panosthegreat

For our linked documents we paid someone to save linked document off SIMS with the UPN in the file name. Took 6 weeks to do 1400 students. We're now at 50% of our 10GB limit..

We use it for our termly reports and haven't had any problems at all with web merges. Maybe try exporting them to the DMS rather than download a local copy and leave it running a little longer? Just to see if it does eventually generate anything or not. Also try running the report (from the page before you click web merge) to check the data for the merge is pulling through OK

Arbour had a number of foreign schools already set up and willing to vouch for the system. Bromcom didn't have any before us (I think they might have a Dubai school now). I prefered Bromcom over Arbour so we took a risk and went with them, and on the whole they're doing a lot to get the system working abroad, they just need more time. They're not quite ready for different time zones or bulk-invoicing of fees... but they'll get there. There's an update on Friday that promises to fix the time zone issue but time will tell... I'm heading back to the UK soon so hopefully I can find a job in a Bromcom school. I can't go back to SIMS.

We went with Bromcom, we're an international school and are fee paying but not for profit. Our finance team are not happy with the Bromcom Finance module, they miss FMS and SIMS... and some of the modules (including the parent/student portals) don't work where someone's computer is in a different time zones or a particular version of iOS. However everyone else really likes Bromcom, especially the teachers, and the data team love how much easier it is to set everything up. Definitely better than SIMS, just needs some tweaking for international and fee paying schools... they'll get there. But Arbour may be better for now in those types of schools.

I've added it, it has joined the other 168 pages of idea suggestions

Having moved from SIMS to Bromcom, one of the features I've got to now replace was the options online module (https://www.sims-options.co.uk/). It allowed students to tell us what subjects they want to study, say, 4 subects and 1 reserve, then it did it's magic and created the best fit block structure for all our GCSE and A Level blocks... typically from a cohort of 100, about 4-6 wouldn't get their first choices and would need a reserve... saved us loads of time. Is there anything else out there that will do this? or is it back to spreadsheets and macros for me?

Thanks, didn't think it was possible so was looking for some out the box workaround or methods other schools use to do this, but as it is possible, even better!

At my school, cover is done by teaching staff (no unions in Saudi ) We prioritise the staff that are under their contracted hours to top of the cover list, and those on their hours to the bottom of the list. The staff that are over-timetabled don't do any cover. Is it possible to set particular teachers to appear at the top of the cover list, based on weightings I specify individually? I suspect not, maybe in a future release Any out the box ways to manage this aside from printing a list of teachers and their weightings and taping that to the desks of the cover supervisors?

*edit / update* I worked it out following your DMS advice, OMG that's so much easier! I'd been thinking too far ahead with the apps, they'll be super useful for us in a few weeks when everyone's on, but the DMS document sharing bit would definitely have saved me a lot of stress and hassle from leadership. I'm a big Bromcom fan, I just haven't quite learnt where everything is yet... I really need 2 days off work to just try every single page and see what everything does...

Interesting, we're working with Salamander already to create our Google Classrooms, we were going to push timetables out for teachers but didn't think to do to so with students too. I love this forum, so many good ideas!

Nice one, that sounds like it's exactly what I need thanks

So our timetables are all sorted and populated, but there are a few students that are pulled out of lessons for a period of time to work with specialists in particular areas (e.g. they miss a term of PSHE to work on their literacy, or they see an SEN specialist instead of studying French) We used to program these into Nova-T as 'alternative curriculum' and assign the students to them in SIMS Whats the best way to do that in Bromcom? Make a new class, timetable it and manually add in the students and teacher they work with? I can do that if necessary, but it's a lot of admin throughout the year as they run lots of these short courses as well as a few longer ones, and children drop in and out of them too. Is there a better way anyone here achieves this? Thanks in advance

Our parents will kick off about why they need to download an app to get their timetables. Had some updates, Bromcom say they identified a problem with the website not displaying timetables on Macs... but they can't replicate the issue on PCs yet. They did say I can publish the reports and share them to MCAS, and ask students to get their parents to download that app and find their timetables for them that way... not how we wanted to launch the new MIS but at least it's a solution I guess I'll do the MCAS thing and email as many out individually as I can before Sunday.. at least with Covid my job is safe until flights re-open over here..

how has your experience been? We just moved to Bromcom and I need to get timetables out, instead of smoothly everyone logging into the Student Portal and seeing their timetables it I've been having to manually make each timetable in a report and email it to students as we open on Sunday and I'm running out of time to get it working. Some students are signing up and seeing their timetables fine, others are using Safari so the registration page doesn't display the whole page and they can't scroll down to the submit button to register... others are signing in fine but seeing their timetables on Monday-Thursday and nothing on Sunday (we're in Saudi, so work Sunday-Thursday) others log in and see absolutely nothing on their timetables. It's logged on their support and they're looking into it, but in the meantime I've got kids going nuts and I'm spending my weekend replying to each with a timetable I have to generate Anyone got a third party suggestion that works with Bromcom? We used to use Schoolcomms, which pulled timetables from SIMS and emailed them in about 3 clicks... kindof missing SIMS Aside from this we're happy with Bromcom

Thanks for this, I completely missed the import button there and was going to get everyone to logon and self-register. This will make this so much easier for staff

I'm in the migration process at the moment, not started moving over that type of data yet My plan however was to make marksheets in Bromcom for things like CAT and internal assessments, export it into a spreadsheet from Bromcom, copy/paste or vlookup to put the results in... then import that into the empty Bromcom marksheet.

