Alma SIS Reviews

As a teacher I can say that Alma is one of the best virtual classrooms that I have tried, it is an all-in-one and something that I love is the management of evaluations and students without having to resort to any other external platform.
The function that I use the most is evaluative management since right there I can check my lists for the student report card system as well as the grade assigned to the same task and document

It is difficult to say that Alma has something bad, rather something not so good and that is first-hand integration, but once learned it is phenomenal

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

It is very user friendly. It has everything that our school needs. It is also syncs data with other programs we use within our school.

There is nothing I least like about the software. If there is a change I would like to see made, all I have to do is contact customer care and they will reach out to their engineers to see if its possible.

Alma is very user friendly; you can figure it out without much training at all. The gradebook has great color coding and customization options. Many features have streamlined options such as the "mark all present" for attendance.

Alma does not currently have the ability to link standards to gradebook assignments in a way that categorizes sub-scores on report cards. I also wish it had features such as a "fill-down" button for gradebook assignments. There's also my multiple "click-steps" to entering a a score in the gradebook, which is tedious at times.

I like the fact that this software is simple to use with no prior instructions needed to start. I was able to accurately use the software the same day that I bought it meaning that I was able to really get a grasp on how it works. I also am a fact that I can create a file report for each student and write notes daily to track their progress. This is not something that seems to be common with software, but I appreciate the added touch.

I wish that the software gave me the ability to see absences as well as when students have been tardy. Having this information handy would allow me to file my reports more accurately. I also am not a fan of the price tag, I feel as though it could be cheaper.

Being able to customize information within student records has been very helpful. Standard reports included generally provide needed information, but creating a custom report is also pretty easy.

Would love to be able to view by grade level rather than having to pick students individually or using the data spreadsheet editor.

Alma has a great user interface! It is much more intuitive, FUN, and easy to use than the software we were using previously. It really shines in the LMS arena. Our registrar is very happy with how the class configuration, grades, report cards, etc. work in Alma. Our teachers appreciate the ease of use and the integration with Google Classroom. Our parents appreciate not having to pay for the app. We appreciate that so far there aren't a lot of extra add-ons that you have to pay for. The pricing tiers are very straightforward. They roll out new features/functionality regularly.

Because Alma started as an LMS and added SMS/SIS functionality, you can see that it shines the most in LMS functions. There have been quite a few data fields that we were accustomed to using in our old system that do not exist in Alma. You can pay extra to have them developed/added, but there is no way to do that yourself. As for reports, there are good default reports in the system, and you can do a fair amount of custom reports, but it is not as comprehensive as we had hoped. We wish Alma had a way to give parents access to directory information (of other parents in their grade or the whole school. We wish it had a way for parents to enter/track their volunteer hours. We wish it had more functionality in the emergency contact/ medical information. We wish it had a more robust lesson planning capability.

The support for Alma is exceptional! As I am learning to use different features the Help guides & live support answer all my needs in a timely manner. I brag on the Alma support to other companies who are not as helpful. I also appreciate how Alma listens to my suggestions for improvements. In the almost two years I have used the product, I have seen many of the features I have asked for being implemented. I get a regular email (weekly or bi monthly) that updates me on new features and almost every time, there is something there that I have been wanting. You've got to love a company that listens to and responds to its customers.

Alma has added many features that I didn't even know I wanted - thank you! The only feature they do not yet have is a way to accept and charge for payments. We can track financial info on Alma, but cannot have it accept funds. That would be a huge thing for us because we could eliminate using a separate program for this feature - we actually use two: MySchool and TADS.

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.

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 has a modern interface that is intuitive for our users with all of the information they need right at their fingertips, or one screen away. The student/parent portal is informative and is enabling us to move toward a more paperless registration process. Our teachers love the communication tools built into their grade book that enable them to immediately reach out to a student and their parents without having to jump out of the work they are doing. The report card and grading systems are flexible enough to support both traditional and proficiency-based philosophies. Alma is also proactive in cultivating relationships with third party vendors to add additional functionality to the environment. Alma has also been proactive in monitoring our state reporting requirements and updating our state report templates which is no small task. And Alma's support team is nothing short of amazing. My teachers have the freedom to reach out and get the support they require and that is priceless.

