Damon

Thanks for letting me know. It's good that they weren't trying to push you down one route as I've heard some teams have been doing that. 👍

You're facing a problem that lots of schools are across the country. ESS have told support teams that they can no longer host SIMS and I believe that in the vast majority of cases, those providers have been forced to drop services they have invested a huge amount into. I believe there are some that may be able to continue doing so because they have fought the decision but I'm not 100% about that. Out of curiosity - with option #1, did they talk you through the options or just recommend one provider?

Hope it does the trick! Let me know how you get on.

From what I can see, next gen is mostly a read only platform where they've pulled data through the Sims management services and then dressed it up with a basic front end. That's the really easy bit. Developing functionality that actually allows you to record data and then have that written back or synchronised with your Sims server without issues is going to be the difficult grind. Yes they have done this with attendance marks, maybe the odd element here and there but the more data there is going back and forth, the more issues will crop up. Sims just isn't designed to work like this from the ground up. It's going to need a huge shift in fundamental back end design to be something that can compete with the other cloud options on the market. If you want cloud, just look at the alternative systems that have been doing it for years.

Didn't spot that bit of text Willtech so thanks for that. I do wonder if it was just a copy and paste though rather than a thorough test of what works well. We have a mixture of schools using SQL2019 on 2012 compatibility and others on 2016 compatibility as it made a huge difference to performance. Will report back once we get an official response from ESS.

I'll take that as a no then! Probably a wise move not to folks.

As per the title, is anyone running SIMS on SQL 2019 now it's supported? ESS have no documentation/advice on SQL 2019 configuration and just point towards the 2016 docs. We have found that using 2012 compatibility mode can ruin performance on some schools and that potentially 2016 compatibility is optimal. It's most notable when running reports, we're talking 10-15mins for a super basic report, down to 5 seconds. We're pushing ESS for a response and some official advice on this but I just wanted to gauge whether anyone else had experienced issues and/or been testing. I read a post from jmcdermott last year that referenced 2016 compatibility but nothing since then. Seeing as all official advice until now has been to stick with 2012 mode, it seems odd that 2016 is now the flavour of the month.

This is for SIMS as opposed to Bromcom. Haven't tried OData as with Bromcom it just makes sense to use Power BI and incorporate into the MIS through the Power BI viewer. I linked to Looker through Arbor's connector and it brought through live report feeds. That's fine for basic data. It made me realise how limited Looker is though. The thing was just crawling the moment I tried to create a single attendance measure. I tested against some CSVs converted to google sheets and it wasn't blowing me away either. I'd hoped to create a good alternative for Google Schools but I'm sticking to Power BI. Hope someone has more success than me!

Thanks for this, I thought it was a total shocker that you can't just link to CSV from Google Drive. Even the upload method just produced an error for me.

I think you can just launch SIMSLoad.exe from the SIMS client directory and it performs a check to see if SIMS is in line with the expected version in the Setups directory in the SIMS.ini. If it's inline, it closes, if not, it runs the upgrade for the client. This is what the SIMS shortcut does normally if there's no Solus client installed.

Thanks Rich, I'll have a chat with them to see what the pricing is like. I spoke to David Pott yesterday and he confirmed the same, I need to be on Snowflake really. Though on the plus side he said that it's a decent platform which can easily handle 10m marks from his experience. Session marks is all I'm after and that attendance field list looks ideal.

Hi All, I'm looking into creating some Power BI Dashboards for Arbor schools but i've hit a bit of a hurdle from the outset. The Live feed works fine for getting basic stuff but there doesn't seem to be a way of pulling attendance marks during a period. I can only get a summation of marks during a period as opposed to the detail so it prevents me from doing the deep dive analysis I was hoping for. I have access to the API but gathering data from there through Power Query also seems a bit of a minefield due to the data structure. From what I can see, I would have to do an API call per student for example. GraphQL through REST might be an option but I've not tried running this as a regular update via the Power BI Service. Arbor seem to have a paid Power BI Connector which relies on Snowflake (3rd party data cloud) but if I have to go down that route then it's additional costs for the schools I work with. Has anyone had any luck pulling raw attendance marks at all? Thanks, Damon

