Alma SIS reviews

Glad we're using Alma

Pluspunten:

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.

Minpunten:

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 Software Review (SBG school)

Opmerkingen: Support has been very helpful, typically it seems we have questions that either haven't been asked before or are not implemented yet. Faculty/staff is able to access the reports tab which helps them track students and contacts quickly and has access to student records and class schedules.

Pluspunten:

Alma is easier than our former software and allows us to use our Standards Based Grading which is our priority. Parents were able to quickly learn how to use the system and the attendance feature is great. Students were also able to learn the system and although it doesn't have a comprehensive calendar with their schedules and our school activities, they were able to use the daily tab to track their classes.

Minpunten:

The calendar is static and unable to be exported to phones/other calendars so we had to create an app for that. The reports are not as in-depth as needed and we aren't able to save our filters/criteria that we use often. They are still working on SBG reporting so many items we aren't able to track as we typically do through reports. The report card set up is limited for what we need in our report cards; we had to use every work-around to get a report card as we needed, but they do work now.

Overwogen alternatieven: Schoology

Redenen om voor Alma SIS te kiezen: K-12 was trying to start Standards Based Grading but didn't meet our deadline.

Redenen om over te stappen op Alma SIS: It has what we needed for Standard Based Grading both in assignments and report cards for tracking.

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

Opmerkingen: none.

Pluspunten:

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.

Minpunten:

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.

"Alma SIS: An Innovative School Management Solution for the 21st Century".

Opmerkingen: I have had a great experience with Alma SIS. The system is incredibly user friendly, with a modern and intuitive interface. I have found several features to be incredibly helpful, such as the ability to easily track student progress and quickly access student data. The system also allows for easy customization, such as creating personalized dashboards and reports.

Pluspunten:

I liked how powerful and customizable the Alma SIS software is. With it, I can customize every single detail of my school's workflow, from scheduling classes and managing student accounts to tracking attendance, setting up library catalogs, and creating custom reports. The software also allows me to easily create groups and import data from various sources, including student information systems, library catalogs, and grade books.

Minpunten:

One of the main issues I have with Alma SIS is its lack of scalability for larger campuses. It's very difficult to effectively manage large amounts of data, and Alma SIS does not provide the necessary solutions for efficiently managing large schools. Additionally, the interface is not intuitive and can be difficult to navigate. Finally, Alma SIS does not offer any customization options, so campuses are limited in terms of how they can customize the platform to their needs.

Great Customer Support

Opmerkingen: We have really enjoyed the experience with ALMA. The support staff are very friendly, and if they don't have a solution to an issue, they work hard to find one. They are open to requesting additional options or features they may not currently have available. This makes me feel that they truly want to improve their product. We are very new to using ALMA, but they have proved so far that we made a good choice.

Pluspunten:

I don't have a lot to compare ALMA to, but I feel that the user interface is very intuitive. After light training, I felt that I was able to navigate the software with ease, and perform many of the functions without having to struggle to do so. The resources for questions called the "study guide" has really good searchable articles and videos that addressed almost every issue I had. If I couldn't find the answer, the support staff was quick to respond and help with a solution.

Minpunten:

Education is so vastly different from one school to the next. On the similar needs of schools I think ALMA performs great, but for specific needs or differences they struggle to meet all our needs. Many times we have to find a work-around for issues we are having. I will add that this is very rare. A specific example is that we can search students by grade. We can search specific classes, but not the whole grade. There are times it would be beneficial to see all the students in one grade.

Overwogen alternatieven: Sycamore School

Redenen om voor Alma SIS te kiezen: It was very difficult to use. We had to pay for help every time we had an issue. The reports never looked the way we wanted. It did not handle standards based grading well, and trying to have both standards base with traditional grading was practically impossible without some major programing knowledge. The list goes on, but these were some of our main concerns.

