How do we migrate notes and documents?

This article provides guidance on migrating notes and documents from various previous systems to Arbor, detailing which documents are migrated, their storage locations, and specific tagging requirements. It highlights the migration process from systems like Bromcom, Integris, CMIS, ScholarPack, Progresso, and SIMS, including the handling of safeguarding notes and the importance of correct tagging for proper document placement.

Please use the guidance below to see what documents migrate from which previous systems, and if they do migrate, where they will be stored in Arbor after migration.

Please note there are specific specifications for schools migrating from SIMS via the GroupCall API migrator. If you need to raise any data discrepancies post migration please contact Arbor support or your dedicated partner and we will be advised of the next steps.

Please note that we do not migrate documents stored as URLs from any previous MIS.

SIMS and the DMS

Schools migrating from SIMS via GroupCall

Student and Staff Documents are migrated from SIMS via GroupCall. Documents will be stored against a student or staff members profile and can be found under the 'Migrate Documents' tab. Please refer to the article 'Migrating to Arbor via GroupCall for English schools', which stipulates the data retention parameters we follow when migrating historical documents. 

We migrate the following notes from SIMS when migrating via GroupCall:

• Student Absence Notes
• Medical Note
• Education Plan
• SEN Note
• Medical Condition
• Pastoral Note
• In Care Note
• Safeguarding Note

Student Absence notes will appear in the Planned Absences and Notes section of the student's profile. 

Education Plan and SEN notes will migrate to the Educational Needs section of the student's Arbor profile. 

Student Medical notes will migrate to the Medical section of the student's profile with a record type of Medical Note. Please note: If there is a student medical note without an attachment, we will skip those where the summary field is 'To be obtained from previous school'.

Pastoral Notes will migrate to the Pastoral Notes section of the student's profile. In Care notes will migrate the the Looked After (In Care) section of the student's Arbor profile. 

Safeguarding Notes will migrate to the 'Safeguarding Notes' section of the Arbor Profile. 

Document Manager

We do not currently migrate general school documents.

Documents are often very slow to migrate, due largely to the significant size of the SIMS document server, however server performance can also play a role in the speed at which the documents migrate. Please check the SIMS pre-requisites document to ensure your server meets the recommended standards prior to your migration.

Document Status

SIMS only allow documents with a status of "Confidential" or "Public" to be migrated via their API. Documents with a status of "Private" or null (no status) will not migrate and schools should update these to "Confidential" or Public" if they wish for them to migrate from SIMS to Arbor via GroupCall. Alternatively, the school can choose to manually upload these documents into Arbor post-migration.

Staff Documents

We do not migrate staff documents if the document file path is empty.

Documents relating to a staff medical condition will only migrate if the document type is 'EMPMEDNOTE' and a medical condition record is linked.

Staff contracts will only migrate if they have a document type of 'CONTRANOTE'.

We are unable to migrate staff impairment documents.

Student Documents

The following student document types will migrate, providing the document file path is not empty:

• Student medical event documents are created if the entity type has a value 'STUDMEDEVT', entity type has the value PERSON and 'attachment name' is not empty.
• If there is a student medical note without an attachment, we will skip those where the summary field is 'To be obtained from previous school'.

What is the DMS?

The DMS is the Document Management Server in SIMS. This is where you stored all documents and is where the backup is created when you migrate to Arbor.

When you create your backup to send to us, you must also choose to back up your documents, and upload this DMS file along with your backup. You can see how to do this here: Migrating from SIMS

Can we import .TIF documents?

Arbor doesn't support this file type, so these will not be migrated.

The Migrated Documents sections

Any documents we could not match to a specific area will go into the Migrated Documents area on on a Student or Staff profile. You can also find a full list in School > School Details > Migrated Documents.

This includes documents, scanned copies or photos for evidence of Staff Checks and Qualifications. This is because we don't have a specific area to store these in Arbor.

You'll need the School: Documents: Administer permission to access this area. By default:

• on School MIS sites, only the Head Teacher has this permission, but you can ask your admin team to give you permission using these instructions.
• for MAT MIS users who want to log into school sites to see these areas, you'll need to be assigned this permission Ad Hoc. It is not added to any users by default.

We can't be sure what is stored in these documents and whether they are confidential. Therefore, we have added the highest possible permissions to them to be on the safe side.

If you need to give other staff access, you can download and move the documents to different areas.

Top Tip: You won't see this area if we haven't had to migrate any documents here.

Where do we put the migrated documents?

Students:

• Medical condition, medical notes, medical event - Medical section of the student's profile
• Education plan - in the students' Educational Needs page, on the left-hand side of the student's profile
• Behaviour incident note - in the students' Behaviour page, on the left-hand side of the student's profile
• SEN note - in the students' Educational Needs page, on the left-hand side of the student's profile
• Exclusion note - in the students' Behaviour page, on the left-hand side of the student's profile

Pastoral notes, Attendance notes, Assessment documents, Letters, Risk assessments, Communications and Quick notes will be migrated into the student's Pastoral Notes section on their student profile.

Staff - relevant Arbor section:

• Medical condition
• Staff impairment
• Contract note
• Absence note

Do we migrate quick notes from SIMS?

There are two different types of quick notes - the pastoral notes linked to the main student record, and the supplementary quick notes that are sometimes stored against individual pieces of data, like contacts and addresses. 

Pastoral Note-type quick notes are migrated as pastoral notes, and each note record will have the date of the migration as the date the note was recorded. This is the case for GroupCall and .bak SIMS migrations. 

What should I do if there are missing documents?

1. Check you uploaded your DMS along with your backup. If you didn't, you can see how to do so here: Generating a backup
2. If you did upload your DMS, figure out what documents are missing. Check whether we migrate these documents, following the above guidance.
3. If they are documents we usually import, but they haven't migrated to the right section, get in touch with your Support team, and include your examples, with screenshots showing the document being present in your previous MIS, but missing in Arbor.