Thanks a lot for responding. That's what I needed to hear! Now I can crack on with this report without any issues 👍

Hi all, When adding custom report columns with date range filters such as the attendancecode counts, the relative date filter provides options like this year, currentterm and last term. Can anyone confirm if all these dates stay relevant to the report rundate when running through the live link or are they frozen based on when thereport was created/modified? For example, if I create the report in sept andset it to 'this term', if I run it in July via the live link, will it give methe summer term data? Thanks for your help

Just so you're aware, you actually need another step because that 2013 ISO isn't suitable even with the latest update. You need to get the latest SIMSInfrastructuresetup.exe and a couple of other files. If you search for that file on the KB there will be a link to a new version that needs to be downloaded and added to the setups directory too.

Did you manage to connect to the c$ share based on the IP as mentioned above? I think you're going down the right avenue though. Solus will just go on whatever DNS it's pointed to unless you have something in the hosts file. Does the agent connect when the service starts and then drop offline after a few minutes? If yes, then it's working from client to server but just not the other way around. If you're not getting any initial connection then it's probably an issue in both directions. Don't forget that you can manually update FMS to get the user up and running. Just export the update to a shared directory.

Interesting point. I guess the story is not over yet. Likewise, what if the appeal fails? That's more money down the drain. I wonder what grounds you can appeal on with something like this.

To add to the good points localzuk made. Bear in mind that when you procured an MIS for your 9 schools you could include future schools in your tender. So it's 9 today but will likely be 10 by 2024 and 15 by 2027, etc.. As mentioned above, the idea is for it to be fair to all suppliers. Imagine if you had SIMS in all schools but wanted to get rid of it, if the tender put value on not having to retrain or re-procure and ignored the fact that you've spent money on servers etc then it would give a skewed result. This is generally a long term procurement of 5 years or so. Retraining is a shorter term issue if it means getting the right solution in place to support the goals of your organisation. Tenders generally aren't scored on a yes/no basis. It's more a consideration of a broad set of requirements in one particular area of interest and an overall scoring for that based on some potential weighting within it. Let's say you have a section for central reporting and management, one for assessment and another for general admin, etc. The supplier has to provide a tailored written response to each of these areas. Sometimes it might be 20 pages for a tender, sometimes it's 60, 100, etc.. It all depends on the complexity and the rules set from the outset. So whilst it makes no real difference in this case, it's not just a supplier sending an email with a price. These things can take weeks to put together from lots of senior staff. Likewise there's lots of calls and meetings that take place. Bromcom got pulled up for not asking for permission to record some of the calls but I believe the ruling was that it was more of an administrative error and that the expectations are that Tender calls are recorded for note taking purposes. I doubt UL had much of an issue with this but it was probably notable enough for their defence team to raise it to cast doubt on the claimant which I assume is pretty standard when things get tit for tat in the courtroom. I know where you're coming from with the job analogy but to add more meat on the bone, what if the CEO of a publicly funded company was being paid £500K a year and they tried to sneak one of the trustees mates in. You'd want there to be evidence that they were capable of doing the job and that there weren't better candidates for the role. That's kinda the level of money we're talking about here so you can see why it's important for there to be some sort of auditable process. I get very narked off when I see this sort of thing in central government so try to apply the same due diligence and respect to Education budgets. UL did try here and that is evidenced by the ruling. Unfortunately, it seems like there were some mistakes which arguably they don't bear the full responsibility for.

Edit: Took so long to write this that the question has already been answered...! I get where you're coming from with the costs side of things but that's not what happened here. In the case of a tender, you set out the way the submission will be scored from the start and make it clear to all suppliers. You might say, 30% on costs, 30% on service delivery and 40% on ability to deliver the requirements. If Bromcom won after the impermissible Arbor discount was removed, then it means they did well on the other areas too. Bear in mind that UL wrote the tender themselves and based it on their own exacting requirements. So if it was really close but there were fundamental issues skewing the 'fairness' of the competition then it suggests that both products were very capable of delivering what UL wanted. If you were running your own tender, you might feel that cost is less important, so you could reduce the weighting. However, the point is, if you set the rules, you then need to grade by them, and it may mean that you end up choosing a different supplier to who you had in mind originally because they have proven to be more capable of delivering based on what you requested and scored on. That isn't directed at UL, I just mean as a general approach to tendering. It's not a price thing, it's an overall score that's what's important. In this case, after the price adjustment and so on, it was shown that Bromcom were the winner by a fair margin. Lastly, as per the suggestion from an earlier post, I'd direct people to my sig. I do like Bromcom as a product, I like the people there and do work with them a fair amount as part of my various roles (contracting). I have colleagues that work with Arbor and likewise have no complaints there but I personally don't know the product as well. I came here to see the reaction to this as it's important for me to understand how it will impact Trusts and Schools.