Overgestapt van: Sycamore School

Redenen om over te stappen op Alma SIS: - I think the look was more updated - parent perception of quality - Standard or Traditional grading supported - Communication from the console - I'm not sure if the others did this, but it has been very helpful - Customer Support - the reviews on this was a big reason for choosing ALMA

Excellent, Comprehensive, and EASY TO USE

Opmerkingen: This has made running our school so much easier. I am so glad we switched from the old software.

Pluspunten:

We moved from PowerSchool to ALMA and it is sooooo much better! Everything is intuitive. No paying for extra training for everything. No extra modules being hawked to you every month. No need to pay for someone to "maintain" the software. It isn't some old Database software that you need to learn equations for. It looks wonderful, is easy to use, and super adaptable. All of the new additions that you get charged for with other software are free updates with ALMA. If you do have a problem, ALMA *wants* to hear from you! It's an entirely different relationship. And it has more features. Because it is a modern piece of software and not something based off of antiquated 90's era software, there are more bells and whistles. New options are being added every couple of months. Often based on what the users have asked for. This makes my job 100% easier!

Minpunten:

Some things are still a little complicated but it comes with online instructions to help you along.

Easy to Use and Functional

Opmerkingen: Alma has allowed us to improve our communications within the school and with parents and students. Parents and students can see middle school students' grades and assignments. We also use it to broadcast emergency messages such as snow day closings.

Pluspunten:

Alma is very easy to learn and to use. It has a lot of great features that make it flexible for the needs of different schools. Most importantly, the customer service is fantastic. They get back to you quickly, are helpful, even pleasant with some of my "stupid" questions to which I should know the answer and are open to ideas for improvements and new features.

Minpunten:

Some may wish for an "all-in-one" SIS/LMS system. Alma is more an SIS+ with some features that would allow a school to get away without an LMS, but certainly not all the features one would find in a combined SIS/LMS system. However, I think this is a good thing, as it provides flexibility to meet the needs of particular schools. For example, we are a Google Classroom school and don't currently use a full featured LMS such as Schoology or Canvas.

Overwogen alternatieven: PowerSchool, Skyward Student Management Suite en Sycamore School

Redenen om voor Alma SIS te kiezen: Easy Grade Pro, our gradebook for years, was no longer being supported and we needed a new SIS system to replace Rediker, which was not meeting our needs.

Overgestapt van: Administrator's Plus

Redenen om over te stappen op Alma SIS: Alma was easier to implement then many of the bigger options and had a more up-to-date interface them some of the other smaller options.

ALMA is what we were looking for....

Opmerkingen: 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.

Pluspunten:

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.

Minpunten:

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.

Great Support!

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

Pluspunten:

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.

Minpunten:

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

A User-Friendly Management System

Opmerkingen: Overall, Alma is a great management system that makes it easy to keep track of the data and internal communication. The user interface is intuitive and the reports are comprehensive and user-friendly. However, it can be slow to process large amounts of data and the features are somewhat limited.

Pluspunten:

Alma is a great management system that makes the process of tracking data and communication incredibly easy. The user interface is very intuitive and simple to use, and the reports are comprehensive and user-friendly.

Minpunten:

Unfortunately, Alma can be a bit slow when it comes to processing large amounts of data. Also, the features available to managers can be a bit limited.

Alma SIS in a small, rural, school district.

Opmerkingen: The staff at Alma are excellent. The transition was difficult because it needed to occur over a short timeframe. But the support was there and we pulled it off.

Pluspunten:

Alma integrated well with Google Apps and provided integrations with other third party software. The interface and design were well thought out with the end-user in mind. Running reports and editing the data are easy and intuitive - and those are the most important aspects of an SIS. The support was excellent, and always available through the Alma Academy.

Minpunten:

We would like a module that would allow our cafeteria software to integrate so parents could see their child's lunch balance in the same place they view their child's schedule, teacher, and fees. There were also growing pains, as state-required data collections differ in every state and sometimes this meant there were duplicate or similar data fields that confused some of our clerical staff.

