SIMS Next Gen Setup Service

What is it?

This consultancy service is designed to help schools who use SIMS to setup SIMS Next Gen (the cloud version of SIMS).

SIMS Next Gen extracts data from SIMS hosted on your school server and syncs it to the cloud version.

To start your school's journey to the new cloud-based version of SIMS, you will need to on-board your school SIMS Next Gen.

The first step in your school's SIMS Next Gen journey begins with enabling teachers to take the register for their classes. As teachers take the register in SIMS Next Gen, data is synchronised back into on premise SIMS. Users log in to SIMS Next Gen using their unique Microsoft 365 identity, which has been secured with multi-factor authentication (MFA) ensuring your school's sensitive data is protected.

Once setup, your school will be able to start using the new functionality and features in SIMS Next Gen as they are released. The ESS SIMS Next Gen Roadmap explains the current features.

Why do I need it?

Included in the setup, Education Digital Services will:

help your school administrator setup a SIMS ID Administrator for accessing SIMS Next Gen
ensure only correct, current SIMS personnel data is transferred to SIMS Next Gen
ensure staff have SIMS logins ready for using SIMS Next Gen
ensure SIMS Services Manager is working and connected to SIMS Next Gen (see also Additional Information section)
help the SIMS ID Administrator to invite teachers to use SIMS Next Gen Registers
show the SIMS ID Administrator how to link Office 365 accounts to SIMS ID accounts, adding an additional layer of security

What are the benefits?

no more paper registers
Teachers can take their registers with a click of a few buttons, whether it’s primaries completing statutory am/pm registers, or secondaries taking daily lessons
Teachers can input registration directly into SIMS Next Gen which writes back to your SIMS in school within minutes
make registration quicker, allowing quicker chase times with parents
The consultancy session will be scheduled at a date and time convenient for your school

What is included?

With the help of one of our School Applications Support team, our SIMS Next Gen Setup Service is designed to give school staff the peace of mind knowing the setup of the register in SIMS Next Gen is complete. As part of the consultancy, we will:

ensure at least one school administrator and two teachers can take a register
work with your SIMS ID Administrator to ensure the relevant data is transferred to SIMS Next Gen
provide documentation showing you how to add another SIMS ID Administrator to SIMS Next Gen
provide documentation to show you how to add more users so they can use SIMS Next Gen
provide a consultancy from a member of our Schools' Applications Team

What is excluded?

Amendments or new requests for assistance should be commissioned separately.

What does it cost?

Log-in to find out information on our pricing.

Additional information

Is anything required before I can use this service?

Your school will need to have SIMS operational on a SIMS server hosted within the school, a unique Microsoft 365 log-in with Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) enabled, and if your school has taken devolved admin for your Microsoft 365 tenancy or support your own tenancy, a Microsoft 365 tenancy administrator may need to be available during the setup consultancy.

Pre-requisites:

The latest version of SIMS needs to be installed on the schools SIMS server
a unique school email account for each SIMS user, with MFA enabled
internet connection on all devices using SIMS Next Gen
Ensure the web browsers on the devices that will use SIMS Next Gen are up to date. Supported browsers are detailed in the ESS Technical Roadmap which can be found on our website
Add noreply@sims.co.uk to your school's email whitelist to ensure that the automatically generated system invite does not go into the junk folder
If your school does not purchase our SIMS Managed Service, your third-party IT company will need to allow us access to your SIMS Server, along with the SA password, to allow the setup of SIMS Services Manager

How many consultancy hours are included as part of this service?

This consultancy is expected to take two hours. If additional hours are requested or required, extra hours will be charged at our standard Price Band B consultancy rates.