bobsmith

Any idea what they do? I never needed any of that when I ran SIMS - download basedata to folder - go into sims and press import.

You can do it very simply with a report based around the student and a subreport of attendance marks. Can't remember how to parse variables (today's date being quite important) but if you can do that then this should pull out all the marks for today.

sometimes they release a new version of missync - we've had issues like this in the past where a windows update breaks it. either check the download page on parentpay or contact them direct.

it's all about the dates. Look at the Learning aims assigned to the student - when do they start and end? Now the programme of study is like a wrapper around the learning aims. The learning aim start and end dates should be within the programme of study start and end dates. If not that's where to start checking.

precisely how it worked here - except there was no email - I'm the lead contact for Wonde and I checked.

short answer - no longer answer - not as far as I've ever seen, heard or read about anywhere.

groupcall's user experience is very much dependent on who you get on the phone. I've been lucky and keep getting the guys who know what they are on about and listen to what I'm saying. thankfully almost everything has shifted to XoD (Xporter on Demand) which handles it all through the web.

just had our email informing us that we would have to start paying. so I logged in and moved us back to the free plan (we never actually had the paid for plan). It's a cheeky move - but I'd imagine they'll hit everyone with it - it's basically upselling. The basic access you've always had is STILL free - but they've offered a load of extra crap and made that the default option so that people not paying attention will start paying them.

It only appeared on the status page after I logged a case though - I'm not for a moment suggesting that it was my case that triggered it - but I'd really love to know the threshold for getting that status page updated! I end up wasting time trouble shooting our school connection or any updates that may have been applied our end - only to discover yet again it's a service outage. On a related note - you tried running any reports - because ours aren't working and there's a lot of other people reporting it on facebook?

The integration on offer from Inventry was that signing in could trigger an adjacent paxton door to unlock and allow access. But you've probably already got a RFID reader on the door anyway so not a showstopper if you don't have the integration.

I hate flogging this dead horse but a couple of experiences from me. caveat: Never used SIMS Hosted or SIMS Connected During lockdown we set up a well provisioned on-prem RDS solution - SIMs worked fine on that - we worked from home with full sims access as usual. So the concept is fine. However - that's not exactly the way they do it, and since you don't have the same backend access to fix stuff you're gonna have time lag to resolve issues. Also I imagine we allocated more hardware resources than they did. Connections to the the third party apps were unaffected as in reality it's still just an on-prem setup - but without remote access bolted on top. True cloud solutions - Arbor, bromcom, engage and all the others just work. Third party apps talk direct to the MIS, upgrades aren't our problem, backups aren't our problem. Only downside so far has been slow downs when their hosting farm is underprovisioned - but to be fair it's not been bad at all. I'd be really interested in a cost comparison of doing it hosted yourself vs paying them - taking into account the "soft" costs of all the issues that you spend time fixing both on-site and dealing with their tech support instead. But in the end, as others have said, if you're making a decision on where to go next with your MIS - true cloud solutions exist and they work. As for reporting etc raised by an early poster on this thread. Yes SIMS reporting was actually pretty good - but in Bromcom at least - it's a swings and roundabouts thing - some stuff that was pretty easy in SIMS is a pain in the bum to do in Bromcom - but the live data feeds are literally transformational in how you can work with data. Also the scheduling of reports and even just using the built in dashboards - the efficiency and time savings are phenomenal. There's certainly no show stoppers in terms of functionality we lost when we moved away from SIMS.

How about make a new absence category - "sickness - no note needed" and map it to sickness for the official dfe reason?

Bromcom allows you to build a support timetable for a member of staff by attaching them to specific students for certain lessons - perfect for TAs In SIMS you could add them to a class - but it then causes issue with cover as it believes there's two teachers so doesn't flag up lessons for cover when the teacher is absent but the TA isn't.

Nothing - they use a loginmein or teamviewer connector and have to make contact with out IT support team to arrange access each time.

system manager if that's what they need.

Just took a quick look (haven't used sims in nearly a year) and my discover groups are all there and there's no delete button. I don't remember ever having a need to delete them as they were dynamic and could be renamed/recycled. There is an "active" tick box you could untick so you don't see them. Probably need SIMs themselves to remove them from your database if they are causing issues.

The government requirement for gender (which drives the capabilities of MIS) is biological only. (the luddites!) Salamander can do anything that can be scripted - just ask the team there and they'll make it happen. Whether this is a good idea I'd leave up to the DSL/DPO.....

Using your link (thanks!) we're basic too. £350 to upgrade but the list of "premium" items are not of any interest to me.

Outside of this thread I can't find anything about Wonde Premium anywhere. Google can't find it, Wonde's own website has nothing about it either. My admin console doesn't have any subscription info either. Got any links about this?

For those of you like me that are using office365 to send the emails from bromcom, have you seen this yet? https://docs.bromcom.com/knowledge-base/office-365-o365-smtp-faq/ What changes are taking place for Bromcom sites that use Office 365 to send Emails? Microsoft is turning off support for the Basic authentication protocols connecting to external services that use this method to send out Emails. This may mean that current SMTP settings (Config > Setup > System Settings) stop sending out Emails if they are using Basic authentication. When will Microsoft turn off support Office 365 Basic Authentication? Official Basic authentication support ended at the end of December 2022 and Basic authentication may be turned off before the end of March 2023. What alternatives are available to Office 365 SMTP for sending Emails? If you have issues with your SMTP settings, you may wish to use Bromcom’s own SMTP service or change your current SMTP settings (Config > Setup > System Settings). Each school gets 3000 free Emails a month using this service and more monthly messages can be purchased for an annual fee. Any of you got plans to deal with this?

"obviously it's not up to me to get involved (as such) in the school's I.T. provision/planning, " Aren't you the only IT expert in the building? An alternative way of looking at this situation.... What's YOUR plan/vision? If you sit on the sidelines you're gonna have this kind of situation happen to you, rather than you being part of the process.

voted - but I'm not gonna vote for every single area of bromcom permissions which needs a teeny weeny bit of common sense applied. It'd be the work of a few hours for someone at head office to go through the permissions menu and figure out the bonkers bits that need fixing.

how about the storage on your SAN? where are the profiles being saved?

We get them when there's a connectivity issue - I've been blaming bromcom since we've got dual redundant feeds from 2 different broadband carriers.

Wonde are your integration partners for this aren't they? Worth checking their requirements for the permissions for your wonde export user in bromcom.