Steven_Cleaver

Another TASC happy customer here too and completely agree about patches and upgrades.

I have created an App that we can autostart when staff login and fills the screen we also have some software that can sort of imitate login so where staff are logged in we just sort of resend the login process and the App loads full screen over everything used the same process for a while when certain staff were really annoying me and not taking registers .

That was sort of my second thought.

Shame its only on SLG . Although can think of a couple of reservations with this but would depend how it worked.

A member of staff sent me this link just wondered what people thought and is FROG not on this list because it isn't classed as an LMS The Top 20 Most Popular LMS Software Solutions powered by Capterra we use Moodle ourselves but used FROG at the last establishment and have found both excellent.

No Problem.

Try this and is free I have it installed for our language teachers just need to press F8 and key once installed to provide accents etc its called AXkey AX Trusted Freeware download and reviews - SnapFiles.com actually quite a few useful bits of software on Snapfiles.

We use SISRA and this works well for high level Analysis so great for SLT and MIS staff and staff that understand data but Teachers, TA's, Support Staff etc were struggling with it a bit and it didn't quite give us everything we wanted so looked at our own system started with doing a fair bit in SIM's exporting to Excel then an App front end to link it all together, this gave us the model for the data we needed. Staff loved this but was time consuming and wasn't live, so have now developed this into a web based system, Staff enter data in SIM's (PAR's), exports data we need every night into our own database, some software we have developed with external company then Analyses the Data then sort of Exports to a web front end for staff to access we have also added intervention to this so we can also enter, track and analyse what Intervention is taking place and if has it been successful. So trying to link Progress and if not Progressing Intervention takes place and is analysed if this has been successful or not, this is working brilliantly as it is easy for Staff to use and saves time we are looking at developing this with one of our feeder schools and hopefully all four eventually and are also in discussions with a sort of Academy Trust in using this and another single Academy. Took a bit of time and effort and a lot of us working together including Head, Assistant Heads, MIS Officer (who is excellent) and is working brilliantly now. Which is great as I had spent a fair bit of time on this and also cleared some funding for Software Developer to give us a hand where needed.

Only a few days left

You could try Hirens Boot disk has a fair few utilities on their for recovering files along with a mass of other useful tools used this quite a few times with great success.

Another vote for Insight and Tasc which we use for Staff, Parental and Students to access all information, use our own Gateway (remote access) with simple dual factor if staff want to access SIM's full version and has proved much cheaper, another school in the borough has sort of adopted this method once they saw how Insight and the Gateway worked. I have looked at SLG a couple of times at various schools and spoke to relevant staff as well as other SIM's products as well as have demo's from Capita and just weigh up the pro's and Con's against comparable systems in regards to price, features but particularly ease of use as this is key if it isn't easy to use and relatively quick, staff, Parents and Students become frustrated and systems aren't used well, my concern with a lot of Capita products is the user front end is not user friendly again even had someone from Capita say this once we mentioned this. As previous post has sort of said I think that SIM's is really good at the Core things with the odd issue, I have looked at other MIS systems as well but felt that SIM's does the Core things better than most or I wouldn't really gain any advantage from moving from the SIM's Core products to another MIS. Once it branches out into other areas and you look at Partner products these seem a lot better in general and better value for money. I understand the idea of going to one system for everything but think you have to weigh up what you lose or gain by doing this. I have also heard similar things speaking to people unofficially as previous post as regards SIM's products. Look at other products as well as SLG including Insight and Tasc Software but also SLG and go to schools if possible where these are in place as going to a school that is using these as well as sales pitch is always a good idea. Saying all this I am sure their are a lot of schools using the vast array of Capita SIM's products very successfully.

Best of Luck

Cheers @vikpaw this is useful and I probably should have looked for something like this when I was trying to work out extracting the data but looks really useful thanks.

Me too as regards Command Reporter wish I had heard of this a couple of years ago as I was stuck for some time on how to automatically extract what I wanted on a schedule as we were stuck a bit until I found someone mention this on Edugeek as I was planning on getting the info straight out of the SIM's SQL but when we run SQL profiler on the SIM's database to try to look at how to extract the info it straight from SQL it creates some info on the fly so is difficult to link the information for example until a Marksheet is run, straight out of SQL would be cleaner but is difficult to link the data through and extract straight from SQL tables we did give this a go. Have found that Command Reporter works really well for getting the data out just have a method for analysing it after, Excel Vba or Excel templates as that what is what we used initially and this worked well with App front end to link the data but the only downside was that if students move class or leave etc the excel stuff was quickly out of date, might be also worth looking at SISRA as this doe a massive amount of analysis from uploading data again the only downside isn't live so any changes on Time table etc and it is out of date after upload so have to extract from SIM's and upload but analysis is excellent especially for SLT if they are reasonable with understanding systems and are happy to spend a bit of time getting to learn this. If you have a way through VBA of automating the analysis instantly this should work well, using our system has mean't that the MIS Officer is now analysing the data a lot more instead of just manipulating the data and driving training etc with our staff and SLT and highlighting particular areas where staff should look in regards to intervention all of this is done in a really positive way and staff see it as support rather than Performance Management and we have staff asking here to provide training on understanding and interpreting the data with effective use of this. We have tried to link all our IT systems together to look at the way we can help with student progress which at the end of the day is what we are after to make sure students progress and get the best grades along with best prepared for their next step be that education, apprenticeship or work. Progress Systems, we use various systems and methods to try and achieve this, we think we are going in the right direction hopefully but always more work.