Thanks, the Bromcom support were very good with this, while I was waiting I thought the community here may shed some light on the Nova import as it was most likely something I was doing wrong. The mistake seems to be that I put registration as a lesson in Nova and then mapped it to the registration period in Bromcom - the system doesn't like that. So in Nova after deleting the registration periods and not mapping anything to the AM/PM reg in Bromcom the timetables now appear in the right places. I'll put a feature request in to maybe put a bit of guidance on that on the timetable scheduling page or documentation

I've been struggling with this for a few days now, I've logged it with them but in the mean time if anyone's done this and know what is going wrong any advice would be appreciated The period structure in Nova is 7 lessons per day. Lesson 1 is registration, and lessons 2-7 are regular lessons. All teachers assigned to classes, rooms assigned etc... no issues in Nova. When I import it into Bromcom I get a big screen with all the days of the week, and the 7 periods at the top... i have to assign a number from 1-70 to each period. So I start with AM and assign it number 1, and go along writing 1-70 in each lesson of our 2 week timetable (10 days, 7 periods, where AM is a registration period but in Nova was set up as a regular lesson) If I generate a report to view a timetable it displays fine, but there are no times on it, and some of our staff will struggle to build a report to find their timetables... The easy way for them to view their timetable would be to go to Modules > Attendance > User Timetable (or search user timetable in the search bar) However when you do that, the AM periods are down as all day events, and the periods are all shifted into the wrong positions. I'm sure it's something really simple I've missed - but fresh eyes are definitely needed at this point. We're based in the middle east so work Sunday - Thursday by the way. I've attached the Nova structure, and what I'm seeing in Bromcom

Agreed. Some of the newer systems (I've been looking at Bromcom but haven't moved yet) have a 'Projector' mode on their registers that will take out all the personal details like SEN etc... so they'd be fine to display

Their prices are all online on a government site for transparency, https://www.digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk/g-cloud/services/172233866143787 (Pricing.pdf on the right of the page) There's a few grand setup fee, then its either £7/user or £10/user for the all singing & dancing version. For our school it's going to work out about the same cost as SIMS as we have lots of the extra SIMS modules, which should hopefully drop a bit more after a year when we start removing our 3rd party systems and replacing them with the Bromcom in-built systems.

Our finance team say that all invoices and reminders they've sent to a parent have been going to the wrong person (someone not in our system at all). I looked up both parents of the child in question, and just the father has been set up as bill payer and has the 'Email Bills' box ticked too... then the email they want to receive these via is set up as their Home email, is Main and Primary, and 'Use for fees financial PDF documents' is also ticked However, the emails have been going to a random username at the domain of their work email (which is not main, primary and the 'use for fees...' bit is set to False). I suspect SIMS emailed their work account, and that sent to someone else because of a policy at their work (maybe external emails are directed to a particular account or something)... Any ideas why it might be sending to the wrong account? Is there anything elsewhere I should check to make sure only their home email account is used?

This is all I've had from Capita so far: Didn't help in my case, maybe it will for you?

We're still on Summer 7.188, I only got the email about the Autumn release about an hour ago actually (we're international so it may have been a delayed release for us). I've logged it with Capita now, Ticket Number: 1911-3983726 I usually don't rush to update SIMS, in case there are any issues with the update that a patch will be needed for later. If they say it'll fix it though I'm happy to rush it through over the weekend *edit* not seeing anything in the release notes about this issue, so that may not be a fix

We've had this over the last fortnight or so actually. It's been happening to the same 3-4 teachers, they've reliable teachers that have also started getting their classes to witness them clicking the save button as they're getting annoyed at all our messages about them not saving registers. I'm drawing a blank though, I don't think it's the link between SIMS and the SQL database as usually it crashes when that link goes down. I've tried reinstalling SIMS via Solus on the machines of the staff it's happened to and that made no difference. Could it be something from the latest update?

As part of our school's website re-design, we're looking at our online application forms. We're an all-through international school, taking kids from 3-18 and have a number of entry priorities (e.g. British students, Siblings etc.. are prioritised when they apply). We're currently using SIMS, though may be moving to Bromcom so integration with that is a bonus but is not a must. There is a cost involved in applying, although this is refunded if you're not successful (currently this is done via bank transfer and we email the 2nd part of the application form when that's gone through - so a system that takes payments or allows you to track progress would be nice). I think that's about all that might influence an application form. Applicaa Admissions Plus looks like a good contender as it will write directly into Bromcom https://applicaa.com/admissions-plus and is feature-rich. Much cheaper though, would be something like a form on Google Sites, that may not have the features but would still be simple to use and free. Can you recommend any other packages for this process?