SIMS Learning Gateway Setup

[IT_Man_Dan]

Mornin All,

We recently purchased a Hosted SLG and have had a few teething problems with the setup so far.

Admitably the first problem which delayed us by a week was with the VPN dropping every few seconds and we found out it was caused by our ISP not configuring the Firewall correctly when being requested to do so.

Other than that, a Month after install I'm only just able to login to SLG today as the installer mislaid my password and then we had to contact the helpdesk (On headed paper with SLT signature) in order to get it sorted out. Now that I can finally login the system seems to randomly not let me login and when I do get in I have only been setup as a teacher instead of site admin so I have had to contact the helpdesk again and am waiting for a call back.

I was just wondering if any of you guys with hosted SLG's have had or are having similar issues?

I'm beginning to regret purchasing it, I just hope that once these issues are ironed out the system is more reliable than it currently appears to be. Otherwise I won't be popular with SLT...

Thanks for listening to me rant.... Grrrr!!!!

Regards
Dan

[Sivadam]

We have Capita Hosted service too. Like you, we had issues with the VPN dropping but that was sorted between the Broadband provider and with Capita.

Now the service is excellent. Except for when Capita are carrying out maintenance on their servers. This happened for a couple of days in the holidays and did cause some issues to some staff who were hoping to do their AM7 Marksheets and Profiles Reports via SLG. We were aware of the issue in advance but disruption had been expected to be minimal. In fact it wasn't!

Stick with it. Once your inital problems are sorted then you will find it well worth it. Especially when other webparts are delivered as per the SLG Roadmap.

[matt40k]

Stick with it. Once your inital problems are sorted then you will find it well worth it. Especially when other webparts are delivered as per the SLG Roadmap.

Did I hear correct they are ahead of schedule? I know everything must be ready by sometime in 2010.

[morganw]

We have it.

I personally couldn't log into it for about two months aftert it was set up, my colleague the other administrator could usually log in but sometimes not. We were always told that the problem was with the OpenVPN connection to the hosted server, it turns out the problem was that we were given an incorrect URL to access the site.

We were given https://hslg5.capita-cso.co.uk/

What we actually needed to type was https://hslg5.capita-cso.co.uk/[insert 3 character establishment code here]

Confusingly, when you access the site with the correct URL it instantly removes the 3 characters so it looked exactly the same as going direct to the first address.

We have since had issues with the VPN connection dropping so i've got a scheduled task to restart every day.

Since then it's been ok, although slow. Slow enough that a couple of members of staff have pointed out that they could do their marksheets on paper, bring then into school, and type them into the SIMS client faster than using the web interface.

[Sivadam]

The last three letters are the identifier for your school and so are a little bit vital!!
Interestingly our address is 'hsgl2' and not 'hsgl5'. Obviously a different instance of SLG.

And Matt - Yes they are in front. Capita usually are arn't they? The same is true re. SWR Census. We have been testing nearly 2 years now.

[Sylv3r]

Did I hear correct they are ahead of schedule? I know everything must be ready by sometime in 2010.

Here is the Roadmap from another thread. Some nice little goodies hopefully coming.

SIMS Learning Gateway 2009 Roadmap (UPDATED 15/04/09)

We host our own Learning Gateway internally and have no problems at all with it. Staff and myself included think its pretty good.

[IT_Man_Dan]

Ok, Update on our SLG situation.

The Helpdesk got back to me yesterday and resolved the issue with my user account, I'm now setup correctly as siteadmin. The slg also seems more reliable since that change and I haven't been kicked off :-)

I've now signed off the installation and have got our training booked for the beginning of next month, after that I'll give HOD's and a few parents access so that we can test and tweak it before letting all teachers and parents have access in September.

Cheers
Dan

[AramScarem]

We're being asked to set this up, can anyone help?

We've read the instructions, however, we use RM SmartCache (hosted in-school) and we have our own email via our own exchange server.

However, none of the three of us have had any server, SIMS or sharepoint training.

We might be able to cancel all other summer hols jobs but will still only get 5 weeks to finish the job, including taking 2 weeks off, each.

[jamesb]

We're being asked to set this up, can anyone help?

We've read the instructions, however, we use RM SmartCache (hosted in-school) and we have our own email via our own exchange server.

However, none of the three of us have had any server, SIMS or sharepoint training.

We might be able to cancel all other summer hols jobs but will still only get 5 weeks to finish the job, including taking 2 weeks off, each.

If you go for the hosted solution then the only thing you need is SIMS .net. You shouldn't need any Sharepoint training for it. Self-hosted is another matter and requires quite a bit more technical know-how, particularly if you're going to use it to its full potential.

I don't know whether there'd be any problems with RM Smartcache, but suspect that'd be down to your own configuration.

[AramScarem]

I've not read the full details yet, but have been told that if you host your own email and "internet" (presumably proxy or filters?) then you cannot use any externally hosted solution. So it seems we will have to do our own Server 08, sharepoint and then the SLG itself...

[jamesb]

Hosted SLG has no impact on your e-mail at all, and relies on a VPN link for data, so a proxy shouldn't matter (if its correctly configured). The only problem would be if you have no actual internet access at all.

[AramScarem]

We read that in a Capita document, "Required Reading to Choose your SLG Solution"... I think... will have to confirm the doc name later.

[IT_Man_Dan]

We host our own email etc and it doesn't matter. We've gone for the hosted version of SLG and as another user said it just requires a VPN link from your sims server so the proxy shouldn't matter.

Regards
Dan

[pmassingham]

[QUOTE=morganw;318891]We have it.

We have since had issues with the VPN connection dropping so i've got a scheduled task to restart every day.

QUOTE]

We have had the service installed and during testing the VPN connection repeatedly fails and then re-starts. Capita have suspended the service to investigate. However, we also just installed the Keep Kids Safe service on the SIMS server and this does exactly the same thing. Has anyone got to the bottom of this problem? Thanks.

[jamesb]

[quote=pmassingham;342459]

We have it.

We have since had issues with the VPN connection dropping so i've got a scheduled task to restart every day.

QUOTE]

We have had the service installed and during testing the VPN connection repeatedly fails and then re-starts. Capita have suspended the service to investigate. However, we also just installed the Keep Kids Safe service on the SIMS server and this does exactly the same thing. Has anyone got to the bottom of this problem? Thanks.

Just as a thought, which ports are the two OpenVPN services running on?