bobsmith

myconcern was very tight with bromcom last I checked, CPOMS is also the other big player. I don't think bromcom or any MIS is ever as good as a dedicated 3rd party product - but the question is really "is it good enough?" I've just had another look a the safeguarding bits on student records in Bromcom - it's not bad at all for recording stuff - but it doesn't appear to have the granular access rights control that CPOMS/MyConcern would offer, or the notications and case management stuff. I'd advocate that the safeguarding element is too important to leave to software that can't do it justice. For now I can't see bromcom doing a good enough job to eliminate the 3rd part options.

Edval is probably the closest thing I've seen to AI - we've done 2 timetables where we let the software produce the actual scheduled version with very little direct input from us. Mostly in Edval you end up just adjusting the prority of the rules if it's not producing a timetable with high enough quality. One of the nice things it has is a quality indicator (measured against the rules you've provided it) and I know that in our 2nd year we got it down to a really good score compared to other schools. I know I'm pretty good at seeing moves that other people struggle to see but the software algorithm can do those moves in milliseconds compared to minutes. AutoScheduling in older software was often so bad that I'd end up doing it all in excel myself and then simply plugging that solution into the software. With Edval it's been much more of a matter of adjusting the rooming requirements or relaxing a rule on spread of lessons and then the software solves it in seconds. The downside (yes there are one or two) is that mid year changes need doing directly in bromcom (but it's actually easy to do so not a huge downside) but a major rewrite mid year would be a massive pain in the bum. Saying that I believe that issue is actually a bromcom issue rather than an Edval one. I think that in a SIMS school you could use Edval just like you do Nova in terms of just importing a new version with an effective date?

pretty much every 3rd party company I've dealt with in the last few years has migrated to Wonde or provided the choice of sync (Wonde or Groupcall). While groupcall have been good in the past their service has fallen off the cliff.

nova-p5 the parents evening module? Most posts I can find about this on the internets are no later than 2012!!!

when we did it on sims it was on-prem servers with no remote access - so it handled itself when we had bromcom (works 99% the same as arbor) - we used ip-restrictions within bromcom - but conditional access for their microsoft/google accounts would work equally well. but since the passwords were only good for 24 hrs it wasn't a major security concern.

ok - for short term access I had placeholder staff accounts that were used for the cover - their logins were restricted to in-school only and passwords were generated daily. worked well enough

on a side note - isn't access revoked when you disable their arbor account when they leave?

can you confirm that you mark the kid absent BEFORE trying to reschedule?

Bromcom I presume? (you should really put the MIS name in your thread titles) https://docs.bromcom.com/knowledge-base/how-to-escalate-and-reschedule-detentions/#reschedule Reading through that guide - "While Rescheduling is possible when a Student misses a Detention with an Authorised Absence." Are you marking an absence before attempting to tick the reschedule button?

03/12/2025 12:29:22 GMT - SystemAdditional comments 03/12/2025 12:28:58 - Graham Ankin (Additional comments) Good afternoon, We are pleased to advise that we have identified the issue impacting on SIMS ID and access to SIMS Connected has now been restored for all users. Work remains ongoing to restore access to SIMS Next Gen and a further update will be provided as soon as possible. We apologise for the disruption and thank customers for their patience as work remains ongoing.

update: Your case has been updated with an additional comment. For more details click here: CS0159162 Case Details: Case Reference: CS0159162 Date Created: 03/12/2025 11:34:34 GMT 03/12/2025 11:39:43 GMT - Laura FordAdditional comments Good morning, We are aware of an issue impacting SIMS ID this morning that is preventing access to applications such as SIMS Connected and SIMS Next Gen. This issue is under investigation as a high priority, and your case has been linked to a Major Case record for this problem. Further updates will be provided via the case when available. We apologise for the disruption. Kind regards, SIMS Support

I'm logged in fine - now making sure I keep my sessions alive. but anyone trying to login is stuffed - I've logged a case with them just before coming on here to confirm it's definitely not a local issue. and yes - no outages listed on the support portal at all.......

