Anjelica

2011. Yes I have accessed the old database. A couple of times I had that "Is this data right?" moment but checking SIMS found it was. Once we were happy with the data we moved the old database to a virtual server with the minimum amount of memory - it's painful to access now but it's there if needed. We did have a request from the Police during a high profile court case although they did acknowledge that as the data was outside the seven year range they didn't expect we would be able to fulfill. The essence of a good migration is a 'clean' database which you know will only have relevant information. Spend some time getting rid of old contacts, doctors etc. There is no sense in moving anything you aren't going to use. Word of warning. Once you have migrated be aware that your new database will start numbering new Admissions from 1. There is a setting that you can use to start from the last number in your current set up - it may not bother you but I wanted my numbers to be consecutive.

Yes, I still had access to our old SIMS database but we paid extra to have seven years data migrated. Well worth the extra expense.

Reboot_IT - You should consider asking Bromcom to provide you with details of a Reference Site who you can talk to. Unfortunately, when we were considering moving, our nearest site was a full day trip away but it was worth going and seeing how they used the MIS. Now there are a lot more schools using Bromcom you should hopefully have somewhere closer. Changing MIS is a daunting task but it is very doable especially as Bromcom do all the hard work (when converting from SIMS).

Add another vote for Bromcom. Excellent support, easy to use and, when we converted from SIMS 9 years ago, they did all the transition while I went on holiday. Price is good and for a MAT to have all it's data coming out in the same format is a no brainer. Parents like My Child At School and this has revolutionized Parents' Evenings so worth the money on it's own

Oh, good grief! Why do people stay with Sims with this kind of support. I normally get a reply from the excellent guys at Bromcom support within the day and it is unusual for a problem to take more than a week to fix (or at least know that the fix is in the next upgrade).

I used to set mine up in the morning and set the timer so that it finished just as I got home from work. Unfortunately after a few years of use mine has suffered from spindle failure* (the bit that holds the paddle). It still works well but I can't leave it full of ingredients all day anymore as it will leak. I now surround the spindle with marg before I put the water in, shove in the ingredients and put it on straight away. Mine does a dough cycle (doesn't cook it at the end) so often I use that and turn out the dough, shape it and cook the bread in the oven when I have it on for other stuff. We have a flour mill close by so there is no shortage of different kinds of flour to try - I never bake the same kind of loaf twice in a row. *Spindle failure is not uncommon - you can buy a new pan but they are almost the same price as a new machine.

Excuse the silly question. If we buy into a system like yours do we get our own branding so that it appears like we have sent it or does it look like it has come from a separate company?

Thanks for the comprehensive reply. I don't think the e-mails are getting blocked by our ISP as some parents are receiving all of them. We are presently running an iPad project with our Yr7s. My test e-mail (yahoo) hasn't had a single e-mail that contains the word iPad!!!! One of my biggest problems with the system we use is that we don't get bounces so there may be a large number that have no chance of getting through. I find this a big problem because, of the 2500 addresses on our database, I have no idea how many are getting there. My Head keeps asking what percentage of parents have provided an address but that could be significantly more than actually get the mail!!

Thanks for your thoughts guys. I had thought more people would be DIY like us but perhaps our problems with being classified as SPAM explains why not. Any other thoughts gratefully received!!

We have always run our own parent mail system. In the early days it was easy - we used First Class and could send as many e-mails as we wanted to. We had to move away from FC a few years ago and now use Microsoft Office 365 to send our mail and alerts. Initially we ran into the problem of MS restricting how many e-mails we could send per day (500 rings a bell). As I have 2,500 parents that was a major problem. One of our teckies worked out how to create groups of e-mails and now when I send it appears that I only send 1 e-mail per group. (My parents are divided into Year Groups so a mail to all parents takes the equivalent of 7 e-mails.) This was working fine until ....... ISPs started blocking our e-mails. It's weird. I've run a test with my own Yahoo.co.uk address - they don't block all the mail, just some and there is no pattern. It's not the length of the e-mail or the kind of attachment - there is really no pattern. As far as I can tell, all mail to Sky.com is blocked and BTConnect.com is patchy. The other problem with this service is I don't know how many e-mails are bouncing. How does your school do e-mails to parents? Are you doing it yourself? How do you stop ISPs presuming that it is SPAM? Are you buying into a service? Are they any good / worth the money? How easy are these services to configure? How flexible are they? Help. What should be an easy task is turning into a real pain.

None - a power surge fried the router on Monday night!!!

Brucy - Excuse the stupid question but where did you order them from (and does the word "order" mean you had to pay for them)? I just keep logging in until they appear on the page (usually sometime after Christmas)

Work this one out then......... Door to door it takes 1 hour 20 to get to work but 4 mins to get home. With a very smug look on my face - I go to the gym on the way in!!!

Thanks to everyone who offered help with my question this week. Richard (@rpwillis ) at SalamanderSoft has come up trumps and is working to complete the task for me. We had worked together before so he knows our systems and I can recommend him if ever you want any kind of task from Sims (he created a Sharepoint front end so that students could fill in an Aspirations aspect on our Intranet).

The problems with the DMS are many and various. The main complaint has always been that if you create documents from a mail merge you can't then automatically upload them to the student files whereas with document archive software it would recognise the occurence of a particular name, tag etc. My aim is for all files to be archived no matter where they are stored then they can be searched as necessary. It won't matter then when people "forget" to upload or if a document refers to one or more students.