Green_Eggs_No_Ham

We're CMIS at the moment, thinking of moving to Progesso at some (!) point in the future. I feel obliged to keep pointing out to my LM that there are other suppliers out there, and I keep seeing good things about Bromcom and Scholarpack on various forums, but also - they're fairly new aren't they? Is it better go go with someone more established? Or is that something that I shouldn't worry about at all? It's not as if I make any purchasing decisions or anything but it's something I'm curious about. Edit to add:- I know the reporting in CMIS is......clunky but I have learned to use it over the years and love the fact that if there's data in there I can get it out. I worry about losing this ability in another MIS and I keep hearing that reporting is easier in other MIS's - but does easier mean simpler in a bad way. I'm not expecting answers to all this but these are just thoughts that I wanted to throw out there.

Actually, while we're talking integrations - is anyone using ClassCharts with Progresso? Is that all working ok (excuse my ignorance I don't know much about Class Charts). Also - I'm assuming things like SISRA just pull data out nice and easily - again I've not actually seen SISRA, I'm just asking the question. Thank folks.

I think that (well I know that) a couple of years ago Progresso was a very different product to what it is now and the move from Serco to Advanced has made a big difference to the way they do things. I think it's all mostly positive change. Our account manager mentioned a MAT in London that he said was successfully using Progresso but maybe they're not in your part of London (we're Midlands) or maybe that school was more similar to us and London Oratory might be more similar to you. With it being hosted, how do people find it's performance (in recent times, not like, two years ago, please)? I wonder about this sometimes but then also I have to bear in mind that using Facility that contains a lot of (historic) data and on a network that's in an old building is not the zippiest thing in the world either so it's all relative.

We're currently on Facility and had a quick demo of Progresso this week. I', bearing in mind that there are pros and cons to any MIS but as a MAT we're really interested in a MAT-type overview of the data - the ability to look at what's going on at a school without having to remote in or phone them. I get the feeling that Progresso is the only one at the moment that does this - am I right in thinking this? Does the SIMS cloud thing that they're launching next year plan to do something similar? Thanks folks.

It generally is a good idea to restart services overnight and I am guessing the actual servers would benefit from the odd restart now and then too? I'm not very "hardware".

Cool, thanks. The versions you have for ePortal match mine and I dont' have that particular issue, so it's not that. I have just remembered that matching version of Facility and ePortal aren't as important as they used to be - you'll need Facility 17.2 for Census though. Erm, have you spoken to their support team? Lately I've fond that the person answering the call logs the case but can't do much towards resolving it, but then someone rings back. Works for me. If you can face reinstalling ePortal, that will probably fix it, depends if you have time / can face doing that, and the fiddling involved. Personally, If I was having this issue here, the next thing I would look at is the install of ePortal to make sure the folders etc look ok. If you want more info about that I can tell you, if that might help.

Sorry to butt in, but - reporting is not good as in slow, or not good as in not powerful (ie is it ever not possible to get the data out that you need) or not good as in hard to learn to use? Sorry, thanks.

Both AM and PM, for all form groups? Has it always done this? If you're seeing java errors like that in ePortal the best thing is often to look at your installation of ePortal (sometimes it's an issue with data, but rarely). Could you have a look under Help | About in ePortal please, and screenshot that? Also in Facility - Help | About, I just want to make sure your version numbers look ok. Thanks.

In terms of who to contact, call the Support team, or your Account Manager at Advanced - in both cases you will probably speak to someone and get a call back, but that's how they keep their wait times down on the phones. In terms of what you're trying to do - you say you're using CMIS - I'm guessing Facility and ePortal? But you say the registers are entered manually which makes me think you're taking paper registers and typing these in in the office? Sorry if I've got the wrong end of the stick.....

Create a list report, object type Student. Use the SingleSetExamSubject() function to get the result grade out, then make a copy of this column, but use it to bring out the points rather than the grade. Tick the Numeric Sort option for this column. Use Advanced | Sort Criteria to make sure the report sorts on the points. Run the report, all done.

And educating the right user is best of all....personally, I like having an audittrail in the system I use, it gives me peace of mind, especially as staff roles change, new staff come in, and people start doing tasks that they might not have in the past. It's good to be able to check and prove that things are being done properly (or not).

Hi, I have sent you a direct message.

Yup, sorry. And apologies all for detailing the thread, it was an interesting one.

I've not been on these forums very long, but I'm going to weigh in. We get it, Banjo, you like SIMS. On other threads you've been very rude about the makers of Progresso - yes the product isn't all it could be but I do feel you've gone a little far. And now you're picking on Bromcom staff. I doubt anyone here approves and if I was not in such a terrible mood today I would leave you to it but I was looking for actual information about alternative MIS suppliers, instead I keep seeing you trolling anything non-SIMS. I can't form an opinion. Any chance you could rein it in please?