Moving in good directions

Opmerkingen: Far better than any other software I’ve used to manage classes, but still approaches the problem from an administrative, quantitative standpoint, rather than a student development standpoint.

Pluspunten:

There are concessions made to narrative evaluation, which is great for an alternative school. Each block, the system gets cleaner and easier to handle as we write our evaluations for the kids, and, since our output is so much more complex than a single letter grade, it’s really important that the cognitive overhead for each evaluation be as small as possible. I’m really gratified that Alma continually improves this aspect.

Minpunten:

Touchscreen integration is clunky but getting less so. It’s often hard to see what I’m doing, as column headers disappear as I scroll. There are a bunch of interface elements like this that make interactions awkward or repetitive, which induces frustration and boredom, which leads to errors. It feels like evaluations are 90° off. I want to be able to evaluate a student, but it’s easiest to evaluate not only one class at a time, but one skill for the whole class at a time. It discourages thinking holistically about individual students and encourages comparing them in each skill. I think this makes it harder to do evaluations and makes them less accurate. Daily evaluation notes go nowhere. We take attendance each day, which is dutifully reported, but any qualitative expression we have is thrown away. This does a great disservice to students because it means that, in the course of a day, it’s harder to make qualitative assessments of a student, leaving us only with their attendance data — a quantification that’s easy on a database designer but is hostile to learning.

GETALMA for International Schools

Opmerkingen: I’m very satisfied with the overall performance of GetAlma, and I highly recommend it!

Pluspunten:

1) The features that where the most impactful: -Attendance and Report Cards 2.) Is the product easy to use? -The learning curve was a little steep in the beginning, but because of fantastic customer support, all concerns were quickly answered and solutions were given/suggested that solved the problems. 3.) Was the integration with your existing business processes easy? -Teachers found it easy to use overall.

Minpunten:

1.) Are there features you feel are missing or could be improved? a.) Finer granular control over the lay-outing of the templates. b.) Ability to add drop-down dates in some places. c.) Manual inputting of each teacher’s class schedules for all grade levels is tedious. Alma should have a built-in feature of uploading .CSV files for creating and updating class schedules instead of using an optional 3rd party service. d.) The sandboxed sites for testing the look and feel of creating classes and report cards are geared for US school systems and not for international school systems, and which I did not find very useful. e.) There should be a feature during the initial set-up of the school year to allow certain weekends that can be ticked-off as part of the school year. 2.) Are there aspects of the product that are difficult to use? -ALMA Start (for creating online school enrollment forms, online parent info access, etc.) is a little complicated to learn and implement without a sandboxed testing environment when the school year has already started.

Alma Software - The Superstar of Student Information Systems!

Pluspunten:

Alma's ease of use for all stakeholder is top notch. Teachers, parents, students and office personnel can easily navigate through this platform with minimal clicks, all the tools and information you need as a user are right there in front of you. You no longer have to click 4 layers deep to find what you are looking for. Alma also provides an easy way to communicate with all stakeholders. While in the gradebook you can email students and parents, eliminating the need to use a secondary software program. Along with a traditional grading program, Alma provides a true standards/competency based platform. This SIS has grown alongside the change in educational trends, meeting the needs of schools, transitioning their assessment/evaluation practices. Support services for Alma are outstanding. The customer support team is available in the matter of minutes, assisting and answering all questions one might have. The team is extremely knowledgeable, friendly and willing to take an idea you might suggest and make it happen! This support team makes transition/roll over periods stress free!

Minpunten:

Alma's reporting section for state reports and other school information reports still needs to develop. As time goes on I believe Alma will continue to make improvements in this area. Reports are currently available in a a basic excel or csv files. These files work for what we need, but I feel this area could develop more in the future.

