Sycamore Education

Kommentare: Overall we were happy with Sycamore. I highly recommend them for smaller schools and it may be the right fit for larger schools. I think they just need to evaluate what workflows are most important to them and understand the trade-offs of having a wider than deeper program.

Vorteile: First of all, they have excellent customer service. They really are doing their best to help schools succeed. They have great integrations with google, which for us was one of the primary deciding reasons for going with them. They now have a quality app and more features than most programs have for a fraction of the cost. They also have a REST API which is extremely helpful for expanding the potential of the software.

Nachteile: One of the hard parts about being an educational software is that it is hard to know when to stop developing different​ features and instead focus on making the features they do have into amazing experiences. IMO Sycamore has a broader instead of deeper development philosophy. This is good for small schools that need a comprehensive solution, but it can be frustrating for schools with more users that end up choosing multiple solutions because the overall experience and depth of usability are better. An example of this is how they have 3 different enrollment/admissions portals that they have tried to develop. Instead of making one amazing, they have tried multiple times. Their most recent one is promising, but still,​ isn't​ usable for schools who need all of the features available.

Vorteile: Communication has increased between parents and teachers as grades can be tracked and paper grades don't get lost. It also has provided accountability in that teachers are posting grades on a more timely basis. It allows consistency between grades and years. The system is very powerful; customer service is probably the most helpful that I have encountered. I love the ability to create transcripts and that these are kept on the system. It tracks attendance much better than we were doing previously. The medical logs have been helpful. Doing online admissions has taken us to a new level as well.

Nachteile: The system isn't as intuitive as I would like. Because I have worked with it several years, it's much easier now and people end up coming to me to figure out how to do specific things with it.
I have been frustrated a bit b/c it doesn't allow for creative flexibility (for instance transcripts don't have a lot of space for extra activities) or for things that aren't the same in different countries. We have worked around a lot of the barriers, and Sycamore has been very helpful to put things on the list of potential fixes.