I have edited a report I have to just pull End of KS3 or KS2 Sub Levels but both as Result Sets if I try and pull End of KS3 as a Result Set and the Grade Set Ks2 Sub Levels SIM's throws a wobbly but is probably how I am doing this, I did have issues when trying to extract stuff like this and is why I sort of take everything out and deal with just using the info I want outside this a see if the screen shot helps. To be honest I take everything out as regards Data, Classes, Students and Teachers in about five reports put these into an SQL Database and use web front end to analyse it this is all automated and runs overnight so Staff enter data as they were before the system automates all the Analysis, so Graphs, Colour Coding, By Student, Class, Department, Teacher and Teachers just simply click to go from Class to Student in the web front end and we have also added in Intervention so all Staff and SLT can easily see all data has been hugely successful here as it means staff are looking at and using the Data and acting on this in regards to intervention which really is what we were after a simple system for staff to use and get there analysis done for them so that they could use this to undertake Intervention where this was required and we could measure the success of the intervention and what works best. We have invested quite a lot of time and some money in this to get it to this stage and few people of Edugeek helped me get my head round extracting the info out of SIM's including Vikpaw who has posted a reply so would have a look through his reply as he has much better understanding of SIM's than I do.

Is this information in a Marksheet you should be able to get all the data for all subjects in a Marksheet if they are held somewhere. I may be wrong and not quite understand what you are after but I think you need to filter by those parameter's and should be able to get this information in one report the Result Set as if you just use the one Result Set it will just pull the Grades for that result set is probably the key along with year if you can. As I say It might be me not quite grasping what you are after.

Its a shame I am sure anyone could do with a bit of the Witch magic

@chrisateen No problem, I use this method occassionally if SIM's is having an issue with a large report as it seems to run pretty silently without crashing my PC. To get certain parameters for example aspect name and result set you would need to design a custom report with those parameters, you add your information so in SIM's if you go to Reports --> Design Reports then select the information you want in the report, you would need to filter this to get those parameters aspect name and result set etc then save the report then use same method to extract the report as previous post please see attached image in case this helps.

No problem just an excellent company as I am sure anyone on here that uses them would testify to, excellent support and always go that extra mile and always extremely competitive and inventive. I think the role would be an extremely interesting and varied.

Excellent company who have done quite a bit of work for us. Job Title: Network Engineer Salary: £26,000 dependent on experience Office hours: 8:30am to 5:00pm with 1 hours lunch Monday-Friday Holiday: 20 days PA bookable plus Bank Holidays Closing Date: Friday 31st January 2014 at 20:00 Burconix Ltd

Hi Phil The method above is what we started with we sort of now have an App on the Server that extracts multiple reports on a schedule and then imports them into their own SQL database which then produces the analysis via a web front end so this all runs automatically overnight and the web front end is accessible by staff with analysed results but took us about a year to get their with various help from here and other sources. What you are trying to do is quite high level but sure someone here will have an idea I am sure as is a great Forum with some really bright people. SIM's works well for a lot of things but it can be sometimes difficult to get sometimes very specialised things out or setup. Hope you have some luck with this.

I use command line reporter and .bat files to export some data out of SIM's reports on a schedule every evening for our own analysis,tracking and Intervention system with help from some people on Edugeek, these are only sort of raw data so CSV (Excel) not sure this is any use to you it wouldn't display the info in SIM's but would get the data out on a schedule. See below if you use notepad and just copy the below in and alter the relevant details then save these as a .bat file if you double click the .bat file as long as you are able to run .bat files it will run the report you and save the report to the C drive on the machine they are run on if you change /OUTPUT="c:\reportname” for example you can change the location to a different drive you would just then need to schedule this .bat file. "c:\Program Files (x86)\SIMS\SIMS .net\CommandReporter.exe" /USER:simsusername /PASSWORD:simspassword /SERVERNAME:simsservername\database /DATABASENAME:simsdatabasename /REPORT:"reportname " /OUTPUT="c:\reportname” Example "c:\Program Files (x86)\SIMS\SIMS .net\CommandReporter.exe" /USER:Jbrown /PASSWORD:john /SERVERNAME:SIMSADMIN\SIMS20081234 /DATABASENAME:sims1234 /REPORT:"mysstudents grades" /OUTPUT="c:\My Students Grades" Not quite sure if this is what you after.

I went to an Optimus one last year in January and found it excellent gave us a lot of good ideas, our MIS Officer\Manager and a member of our SLT is going again this year in January, was probably one of the best conferences I went to.

We are looking at one of these and had a demo today just wonder what people thought of these in general in regards to their use in school and benefits I can think of a few but just wondered what people thought that were already using these.

Just done SIMS 2013 Autumn but SIMS 2013 Autumn 2 is coming I have been told