Sylv3r

We are a Sisra user and the staff and data people love it. We looked at 4Matrix too, but they went for Sisra in the end.

We were a EMC SAN Customer (and still using it) before we went for the new Dell SAN in the summer. Would have happily bought EMC again, just the cost was slightly more out of our price range. Couldn't fault the EMC kit or support though.

Not sure some of these posts are true. If you are an existing SLG customer it is not free whether hosted or self-hosted. It seems that theres been a few mixed messages from the stand at BETT.

We are another happy silicon alley customer for the last 2 years.

We use SLG, I think we've been relatively lucky and certainly wouldn't class ourselves as Sharepoint experts but we have grown to use and tweak it for our needs. When we first got SLG around 3 or 4 years ago, we had our staff taking registers, Profiles and viewing student and staff data - we only rolled the SIMS client to a small number of staff. All parents and students had access to their information plus we never printed school reports and e-mail parents to say they are available online. Due to the lack of some functionality within SLG, we rolled out the SIMS client to all staff - some still choose to use SLG, but thats their choice. I think CAPITA will openly admit, that Sharepoint isn't the best thing to manage and is a little clunky at best, but like I said barring web part updates for us, it's something I generally can forget about and everything works fine from consolidationg users to day-to-day use.

We are currently looking at systems to enable us to monitor systems internally as we as remote servers. We have signed up our primary schools to provide IT support to them and I really want some sort of system in which we can setup in our office to enable us to see an overview on a large screen or e-mail us when necessary alerts are hit to enable us to be proactive rather than reactive. We will have a dedicated roving technician, but if it's an issue that is flagged up, we may be able to resolve remotely. Issues could be: Server goes offline, issue with low space etc. Ideally it's just endpoints we are looking to monitor and not workstations, other devices such as printers etc, but it would be nice if we could monitor such devices internally on our own network. We've looked at Centrastage and a couple of other products via a google search but would like some suggestions as to what others are using. I have some budget available, but obviously something cost effective would be preferred anything free like Cacti or Nagios would also be good, although I am not sure how this would work on another site unto 10 miles away.

We are another happy Class Charts user. Been using it since September last year and we've had good discussions with the staff and they have added features as and when we have requested / suggested them. We did very little training with our staff as it's pretty simple to use. Staff love the seating plan functionality plus the ability to easily add positive / negative behaviour which writes back to SIMS via the Groupcall Xporter. We only signed up initially to the 1 year contract, as we wanted to the test the waters with the product and whether our staff would use the system, but we have no hesitation to look to go with a longer term when our renewal is due this year.

We have a Facebook page which is regularly kept up to date, and we've just passed the 3,000 likes mark this week. Communication is key, yes we have the odd sarky comment from a parent, but generally we leave them on as it makes them look like a fool more so than us.

You could also use SIMS Profiles - although I would advise either reading the manually or trying to attend some training either ran by the LA or CAPITA.

We've just setup something similar with a folder for each student on a shared drive and Pastoral are going to scan and upload all communication / doctors notes, Ed Psych letters etc to each student user folder. We've got a program on a word document that will probably used by the Head of Year to log parent meetings, phone calls, e-mails etc. Although, a system designed for such task would be better suited, I looked at couldn't find anything.

Theres some good resources amongst the toolkit. I looked at it earlier in the week and we have decided to use a few both pre-school and during PSHE which so happens to fall on the 10th February.

When we became an academy we moved away from FMS to Sage 200.

We've used Microsoft Lync before in the past to deliver e-safety training to our parents and it's worked pretty well. All free as part of Office365 too.

I am going through exactly the same thing at the moment and in the process of drawing up tender documentation. I agree with you - Option 2 is what your after.

I had a nosey of it around 6 weeks ago at the SIMS Partnership Schools conference - really liked it and fedback some changes I would have liked to have seen. The existing supportnet is due a refresh so look forward to seeing the latest release.

Are you running up-to-date AV software on all your machines? It sounds to me like someone has received one of the dodgy e-mail attachments doing the rounds at the minute and a PC within your organisation is sending out rubbish which is resulting in the backlisting. The issue is, if you request to be removed from the Blacklist you only get a limited of opportunities if you are blackisted again otherwise they may be a little less accommodating / charge for removal.

On the SIMS homepage if you have the timetable widget the members of staff can just double click the particular lesson?

Excellent article - only fell asleep three times reading it but eventually got it finished Hopefully bump into you this week sometime for a catch up!

App for iPad / iPhone released last week too.

Just seen this video, does anybody recognise anybody familiar from these forums? Theres a Oscar or BAFTA ready in waiting. I wonder if he did his lines in one take?

I thought it was very good. An IT Teacher and the Head of PSHE asked us if we record it at the start of the week, but I'll have to have a word as to what purpose they were going to use it as the audience will have to be probably our sixth form only.

Impair is a great product and we use it here. Not sure if it would replace your network though, your going to have to setup scripts etc for mapping printers logging down access to students and staff etc, but Impero on the top will give you a lot of useful features - printer credits, patch management, power management etc.

Are they trying to replicate Yammer from Microsoft?

I think as an academy (if thats what you are) a three year lease is the most you can buy into I believe - 5 year leases will be heavily frowned upon by your Auditors without a valid reason.

We've been a longstanding Smoothwall customer for around 7 years now. We are extremely happy with the product, features and support we receive. If the price is the sticking point, I'd look to dig deep and find the difference from other competitor products personally.