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SSRS does have a learning curve but once you nail it it's really powerful. If they're being slow skip Advanced's training and go somewhere else - SSRS is a Microsoft tool so there are tons of consultancy companies for it. WiseOwl do great training and also do a Youtube series that's pretty good: (nb in the video they use Visual Studio / BIDS to write reports. Generally Advanced push Report Builder, but you can use either) The only mildly irritating thing is that the nature of Progresso forces you to use the report models instead of direct SQL query, but it's not a major obstacle. Can't remember offhand when the UX/UI changes were being finished. I know there's some good changes to the timetable section UX/UI in the pipeline but I forget when they're due.

By "fully integrated" do you mean "It pulls data from the API without user intervention", or do you have to do CSV uploads from Progresso to drop in the Timetable and whatnot? EDIT: Ooh, did you also used to be PEBS?

A lot of staff's negative opinions about Progresso are, I agree, a hangover from a couple years past when there was a lot more wrong with it coupled with the fact that for Teaching staff particularly there are some things that they're used to doing easily in SIMS that might take a bit longer in Progresso, but there are also problems that are not the result of user inexperience and they do include speed and reliability. Indeed at the moment those are the main problems that we have with it. NB: That's not to say it's bad necessarily - I think the vision is right, but it can be really frustrating at times.

You can't separate Manual Event Overrides no - people either have it or not. The room bookings person here manages afaik to do it entirely within Progresso, we've never had a problem with the level of access to MEO and cover that she has. I think she actually uses the out of box report too - why's it unusable for you guys? Speed or just the lengthy format?

Welcome to Progresso. Depresso is a pretty common nickname here too, quite amused it's so widespread. I worked at Advanced Learning on their support desk for a couple years and have been the Data Manager of a Progresso school for 2.5 years now so can probably help. You're more than welcome to visit too but my school is in Bradford which I imagine does qualify as too far from Cambridge! Ad Hoc room bookings: 1) If you're just moving an existing lesson for one period, use manual event override and set a date range 2) If you're turfing a lesson out of a room to use it for something else, add a Room Unavailability in Cover and then assign a new room to the lesson you turfed out using the Assign Cover window. 3) If it's just being used for something that's not a lesson, use manual event override and add an ad hoc event. Again, make sure you set a date range (otherwise it assumes you want to block that period out forever)

Truancy Call by Contact Group is already web based - we've been using it web based for at least 18 months. I still wouldn't recommend it like. We've just started to send absent chasing messages through Progresso instead and the attendance team are much happier.

The only time we tend to get queues is if a couple of visitors arrive at the same time as staff. The first time visitor sign in process is obviously a bit longer (subsequent visits by the same person are faster as it remembers them), and then yes you do tend to get staff wander off instead of waiting to swipe in. We don't use it for attendance since the smaller consoles won't write back to the MIS, so it's only a problem when you get an unlucky rush. Certainly never noticed any lengthy delays in normal operation.

I've always used Scheduler, but Keith Johnson's Timetabler I have heard good things about and the Options software from the same company isn't too shabby.

We have Inventry for visitors but were told that the Learner Registration part won't work using their "small" readers, only on the larger totem. Can any of you guys confirm that? Seems a bit weird, but because our students come in via multiple entrances were not using the Registration portion as it's too expensive to have a full totem in each entrance.

Managed to sort it myself! My how I hate COLLECT...

Anyone know if there's an actual helpline for COLLECT, as opposed to just the web forms? Given the deadline's today I don't want to wait the 5 working days they quote!

No problem! Correct; teachers can be linked to a Teaching Group without it then appearing on their timetable (unlike students)

No problem It will be pulled from their timetable yes, but additional staff can be assigned to groups by just editing the group in Data | Groups | Learner Groups and ticking whoever you want to have access to them. Bear in mind that if you take a staff member off a group's timetable, Progresso doesn't automatically de-associate them from the group though, so you might find some staff who've moved groups a lot still have a lot of chaff. You can see the groups a staff member is linked to on their record, or you could use a report to view all the staff in one go.

There's an access right called "Enter Assessments for all Screens/Groups" - if you revoke that from your teachers then they will only get access to the Teaching Groups they are actually assigned to.

Oh, really? Directly below that I get "Progress 8 lower confidence interval" and "Progress 8 upper confidence interval" too.

