gillp

I am very happy with Cunningham's today - they've sent through a customer survey. Here's the link if anyone would like to participate: Mod note: Link removed as it requires a customer-specific token

Have a look at Coscole - https://www.coscole.com/ Works well with SIMS but not as easy with iSAMS

We use iSAMS

We have a similar problem – here is the reply from Cunningham’s: “I think the issue your MIS has a licensing restriction on the API, meaning there is now an additional cost for accessing photographs. I have spoken with our MD and development team and currently we are unable to pay the extra fees. I understand this is frustrating and means the photographs will need to be transferred manually into the folder, until resolved. “ We are very concerned

This doesn't apply to exam results, as far as I know

We use A2C for communicating with exam boards

I couldn't recommend Cunninghams either. I was impressed with BioStore at BETT. I've heard good feedback on other forums.

Interesting - we had problems last week as well

We are in our second year with CRB Cunninghams and WisePay. The system works but it took half a term to iron out the problems. If we were to start again I would not choose them. I saw BioStore and Bett and was very impressed. If we had the energy and resource to start again I would look at them. Gill

I have picked up the task of extracting data from CJM to transfer it to iSAMS. I haven't used Filemaker/CJM before and would welcome advice on how to proceed. I have exported pupil and contact information but am struggling with the rest. CJM mention a link to iSAMS on their website, has anyone used this? Help/advice gratefully received

We've recently started with WisePay and I am not impressed. We switched late in the day as we were making the decision at the time when there was a lot of bad publicity around ParentPay. When a parent tops up on WisePay the balance is not correct until there is a sync with Cunninghams. I cannot believe that, in this day and age, that Wisepay cannot show a correct balance. The account linkages are dreadful. It would really help if, when there are siblings, that the main account was clearly identifiable. Ideally, Wisepay would prefer that you email only one parent. When both parents are together you mostly see Mum's details the Dad's. If Dad sets up the account it defaults to Mum's email address. No wonder parents get confused. If I am missing something please please let me know

We moved from SIMS to iSAMS around 6 years ago. Teaching staff found iSAMS much easier but the office staff would still prefer to go back to SIMS. You will need a separate timetabling package. We tried the Australian timetable software and Keith Johnson's. The latter was better and is used by quite a few schools. However, some former SIMS schools still use (or have moved back to) NOVA T6 and getting the data into iSAMS works well. Extracting data from SIMS is much easier than iSAMS as it is pretty much all available and many users can do this. With iSAMS you need 1 or 2 developers to set these reports up. Setting up all the structures pupil reports is so much easier on iSAMS than it was on SIMS. You can set up the output templates yourself or iSAMS do it for a very reasonable price. iSAMS have a parent portal. Iit is not 'very pretty' but our parents like it. iSAMS are going down the APP route, which looks interesting. iSAMS also works well with the Firefly VLE. We have our website and VLE with Firefly but they are moving away from website development, which I think is a bit of an own goal. A number of schools have moved their school calendar from iSAMS to SOCS and we are also looking quite seriously at that. Overall, I prefer iSAMS as it is web based. Much of the functionality also works on iPADS so we can register in assemblies etc The big issue is the sheer number of packages available which all fill a ‘little niche’ but full integration can be a pain.

We moved from SIMS to iSAMS 2 years ago. The teachers love iSAMS and find it much easier than SIMS. The Registrar and office staff have found it less straightforward but don't moan as much. You would need someone with SQL reporting knowledge to extract data. Timetabling is more of an issue as there isn't an intregrated package. Our Parents are very happy with the Portal - we now only post full reports home, all other reports are only posted on the Portal. On the whole I would recommend it. If you are doing the rounds, have you looked at Schoolbase?