Isotoma Ltd

Sofia Curriculum Mapping Software

Sofia is a powerful curriculum tool that maps even the most complex curriculums simply and beautifully. Developed for real-life use by the team at Imperial College it is now in use by nearly 20 institutions worldwide, providing curriculum mapping and management across a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses.

Features

  • Support for all curriculums within an institution
  • Define metadata on a per curriculum basis
  • Powerful version control tools, with full exportable audit trail
  • Assign versions of each curriculum to individual cohorts of students
  • Cloud hosted SaaS product, fully browser based
  • Easy integration via API with other institution systems
  • Upload or link to learning and teaching resources
  • Round trip import and export of any curriculum
  • Integration with institution SSO
  • ISO27001 and Cyber Essentials Plus

Benefits

  • Rich graphical interface for both students and adminstrators
  • Powerful search and filtering of curriculums using metadata
  • Allow learners and educators to view outcomes in context
  • Support curriculum governance processes and procedures with ease
  • Link institution scheduling tools to see when topics are taught
  • Provide read only accounts to external accreditors to evidence teaching
  • Robust traceability and provability of teaching and learning
  • Support curriculum teams across the entire institution
  • Access the application on or offline from any device

Pricing

£12,000 a licence a year

  • Free trial available

Service documents

Request an accessible format
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at enquiries@isotoma.com. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.

Framework

G-Cloud 13

Service ID

8 2 8 1 5 5 5 1 7 2 2 3 9 8 9

Contact

Isotoma Ltd Andy Theyers
Telephone: 01904313980
Email: enquiries@isotoma.com

Service scope

Software add-on or extension
No
Cloud deployment model
Public cloud
Service constraints
No
System requirements
SaaS application

User support

Email or online ticketing support
Email or online ticketing
Support response times
4 hours UK working days
User can manage status and priority of support tickets
Yes
Online ticketing support accessibility
WCAG 2.1 AA or EN 301 549
Phone support
Yes
Phone support availability
9 to 5 (UK time), Monday to Friday
Web chat support
No
Onsite support
Yes, at extra cost
Support levels
The application is monitored and managed 24 x 7. All customers receive the same support level. All customers have access to a specialist support team via web, phone and email
Support available to third parties
Yes

Onboarding and offboarding

Getting started
Every customer receives up to 10 days of curriculum consultancy provided by educational specialists from Imperial College. There is a large library of online training videos to assist in using the application.
Service documentation
Yes
Documentation formats
PDF
End-of-contract data extraction
Users may extract their data at any point using the unbuilt export feature
End-of-contract process
Users are provided with an export of their data in a format that can be used in other systems. We manage the disconnection from customers' SSO systems. No other offboarding is required.

Using the service

Web browser interface
Yes
Supported browsers
  • Internet Explorer 11
  • Microsoft Edge
  • Firefox
  • Chrome
  • Safari
  • Opera
Application to install
No
Designed for use on mobile devices
Yes
Differences between the mobile and desktop service
Users accessing the application via a tablet get the full desktop experience. Those accessing via a mobile phone or similarly small screened device get a cut down version of the application, with key 'at a glance' features made more prominent.
Service interface
No
User support accessibility
WCAG 2.1 AA or EN 301 549
API
Yes
What users can and can't do using the API
Authorised users can:
- access curriculum data
- access curriculum changes
- update curriculum data
- create and update calendar entries
API documentation
Yes
API documentation formats
  • HTML
  • ODF
  • PDF
API sandbox or test environment
Yes
Customisation available
Yes
Description of customisation
Users of the software can:
- customise the appearance of the application to match their institution's branding
- customise the structure of the curriculum appropriate to their institution
- customise the metadata the system stores appropriate to their institution

Scaling

Independence of resources
Sofia is installed in multiple AWS Availability Zones and is configured in such a way that it can auto scale. Customers read from a fluid pool of database read replicas, ensuring that all load can be accommodated.

