Moodle and iSAMS

Moodle and iSAMS

by Jon Witts -
Number of replies: 3
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Hi all,

I work at an Independent school here in the UK and we use a system called iSAMS for our student and course administration. I have spent the past few months developing a system to synchronise all courses and course enrolments from this system to Moodle. I thought that people using iSAMS may well find it useful, but there is no real reason why it could not be adapted fairly easily for any other Student Management System which runs on a Microsoft SQL Server.

It is a three part blog post, and you can read each one here:

  1. Part 1 - http://bit.ly/U4ACdo
  2. Part 2 - http://bit.ly/1rFbVDl
  3. Part 3 - http://bit.ly/14WUsgD

Happy reading!

Jon

Average of ratings: Very cool (3)
In reply to Jon Witts

Re: Moodle and iSAMS

by Jez H -

Have you looked at moodles web services?

We use those to duplicate courses for the new academic year and enrol students on those courses. Previous years students still have access to old courses to refer back to. Quite a lot of work went into that, perhaps more than a school would want to take on but it works well for us as you can do a lot with web services, adding your own if you need to.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Jez H

Re: Moodle and iSAMS

by Jon Witts -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Hi Jez,

II haven't looked at Moodle Web Services TBH aside from enabling the Mobile web service... iSAMS does offer an API for remote systems to access its data but it is a subscription basis which the school would have to buy into. I think that it uses XML to send the data out to other systems; but without a subscription to the API I cannot even look at the documentation to see if Moodle Web Services would be compatible!

I will speak with iSAMS to see if I can access the documentation without paying up; as using the official APIs would seem a more robust long term route to take.

The only downside in doing so for iSAMS schools is that they would have to license this access to be able to integrate with Moodle. My current solution allows basic integration at no additional cost.

Thanks,
Jon

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Jez H

Re: Moodle and iSAMS

by Jon Witts -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

OK... So I have got access to the iSAMS developer portal and their documentation and it appears as if their API will let me create a batch web service which can refresh its data at a set time frame and output its data to me as XML...

I guess then it should be possible to get those various XML files and have them processed by Moodle...

Certainly this would save having to query the database directly; however I still feel that the direct to DB approach is going to have to be easier; although I am probably just highlighting where my skills lack in that statement more than anything else!

Average of ratings: -