GREED

Partner loved it, going to give it to her mum the weekend to cheer her up after her recent op. Perfect timing.

The BECTA report is not representing procurement law. Interesting how only tenders Bromcom have won have been mentioned and very positively here. This thread is fast turning into promotional material. If the report or what it was referring to was applicable and mandate and had an effect on single schools, in the 6 years since many many many schools will have fallen foul by now... they have not. Please can we stop scaremongering that every schools HAS to be going through full procurement processes. It is sensible to take the opportunity to look at the MIS you have, make sure it is giving you value for money... but like switching any other software out there to a competitor it is not mandatory.

BECTA report was never a mandate anyway...

Sure you can - because most of the time a migration is just a whole bunch of reports/exports anyway No competing MIS will have access to another's database like a partner or integrator will do (ergo be a partner themselves, have access to APIs and the likes).

No... it isn't. This will only apply to large deals likely in the domain of LAs; individual schools will fall below the financial limit for OJEU. MATs or group procurements, may do and would need to check individually. Will the database be significantly changing is the next question - more than is deemed reasonable? Maybe. So then is it only a large interface change? For sure. Does this mean it is significantly different? Only time will tell I have no where near close to the answer about what SIMS 8 will be like. I'm very concerned that there is forceful language going on insinuating that schools MUST do x y and z, and saying it is not an option, even at this early stage - and advice coming from a competitor as well... seems convenient advice. Absolutely schools to take this as an opportunity to review the MIS and is it now/going to be fit for purpose, getting the best out of their MIS still, is there something better or more cost effective out there. Schools should take time to access what the costs are in the procurement, and if a full OJEU process is needed (unlikely). If deciding to procure, do it properly, get some people in and have a look at what is on offer. BUT if you are sticking with what you have, you are NOT being forced to fully reprocure. And finally - the BECTA report is not a mandate, I'll just leave that there...

Link is broken Ali I'd suggest a couple of things on this topic, seeing as we have moved away from the OP: @PhilNeal will not comment on any truth in what has or had not been said, no point in trying to goad him into it! One suspects that whatever decision has been made is still a long way away yet - we are going to have a new government before the deadline so a lot can still change. Without starting something which I know it will, the term upgrade will be very loose here, either to mean procurement is not going to be an issue, or almost certainly that it will fall below the threshold for requiring full procurement procedures. Further, why should this not be deemed a simple upgrade on the same licence (assuming it is) - there was no need to re-procure on the last SIMS upgrade, nor when the database was migrated from SQL x to SQL x R2 (probably!). If we are talking about upheaval, you might as well add extra tonnage if EVERY school has to fully reprocure if/when they become an academy - shall we move into how much wastage in public money that will entail? Surely far greater than any possible saving for x years. Money that could and should be going to the people it is designed for - students.

Very pleased with it

Just adding some rep for @glen_j superb job on the cone, thank you very much!

You need a new BB hub for it to work properly

Traded services for support and training. Still very much going to be needed.

I'm not up to speed on the latest with all the suppliers, but I am not so sure on that. Progresso is one central solution. I believe G2 is? Scholarpack? Arbor? It is all moving to SaaS. Is the problem here supporting the tech or supporting the use? Likely the latter, there is no reason local support has to go. Edit: Also informed that Bromcom have a centrally hosted solution (we all know I've been asked by them to add this!). Although, my point is that the above mentioned solutions are a single central solution I don't believe there is any other hosting option.

Also I don't have the cables all going though my house right now for multiroom so that is another bonus freedom to move the boxes. I intend to use a hdmi splitter upstairs to supply all the bedrooms (and my office )

It seems fine to me. Have not used a lot yet. You get 5 tuners so watch 5, watch 4 record one, etc. You can pay for additional boxes as one off costs. Easy to transfer recordings to ipad (ok not new ) and watch live tv to I think. I'm liking it so far. Also the secondary boxes act as WiFi repeaters to expand your WiFi.. Great in my house

I have Sky Q installed now. What would you like to know? My Sky Q is free (after one off costs, which was £49 because I have Sports and BB with Sky), because I have Sports channels. Will go up when I get rid, but still saving me money because sports costs me 1 good kidney per month currently

I'll PM you @glen_j

Thanks for that I will take a look.

OK an unusual request: my partner's mum has a weird thing about blue traffic cones (please, not jokes or anything! Just finds them funny is all!) and we have been trying to find a desktop size blue traffic cone - as in blue and white stripes, as a joke for her, To no avail. So my request to any school or other that has a 3D printer that would be willing to create one for me. I will happy pay for all materials, and happy too for this to be part of a project to involve kids in the design or operation. Also happy to pay appropriate P&P. If anyone interested please let me know here or via PM. Many thanks in advance.

There are lots of alternative providers for SIMS/MIS type software. Curious to know if you JUST use SIMS for taking registers, what else do you use it for (creating timetables, recording behaviour incidents, marking markbooks/assessments, etc etc). Likely, you will be look at an alternative MIS product - have you investigated what your MAT has already/other schools in the group have?

So when do you get your Double First uniform and name badge?

It is fine to uninstall xporter jobs if they are no longer needed/used. Control Panel and uninstall will be fine. Just heard from the Xporter product manager (no my bag personally): Changing the extract times/job schedules for individual jobs should be done by the third party themselves and with their knowledge, particularly if using a cloud service. Contact the partner for help on this (or Groupcall if it is one of our products).

If it is the only thing your schools is using Xporter for, then yes just uninstall. If there are several jobs running and you need to keep those still, then give our helpdesk a call who will be happy to help you out with this. Sorry, I didn't mean to sound stroppy earlier about 'hacking around', just making it clear that you might find some third parties utilise the Xporter feed differently and base the inner workings on their platform on that schedule.

I suggest you give Groupcall (us) or your third party a ring about this, don't go hacking around with it as Groupcall or other third party products rely on the schedule that is set up on there - they work in partnership. You might end up making x product not work properly through a mismatch of data movement (not always, but could happen). Do you want to elaborate on why you want to do this?

As far as I was aware, Students HAVE to be the person to open the results (what they do with it after that is up to them). So emails you'd have to be careful about. You'd best look closer at solutions that the student has a log in to, as a first port of call (either app or online for example).

So long as the laminater is working

This does come up a number of times during this conversation... that the fire department will sweep regardless... My question would be: if there is a real fire, would you or more importantly would the parents want to know if someone was missing? How quickly would you be able to identify that? 30 mins? An hour? Do you care? Would it help the fire chiefs to know if someone was unaccounted for?