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

Thanks for replying. After much digging around I managed to find a way to extract the data. If you add "Group Membership" to your report, and then add a filter on that for "Group Type" and select "Year Group" within that filter. Then, add in the "Supervisor" field name to the report. That then gives you access to the Head of Year data. If you want further details about the HoY, then rather than adding the Supervisor field, add the "Supervisors" component, because you've filtered for year group previously, this will just be the HoY details, and within that component you can access more details about them. That's what works for me anyway. Hope that helps.

Hi all, I've created a SIMS Report (through "Design Report") to output some pupil info in XML format that I can then load into other systems. As part of that info I have the name of the pupil's tutor (done through adding the Classes component and filtering for CLS), which works well. However, I'd also like to add their Head of Year to the report. Now I know the info is in SIMS, because when you view the pupil info via the Student Teacher View it's there, but I just can't find anything that relates to head of year in the report info, and my SIMS manager is just shrugging his shoulders at me. Anyone have any ideas of how I might access the data? Many thanks, Chris

Just what I'm looking for! Thank you so much.

If you asked me what the problem was like, I would describe it like a hard drive that desperately needs defragmenting. I just asked the IT guy and the SIMS manager about an SQL maintenance plan and they didn't have any clue about it. Even if this isn't the problem it very much sounds like it's something we should be doing. Thank you so much for suggesting it, I really appreciate it. Any idea of how to set all this up, or is that detailed in the documentation you couldn't find?

Hmmm, that's interesting, do you know what the SQL maintenance plan does entails? Will have to ask the SIMS manager.

Oh yeah that's definitely a factor here. So Y7 reports runs in just a few minutes, and steadily gets slower up the year groups to Y11. And then all of those times get steadily slower from September to July. But usually the max is around 10 to 15 minutes. But I've been doing this process for a few years now and never noticed this sort of problem outside of a server issue. It's definitely down to the volume of data that's coming down, but as I say don't know why this year is any different from last. I wondered if the actual SIMS database could get fragmented or something bizarre like that, or if there is some underlying network issue that isn't immediately obviously.

Hi there, I'm running SIMS reports with the SIMS Command Line Report utility. For the last month or two the speed at which the utility runs at is taking way longer than it used to, some 20 to 30 minutes. Before this it used to take around 10 to 15 minutes. I am running many filters (a good few hundred), so am requesting a lot of data, but just not sure why all of a sudden it's taking so much longer. I use the utility over remote desktop, and I have noticed this sort of thing happen before but it's usually when there is a server issue and the server is running slow. But this is not the case at the moment as the server seems to be fine. Does anyone have any ideas of something to try that might help or things I can investigate? Many thanks, Chris

When I first started out using VBA to interface into SIMS with the command reporter, I made a mistake in the call to the commandreporter.exe file, and don't ask me how because I don't know how or why this happened (although I think the quote marks were part of the problem), but I overwrote the exe file! So that meant no more command reporter! I had to sheepishly go to the IT manager and get him to repair the install. Oops, lesson learn't! A little knowledge can do a lot of damage!

I got in a right mess with my quote marks! So I build my command in VBA to then use in the Shell, called like this: Shell(cmdStr,vbNormalFocus), but trying to use this different method of using the command prompt I initially tried Shell("cmd /k " & cmdStr,vbNormalFocus), but that fails because of the space in my exe call. After faffing about I finally realised my command string should be entered as a string into the shell command, like this: Shell("cmd /k " & """" & cmdStr & """",vbNormalFocus). So that now runs happily, leaving the shell window open. So far though, typically, no errors. I'll keep trying! Thanks for both your help here, this is helping me to at least make progress! Chris

If I use /K in my shell command nothing changes, where do you use it? My code that then runs in the command prompt is below (with the /K)... C:\Program Files (x86)\SIMS\SIMS .net\CommandReporter.exe /user:cn /password:"" /K /report:"SIMS Databook Report" /output:"\\User\Documents\\Testing\Ce11_SIMS_report_output.xml" /paramfile:"\\User\Testing\SIMS_filters_def.xml"