Alma

"Glad we're using Alma"

Vorteile: Unlike other SIS's, Alma actually looks and feels like it was made in the 2010's. The system is solid, and has essentially every feature a smaller school like ours would want (and many more that we don't need to use). The gradebook is excellent, and it's easy to transfer classes and students from year-to-year. Their customer service has been great (we accidentally deleted multiple report cards in different places the other day and they quickly and helpfully solved our issue by restoring to a backup), and they are continually adding features and improving the platform. And the cost has been at least 50% less than quotes we were getting from major competitors. Many reasons to switch to Alma.

Nachteile: The latest transcripts update was helpful - there are still a couple of features we'd like on the transcripts front, but that's mostly because our school has a unique curriculum. This is totally just a personal preference, but I'd also like to be able to search for classes in the search feature in addition to contacts.

"ALMA is what we were looking for...."

Kommentare: This program has helped our students, staff, and parents utilize one student management system and use it to it's fullest potential. Each people group is able to pull from the system the vital information they need; some need more than others and the program has addressed all levels of information and all levels of user. That was important to us as we needed something that our staff could use to keep track of vital demographics, our teachers could use to track student grades and assignments and yet parents and students could log on and keep track of grades, test assessments and missing assignments. It meets the needs of every level.

Vorteile: This product is very easy to use, in real time and easy to understand. Novel users can open up this SIS program and navigate in order to find the information they are looking for.

Nachteile: We were one of the first public schools to sign on with ALMA, therefore we have evolved with the company. There have been some growing pains as we have evolved. The tech support teams have been gracious and very helpful in keeping us up to speed and rolling.

"The absolute worst year I've had as a professional school counselor."

Kommentare: none.

Vorteile: You can log in quickly. The people who have come in to assist with how horrific this year has been have been mostly humble and at least tried to help.

Nachteile: Absolutely impossible to have what we need at our hands as high school counselors. Everything is laborious or actually impossible to do. It has taken MONTHS to get even tiny bits of advances to make this usable. Transcripts, which are an essential piece for our kids, took 6 months to have functioning, and they're still inaccurate. Scheduling is months behind because the programming is inept for a school this size. It lacks confidentiality and privacy that's important for our students. Household units are not available, access to other buildings makes it impossible to know who has siblings and other people living in their home, which poses a safety issue when filing reports to CPS, report cards are still completely wrong and inaccurate. I could truly go on for an awfully long time, but I digress. At the end of the day, I think I can vouch for every person in my building when I say that this program was rolled out in a deplorable way, changes and improvements are slow and sometimes non-existent, and it's made me reconsider even working in this corporation due to how terrible this system is. A program in its infancy has been detrimental to every single stakeholder in this corporation, and I've been disappointed since the first day of training in August.

"A solid Student SIS"

Kommentare: They are a fantastic company with a bright future ahead of them. I'm happy to support them, enjoy using their product, and appreciate their customer service.

Vorteile: The main selling point from Alma was the ease of use. Out of all of the systems I've demoed and tried, it was easily the easiest to log in, poke around, and figure out how to do what I needed to do with minimal training. The second selling point is their customer service. Absolutely top notch. Their people are friendly, very responsive, and (most importantly) humans. I enjoy talking to them! I can usually get a response from a rep within minutes and even our teachers are welcome to message them with questions. The third selling point is that they are new system with a considerably active development cycle. We knew, going into it, that they wouldn't be as fully fleshed out as competitors like PowerSchool. That also means that it's easier for newer and fresher ideas to be implemented. It's not built on some old archaic database. Many of the features they do have that I use regularly such as the Report Card Builder and the Spreadsheet Data Editor/Report builder are very well done. We regularly get emails about new features being added and they listen to their customers when new features are requested. They've given us a lot of new toys since we first signed on with them. The final selling point is narwhals.

Nachteile: Probably the biggest issue that I face regularly is that their district level stuff isn't as fleshed out as I would like it to be. Many of the cool features that are available at each of the schools I manage can't be done in the district portion, aggregating all data and whatnot. I've been told they are working on that stuff though!

"Great Support!"

Kommentare: We have always had great success with Alma. They are supportive, friendly, and responsive.

Vorteile: The customer service reps are always kind and supportive. They are quick to respond and ready to help out. They even change their software based on suggestions.

Nachteile: There is nothing that I find to be the least liked about this software. They are always willing to help and update.