Kaleidos - help from Kaleidos users needed on an alerts issue

[Andie]

Thanks for even thinking of pursuing this one. I have had my faith in the world of IT restored once again by this fantastic site.

Kaleidos (the RM system) works by allowing you to manually enter your email address, a display name and a note about yourself in something it calls a profile. By default, you get access to this on the home page of the main school group you belong to, through the settings web part that is there by default; if you are staff, this is the Staff home page, if you are a pupil, this is the Pupil home page, etc. However, I have no idea where that info is stored and it does not appear to be linked to the username that you log in with. From the home page you can then get to what is called your Personal Space. But RM have said this is a separate site, even though you access this from the default home page and without logging on again. RM have said that there is a separate profile attached to this Personal Space; but you can't get to add your email address, display name and so on to it manually unless you add the setting web part to your Personal Space page. You can add a completely different set of details to this profile; the two profiles don't update each other. I know because i tested it and sent the screenshots to RM. On top of that, users can create Interest Groups. These can be created on the Staff/Pupil site you belong to, or on the Personal Space you have. These also seem to have profiles attached to them, which may or may not get their details from the site they are attached to. After some editing, I actually had three different profiles with completely different details all accessed through my one username. Are you following all this out there? No? Thought not...

The problem with our LEA is that no one had told us about needing to add the settings web part to our Personal Spaces. And some of the Interest Groups which were created, and which presumably took user details from those Personal Spaces, were then not sending out alerts to members about those Interest Groups. We all thought that we had done all the profile stuff when we added our email addresses to our profiles on our Staff home pages.

Back to the dark room now...

[saundersmatt]

It's ok folks. You can forget I ever asked. RM have replied and it seems the behaviour that was driving me mad in Kaleidos is normal in Sharepoint.

Basically, each site you have access to has it's own profile. So you have to add your email address to a profile for your Staff Home, and your Personal Space, and, as far as I can make out, each Interest Group you belong to as well. The profile isn't attached solely to your username, but to your username+site.

I am now going to lie down in a very dark room for a very long time...

Lol, i've just been playing around with ours and it displays the same (broken, in my opinion) functionality.

Shows how much we use it.

Matt

[Andie]

Thanks. At least I know that I'm probably not going mad!

[Andie]

lol

That make sense....

sorry didn't have time to look into it myself but it has just occurred to me I wouldn't be able to help as we are on different version to yourself..

Russ

As we are going to be migrated to LP v2 in september, I guess we are on version 1. What version are you using?

I am further annoyed at the moment with the fact that there seems to be no proper compatibility between the versions of Kaleidos. I thought one of the big reasons behind LEA having a whole Learning Platform approach was so that all schools could share information. But RM can't migrate everyone to the new version at the same time (understandably). Because you can't access the new version sites from the old version sites you are cut off from sites that are migrated before you. The main LEA site was migrated weeks ago, and has a support section on it for Kaleidos within the LEA, but our school isn't being migrated until mid-September, so we are cut off from any updates that appear on the LEA site until then.

I know that forwards compatibility isn't easy with such a large beast as a LP. But doesn't this make a mockery of the whole information sharing thing? Anyone know if other platforms have this kind of problem when being updated to new versions?

[Andie]

We have now been updated to version 2. The LEA are now having to run another lot of training sessions, less than a year after the training for version 1...

Anyway, the profile thing seems to have been fixed (Yippee!!!!), and the structure of the platform seems to be a lot better - much more sensible. The look is better too. The My Desktop thing is annoying, and the new structure is going to confuse any teachers who have just got used to the old one, but I am cautiously optimistic. We start to roll this out for real to teachers here in November.

[PaulDH]

Glad to see you are now happier with this product Andie, but would you recommend it?

We are embarking on the road to Kaleidos and I need to know if I should buy new walking boots

Isn't technology a wonderful invention

Paul