I should have mentioned, if anyone's interested the judgement doc is here: https://files.monckton.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/11125118/Judgment-Bromcom-Computers-PLC-v-United-Learning-Trust-United-Church-Schools-Trust.pdf And the claimant's (Bromcom) barrister did a post about the summary here: https://www.monckton.com/brendan-mcgurk-wins-academy-schools-procurement-challenge/

Agreed with most post announcement comments on here. Particuarly the damned if they do, damned if they don’t. When I worked in an LA, the BECTA report came out about SIMS LA contracts being kept in perpetuity without any due diligence over whether it's the right solution for schools. Bromcom put in an FOI about the contractual renewal process for SIMS and when the last time it was performed, presumably in an attempt to jolt the LA into at least reviewing the contract. At the time, as an LA team we were pretty narked off about it as we just wanted to keep the status quo. But in hindsight, there is no way LAs should have been keeping SIMS in place for so long without review. If I was an outsider, reading a story about CAPITA having 20yr+ high value LA contracts with no review I'd be furious. I feel like this could be one of those same moments with this case. Right now, there's some mixed feelings about it but further down the line, it might have spurred MATs to ensure that proper due diligence is done and that tenders are undertaken with the right mindset. I'm not suggesting that UL weren't taking it seriously but developing your own tender rather than using a tested framework is a tricky undertaking and it's so important to be clear from the outset and understand the rules. If you tell suppliers the rules of the game at the start, you can't then accept submissions that aren't compliant with those rules. I think that's why frameworks make it that bit easier so if I was a MAT considering a new MIS, that's the route I'd take. Likewise, suppliers need to play by the rules. Arbor were a bit naughty on that front. I appreciate that it was something that would be in the Trust's benefit but that's not how a tender works. To leverage the savings from those extra Schools, UL could include them in the scope from the outset so that all suppliers had that opportunity. Having said that, it's a shame that this could easily put off MATs from mass procurement as there are far better alternatives to SIMS out there. Both suppliers have decent products and SIMS has had it's day.

ONE is the central system used by the LA. It receives data from all of the maintained schools (that agreed to) and they can use it to track SEN, Admissions, etc.. It sounds like they are looking to move to a new system, hence the trial. Arguably it's in your benefit to be part of these things as it ensures the LA has accurate information to work from. It sounds like you would have already been sharing data with the LA in this way via another means, otherwise they would have been in touch to say the feed to ONE was broken.

Interesting as I'd heard of a fair few LA's that are doing this and it means that potentially their schools would need to go single site if they want to stay on SIMS. Anyone else in a situation where their LA is not going to sign the facilitation agreement? I believe it would mean that you wouldn't get the LA discount anymore and have to purchase your own license. If yes, is that what you've been told? Could do with knowing for my school (governor) just in case as I don't have LA contacts there. To be fair to the LA's in this position, arguably they need to do a full procurement for legal reasons as their 3 year cost would be huge.

To be fair, schools have purchased SIMS in a wide range of different ways , through the LA, directly with ESS, through their MAT, etc.. It's always advisable to confirm the exact arrangements for your individual situation. The FAQ does cover a few different scenarios to explain what needs to be done as mentioned above.

Haha, excellent find! Does it include the MIS itself or is it just the hosting element? If it does, they must honour G-cloud contracts and pricing if a school purchases through the framework. They cannot force you onto a different contract. However, I should imagine this means purchasing a single site licence as part of it so quite a bit expense for a bit of flexibility. I've heard that you can get a single year contract on a new single site licence but they don't give you access to 'next gen'.