Good if your users are not picky

Opmerkingen: Was the right move at the right time (web based - SAS)

Pluspunten:

Web based Fast Quick support Google SSO SAS

Minpunten:

Email editor is TOO basic. Report writer is not flexible, cost per extra fields. Retrieve unenrolled student's data from previous years should be easier. Apply changes to multiple classes, schedules, etc should allow to select randomly or by criteria. Backup/Restore feature not available. Mixed Letter, Numbers and Standards based grades are not compatible. Transcripts reports must allow more flexible design.

Overwogen alternatieven: PowerSchool Unified Classroom en Schoology

Redenen om voor Alma SIS te kiezen: Complete suite must be web based on the cloud

Redenen om over te stappen op Alma SIS: Lower cost Technical support

Excellent Customer Service and Attractive Design

Opmerkingen: Excellent communication with between admin, staff and school families. A plethora of helpful articles and a very responsive tech support make Alma very easy and satisfying to use.

Pluspunten:

Alma has a very clean aesthetic with intuitively easy to use. The customer service is top-notch. Even during the pandemic, the response time has been exceptional. The techs are supportive, humorous, collegial, yet professional. Really happy with this platform.

Minpunten:

I am looking forward to their continued build-out of the transcript function of their platform. They register all suggestions with their engineers, and once they get enough "up votes" they add them to the next roll-out. Can't ask for a more egalitarian system of continuous improvement.

A solid program with good support that currently lacks a few features.

Opmerkingen: My overall experience with Alma has been very positive. I prefer this program to any other SIS that I have used.

Pluspunten:

Alma is very easy to use, even for those that are not particularly proficient with technology. It's functionality is improved from other SIS programs I have used in the past (Progressbook and Power School). As an administrator, I have far more control to make changes and adjustments that fit my staff and students. The customer support team is also very helpful and responsive.

Minpunten:

There are some features that are missing. We have requested GPA-based grade calculation and some additions to transcripts that have not yet been implemented. However, several other features that we have requested have been implemented over the past two years.

Definitely a Product for Educators

Opmerkingen: Having just come from a visually exhausting, not user-friendly information management and grading system, Alma has been a breath of fresh air. It was a pretty easy transition, figuring out the lay of the land. I was never confident on the old system. After only a few months into using Alma, I feel like I have a really good grasp on using it, and if not, I know that they have a great support system to help me out if I get stuck.

Pluspunten:

Is the Alma system absolutely perfect in every way? No product out there is! What has really impressed me about Alma is their incredible support team and communication. If we (the people using Alma) have a need and make a suggestion, they are lightning fast in coming up with a solution that fits the need. It is incredibly user friendly, visually appealing in its organization, and houses all of the tools we need for student information management in one tidy place.

Minpunten:

My only wish would be to see a record of the messages that are sent directly to students and parents. However, Alma does allow you to send the message to your email, so it is possible to keep a record of messages that way.

School counselor review

Opmerkingen: Good, actually.

Pluspunten:

There's too much to list everything!!! I like the class function, the internal staff note function, the file cabinet, the graduation function and the reporting function, though I would tweak them all a bit.

Minpunten:

I don't know how to ask for changes. That isn't really obvious to me at all. Everything below I'd probably be able to ask for, but don't know how. With the class function, I would like to print class lists without the pictures. I also LIKE printing lists with pictures, but a lot of time I just want the data. Also, I would love the print the class schedule as it is on the page, but it reverts to another version that I do not like at all. With the Internal Staff Note function, I would like to be able to hide it on the overview page. That's the page that has grades and I like to show them to students, but NOT the internal staff notes.

Alma for Schools

Opmerkingen: Overall, I love Alma! At first, I was a little intimidated by having to switch my grading over to a system and fit what I would typically do into a "box" that was essentially pre-decided for me. I was glad to see how customizable all of the options are on Alma. I also love that parents/students can see grades at any time!

Pluspunten:

I love that as a teacher I can customize my grade book easily and have different types of assignments weighted differently (and it does all of the math for me!). I also am so happy about the fact that I can publish the grades to where students or parents can see the grades instantly. It is also very easy to email home mid-term grades to all students/parents in one email :) .

