andrew.rose

I requested the cost to advertise on the MIS forum in late 2009 .. was told Capita had reserved it ... I'm not agreeing with anyone, simply pointing it out.

Or even Truecrypt which I've found works really well.

We have "pseudo SSO" in the form of an open username space so users can set the same username/password as their network login. We are also working with some providers to integrate into City wide school portals. However, the only real solution I can see to SSO would be for everyone (software providers) to adopt something like OpenID as it is neutral to any form of ownership / control. There is also SAML/Shibboleth, but it seems to break down when you want to give users the freedom over their provider.. please correct me if I am wrong.

I'll have someone give you a ring ASAP Regards Andrew Rose

Hi Iain Thanks for expanding on the issues you encountered. During the time you would have been using IRIS, it was provided by free to Manchester schools from Parrs Wood High School as a system in development. Ease of use is one of our primary areas of focus. Can you remember what, in regard to the layout was unfriendly? This was caused by a certain MIS system exporting incorrect data due to a synchronisation issue (inside the system itself). This was resolved, after a lot of emailing about support departments that took forever to reply. We also introduced an automated system for keeping data in sync some 2 years ago now. But please be aware that these where issues during the development phase and we helped as best we could by providing the facility for schools to send up hand formatted CSVs of the grouping data that we imported into IRIS while the problems where happening. We had no dedicated support at the time so support requests where handled mainly by myself, who was also the school MIS manager, IRIS developer and IRIS support for 20+ schools. These days however, we do have a support team that can be reached by Phone, Email or the Bulletin Board in IRIS. Most of our support requests are dealt with same day if not there and then on the phone. We have tried to make things as easy as possible for the schools ICT support staff. Some of these include: 1, Allowing staff to have the same username / password as the school network. 2, Providing an "instruct us" service, where you email us with details of any setup requests or administrative tasks to perform in IRIS. 3, Automated data transfer from your MIS to IRIS. While it may be easy to use one system for all areas of school management, unfortunately it is never the case that such a system does it all very well. If a school takes behaviour seriously, using the built in tools of an MIS just doesn't cut it, most of the time I started to develop IRIS because of the lack of functionality in main stream MIS systems and drawning on my 7+ years working as an ICT technician / MIS manager in school to provide a system that is developed for the needs of the school, not what I think they need. Thanks again for replying. Andrew Rose

Hi Iain I hope all is well. Could you expand on your comments: "...own personal experience of IRIS is not good", "...Two good reasons not to purchase in my opinion" and "...I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole". Regards Andrew Rose

Hi Andrew I'm the development manager on IRIS (from the initial conception). If yourself or anyone else has any technical questions, I'd be more than happy to answer them. Best regards Andrew Rose

If by scripting you mean SQL, then it's a simple matter of connecting to the database with your favorite programming language and firing SQL scripts at it. I've done this for over 6years, and have found it to be pretty easy to find your way around if you use the data transfer functionality in CMIS to export the entire database into csv files which you can then grep for what your looking for.