advantage of the framework's launch in June 2027. I hope then that the DfE will be applying appropriate pressure now on all the MIS providers to abide by this (particularly looking at ParentPay group and their propensity for non-negotiable 3+ year contracts).

Info is provided on a pamphlet so supply can read at the earliest opportunity (or refer to when relevant). We also have posters scattered around the building detailing first aiders + safeguarding teams with photos. For a new arrival whilst going through their vetting documents we'd be giving a quick explanation of how the school works, nearest head of department etc and how/who to contact for in class emergencies. On the way up to their first classroom we'd point out evacuation routes and assembly points. If they're late we'll obviously rush through that as quick as possible whilst a person on call is baby sitting the class. However, a good induction could easily take 30 minutes or more which is just impractical at the best of times so it's very much sink or swim.

I'm sorry to hear this - you sound very frustrated. I hope the post stays up. We haven't been with Bromcom as long as you have but I feel like my current experience isn't too dissimilar to what you describe. I have had several of my tickets to support unresolved, often waiting weeks for a response that comes during a holiday period and then times out before I return so the helpdesk closes the ticket. The helpdesk is (it feels) hostile by design - it took me weeks to even get added to the approved list of people for the school. The Knowledge base of problems isn't helpful in this regard either. For all of SIMS problems, their old knowledge base was full of resolved issues which gave specific solutions to the issue (often quoting a particular patch number that would work). Bromcom's is just "this was the problem, this is what the user expected, this is what happened instead". Maybe it's a small thing but it gives the impression of "this is what we offer, like it or leave it". I think it's been brought up in the past, but when there is a problem and a user gives a sensible recommendation for improvement, the helpdesk doesn't take that onboard and it becomes the user's responsibility to re-post it on the suggestions area. I know that I still should for the collective good, but I've stopped reporting problems because it feels like a waste of my time, and it's less stress to just work around the problem. I never felt that way about SIMS support.

Day-to-day supply - generic microsoft login. No MIS access. Laptop + generic staff lanyard loaned for the day from an an internal set managed by cover admin. Signed in as a visitor every day at reception. Long term supply - personalised microsoft login + MIS access. Personal laptop and staff lanyard given which is allowed to be taken offsite. Sign in as member of staff at reception.

Has your period structure been tweaked in Bromcom? Bromcom is slightly wierd in how it handles period start + end times (e.g that the end of one period can't have the same minute as the start of another) so if you've added an extra period after 4pm at the end of the day, then covers attached to the original period timing might have been updated accordingly?

Not a lawyer! Transferred two years ago, no formal guidance, never has ever come up. Assuming a school holds appropriate licenses for use of NT6 at the time of use I'm struggling to see how this would be problematic. Many schools chose to buy an NT6 license after leaving SIMS specifically because it was their timetabler's preferred design software. NT6 historically has not been a SIMS specific solution which is why all of the export functions exist alongside the SQL server push/pull functions. You'd need to check terms and conditions for the software's license, but I would struggle to accept, given the software's long usage history, that a limitation of this nature on its use would hold up anywhere. As to the XML themselves to all intents and purposes they function identically to a set of excel files - class/teacher/period/day codes. I can't remember entirely the contents but I don't think it includes banding or blocking information. They include less information than the actual spl timetable files. There's not even any formatting and may as well be CSV files. At worse there are some columns that have some unique identifiers in which might be relevant to SQL but if that's truly the problem then I imagine the contents of the column could be cleared or replaced with dummy data before use elsewhere. Further elaboration and thought - how is this any different than taking the export of any other data from any other piece of software and using it somewhere else. E.g. an excel spreadsheet created in Office then uploaded to Google sheets and shared edited and used there? How can there be a claim around IP of Parentpay when the ownership of the output's IP is wholly (or maybe partially) the end user? XML files by design are opened and used in multiple different software. There is nothing unique or special in its structure (a timetable is...a timetable?) - it's just a data transfer. All that being said if you don't have the tolerance for risk then in the worse case it would be about a one to three day job to manually transcribe the timetable solution from one platform to another, dependent on the size.

I'm not sure then I'm afraid. I ran into the same problem and my MAT gave me access to Vision so I can get the full historical picture. It's not consistent though - for instance I was able to pull historical suspension data through Bromcom oData...but only for students who had been on roll this academic year. However with behaviour records I could only get current academic year behaviour logs, no history.

If you want more than current year students I believe you'll need to get access to the oData feed from Vision.

I have to concur with TechMonkey - I'm not sure I could advocate for SIMS in its current state simply to keep the company and product in existence. I understand intellectually that a monopoly/duopoly does not necessarily lead to innovation or customer focused products in those particular offerings. But if there isn't a unique selling point or other compelling reason beyond inertia/history then I don't think we're being bad customers by walking away in the numbers that schools have. Lest we forget, it was arguably SIMS dominance and them taking that for granted that created the environment for new offerings. The same could/would happen if Arbor and Bromcom repeat Capita's history, surely. However, on psydii's later point I do agree - in fact we should be holding all the main players to account.

Gareth, if you send as "email - plain text", it defaults to a message in the app with an accompanying push notification for all parents with an active MCAS app. Any without would be turned into an email. This is probably as close as you will get. https://docs.bromcom.com/knowledge-base/how-to-send-an-sms-or-email/ You can send this to groups of parents/students either by using the group page (e.g. year group, class group, tutor group) or by selecting a selection of students using the standard filters, or the hidden filters at the top of the screen

Jawloms - my suggestion in the interim would be to have the school consider shifting their language into a neutral style (child instead of boy/girl, they instead of he/she) where inserting the child's name would be inappropriate.