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In the spirit of trying to help colleagues in a similar position... When Advanced notified us that they were halting all development of the product, I saw the writing on the wall and started to look at alternative MIS systems immediately, with a view to having something set up by July 2023. Never did I imagine they would pull the plug so soon and I cannot imagine what schools must be going through right now. I did 3 months of research, meetings and investigation. We were a big user of Cloud School - I had developed my SSRS skills and we had a suite of widgets to support staff, students and parents alike. All students and parents used the portal, so getting a new system that allowed us to continue to build on this base was important. I have just signed a contract with a new MIS provider. If there are schools out there who would like to know more about what I looked at and the reasons for the choices we made, I would be happy to share them. If there is enough interest, I could host a Zoom meeting to prevent having to repeat myself over and over again. I have not really used EduGeek much before, but this is a place I do go to from time to time (usually when there is a problem), so I am guessing some of the schools affected may be looking for guidance. If others know of other forums that may find this helpful, do let me know!

When setting up progresso subscription reports, it suffers in that any report that needs to run with date parameters that are relative to the runtime date, there's no way to specify that - it just keeps runs with the date when the subscribed report was set up. As I result, I'm having to copy and modify each report to have no date parameter . On further thinking, and to keep modifications minimal and standardised, I decide to use "01/01/1901" as a value to trigger overriding the parameter date to a runtime calculated date, effectively allowing me to have one report that works normally on demand, but also as a subscription report. For example, where a report is for attendance with a start and end date, on the appropriate DataSet I've change the DataSet -> Properties -> Parameters, Parameters value to be something like: =IIf(Parameters!EndDate.Value = "01/01/1901", now(), Parameters!EndDate.Value) Generally this has worked fine but I've hit an issue with a modified version of the system report "Absences for a date range". The code above works fine for the end date. However, for the start date I simply want to set to the first of the current month. Various attempts have led to the following error (at runtime). For example "Semantic query compilation failed: e InvalidParameterValueType The data type of the parameter "Date" is DateTime. However, the value provided for the parameter cannot be converted to this type. (SemanticQuery ''). (rsSemanticQueryEngineError)". One thing I noticed in the associated DataSet is the queried date field appears like this: whereas for another report that works the relevant date field looks like this I suspect I need to do some kind of conversion but I've not cracked it yet, so any help appreciated.

Hello all What I would like is to be able to add a parameter to reports with an 'Effective On Date' to show the data as of any date in the past. For example, if I have students and classes, it will show students who have left and their class as of that date. For those who have used SIMS, this is a standard parameter before you run the report but struggling to get it working on here. Any thoughts/ideas would be appreciated. Tom

I am working on a modified version of the system Parental Report 1 (Assessment grid - no target column). The main report is selecting values from the Year8 template/screen fine and one end of year value from the previous Year7 template. The issue I have is that for one subject, there is no previous data (effectively we have a new subject). For all other subjects we are displaying the a EndofYear7 value fine, but where the value is a missing value, I want to show an assessment value from the current Year8 instead. A similar situation may arise (for any subject in fact) where a pupil joined in Year8 and again as no Year7 data, I want to show instead the Year8 value. I'm interested in suggestions for an approach. I've tried a options of routes but not yet successfully yet.

Hello My school is currently using Facility Administration and we're looking into changing our MIS. We've had a demonstration from Progresso but feedback from other schools is that it doesn't work well, we will also have a demo from SIMS in the near future. Has anyone else done the change from Facility (or others) to SIMS and if so what were the pros/cons? What can SIMS offer that Facility doesn't? Thanks Richard

I hear Progresso has failed badly in Birmingham, with none of the three sample school being able to adopt it at all. I hear the one that did try and go live has erm, well died. Is this hearsay and gossip, or is this product really not ready at all? Is it that Birmingham are not managing it properly? Who knows. If you do, let us all know please, I'd hate to be recommending a dead duck to my school. Thanks John