Analytics

Service usage metrics
Yes
Metrics types
If you provide us with a Google Analytics tag we will incorporate this within your instance of the application. Other systems are available at a small extra cost

Resellers

Supplier type
Not a reseller

Staff security

Staff security clearance
Conforms to BS7858:2019
Government security clearance
Up to Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS)

Asset protection

Knowledge of data storage and processing locations
Yes
Data storage and processing locations
United Kingdom
User control over data storage and processing locations
No
Datacentre security standards
Complies with a recognised standard (for example CSA CCM version 3.0)
Penetration testing frequency
At least every 6 months
Penetration testing approach
Another external penetration testing organisation
Protecting data at rest
  • Physical access control, complying with CSA CCM v3.0
  • Encryption of all physical media
  • Scale, obfuscating techniques, or data storage sharding
Data sanitisation process
Yes
Data sanitisation type
Explicit overwriting of storage before reallocation
Equipment disposal approach
Complying with a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v.30, CAS (Sanitisation) or ISO/IEC 27001

Data importing and exporting

Data export approach
Data can be exported at any time via the inbuilt export feature. Data is delivered in a documented spreadsheet format.
Data export formats
  • CSV
  • Other
Other data export formats
Excel
Data import formats
  • CSV
  • Other
Other data import formats
Excel

Data-in-transit protection

Data protection between buyer and supplier networks
TLS (version 1.2 or above)
Data protection within supplier network
TLS (version 1.2 or above)

Availability and resilience

Guaranteed availability
We aim to meet 99.99% availability, measured annually. 2020 and 2021 were both 100%
Approach to resilience
This information is available on request. Full architecture is available to those institutions wishing to purchase the product.
Outage reporting
Outages are reported on a public dashboard and via email alerts

Identity and authentication

User authentication needed
Yes
User authentication
Identity federation with existing provider (for example Google Apps)
Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels
Available on request
Access restriction testing frequency
At least once a year
Management access authentication
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Identity federation with existing provider (for example Google Apps)

Audit information for users

Access to user activity audit information
Users have access to real-time audit information
How long user audit data is stored for
At least 12 months
Access to supplier activity audit information
Users contact the support team to get audit information
How long supplier audit data is stored for
At least 12 months
How long system logs are stored for
At least 12 months

Standards and certifications

ISO/IEC 27001 certification
Yes
Who accredited the ISO/IEC 27001
QMS International
ISO/IEC 27001 accreditation date
25/10/2021
What the ISO/IEC 27001 doesn’t cover
The entire Sofia service is covered by our ISO27001 certification
ISO 28000:2007 certification
No
CSA STAR certification
No
PCI certification
No
Cyber essentials
Yes
Cyber essentials plus
Yes
Other security certifications
No

Security governance

Named board-level person responsible for service security
Yes
Security governance certified
Yes
Security governance standards
  • ISO/IEC 27001
  • Other
Other security governance standards
Cyber Essentials Plus
Information security policies and processes
Sofia is managed under both our ISO27001 and Cyber Essentials Plus certifications. Our ISMS is available to prospective customers on request.

Operational security

Configuration and change management standard
Supplier-defined controls
Configuration and change management approach
Available on request.
Vulnerability management type
Supplier-defined controls
Vulnerability management approach
Available on request
Protective monitoring type
Supplier-defined controls
Protective monitoring approach
Available on request
Incident management type
Supplier-defined controls
Incident management approach
Available on request.

Secure development

Approach to secure software development best practice
Independent review of processes (for example CESG CPA Build Standard, ISO/IEC 27034, ISO/IEC 27001 or CSA CCM v3.0)

Public sector networks

Connection to public sector networks
No

Social Value

Equal opportunity

Equal opportunity

Our employment decisions are based on the principle of equal employment opportunity.

Accordingly, we do not discriminate on the basis of race, colour, creed, gender, national origin, disability, age, veteran status, citizenship, marital status or sexual orientation.

To support this policy we do the following:

All vacancies within the organisation are advertised both internally and externally, and equal weight is given to internal candidates as to those applying from outside the organisation

There is a published career progression pathway for each role within the organisation, and all staff are actively encouraged and supported to progress along their chosen pathway

All staff are encouraged to promote the vacancies to any and all social spaces and professional communities - both physical and virtual - that they belong to, to encourage a diverse range of applicants

All vacancies are promoted to those professional communities within the York and Yorkshire regions that provide support to sections of the community that do not usually have access to software development (and related) roles

The wording of each job advert is assessed to ensure that it does not include unconscious bias in the expectations it sets for applicants

Equal weight is given to those applicants with life experience rather than formal qualifications

We actively encourage applicants who are undergoing a career change through relationships with local retraining organisations

Pricing

Price
£12,000 a licence a year
Discount for educational organisations
No
Free trial available
Yes
Description of free trial
We can set up a demo instance (time limited to 1 month) for prospective customers

Service documents

Request an accessible format
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at enquiries@isotoma.com. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.