[sims] Solus 3 feedback

[zag]

So I've just used Solus 3 for the first time like many others for the Autumn 2 Release, here's some feedback:

 

- Its feels massively over engineered!! Seems like its designed for huge councils to update thousands of machines not single schools like us.

- The user interface is incredibly slow, it's painful to just browse a list using a mouse wheel

- The blue colour scheme looks rubbish imo, glad to see the new screenshots posted of a much nicer greyer look

- Why does it rely on DNS so much? Not all schools will have scavenge records set. No other software I know of has these problems. Surely it should show some more useful feedback about a machine that cannot be pinged?

- Solus 3 seems to break completely when you change a computers name in Active Directory

- Why do I have to type in domain/username and password EVERY SINGLE TIME I update a few workstations in the environment? Can't this be saved in the central settings?

- Add agent workstations should be at the top as its most commonly used, not 3 items down in the list. This is poor UI design.

- Needs a way to reset hung agent installs such as "active install" or "queued install" see here for more details

- Why doesn't the agent close down Sims automatically?

- Please make the Blue warning box on the client machine bigger and easier to see. A number of our staff simply ignored it causing all kinds of errors inside of Sims.

- Sims should show better warning message if the update wasn't successful. "Incompatible database" is a pointless error. How about something like "You are trying to run an earlier version of sims" Please see your ICT department to update.

- Sims should save reports constantly, we had an incident where someone walked away from their computer for 5 minutes and lost all their reports because of the Solus 3 upgrade procedure.

- Sims should auto close so the agent can update successfully. All work should be saved as mentioned above.

- Why is discover a separate install from Sims? It should all update at the same time without the need to rollout 2 packages.

- The manage updates list is incredibly confusing. I see things like "Solus 3 auto deployment patch" which I have no idea what it does and there is no description or release notes that I can see.

 

Sorry if this sounds like a bit of a rant, but Solus 3 is in no way ready to replace Solus 2 yet.

[synaesthesia]

I agree about performance and overengineering; it's been designed with geeks in mind and not pretified. Isn't ideal, because in an ideal world the data staff would do SIMS upgrades.

I disagree about DNS - even more so now than ever before, DNS is vital and should be correctly set up. Try telling any techy that statement in 5 years time when we're further into ipv6 and see how long you last!!

 

Solus 2 is not exactly much better - it doesn't moot any of the points made about 3 especially in interface terms, ease of use, warnings, closing sims etc!

[zag]

Solus 2 has always worked perfectly for us since we add all teachers to the power user group on the local computers. Usually we get around a 5% failure rate.

 

Solus 3 had about a 45% failure rate yesterday. I realize that a lot of this is due to outdated DNS records, changed AD names and hard disk space issues but the simple fact is it worked better with Solus 2.

 

Hopefully next time we run it the failure rate will be much reduced.

[MrMat]

- Please make the Blue warning box on the client machine bigger and easier to see. A number of our staff simply ignored it causing all kinds of errors inside of Sims.

- Sims should show better warning message if the update wasn't successful. "Incompatible database" is a pointless error. How about something like "You are trying to run an earlier version of sims" Please see your ICT department to update.

- Sims should auto close so the agent can update successfully. All work should be saved as mentioned above.

 

I would be happy if they just implemented these! These are musts in my opinion for the next version.

[synaesthesia]

I just use Impero (you can of course insert similar product name here) to close any instances of pulsar.exe after the warning emails & messages sent out prior

100% success rate across my 3 schools this week.

[sparkeh]

Just done our first upgrade with S3 and *said through gritted teeth* I was impressed by it.

 

On a wider level though:

• The UI is terrible, *terrible*. Looks like the designer has never deployed software in his/her life. Hopefully the promised updates will improve this.
  
• Re: DNS. Schools should have DNS setup properly and savaging enabled. This will help on a much wider scale then just S3.
  
• You should be able to change computer name. That you can't is just dumb. Any other central based console type program (eg Sophos) can cope with this.
  
• The domain\user thing irritates the Hell out of me too.
  
• The fact that machines can get stuck in a failed state is dumb as well. Surely its easy to fix this as community members have knocked up utilities to sort this out themselves.
  
• I like the idea of SIMS automatically. Currently it seems that if people are using it during an upgrade they just get errors which isn't elegant.
  

Edited January 9, 2014 by sparkeh

[GREED]

Quote from Mr Neal on Twitter in December:

 

"Reviewed progress of new SOLUS3 screens. The new UI will be a huge productivity leap. A couple of clicks to manage a school!"

 

I'll gather this refers to a future release of SOLUS.

[zag]

Quote from Mr Neal on Twitter in December:

 

"Reviewed progress of new SOLUS3 screens. The new UI will be a huge productivity leap. A couple of clicks to manage a school!"

 

I'll gather this refers to a future release of SOLUS.

 

Yep and some screenshots of the new version here:

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/mis-systems/129726-update-user-machines.html#post1108365

 

It looks nice!