Minpunten:

Some of the functionalities that Alma offers are great functions, but they are not always user friendly. For example, there are A LOT of steps to go through to create a report card/progress report. I had a very difficult time figuring out how to create a progress report for a student who took one elective class first term (sewing) and a different elective class second term (art), and other students were vice-versa without it causing issues on the report card. I would also like to have the ability for students/parents to see a percentage grade for a class as opposed to just a letter grade. It makes a difference when you see a 79% vs 70%. I would also like to be able to truly design my own report card. I can make what I want fit onto a single page, but with the options available on Alma, it is not as easy to adjust certain areas to make everything fit.

Alma - An Easy-to-Use Gradebook

Opmerkingen: Whenever I have had a question, it is answered pretty quickly. Alma has also done a good job of responding to our concerns.

Pluspunten:

I like that Alma has customized the system to a lot of our needs since we first adopted it. It's very easy to use!

Minpunten:

I would like for the Alma gradebook to work more seamlessly with our LMS, Schoology.

Using Alma

Opmerkingen: We began using the Alma gradebook last year, and then the Learning Report feature this year. Initial set up of the files and transfers was a little bumpy with customer service at the beginning of the year, so this accounts for 4 instead of 5 stars. From there, the team has really worked to adjust files to our needs, particularly when we come up to report card time. The program still seems relatively new, as the team is building and embedding resources as it goes, and customer service is responsive to requests for new types of reports. I really appreciate the chat feature in the program, to see which customer service members have seen a message in the queue, and that I get an email if I'm not online to see it. One difficulty that has taken some time is the process of loading our state standards. Only national Common Core standards for math and ELA, and the National Science Standards are available for the gradebook side. This meant hours, hours and hours of work on our part to code and format our state standards to send to Alma so that, hopefully soon, they can be uploaded and our teachers can use them. In the meantime, no scores on the gradebook side can be loaded for any subject other than math, ELA, and science, given that we want to use Common Core and NSS standards for those assignments. The process of loading specialized learning targets for report cards was very easy the first term. Since we were learning the process, teachers wanted to create some adjustments to those for the second term, and that required a huge effort on Alma's end, so we've been nervous and eager to see that working and get reports done in time for parents. Likely, now that we've gone through that with them, it would be easier for other schools if needed from this point forward.

Alma makes it easy

Pluspunten:

Alma is a great software package. The gradebook feature is easy to use on the administrator end. If features need adjustment, you can contact the company and they LISTEN!

Minpunten:

There's nothing to not like. Teachers and staff are still learning to use the features, and that's typically the most difficult thing - getting folks to change practices based on old software.

So easy to use! Great for quick grade updating.

Opmerkingen: It is easy to use and it makes it so easy to communicate student performance with parents and administrators.

Pluspunten:

I love how easy it is to use. I can have my students call out scores for homework assignments and be updating them during class time. I also love it as a parent communication tool. With the simple categories and live updates, I can quickly show my parents where their students are struggling simply by updating my gradebook.

Minpunten:

I wish the assignments in each subject were sorted with the most recent assignments right next to the students names. I also wish there was a feature that would allow you to email a particular group or class right from the main screen instead of having to open that class.

Alma has been great as responding to our requests for improvements and additional features.

Pluspunten:

I love the visual simplicity of the grade book and the compatibility with Standards Based Grading. Not many grading softwares have the finesse for options and sophistication within SB. I've also had great response from folks on the team to help fix issues quickly and respond to inquiries.

Minpunten:

We are still figuring out how to set up out report card to best reflect SBG. Since our school writes narrative reports in addition to assigning standards, the option for narrative reports still needs some work. Our teachers write extensive narrative reports, and currently, the text options are pretty minimal, including text edit features when copying and pasting from an outside document. Additionally, we'd LOVE to see compatibility with Google Classroom for assignments and the grade book.