Have been following Progresso's development quite closely. Were due to go live a couple of times, saw data in their transition environment earlier in the year and we panicked it was so bad! We pulled the plug on our migration and it is currently TBC as far as we're concerned. Had a call today from our Serco rep to tell us that they are not going to migrate any more schools over to Progresso (from Facility) this year because there have been so many problems. Talking to a colleague via SSAT and they've told me the same story and that they are considering dropping Serco completely and going to Aspen or Integris. Can anyone else share good or bad stories of their Progresso migrations (or build up to failed ones), that could help us and others make a considered decision with all of the info please? Thanks Simon

Hi, We have recently been having an issue with the MS 2017 report builder which works along side Progresso reports. When editing a report the connection can fail, but then i can open report builder and browse to the reports from the open area, i can see all the reports and the folder structure but then when i try to open the report i get the remote server has closed the connection. So, when opening from Progresso it fails, The opening report writer first allows me in the 1st time, Then if i try again If anyone has had similar issues then if they could let me know what was done to resolve it that would be great. Thanks

Hi, Does anyone have any experience of using an alternate SMS provider in Progresso, the system has the capacity to add in other providers as the out of box Progresso provider is very expensive. Thanks

Would anyone like to point out why the following is invalid according to progresso? It was entirely built by clicking selections in the command builder. IF(((Count(Y7 2016 entry.Cur. Threshold * 1)) = (0)),Y8 2016 entry.Cur. Threshold * 1,Y7 2016 entry.Cur. Threshold * 1)

Anyone any experience using progresso to run a 6th form. Anything to look out for? Happy to hear about other MIS experiences with 6th forms too.

Hi, I'm sure this is probably the case but I wonder if a Progresso reporting user could confirm for me: can you store and report on grade values of assessment results, so that, for example, teachers could give 5+, 4- etc on a marksheet but in a report you could count number of grades with values greater than 4? Thanks Ed

I'm looking to learn from other schools that are Progresso users at primary level. In particular, I'm keen to see how you track and report at EYFS, KS1 and KS2 stages and how that feeds through to reporting. We are an all through-school and we manage Secondary level well, produce PDF reports that we make available via the parental portal. We are looking at replicating something similar at primary level. Anyone able to help?

We have started to investigate other msi systems as we find Sims has just got to the point of being bloated and not very well developed, a lot of catch up ideas and everything is an added extra. One I have seen and been on is Progresso, it was fast, clean and I couldn't find anything which sims does (able it with 10 add ons). It's more expensive but if we went for this we would save 14-18k just on removing add ons such as groupcall. If anyone has it and even better has been through a sims to Progresso conversion please could you give me your thoughts. And before I get a your in the wrong place it's Mis, Progresso is a cloud biased Mis!

Can anyone tell me in simple terms what the new Serco MIS, Progresso, is? Is it a replacement for Facility or is it to be optional alongside Facility? Thanks.

Hello, I am currently looking for a full time job opportunity in the East Midlands area using CMIS or Progresso. I am highly skilled in using these MIS's and also have come from a strong I.T background and also Support. I have a full clean driving licence. I also have a bit of knowledge using SIMS. Please let me know if you wish to see a copy of my C.V. Thank you for reading my post.

Hi Does anyone have experience of the PROGRESSO cloud based MIS? I would be interested in hearing from anyone who has used the system. thanks

I'm a teacher and our school is due to go live with Progresso tomorrow. I've just looked at the template for the first set of student reports we're supposed to write using the new system and was wondering if anyone could help with a quick query. It looks like the "comment" field we fill in (250 characters of free text) requires us to click "Enter" to bring up the text entry box. This gets extremely click-y (especially when there's a second or two to wait for the box to come up or close again). Does anyone know if we can configure Progresso to present the text boxes inline as they were in ePortal? Even better, can we get Progresso to import report data from Excel (it seems to export to Excel quite happily)? If there's not an import from Excel function does anyone know anything about the Progresso API so I could look at writing a little macro to do it for me? Thanks a lot!