cn198

Yeah working in a school environment I am limited in what I can utilise, and what budgets will allow. Office is a great tool in that respect because it's free for educational use, hence me trying to use it to the max. Plus most teacher are pretty decent with using Excel as part of their job, so picking up using the trackers is a shallow learning curve.

I'm kind of flipping that though, I have a complex tracking system built in Excel, which itself can pull the data into. This gives a completely self contained system that the teachers can run themselves with just one click of a button. If at all possible I'm trying to mimic that. So the main process here is getting the data out of the MIS (in this case Arbor), and Wonde or API access can hopefully give that. Longer(ish) term, trying to ditch VBA, I'd like to again keep things as contained as possible, so I'm hoping MS will pull their finger out and decide what they are going to do in having a cross platform (i.e desktop & web) language to script in, and port over to that.

Yes, very much agreed on that!

Thanks everyone, I will certainly investigate Wonde, that's definitely a potential path. So basically what I'm doing is building what we call "trackers", that track results of pupils in both primary and secondary, and allows us to colour code their academic journey, helping us to easily identify pupils who are not where we expect them to be. But I do this all in Excel, which gives an easy platform for teachers to use, and allows them to do all kinds of filtering with the data (via autofilters) to analyse the data, especially in subgroups, like PP, FSM, SEN etc... I've written code via VBA in Excel to access a bespoke (but generic) SIMS report, that the tracker itself can define what data it needs. Once SIMS delivers back the XML file with the data, I then have code (again via VBA) to read in the file, process the data and dump it back into the Excel file. The end result is that the teacher has a data analysis file (aka the Tracker), that they can click a button to get the latest data from SIMS, and it's then instantly analysed and colour coded. Meaning they spend no time collating and processing data, and more time actually doing something with the data. But because the SIMS report is generic, I can have many different tracking systems (i.e. one for English, one for Maths, or even one for all of Secondary) all using that same report, because via the commandreporter tool, the tracker can tell SIMS what pupil data it wants. We've even built tracking systems for pupil attendance and a staff SCR. So it all works really well, but obviously it's all just inherently linked to SIMS. We kind of liken it to putting a skin on SIMS. Trying to work out if it's possible to do this outside of SIMS is proving challenging, and will definitely require a different approach. API could also be a good approach, thank you, definitely worth investigating too.

Hi there, That sort of does some of what I want. But the problem is I can't define then exactly what I want when I ask for data. In my custom SIMS report I have aspect names for data, which I have selected need to be specified at runtime. When I run the commandreporter tool I supply an XML file that defines these parameters, effectively telling SIMS what aspect names I want at that moment. Doing it this way means that I can have many different systems asking for data from SIMS, but I only need one report in SIMS that can supply various bits of data to each of these systems. Going down the Live Feed route, I'm guessing I'd need many different reports in Arbor to then supply data to these systems. Chris

Hi all, I'm currently working with a school that uses SIMS, and we extract data from SIMS by using the CommandReporter tool (via Windows Command Prompt) to run reports, that then returns back an XML file with all the data. I then have some code to read in the file and put the data into Excel. However, is there anything of an equivalent nature to the CommanReporter tool in Arbor, as the school is in a trust and the other schools are interested in the system I've developed, so just wondered if there are options to run reports in Arbor, say via the command prompt, just like I can with SIMS? Many thanks, Chris

Hi all, We're overhauling our staff absence policy at the moment and we'd like to re-classify a lot of previous absences over the last 12 months to fit in with our new policy. We've extracted out all the staff absence data from SIMS via a report, but is there any way we can get the data back in without having to go in and edit every individual absence by hand? I know with pupil assessment data you can import back in to SIMS from a spreadsheet which works quite well, but doesn't seem like there is any options for something like this. Thanks! Chris

Do you know what, that could work. Thank you!

Yeah that's what we're seeing, and presume you don't know of any way to alter the drop down menu of something like the certificate type within the absence window?

Hi all, When entering staff absence in SIMS, I want to be able to record that a sick note is not needed for the absence. I originally thought of having an option in the "Certificate Type" drop down menu for "Sick note not needed", but our SIMS manager can't see a way to edit the menu options. I then wondered if we could add a tick box option on the absence options, but it seems there isn't a way to edit or add to those options. So has anyone got any ideas of what we could do here? Image of the sort of place I want something is below... Thanks! Chris

Thanks for that. Yes we've resorted to using the comments box, but as you say, the issue with that is that anyone can enter anything which is causing Excel to moan. It's madness that it lets you edit the date, but then won't save it. It just shouldn't let you edit in the first place. Very frustrating!

Hi all, We are trying to alter the renewal date on some training courses in the staff details on SIMS. These are courses that have already been logged previously, and have to be done at regular intervals. There is no need to retain the old information (i.e. when the courses were done previously), we just want to know when the next renewal date is, and don't want to have to enter in a brand new course listing just to update the renewal date. When we load up the course and alter the renewal date, you can alter it, press "OK", and then click "Save" on the employee details. All seems fine, but when you go back and look again, nothing has saved. Any ideas if we're doing something wrong, or is what I'm wanting to do not possible? Many thanks, Chris

Thanks so much for that, I shall digest and see if I can cobble something together. I have a test account I can play on so no harm can be done. Thanks for your help!

Thanks for the reply. I'd certainly echo that O365 is not suited for high volume emails. But being an educational environment every penny counts, and it's free. But we're not really sending high volume emails, our custom based email system downloads pupil/parental information directly from SIMS, and then we can pick and choose who to email based the email requirements. It means we can send highly targeted emails so that parents only receive essential information that's relevant to them. So whilst it's certainly not a speedy system to send email, it's definitely effective.As for the license, it's pretty much what I was fearing. But the idea of doing it via code or powershell is interesting, and could definitely work. Do you have a good resource to point me in the direction of for doing it via powershell? Really appreciate you help!

Hi all, Not sure if this is the right place to post about this, but we have a custom built email program that send emails using SMTP, with an Outlook account. This all works great, but with sending lots of emails, the sent items of the Outlook account can fill up the storage quota (a lot of the emails we send have large attachments). So what I'd like to do is have some sort of policy set on the account that any large emails (say >200KB) in the sent items get deleted after 6 months. We have an A1 license for Office (free for education) so I think our options may be limited. But I've looked into having retention policies on the sent items of the Outlook account, and auto applying retention labels using specific keyword searches looks like the way to go to do this. Does anyone know if this is possible with an A1 license? Our network manager isn't sure if this is possible with the A1 license, and I'm just looking for some guidance. Thanks! Chris