Tips and Techniques - SIMS In this edition of Tips and Techniques, we will cover the following topics: SIMS Release Notes Student Teacher View Messages Print Timetables for Selected Students following Curriculum Changes School Report SIMS Release Notes With each release of SIMS, Full Release Notes can be found from within the Documentation Centre, located on the SIMS Homepage. By clicking on the Documentation icon from your SIMS Homepage, you will be directed to the Documentation Centre relevant for your school phase. 1
From the Latest release information there are various items of information for selection. For example, in the image below we have selected the English Secondary Release Note included in the Spring 2017 version of SIMS. The next image is the What s New in this Release from SIM Spring 2017. 2
Student Teacher View Sending Messages to Staff SIMS Internal messages can be sent to any of the people named on the Student Teacher View. The Timeline widget provides the facility to send a General Message to the student's class teachers. To send a message to all staff referenced on the student's Timeline, click the Options button then select Message All Staff from the pop-up menu to display the Send Message dialog. Please note, selecting 'Message All Staff' will only populate the Main Class Teachers. For split classes that have more than Teacher, it does not display them apart from the Main Class Teacher. This is expected functionality within SIMS. 3
Additional recipients can be included as desired by selecting the Add button adjacent to Recipient. When adding additional recipients, you can filter to a selection of Roles as per the image above. 4
Once a message has been entered, the Send button becomes active. To send a message to the main teacher of a specific class, either double-click the required class on the Timeline widget or right-click the class then select Send Message from the popup menu to display the Send Message dialog. Print Timetables for Selected Students When changes are made to a selection of students curriculum memberships, for example with set changes, it is possible to easily print only timetables for those students with changes. 1. Focus School Academic Management Curriculum Assignment by Scheme. 2. Make the changes to student memberships as required but do not Save at this point. 5
3. Once you have made the necessary changes, and before saving, left click on the Action icon. 4. Choose Tag/Select Select Changed Students. 5. This will highlight all the changed students only. Click on the Action icon once again and choose Print Timetables for Selected Students. 6. Once you have printed the timetables you can click the Save button. Note: Tag Changed Students Select Tagged Students will work in the same way. 6
SIMS School Report The School Report was introduced in SIMS in the Autumn 2014 release and enables the monitoring of key measures in the school. Since then there have been some enhancements including a new Start Date for Attendance, Conduct and Exclusions. You can customise the report output by including or excluding specific measures in which you are interested. A key attribute of the School Report is that the data is anonymised making it useful for reporting to Governors. The run-time settings that you specify can be changed to alter the focus of the report output each time that the School Report is run. 1. Select Reports School Report to display the School Report dialog. The Start Date for Attendance, Conduct and Exclusions defaults to the start date of the current academic year but this can be changed by clicking the Calendar button and selecting an alternative date, if required. The Reference Date defaults to today's date but this can be changed by clicking the Calendar button and selecting an alternative date, if required. 7
Below is an example of the School Report showing the Conduct Summary and Exclusions. See the Capita mini guide Running the SIMS School Report from the SIMS Documentation Centre for more information. Important Note: Assessment data will only be included in the School Report if schools have mapped their own assessment data using the Assessment Mapping tool. ICT Services have collated a SIMS School Report FAQ see our document W128 at the following link http://www.thegrid.org.uk/info/traded/sitss/assessment/sec_ass_mgr/ Please contact the ICT Service desk with any queries on 01438 844777, option1 and option 1 again. Alternatively, email help@sd.hertsforlearning.co.uk 8