Review of iSAMS by IRIS
iSAMS by IRIS
Mike Yeung

Administrator

Berlin International School, Germany

Used iSAMS by IRIS daily for 3-4 years

Nov 2025

Systems like iSAMS try to do a lot of things, and I can appreciate that none of those will be as good as specialised options e.g. we do not use the built in admissions, we use OpenApply. Whilst the system does the core items fairly well, it does feel like it is ageing and in need of overhaul, and despite it's best efforts, it does not feel like iSAMs has enough capacity to do this quickly enough.

Mike Yeung found iSAMS by IRIS:
  • Provides school data
    Not all data stored in the system can be exported; you need to request paid custom reports. The ability to bulk change, or import data is relatively limited.
  • Improves school processes
    All of the modules, including the newly released ones, could be designed to be less clunky. Our internal school processes are robust, but sometimes we have to work around limitations of the system, or look for solutions outside of iSAMs. By their own admission, that are a lot of minor developments that are needed, which unfortunately when taken altogether, can cause frustration with some workflows.
  • Improves parent engagement
    We use the inbuilt email wizard system, but since we onboarded it has been unreliable in some cases, and despite contact with support, that still persists. The email wizard is also only really good when you have mostly text and a few pictures - anything more complex and you have page pagination issues. We launched the Parent Portal to our families last summer, and whilst the recent UI update has been appreciated, the analytics now do not work, and some useful features that were available in the old Portal have now been discontinued.
  • Improves behaviour or wellbeing
    I can't really comment on this part - we only just started to use the Rewards & Conduct module
  • Reduces teacher workload
    I find this a tricky question - of course iSAMs is helping us. But I can't help but wonder if other systems would have been a better option. As mentioned before, there are quite some minor developments needed, and whilst I appreciate the hard work that iSAMS and it's development team are doing, they do not seem to have the capacity to 'fix' certain flaws. If you contact support, you are often directed to put in a suggestion to their Ideas Portal, but you can see that the top ideas from the community there have not been actioned after many years, which is quite discouraging.
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