[sparkeh]

Another thing, unless I am doing it wrong, is how the deployments are handled and reported.

 

So an example. I have about 100 machines to update. After the initial deployment 90 were successful, 7 were offline and 3 failed due to SIMS being left opened.

 

So I contacted the teachers to close SIMS and clicked to redeploy to the 3 failed. This created a new deployment which resulted in 2 successes and 1 failure (still not closed SIMS!). So I 'contacted' teacher again and redeployed to that 1 machine. This created a 3rd deployment which was a success.

 

In the meantime people are turning on machines that were originally listed as offline which are picking up the original deployment. SIMS is installing successfully. However the original deployment is still reporting that the 7 machines are offline. But when I look at the deployment detail it reports that those machines are a success.

 

This seems a messy way of doing it. Why can't we just stick to one deployment. If the installation fails then you reattemp installation but within the same deployment so the feedback in the "Targets in the deployment" just updates with the latest information.

 

This way we only have one deployment per product to keep track off.

Edited January 9, 2014 by sparkeh

[matt40k]

So I've just used Solus 3 for the first time like many others for the Autumn 2 Release, here's some feedback:

 

 

You should of been on the field trial!!

 

 

 

 

- Its feels massively over engineered!! Seems like its designed for huge councils to update thousands of machines not single schools like us.

 

 

How do you think that little school with 1 Winodws 7 workstation feels?

 

 

- Needs a way to reset hung agent installs such as "active install" or "queued install" see here for more details

 

 

Keeps me out of trouble

 

 

 

 

- Why doesn't the agent close down Sims automatically?

 

 

I did ask

 

 

 

 

- Sims should show better warning message if the update wasn't successful. "Incompatible database" is a pointless error. How about something like "You are trying to run an earlier version of sims" Please see your ICT department to update.

 

 

How far do you take this, I mean it could get over complex - I think the "best" solution is a link to a KB article - oh wait, that sucks. Maybe a few macros might be nice maybe? Soemthing like a global %SCHOOL_ICT_MESSAGE% you can set so the staff nice a friendly message.

 

 

- Sims should save reports constantly, we had an incident where someone walked away from their computer for 5 minutes and lost all their reports because of the Solus 3 upgrade procedure.

 

 

Isn't really SOLUS, also surely you warn them about the update first? Still auto-save like in Word would be good, we all know what staff are like

 

 

- Why is discover a separate install from Sims? It should all update at the same time without the need to rollout 2 packages.

 

 

It isn't part of SIMS and it isn't included. It's a bolt on dispite what @PhilNeal says, it's a bolt-on as part of the assessment suite.

 

 

- The manage updates list is incredibly confusing. I see things like "Solus 3 auto deployment patch" which I have no idea what it does and there is no description or release notes that I can see.

 

 

Cheers, I did say this to them over a year ago. Ah, now I can do the "I told you so" dance to @JonathanWood

[matt40k]

3 failed due to SIMS being left opened.

 

They just need a reboot.

[sparkeh]

They just need a reboot.

Oh? will their status change from failed to successful within the original deployment?

 

What about offline machines, do they ever get reported as successful or always listed as offline? Seems to stay as offline here, which is less than helpful.

[sparkeh]

Ok interesting, our FMS deployment (of which there is only one) updated as successful when our offline machines came online and installed the update.

 

The original SIMS deployment does not. I wonder if creating new deployment with a redeployment task stops the original deployment updating?

[matt40k]

You should only need to redeploy if it fails, fails, if a few workstations after offline you'll be ok. If a workstation fails, try a reboot*, then redeploy just to those workstations, it could get it into a bit of a pickle and do it twice. Historically it would cause it to reinstall - pretty sure they got it fixed now as it checks before running it. So you would just add to the "job" list and it would check twice and upgrade once so not really a biggy. I do also believe once it fails to install it won't try again until you tell it - I mean it's its stupid to try re-running it on a machine without a enough disc space or some other unknown fault, you'll just lock the machine up.

 

No idea re-update the original screen, I remember talking to them about it but I'm not sure, I'll ask one of the developers - who I know from the field trial - I'll just keep saying this so people actually get involve in future field trials so when you want a change something isn't like Chinese whispers involving a lot of repetition and jumping up and down and (as much) waiting.

 

* You can check if it needs a reboot - check the registry for the pendingfilerename key - it will list any files it couldn't update cause they had SIMS open - annoyingly because the way .NET works, it'll dynamically load the .dlls as it needs them so you may think your in SIMS say v1, but half the SIMS libraries \ dlls will be on v2 so it'll crash spectacularly when it trys loadings a v1 library and gets a v2. So really a force close is the only way forward. Because it's a wise installer it'll happily keep trying to install if you keep running it, so as you say, re-deploying will get it going if you close sims then redeploy - but you'll have pending file renames when you reboot - hopefully it'll be the same version and Capita won't do a 2 parter update like they did before - we had manually updated some\redeployed, didn't know about the pending rename, so the next day the windows machine put the part 1 files over the top of the part 2 files

[zag]

- Solus 3 also appears to break the Examination Module everytime its upgrade. Needs Sims to be installed manually to fix it. "Automation Error"

[zag]

Also when I try and install sims manually from the /setups folder it only installs and old version!

