Popular Post vikpaw Posted May 26, 2014 Popular Post Posted May 26, 2014 (edited) The pre-release notes are out. Plan is for release before COB on Monday 30th June. Not sure about UK schools but we'll be closed by then. Some great new assessment features amongst other changes. If you don't keep up with David Pott (you should!), you might not have heard about these Assessment Manager Enhancements Summer and Autumn 2014 | SIMS Assessment Manager Blog : The assessment mapping tool sounds great and will be really useful, hopefully for schools to move data internally between old and new systems as well as for pulling data in to standardised aspects. Grouping by cell colour - cool. Easier hide / unhide of columns. New tags for Ind. Reps. like Sessions Late over a given time period. Total Minutes Late.... Plus there's the usual improvements and changes to various areas, notably a speed increase in the reporting engine which "will mainly be seen when running simple reports involving the student focus" . . . EDIT: Also noteworthy from a separate bulletin on Assessment: The Summer release continues to boost the suite of Capita SIMS pre-defined assets by introducing enhanced Key Stage 1 (KS1) and Key Stage 2 (KS2) Resources and these are taking the form of two distinct strands: Assessment with Levels Enhanced KS1 and KS2 progress tracking Marksheets, Tracking Grids and Aspect Analysis for the core subjects of Reading, Writing and Maths (suitable for those schools in England who choose to stick with levels for the time being and for Welsh schools in KS2 for whom Levels will still remain) Assessment without Levels The first step along our assessment roadmap to move towards assessing without levels, a new Progress Grid has been introduced to which clearly displays knowledge descriptors matched to the new curriculum for all core and foundation subjects. Teachers can use this Progress Grid to record whether a pupil is below expected, at expected or above expected knowledge at termly intervals for both the statutory and non-statutory requirements Moving into Autumn there are plans to further enhance the assessment suite of resources, introduce a SIMS School analysis report and take on-board feedback from our Assessment Software Consultancy Groups to feed into our assessment future roadmap. SIMS will continue to support the use of levels for as long as schools find the resources useful. In parallel with this, resources are being added into SIMS to help support a life without levels and will evolve overtime with feedback from our Assessment Software Consultancy Group meetings, the DfE, NAHT, ASCL and other leading bodies. Assessment is changing and SIMS Assessment Manager can help schools achieve their attainment and progress tracking needs for now and into the future. and from the blog .... upcoming : "Flexible Marksheets, Configurable by Teachers" - which has been long awaited. Edited May 27, 2014 by vikpaw 5
TheScarfedOne Posted May 26, 2014 Posted May 26, 2014 Damn you @vikpaw will you top stealing my thunder :-p
vikpaw Posted May 27, 2014 Author Posted May 27, 2014 Damn you @vikpaw will you top stealing my thunder :-p Nothing tops stealing your thunder! Sorry, have you blogged about it?
creese Posted May 27, 2014 Posted May 27, 2014 We might just get this rolled out to schools before I leave... for ever. If it's on time.
vikpaw Posted May 27, 2014 Author Posted May 27, 2014 And who's going to deal with the ver 2 and ver 3 revisions? 1
creese Posted May 27, 2014 Posted May 27, 2014 And who's going to deal with the ver 2 and ver 3 revisions? I could say 'who cares' but... well... who cares.
CAM Posted June 9, 2014 Posted June 9, 2014 Can't link to it at work, but Capita's Twitter feed just announced bulk Aspect replacement. 1
vikpaw Posted June 22, 2014 Author Posted June 22, 2014 Edited 18th June, minor change, still the same release date. One IMPORTANT NOTE: IMPORTANT NOTE: Secondary schools that use Examinations Organiser must upgrade to the SIMS 2014 Summer Release. Failure to upgrade to the SIMS 2014 Summer Release will result in PI values being wrong, missing functionality in PI reports and the latest business rules not being applied throughout the SIMS Exams software.
SHimmer45 Posted June 23, 2014 Posted June 23, 2014 is there a link on support net for the provisional release dates for this year im sure there used to be one?
vikpaw Posted June 24, 2014 Author Posted June 24, 2014 Are you thinking of the roadmap? They are fairly fixed i.e. March, June, October (ish) close to term dates and census dates, i don't recall seeing any exact dates though.