When we ran SIMs on-prem I had 2 servers for doing what you're doing. A pure SIMs server - no other crap allowed on it. A "SIMS third party server" - wonde, groupcall, zinet and command reporter would all use that machine instead. definitely helped us.

yes - my exams officer pulls off the year 11 timetable (as an example) and then assigns the freed up staff on her spreadsheet. then we just email them to tell them to turn up. As they aren't taking registers they don't actually need to be assigned in Bromcom for our purposes.

Happy monday. Can't show you anything as I've not got any of my bromcom files since leaving my last school. Personally I don't think I've forced a new page - none of my report designs required that. Can you post up a sanitised example of what you're trying to achieve? and yes - a CSM was a customer success manager - but interested to hear that you're having to go through the LEA - was this an LEA procurement rather than something your school did?

didn't school workforce reform put a stop to teachers doing invigilation? also pretty sure JCQ don't want subject teachers invigilating their own exams either....

Have you not been assigned a CSM? Ours ironed out all these little issues really early on in the migration process. I've just gone back to SIMS (changed schools - not MIS) - but we're looking to jump my new school over to a modern MIS in the spring. So a little rusty on my bromcom workarounds. Certainly this isn't a fundamental problem you're having - my bromcom reports worked just as well as my SIMS reports did - but much easier to update them!

03/11/2025 09:15:10 GMT - Harvey EdwardsAdditional comments Good morning, We are aware of an issue impacting SIMS Connected this morning that is resulting in degraded performance and login problems for users. This issue is under investigation as a high priority, and your case has been linked to a Major Case record for this problem. Further updates will be provided via the case when available. We apologise for the disruption. Kind regards, SIMS Support

Anyone else getting this error this morning? I've confirmed it with another school I know - but a sample of 2 isn't all that big.

what's funny/sad is that there is no outage or service degradation reported when it was down.... 100% uptime the entire week on every single service!

back in now. not helpful in the middle of the census

any other schools getting this?

Sorry but you are making a very wrong assumption here. I learnt timetabling under the wing of my first assistant head who used a pin board and post-it notes. When I saw how horrendous his methods were I learnt Facility Scheduler (CMIS!) - I then had instruction from Peter at MIST services (45 years experience). Then I learnt more from a consultant called George Faux before moving on to doing it myself from scratch. I've written timetables using my own home grown excel spreadsheets (all manual scheduling of course) - then took a look at Nova-T6 when my school had SIMS foisted upon them and ran a mile. I ended up having to consult on timetabling to help out my next school (they used Nova - so I would explain timetable theory but let someone else press the buttons) - then moved on to Edval which is great. Something your customers may have missed out on is that Edval comes with a serious amount of expert level consultancy on timetabling - if they didn't use that consultancy then that's on them - I found their help was invaluable for navigating the software. My boss (the "official" timetabler) in my previous school was a timetable virgin - no grounding in the theory - but the consultants helped with that aspect - doing the planning and checks before you even dream of scheduling. I've also played with timetabler (it comes with Keith Johnson's excellent book) - but found it wasn't as flexible as Edval. Of all of them - Facility Scheduler was the most powerful in terms of letting you create exactly what you want, but Edval is a close second - and it's automated "AI" scheduling assistant is really impressive. Current school uses Nova-T6 and I'm hating it.

Edval (TES Timetabler) was used 2 years running in my last school and was a genuinely impressive bit of kit, running a secondary with sixth form including half year group bands. That's as complex as a secondary timetable tends to be (barring split lunches!) It's all in the setup - but after I sat (virtually) with one of their experts for an hour or so - it was a pleasure to use. Our timetabler hadn't timetabled before and after I wrote him a nice curriculum plan and organised the rules around staff etc it was a breeze. My new school is moving to Edval this year and I am really looking forward to never touching Nova-T6 again.

Not a plug for Bromcom but.... bromcom embeds the powerbi reports on a page within their site and you only need one pro licence that is assigned to the bromcom user that publishes it (credentials stored within bromcom) for all MIS users to see and interact with the page. Why is Arbor not able to do the same thing? Or is Bromcom doing something wrong?