supportman

Mines been on for 3 weeks now 24/7 and had no stability issues. Using an NUC extreme.

Working fine here, although we did start a little early to avoid the rush. Apparently the bottleneck is the check for updates procedure when you type in the keycode. There is a fix that you can disconnect the internet cable and it should skip that bit (assuming you've download the test already). Then just reconnect once they start.

Worked well for us starting at about mid day using the secure client. No issues with submission.

Just started 20+ of our students off using the secure client after a 3hr delay Lets see how it goes.

To be honest the UI is a little off topic, the product works great and I have no problem with it other than the platform. I'd be happy with just a cloud version of the current UI

We moved from Sims to Bromcom. Both Groupcall exporter and Wonde integration migrations were pretty seemless. No issues with syncing as both sync products work natively with Bromcom.

I really do hope timetabler.co.uk goes cloud in the near future. We are a customer and will move or pay more immediatly. The move to cloud is not really debatable now, although I understand your points.

We moved to Sage, but this was a seperate move from our finance department.

Can you share your mail flow rules for students please? I'd like to set that up as well. Seems like you have done everything right here. We use our MIS to send out bulk emails so it skips the office 365 limits.

To me the Blog was hugely dissapointing. They are basically admitting they are continuing with all the technical debt of Sims just bolting on a cloud layor on top. Madness from a software engineers point of view, but it sounds like these decisions are not being made by them. Just like the old Capita who tried to save money by cutting back the developers and outsourcing them. If I was them, I would get a group of young modern framework developers in a room with a couple of experienced guys and build out single modules of functionality starting with a fresh database structure and responsive web design. Agile development, release early, release often etc etc. Get another room of developers there to handle the migration code and processes. Host it on Azure or AWS and your good to go in 6 months.

Sounds like a laptop issue to me, we've never had any issues with Aruba speed on our 515 and 225 transmitters. They are blazingly fast with all devices.

Ford vs Ferrari Thought it was excellent. 9 out of 10 for me.

They have just been taken over so its all up the air right now. I'm guessing they are more concerned about keeping hold of customers than poeple buying new bits

Veeam just the VMs

Now that is quite a statement! I still have nightmares about solus haha!! I wonder if they will keep it going forward...? Moving to full cloud has meant I have not done an "upgrade" or "client rollout" in 18 months. For all of you stuck on Sims and not motivated to move, then just think about the wonderful world where a cloud system just works and constantly updates with new features. I know i'm preaching to the converted talking to a load of systems admins, but it is refreshing now we have moved to not have to deal with that.

I watched all the release demos and it looked great, but we already use Salamandersoft here which works perfectly. One thing I did notice was the Bromcom Office 365 stuff seemed to not sync with local AD. We do use single sign on though.

Yeh its a bit of both really... Things like cashless catering being all included in the parent portal is a huge improvement without having to sync between 3 different systems. Timetabling is an interesting one as Nova-T is very out of date but still quite functional. We ended up moving to another 3rd party product in the end but it did save is £2,000 in doing so HR and perfomance management is another good example, our MIS now does all that and of course it works nicely with single sign-on, personel records ect. But you are right, it may lack certain functionality from Bluesky. But then again its another 3k saved... In terms of people and the personalities involved we found it easy during lockdown, as everyone wanted remote access and we knew about the risks of remote desktop so people understood the need for a modern system. I think its best to get a single member of SLT on board and just go from there. I kept sending SLT BBC news stories about schools loosing their Sims data in Ransomware attacks, that appeared to focus minds Then just go hard at everyone else using the buzzwords about safegaurding, cyber security, ofsted which are important in schools and understood by the less technical people. We ran both Sims and Bromcom for 6 months until everyone was happy to change over. That helped a lot in terms of takeup. Both our school office personel and teachers had no issues with a move to a modern system. I can't remember any negative feedback in terms of features or missing things. There are a lot of new things like the census and A2C exam integration that make peoples lives so much easier as well. As with anything communication and having a overall strategy are important, but at the end of the day, its up to us the Network Managers or IT to push these things forward and not just sit on our hands and say its too hard. Oh and don't get me wrong... I also was worried about it being too hard or dangerous with so many people involved, but I'm happy to say having gone through the migration that the vast majority of my fears came to nothing.

When we migrated away from Sims last year we got rid of: Schoolcomms, Tucassi SCO, TASC insight, 4Matrix, Ruler, Groupcall, Wonde, Cunninghams, Nova-T, Bluesky and probably a few more that I forgot. If anything having one system to do it all has simplified our workflows. We had no issue moving, I think the biggest thing was reissuing parent portal logins, but that only took a few days.

Big news that seems to have been missed by a lot of people: Next Generation SIMS | ESS SIMS (ess-sims.co.uk) I think the key word there is "begin" The rest of the blog seems designed to scare people into staying with Sims from what I read. I proufoundly disagreed with the points about disruption and costs associated with Moving. Our experience is the complete opposite with no real disruption and costs remaining broadly similar. We ended up with a better system and all the planning and worry about moving feels like a distant memory now. It just worked and staff had no issue learning a new system. EDIT: Whats worrying is they seem to be talking about a hybrid cloud approach. Does that mean remote desktop into sims like some companies like PS financials do? Does it mean a sync between on-premis or hosted versions. Does it just mean a layor on top of the local legacy Sims database. None of those options seem appealing and it shows the issues you have with legacy hosted software where you don't want to alienate current customers but it makes it increbibly hard to innovate. Starting from scratch is simply not an option for them.

Yes... both Arbor and Bromcom are light years ahead of Sims. I thought they were both excellent systems when we tendered for a Sims replacement last year.

It was something to do with the boot MBR partition in the end. I just removed the old partitions and did a clean install. Worked very well on my home PC.

Sure why not... Its just a small evolution from 2019. Hopefully my days of installing local servers are mostly gone now. Cloud ftw!

Just a heads up, but VLSC appears to be moving to Office 365 Admin portal. I just found the "new experience" under Billing >> Your Products and its pretty awesome!! All downloads and keys available right in the admin portal. I did wonder why they never updated the look of VLSC. Looks like its be superceeded.

Not sure about anyone else but I am incredibly happy to have seperation between my work and home accounts. The system they decided on works well so I can login with my personal outlook account as well as work teams if wanted using the seperate app. I would not want them merged or in the same software in any way!

Just like they use copyright to threaten anyone who publishes the TV scheduals for football matches. Its not even proven in court yet but companies still pay up.