I'm a Facility user so I've been watching this thread out of interest and not really commenting because I haven't seen much of it (Progresso) in action. I don't think their number of users is falling that much - it's clear from this thread alone that people have been unhappy and left but then also they have got a couple of big contracts lately. I do know that a lot of Advanced's development time and investment goes into Progesso - I know because I'm using Facility, which is maintained and developed gradually, nothing like at the rate that Progresso is. When you talk about the product being scaled back, what do you mean? I thought it started out doing (more or less) everything Facility did and it still does but they're working on things like performance issues and the interface? They did take it to market too quickly. But I don't think they stripped modules out of it - in fact maybe they should have done. But that's water under the bridge going back about 5 or 6 years (I think). I can see where you're coming from about finding new staff who are able to use a system that's not the market leader but then also .....people can always be trained up and at my school at least there's not that much external recruitment going on. You should hopefully only need one "expert" in a school. But it would be easier to find a SIMS expert I guess than for a newer product. Maybe that's a factor, I dunno. I don't think it'll be a factor in my school's consider of a new system when our contract comes up for renewal. Perhaps it should be, need to think about that one.

I'm a Facility user so I've been watching this thread out of interest and not really commenting because I haven't seen much of it (Progresso) in action. I don't think their number of users is falling that much - it's clear from this thread alone that people have been unhappy and left but then also they have got a couple of big contracts lately. I do know that a lot of Advanced's development time and investment goes into Progesso - I know because I'm using Facility, which is maintained and developed gradually, nothing like at the rate that Progresso is. When you talk about the product being scaled back, what do you mean? I thought it started out doing (more or less) everything Facility did and it still does but they're working on things like performance issues and the interface? They did take it to market too quickly. But I don't think they stripped modules out of it - in fact maybe they should have done. But that's water under the bridge going back about 5 or 6 years (I think). I can see where you're coming from about finding new staff who are able to use a system that's not the market leader but then also .....people can always be trained up and at my school at least there's not that much external recruitment going on. You should hopefully only need one "expert" in a school. But it would be easier to find a SIMS expert I guess than for a newer product. Maybe that's a factor, I dunno. I don't think it'll be a factor in my school's consider of a new system when our contract comes up for renewal. Perhaps it should be, need to think about that one.

That's interesting, thank you.Naming no names of course, but who complained? Stats are just stats. I guess maybe if I am selling a product I might want my customers to think that it's more popular than it necessarily is, in order to look more credible I guess. But numbers are numbers, they can't lie. Thanks for putting this together, this is all new to me.

I can have a look and see what we use and maybe send you a copy of it. Is it possible to attach files to posts? You know when you look in Facility, where are you seeing the A Level grades - are they in the Results tab in the Student window, or in the Candidate window? I ask because there's two places in Facility that you might be looking at this information and the repory would need to know where to look. Have you rung the support team at Advanced yet? Even if just to tell them you are new at the school so they can point you at where their documentation is etc. As for other stuff like D of E etc - yes you could do it in Facility, we don't do it yet at my school but I want to start. I am thinking of using Events - Data | Event definitions. You set up in Facility and then you can use in ePortal (or in Facility I guess, depending on preference). Hope this helps. If you can tell me how to attach a file to a post I can see if I can send you a copy of one of our reports.

That's not ideal is it. Ok step 1 - in ePortal, under Help | About, you need to check that both your version numbers match (mine are both 16.3). 2 - Are your services aren't crashing at all? You know ePortal and Facility Data server services? There's a SQL Server service as well I think, I might need to check that though, I can't remember. 3 - In your shoes I would probably start looking at the folder that ePortal is installed in to make sure that looks ok - you know on the D: or C: drive or whever it's installed it will be a folder called Facility and in there, there will be 4 folders - Documents, ePortal, facilitycontroller, facilitydataserver. Inside the ePortal folder there is webapps - what do the contents of that look like? There should be (another) ePortal folder in there, but just one. If there's an ePortal_bak in there, it might be an idea to take that out and stash it away somewhere outside the whole folder structure. (Just spotted that my install ha one so I should probably have a think about that). 4 - Erm.......can you restart services at lunchtime and see how that goes? 5 - Sorry to ask what might be a silly question - but was it all ok before the latest version? I'm wondering if there's something in the BM events that the latest version doesn't like - you know how sometimes an apostrophe or something can break things? Anyway, hope that helps a little.

This is for any kind of event, positive or negative? How weird. No, don't think I've seen it before. As far as I'm aware the last ePortal update (fingers crossed) was fine. I am assuming that Advanced took a look at your ePortal install and made sure your XML files etc all look ok? Dataserver and Controller versions match up etc?

Hi, Are we talking about one row per student, showing how many A's, B's, C's etc per student? Or a list of all the A Level grades (for example) with totals at the bottom of how many A's, B's , C's etc? There's various ways of pulling the data out, depending on what you need.