[SIMS] Ahhh Capita, golden advice as always

[MattHarwood]

So SLT have brought in some Capita sales reps this afternoon to talk about using "SIMs in the classroom" for attendance, and assessment etc. Three of them came, in fact. Strength in numbers...

I bit pretty early on - "our SIMs installation is on our Admin network, and classroom computers are on our Curriculum network, for a very very good reason. How can these interact?".

Their suggestion: Oh don't worry! About a thing! All you need to do is merge the two networks - it's really easy

I walked out a few minutes later with a muttered excuse.

/rant

[chazzy2501]

lol, this is what happened here! (before I joined)

[MattHarwood]

lol, this is what happened here! (before I joined)

Did the school actually do it?!

I'm now worried SLT will be sold on this. Time to enter convincing mode.

[Abaddon]

Out of curiosity, what is your "very very good reason"?

[chazzy2501]

yeap.

I have 1 big flat network. (that's why I'm now only worried about learning vlans)

[glennda]

Having two networks is so very old school in terms of security, this was long since the recommendation with regards to Sims. As long as your NTFS permissions are set correctly no student should ever be allowed to get near Sims.

[broc]

You could always establish a trust between the two networks, that was how SIMS.net & lesson monitor were set up when I arrived in my school in 2003. A couple of years later we merged the networks & we have run with a single combined network for more than 7 years without issue.

[MattHarwood]

I was equally annoyed at the idea of rebuilding the entire network structure for their electronic tick sheet, to be fair.

Of course, I agree that having one network can be sufficiently secure with NTFS permissions and so on. But I am a paranoid soul that feels a lot safer with separated networks

[tumbleweed]

You could always establish a trust between the two networks, that was how SIMS.net & lesson monitor were set up when I arrived in my school in 2003. A couple of years later we merged the networks & we have run with a single combined network for more than 7 years without issue.

And Trusts are now frowned upon, AD Federated Services is the way to go ...

[sted]

the main prob ive found is i cant remember the last time i diddnt have to manually update pcs everytime sims is updated on the server its like it just dosent check for updates anymore and just complains about incompatible database. I still dont get why attendance cant be run from a webpage its just adding a few values to an sql database

[glennda]

the main prob ive found is i cant remember the last time i diddnt have to manually update pcs everytime sims is updated on the server its like it just dosent check for updates anymore and just complains about incompatible database. I still dont get why attendance cant be run from a webpage its just adding a few values to an sql database

Not when you tie it into behavior, homework etc its not.

It moaning about incompatible database is that the shortcut should have C;\program files\sims\sims .net\simsload.exe C:\program files\sims\sims .net\pulsar.exe so that it runs the simsload first which checks the sims.ini in the window folder and the server and installs update.s

[Abaddon]

If you want web entry for registrations etc, look at SIMS Learning Gateway. Then wish you hadn't bothered.

[nicholab]

I used to work in a school with two networks the best thing we ever did was merge the two networks. We moved the admin machines on to the curriculum network it was great.

[BatchFile]

the main prob ive found is i cant remember the last time i diddnt have to manually update pcs everytime sims is updated on the server its like it just dosent check for updates anymore and just complains about incompatible database. I still dont get why attendance cant be run from a webpage its just adding a few values to an sql database

Make sure that your shortcuts are pointing to

c:\program files\sims\sims .net\simsload.exe  c:\program files\sims\sims .net\pulsar.exe

and that the simssetupsfolder in c:\windows\sims.ini is set to the right place. As long as both of those are ok and your users have appropriate permissions on the local machine, all should be well.

[glennda]

Make sure that your shortcuts are pointing to

c:\program files\sims\sims .net\simsload.exe  c:\program files\sims\sims .net\simsload.exe

and that the simssetupsfolder in c:\windows\sims.ini is set to the right place. As long as both of those are ok and your users have appropriate permissions on the local machine, all should be well.

You mean pulsar in the second path