SHimmer45 Posted June 24, 2014 Posted June 24, 2014 @vikpaw i guess the road map would be better than nothing, since moving away from LEA support to direct with capita navigating support net still takes some getting used to lol
Bananas Posted June 24, 2014 Posted June 24, 2014 Ok i'll be waiting for all you guinea pigs to test it out first for a few weeks and then deploy it
vikpaw Posted June 30, 2014 Author Posted June 30, 2014 For those of you looking forward to being the first to upgrade, and be pioneers discovering all the bugs before the rest of us..... Hold your horses - urgent update - it won't be out today: An issue has been discovered at the very last minute in our release candidate for the SIMS 2014 Summer release. The issue could allow schools to input an incorrect date for school census and needs resolving in order to prevent the possibility of schools submitting Census files that may be rejected by COLLECT. We have confirmed the requirement with the DfE and feel we must make the change to the software. In order to resolve this issue and complete our testing there will unfortunately be a small delay to the release of approximately two days. The new revised date for this release will be by COB on Wednesday the 2nd of July. We apologise for any inconvenience that this delay may cause and appreciate the timing is very unfortunate. Regards, Jonathan Wood SIMS Product Manager (Technical and Releases)
bossman Posted June 30, 2014 Posted June 30, 2014 @vikpaw: Has everyone done their migration to SQL 2014 before the update as a requirement for the Summer upgrade which is required for the PI reports? I have mine scheduled for the 4th of August as this is the earliest I can get! I can't believe that everyone has already migrated to SQL 2014?
edutech4schools Posted June 30, 2014 Posted June 30, 2014 We are on SQL 2008r2 and not planning to upgrade for a while.
localzuk Posted June 30, 2014 Posted June 30, 2014 We are on SQL 2008r2 and not planning to upgrade for a while. I believe there is a requirement to migrate to SQL 2012 relatively soon, last time I checked.
vikpaw Posted June 30, 2014 Author Posted June 30, 2014 (edited) I don't know about everyone @bossman - but i'm sure not ready! I'm not aware of that requirement. I don't need those reports, however, but i guess Exams users will ...? The Technical Roadmap only mentions this in terms of general support: Technical Roadmap • Upcoming Software Retirements • SQL2008 - Last support release: Summer 2014 • SQL2008 R2 - Last support release: Autumn 2014 • New Software Support • Windows Server 2012 R2 - Supported from: Spring 2014 • Office 2013 - Supported from: Spring 2014 • SQL2014 - Supported from: Autumn 2014 So if you're on SQL 2008 you need to panic now, if you're on SQL 2008 R2 you got 1 life left You made me panic - but i just checked and i'm on R2, phew. Edited June 30, 2014 by vikpaw
bossman Posted June 30, 2014 Posted June 30, 2014 @vyperz: SQL 2012 will suffice but as SQL 2014 has been released you may as well go with that and it will save you time in the long run, my only regrets is that I don't have a Windows server 2012 license as yet so it will have to remain on our 2008R2 enterprise server! Didn't mean to startle anyone but been under the cosh these past few weeks as I am a technician down plus all the strategic planning to do as with all the rest of the paperwork so I thought I needed to get it right first time if you know what I mean. @vikpaw: haha! just keeping you on your toes Hope all is well with you my good friend
Sylv3r Posted June 30, 2014 Posted June 30, 2014 @vyperz: SQL 2012 will suffice but as SQL 2014 has been released you may as well go with that and it will save you time in the long run, my only regrets is that I don't have a Windows server 2012 license as yet so it will have to remain on our 2008R2 enterprise server! Didn't mean to startle anyone but been under the cosh these past few weeks as I am a technician down plus all the strategic planning to do as with all the rest of the paperwork so I thought I needed to get it right first time if you know what I mean. @vikpaw: haha! just keeping you on your toes Hope all is well with you my good friend Stop panicking, what will be will be )
MrMat Posted July 1, 2014 Posted July 1, 2014 We are on SQL 2008r2 and not planning to upgrade for a while. You're in luck. Support for SQL2008 and 2008R2 has been extended to include the Spring 2015 release. See thread: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/mis-systems/138893-latest-technical-roadmap.html 1
vikpaw Posted July 2, 2014 Author Posted July 2, 2014 It's out, it's out, it's out - don't know why i'm so excited.... just cos it's early ) There are now different release notes containing information targeted to each different school type: SIMS Combined – resource id 22858 SIMS Secondary (Welsh) – resource id 22857 SIMS Secondary (English and Northern Ireland) - resource id 22855 SIMS Primary (Welsh) – resource id 22852 SIMS Primary (English and Northern Ireland) - resource id 22854 SIMS Independent schools – resource id 22853 FMS Release note - resource id 22851
SouthCoastSaint Posted July 2, 2014 Posted July 2, 2014 I have a whole shed load of new intervention strategy templates to make - I really want to get the update to use the aspect replacement feature. Not sure how long I will be able to wait.
vikpaw Posted July 2, 2014 Author Posted July 2, 2014 I have a whole shed load of new intervention strategy templates to make - I really want to get the update to use the aspect replacement feature. Not sure how long I will be able to wait. It's out, just download and install.
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