To prepare you for using the Arbor MIS, your school will upload data from your current MIS to us three times over the course of your onboarding. This will take the form of two dummy data runs and your live data upload (final migration).
You may not have seen Arbor before, or may not be fully versed in checking your school's data. So the dummy data runs provide a platform to thoroughly check your data, test, train, and build confidence on an Arbor site (using your own data) before you go live.
This article will guide you through how to use each of your two dummy sites to ensure that you’re making the most of your ‘free hit’ at using Arbor!
We’ll ask for your first cut of data ready to be uploaded into your first dummy data site quite quickly once your onboarding commences. For this reason, it’s important that you begin your use of your first dummy data site by checking that your key Arbor Champions are able to access the site - this means ensuring they have a username and a Business Role (your Arbor Project Manager will ensure this for your school’s Project Lead).
Usernames are derived from a staff member's email address, which if recorded in your current MIS, should have migrated over into Arbor. Arbor is a permission-based system, and access to Arbor is derived from a user's Business Role. This article here explains how Business Roles are migrated from SIMS (please note, this may differ if migrating from an alternative MIS). As a priority, you’ll need to check the usernames and Business Roles of your key staff to ensure that they can get logged in.
Once you’ve ensured that your key staff can get logged in, you can then start to check your data. Your Arbor Project Manager will give you access to your Implementation Workbook, which includes tabs on both Data Cleansing in your current MIS, and Data Counts to be undertaken in your Arbor dummy site. This article here includes a number of embedded videos showing you how to check your data within Arbor.
Once you’ve started to check your site, it’s important to make a note of any discrepancies that you spot, so that you can fix these in your current MIS ahead of your next dummy data run.
Please note that we recommend only allowing key project staff to get logged into your first Arbor dummy site.
By the time you do your second data upload, you should have started to amend any issues that you’ve spotted in your data based on the data checks you’ve done on your first dummy data site. It’ll then be a good idea to check over any areas that you’ve tidied up in your current MIS in Arbor as a first port of calling, so that you can see your data cleansing come to fruition.
Your second Dummy Data site will essentially be your final ‘free hit’ at using Arbor, so we recommend making the most of it! As well as continuing your data checks, the second dummy site also offers a fantastic opportunity to get used to using the system as much as possible. Try setting up different modules, scour Arbor for different reports you use regularly, and perhaps even enter data in order to better understand the Arbor workflows. Some schools will choose to have their Arbor dummy site open next to their current MIS, and essentially duplicate their day-to-day workload, for example.
Your second dummy data site will also offer a good opportunity for you to check that all of your staff members - from back-office admin staff to teaching staff - can all get logged into your site. We recommend that you share your Arbor dummy site with all of your staff members prior to you going live.
What happens to the data we set up and change on our dummy site?
- Any changes made on your first dummy site will be overwritten once we do the second migration.
- Any changes made on your second dummy site will be overwritten once we do the final migration. You can then set things up properly on your live site.
Because everything is wiped, it isn't possible to preserve any of the settings or things you've changed on your dummy sites.
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