There were a few features I would have like that did not come "out of the box" such as robust reporting tools, and built-in scheduling tools. That said, Alma has worked to integrate those into the system and future users will not have that problem. The one other piece that I believe is in process is updating the transcript system so that it employs the same interface as the report card generator.

First of all, I liked how often improvements were made throughout the year. It seemed that ALMA was always looking for ways to continue to improve the software in order to make it more user friendly. As a PE teacher, my grading system is quite different from the classroom teacher. I have 19 different classes (K-6) with about 30 students in each class. Each class would attend PE 2x each week. At first, it was very arduous to submit all the grades, one student at a time, at the end of each term. One of the improvements that occurred during this past school year, was to be able to submit an entire class's grades at the same time! That one change lightened my work load tremendously! And made it so I looked forward to doing grades instead of dreading it!

As I became more familiar with the features of the software, I became more comfortable using it, but I regret that it took me into my 2nd year using it, to become the most comfortable. Even so, the thing I liked the least about using this software was when I needed to make changes to the lesson details and maneuvering around the different tabs was a but cumbersome to have. Too many steps to have to make the changes I needed to. Hope that makes sense. Thanks!

ALMA is colorful with a high ease of use for parents and students. It is easy to access and manage student and school data.

Class scheduling is a breeze. We can accomplish more in one day that we could in one week with our previous product.

Printing report cards is a disaster. There is no option to batch print report cards all in one job. There is no page break option, so RCs end up getting copied to the backs of one-another if they have an odd number of pages. The only option is to print each .pdf individually.

There are several remaining issues with data reporting for California accountability reports.

I loved that our district made a deal to get a group purchase for ALMA so it made the price just perfect for us. ALMA looks beautiful and is an excellent tool. It is such a powerful data tracking tool which is great when you're trying to analyze large amounts of data. I love that you can run an extract and upload it to CALPADS, it makes reporting so much easier! The customer support team always has a great attitude and truly feels like they love helping you.

One of the major CONS is that it is not yet fully approved by the state for reporting, which adds another step to program administrators to get it approved for attendance. That was a major bummer. Another CON is that because it is such a powerful system, some training is required if you hope to use it properly. When I started using it I thought I could just teach myself how to use it and ended up costing myself and my teachers a week or so of grief until I could get proper training. It's all in the settings. If you don't have those set up properly, then you're doomed. Once you train for 2-3 hours though with their great staff, it's a breeze after that!

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.

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.

This is one of the easiest products I've used at a school. It did not take me long to learn how to use it. I am able to find student information quickly. It is easy to add student grades, or link ALMA to my Google Classroom where grades are automatically uploaded for me. It has a plethora of features, all of which are vital for the seamless running of a school.

I would love to see the Curriculum calendar more developed so that curriculum, units and standards could be added. I played with it a little last year but struggled to figure this section out. I believe it is in the works, however.

ALMA allowed us to do standards based grading in a very efficient and seamless manner. ALMA had Florida standards uploaded for us, so it made it very easy to choose standards for grading. It was very easy to design the template that we wanted to use for our report cards. Responses to questions were almost immediate. ALMA is very intuitive to use - especially for someone like me who is technologically challenged.

Nothing stands out as a negative. I would be searching to find something that dissatisfied us.

There are so MANY things at your fingertips as you delve into this great student information system! If you can't find them and/or understand them Alma's excellent support team will walk you through it.

Change in all facets of life is a challenge. Being accustomed to my previous SIS program there are things I miss and just can't have. Student Attendance is an important part of my daily life. It frustrates me that though student names are still alphabetical they are presented in reports by first name not last. In a true emergency LAST NAMES are what we are accustomed to look for. Sure I can go in and make up my own special document from excel but most likely NOT during an emergency.

Alma has been a great solution for our attendance, grading and communication systems needs. There is a seamless integration with Google classroom and it's very easy to communicate with a single student, their family or the whole class. Health information is readily available and I can also see a student's attendance and progress in other classes. When I have contacted ALMA for assistance, the response is almost immediate. There are emails with information about new features and how to integrate them. They have been extremely responsive to educators' needs during COVID-19 homeschooling this spring .

It would be nice to be able to change a grade transferred from Google classroom without needing to go into that assignment in Google. Automatic grade updates or syncing from Google classroom would be helpful too, as I often forget to re-sync Google assignments in ALMA.

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.

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.