 

How do I update the setups folder to the Autumn 2 files?

[synaesthesia]

what's in Setups is no longer relevant once you use Solus 3.

Sounds horrid but if you really can't get S3 to work immediately on a machine just copy the updated files over from a working one.

[sparkeh]

Also when I try and install sims manually from the /setups folder it only installs and old version!

 

How do I update the setups folder to the Autumn 2 files?

Hmmm with S3 I don't think you get updated setups like with S2.

 

Ok after some testing it appears that if you create a new deployment the past deployments don't get updated with regards to the "Targets in the deployment" section, but the "view deployment details" screen does update with the correct info.

 

Also it would be nice if the overall status of the deployment was updated. Eg, for my FMS deployment one machine was offline during deployment so the status was set as "partially successful", that machine came online and updated, the "Targets in deployment" section updated to show all the machines were successful, however the overall status remains as "partially successful".

[Cache]

Hmmm with S3 I don't think you get updated setups like with S2.

 

Ok after some testing it appears that if you create a new deployment the past deployments don't get updated with regards to the "Targets in the deployment" section, but the "view deployment details" screen does update with the correct info.

 

Also it would be nice if the overall status of the deployment was updated. Eg, for my FMS deployment one machine was offline during deployment so the status was set as "partially successful", that machine came online and updated, the "Targets in deployment" section updated to show all the machines were successful, however the overall status remains as "partially successful".

 

The best one is you redeploy an update to a single machine, that machine fails again and then the status for the redeployment says Partially successfull (I remember Rawns having that before, I had it for 2 redploys earlier this week)

[neilenormal]

- Solus 3 also appears to break the Examination Module everytime its upgrade. Needs Sims to be installed manually to fix it. "Automation Error"

 

In my experience the Automation Error in Exams is fixed by running all windows updates on the affected PC..... and then keeping the PC up to date. A pain sometimes but one of those necessary evils on exams officers PCs

[neilenormal]

Solus 3 feedback:

 

Please could the programmers make the GUI fit a window properly in an RDP session? Surely most folks will access the GUI over an RDP session but when you do there are some screens where even with maximising the window, auto hiding the taskbar, nothing but nothing will allow you to click OK down in the bottom right hand corner...... Even guessing the right number of presses on the TAB key and pressing is a bit hit and miss!! GRRRRRR...........

[zag]

In my experience the Automation Error in Exams is fixed by running all windows updates on the affected PC..... and then keeping the PC up to date. A pain sometimes but one of those necessary evils on exams officers PCs

 

Thanks i'll try this next time.

 

This error was reported 3 years ago and many times on these and other forums. I don't understand why they have not fixed it.

[Rawns]

Also when I try and install sims manually from the /setups folder it only installs and old version!

 

How do I update the setups folder to the Autumn 2 files?

 

Once your using SOLUS3 in a school, forget the Setups folder. Archive it if youhave to so it's not used as it's obsolete and no longer used or updated.

Edited January 13, 2014 by Rawns

[Rawns]

Hmmm with S3 I don't think you get updated setups like with S2.

 

Ok after some testing it appears that if you create a new deployment the past deployments don't get updated with regards to the "Targets in the deployment" section, but the "view deployment details" screen does update with the correct info.

 

Also it would be nice if the overall status of the deployment was updated. Eg, for my FMS deployment one machine was offline during deployment so the status was set as "partially successful", that machine came online and updated, the "Targets in deployment" section updated to show all the machines were successful, however the overall status remains as "partially successful".

 

A full upgrade will only be successful if every defined device in SOLUS3 gets upgraded first time round. If any are offline or fail, then the best you'll get is a 'Partially Successful' upgrade.

 

If you 'redeploy' to one device and it upgrades, that separate 'redeploy' entry in the deployment history will be Successful.

 

The best one is you redeploy an update to a single machine, that machine fails again and then the status for the redeployment says Partially successfull (I remember Rawns having that before, I had it for 2 redploys earlier this week)

 

Yep, I still get this from time to time. Can;t decide if it's a SOLUS3 bug or very bizarre Capita logic!!!

Edited January 13, 2014 by Rawns

[MalekoUK]

Our biggest problem with S3 is that half of our workstations failed with the update and they just won't update, keep reporting as offline even though they clearly are online. Have tried disabling firewall, renewing IP's...just just wont deploy.

All the machines are setup the same with the same policies etc as well.

 

What is confusing is how the other half are working fine. All are on Windows 7 and all deployed S3 and Sims originally with no problems.

This is the first time we have tried updating and despite having great experience with the initial setup and deploy, the update is proving a NIGHTMARE.