Facility Software Release January 2014

[andy_b]

Just in case anyone misses this, there is an update to CMIS if you are affected by any of the following issues:

 

IMPORTANT NOTICE

This build of Admin corrects two known issues that affect Nursery or Post 16 pupils that are eligible for Free School Meals and Nursery schools with two year old pupils.

Schools will only need to install this build of Admin if:

 

You have Nursery or Post 16 pupils that are eligible for Free School Meals

You have two year old Nursery pupils

You have not yet upgraded to version 13.3 (the December release)

 

All other schools may continue to run their census return with the December (13.3.10) release of Admin.

 

 

https://link2ict.service-now.com/schools/kb_view.do?sysparm_article=KB0001511

[sonofsanta]

Good of them to spot & release this the day before the census was due...

 

Fortunately our FSM numbers are low enough to manually cross-check, so our census officer has said not to bother. Which is a relief, as I didn't much fancy trying to do it at lunch, praying that no-one forgets I've told them that Facility is verboten and log in and screw up the database...

[CHR1S]

L2ICT.... again....

 

[Michael]

To be fair it's not really Link2ICT, but more Advanced Learning. It is their product after all.

 

It's easy enough to apply, but extremely late in the day - especially Census day.

 

I think I'm going to take a back seat when it comes to installing the new e-Portal (week starting 20th Jan) in case this gets broken on first install too.

[CHR1S]

To be fair it's not really Link2ICT, but more Advanced Learning. It is their product after all.

 

Don't let things like facts get in the way of a good moan!

[Michael]

Oh don't get me wrong, I'm having to sacrifice my lunch break to patch another school. All in a day's work I suppose

[Michael]

Well the patch has gone on fine and it does correct the issue (in each instance).

 

I'd love to know why it's Census day and not Census week. Getting so many establishments across the country to submit their Census in a single day is just crazy thinking really.

[sonofsanta]

Yeah I ended up having to do it over lunch as well (census officer was on the phone to support about something else and was basically told to install the patch before they'd try anything else). With a quick back up of this year's dataset only, and no need for it to do its database checks (no major version upgrade), it did only take fifteen minutes to have ePortal back up again.

 

Still not an ideal job to be doing on the day in the middle of office hours, though...

[Byford-Rew]

So today I was asked to do the update to fix the census error associated to Free School Meals and 6th Forms students. When I click the relevant links I don't see a patch to apply - instead I see the entire install file for Facility and ePortal. Am I missing something? Surely I don't need to do a full install do I? I have many customisations and SSO to set up. The last time the process took three hours.

 

Meny here appear to have applied the fix - am I missing something?

 

HELP!!

[tomearnshaw]

We did the update for Administration and the uninstall and new install of ePortal on Wednesday. I then had to to do the update for Administration that come out just before midnight on Wednesday yesterday, but no need to redo ePortal or anything else. Quick snapshot of the VM, backup tables, make a copy of the admin folder and install, reboot and done.

Looking forward to not having to touch the Facility server for a couple of months now hopefully!

[sonofsanta]

So today I was asked to do the update to fix the census error associated to Free School Meals and 6th Forms students. When I click the relevant links I don't see a patch to apply - instead I see the entire install file for Facility and ePortal. Am I missing something? Surely I don't need to do a full install do I? I have many customisations and SSO to set up. The last time the process took three hours.

 

Meny here appear to have applied the fix - am I missing something?

 

HELP!!

 

Log into Advanced Firstline

Follow the link to Facility 13.3 Census Update - Please read on the right

Follow the link in the second to last sentence (the word "here")

Download the Facility Administration files, and the three extensions (docstore, export to ems, sms). I also downloaded Scheduler as it's easy to install. You don't need ePortal.

 

In Facility, make sure everyone is kicked out, do your template/data backup, rename your Admin folder, reinstall into the new Admin folder. I only took a backup of this year's dataset to speed things up, and the database doesn't need to do any checks after install, so it is - at least - a quick patch to update.

 

Not sure how any of you have got away with not doing the ePortal update yet - I thought ePortal and Facility had to be on the same major version, and the Facility update was needed for the census yesterday - but if you follow the documentation religiously you're ok.

 

I think the reason it has to be a census day is the same as with the national census every ten years - it's meant to be a snapshot, and make sure everyone is only in one place at once. If it was done over a week, potentially a student could be registered at one school on a Monday, transfer on a Wednesday, and be reregistered at the new school on the Friday.

[themightymrp]

Did the update for our Data Manager yesterday, no real problems. Quick and simple and fixed the fault. Really bad of Advanced Learning to leave this so late though! Do they not test these things???!

 

On a side note, not liking the new ePortal

[Michael]

On a side note, not liking the new ePortal

 

Oh don't say that. How can it possibly be any different?

[themightymrp]

It's not vastly different don't get me wrong, its the new menu system I don't like. Its a bar along the top of the page now. Small change I know and I WILL get used to it but it just bugs me :-p You also have to edit an XML file just to make it default to your bitlet screen when you login (like it always has). Other wise you just get a Welcome Page and you have to choose 'Bitlets' from one of the drop down menus. None too surprising that teachers didn't know what a bitlet was

[Oaktech]

We did the update last night as well as fixing a load of ePortal-isms.

 

We have a poll running currently as to whether we are going to turn the Bitlet screen back on or not. Initially the kneejerk 'I want it back (because I don't like change)' brigade were winning, but now the some what more considered members of staff have waded in with 'It loads faster, leave it be' and are now winning.

[themightymrp]

Fast to get to the welcome page yes, but they still need to get to the bitlets to do most of the things they do. And that still takes a little while to load up.

[Michael]

I suppose more importantly, was the uninstall and re-install smooth? And presumably it still uses IIS in some shape or form?

[themightymrp]

No major headaches really. A bunch of your customized XML's can plop straight back in too after the reinstall. The settings for IIS are unchanged afaik.

 

Files you can move straight back (according to Advanced Learning install notes):

 

bitletscreen.xml

settings.xml

timetable.xml

attainmentanalysis.xml

[Michael]

Thanks - I'll suck it and see next week and see how it goes

[sonofsanta]

I think the majority of the ePortal work was done within an hour for me, once Facility etc. was updated. The main PITA for me was making changes to menus.xml, adding in a Home link ("bitlets" is a meaningless word to me, let alone teaching staff), reinstating the link to Room Booking System and commenting out parts we don't use, like Messaging. Having to restart services to test every tweak makes it slow going. Pro tip: use Notepad++ to read the XML files, so you can see when comment fields exist in the middle of blocks you're trying to comment out. Makes bug-squashing much easier.

[Oaktech]

The main PITA for me was making changes to menus.xml, adding in a Home link ("bitlets" is a meaningless word to me, let alone teaching staff)

 

We refer to it as 'the dashboard' rather than bitlets when speaking to staff!

 

We were missing the assessment link on our primary install, the nogroupsaccess was set to false to TAs couldn't mark registers or enter progress. The timetables were finishing a day late, but an hour early each day, We don't have an afternoon tutor period, so afternoon lesson registrations are supposed to overwrite as afternoon roll call and that wasn't working.

 

The majority of our problems stemmed from the fact that this is the first complete reinstall we've ever done and historically things have been changed that we didn't know about.

[andy_b]

It's arrived - https://link2ict.service-now.com/schools/kb_view.do?sysparm_article=KB0001511 (Facility January 2014 ePortal release)

[jamin100]

Do we need this? We're moving to progresso in half term and I'm wondering if I need the hassle of installing this when it's all changing in half term anyway?