Go check! The Tables checking data was published at 09.30 and has CIs in it. If you got it right can you explain how to do it please

If it can wait till Monday, I'm pretty sure the government's figures are published then for the September Checking Exercise - that will have the Confidence Interval's already worked out.

If you open the CTF in a notepad, the fifth line or so will look like this: 14.0 Better than even odds that if you change that to 15.0 it'll go in.

Used to work for Advanced, now Data Manager at Bradford MAT. Feel free to come look at it if that's easier than Plymouth. It has definitely changed drastically for the better, both in general functionality and also in performance. It does still have its problems and performance is at times still one of them (and sometimes in areas I would call Core), though the frequency and severity of those problems is much reduced from the old days. My big problem these days is that when Staff can't get on Progresso or it seems to be running slowly they'll assume its to blame as that used to be the case, whereas these days it's much more likely to be an internet outage. As Simon mentions the reporting engine is excellent, but it does have something of a learning curve so you will need to drop a couple of tech savvy people onto some training to get the best out of it. Doesn't necessarily have to be training by Advanced - Progresso uses SSRS which is a Microsoft Package, I thoroughly recommend Wise Owl trainers (they also do a Youtube series). The reports library that Progresso comes with (as in, the built in system reports that are not tailored specifically to your school) was a touch lackluster to the point that we don't use many of them, however it has been improved considerably of late and many of the reports that we built now have an equivalent supplied as default by Advanced. tl;dr - is it better than the horror story days? Drastically, it's a well functioning MIS now. Does it still have little annoying niggly things and stuff you wish it did but doesn't? Yeah sure but what doesn't - certainly they're no worse than Facility's annoying stuff. Is it worth moving from Facility to Progresso? In my opinion yes, but other MIS's exist and you should look at them too.

OK so... You don't need the "Staff_UDFs()" bit - that goes at the end of the function, after Fields!Value.Value...so: =LookUp(Fields!EmployeeID.Value & "Job Title", Fields!EmployeeID.Value & Fields!Custom_Fields_Staff_Name.Value, Fields!Value.Value, "Staff_UDFs") Buuuut that won't quite work either because EmployeeID is a number and "Job Title" and Fields!Custom_Fields_Staff_Name.Value are text so SSRS won't let you just use & to join them together, you have to enclose EmployeeID in CStr() (which means "convert to string") to turn that into text as well: =LookUp(CStr(Fields!EmployeeID.Value) & "Job Title", CStr(Fields!EmployeeID.Value) & Fields!Custom_Fields_Staff_Name.Value, Fields!Value.Value, "Staff_UDFs") If you want, PM me your email and I'll send you a report file you can look at to make it easier.

@geekgirl UDFs are annoying in Progresso Reports. The simplest way I've found to do it is just to have a separate Dataset fetching all your UDFs, and then use the LookUp() function to fetch them matching on a concatenation of staff ID and UDF Name, like this: =LookUp(CStr(Fields!SchoolOrClusterEmployeeID.Value) & "Job Title", CStr(Fields!SchoolOrClusterEmployeeID.Value) & Fields!Name.Value, Fields!Value.Value, "<>") ...does that make sense?

Ah yeah - you need to use Internet Explorer to launch Report Builder from Progresso. Something to do with how Microsoft ClickOnce applications work mean it only works with IE or (with the addition of a plugin) Firefox.

So the url is https://reporting.progresso.net/reportserver If you actually launch Report Builder from the link inside Progresso, it actually connects automatically which is a little less faff.

Well you don't need specifically Progresso Reporting help, SSRS is not unique to Progresso, so basically any of the online tutorials will help you get the hang of the basics. Wise Owl's tutorials are really good (the guy running them is also an excellent trainer in person) Although he also uses Visual Studio apparently you'll find most people doing Progresso reports (including Advanced Learning support) use Report Builder 3.0 instead.

We have an opportunity for a Deputy Campus Data Manager to join a fantastic team supporting two schools. https://www.hirewire.co.uk/SG/1022152/MS_JobDetails.aspx?JobID=68487 Southfield Grange Trust Bradford The role is 37 hours a week, all year round. Please see the job description and person specification for more details, but I'm very happy to answer any questions - please just either post of PM me. Dan