[sims] SIMS Summer 2014

[Bananas]

Not doing mine until the summer holidays then the clients can update on inset day in September

[SouthCoastSaint]

It's out, just download and install.

 

Haha yeah right - even if IT could do it this week I'm not going to be the first!

[jdoldridge]

Currently installing it Its been a while since I have seen 'Incompatible Database' it will keep us busy in the morning no doubt.

[markwilfan]

Reason 0 is my fav SIMS message

[jdoldridge]

so far so good. Upgrade went fine, tested a few of workstations and they upgraded nicely... I feel suspicious to be quite honest

[minimoo]

We upgraded last night - Upgrade seems to have gone fine. No complaints from teachers so far.

 

I've just logged an issue this morning that a custom report we run on a daily basis via command exporter is now showing users that according to the report definition I'd expect to be excluded, and were excluded in the spring release. Don't suppose anyone that has upgraded has spotted anything similar on any reports?

 

Paul

[creese]

We upgraded last night - Upgrade seems to have gone fine. No complaints from teachers so far.

 

I've just logged an issue this morning that a custom report we run on a daily basis via command exporter is now showing users that according to the report definition I'd expect to be excluded, and were excluded in the spring release. Don't suppose anyone that has upgraded has spotted anything similar on any reports?

 

Paul

 

So brave...

[Ghostgame]

SIMS 2014 Summer Release -- Reporting Issue – Please Read Before Applying New Release

We have been made aware of a potential problem in the SIMS 2014 Summer release that will cause an error when running some user-defined reports. If you have not yet upgraded to the Summer release we ask that you please hold off until the end of the day when we have had time to further investigate and provide a solution.

 

We understand the issue is that when a report is run that contains a blank column in a sub-report then an ‘Object reference not set to an instance of an object’ error will appear. Although all other areas of SIMS will continue to be usable, the report will not run.

 

We are looking at solutions to resolve this and will post an update on Supportnet by COB today (03/07/14).

 

We apologise for any inconvenience that this might cause whilst we investigate this issue further. Please feel free to email me directly if you have any particular concerns or questions at [removed email address]

 

Regards,

Jonathan Wood

SIMS Product Manager (Technical and Releases)

 

Indeed he is.

[minimoo]

We had a half day yesterday for prospective year 7 open day - so it was convenient time. Capita *had* been getting better recently with not doing re-releases I thought without 5 minutes of a release I thought - although that might just be a case of me not noticing them and waiting a week normally.

 

Issue Jonathan's talking about seems to be a different issue then I've got, but same sort of area, so i'm guessing probably related

 

Unfortunately for me, the custom report that runs was creating AD users, so it's created ~2000 AD users that having fixed my script to work around the sims area, is now dumping those back out the AD.

 

Paul

[creese]

Capita *had* been getting better recently with not doing re-releases

 

 

They had ?????

[minimoo]

IIRC, they did like 4 releases of the summer 2012 release, and I don't think they re-released spring 2014? I'll grant you in autumn and last summer they did re-release - I think it's a case of myself not noticing as we probably weren't affected by the issues. Equally, we moved to Solus 3 quite early on after it's initial release - for the first 3-4 quarterly updates, we hit some timing/bug/other issue in solus 3 with each update, whereas, now it does actually run semi-smoothly - so It does feel *better*

 

There's still a few issues that I think capita could improve on to make life easier for end users - as an obvious example, how they handle what happens if sims is open and the end user doesn't see the "please close sims in the next 2 minutes message". Lets do this morning's workflow (that ~5 different staff hit each update):

 

1) Office Cover Manager arrives at work at 7:30 AM

2) Logs on to sims and hits "sims.net icon".

3) Whilst waiting for it to load (and before logging in) goes off to make cap of tea

4) Solus gives her a 2 minute warning to close sims.net for the update

5) Office Lady returns with cup of tea, enters username and password

6) SIMs displays a dotnet fault trace saying "assembly versions don't match"

7) Office Staff send an email to all staff stating that cover information will be delayed as Sims is broken

8) 8:00AM - IT staff arrive, reboot pc for pending file change happens

9) 8:15AM Staff get cover information for the day as the SIMs problem has been fixed.

 

I guess I can expect to add a step 10 of "Email: we are redeploying the summer update as Sims is broken" in a few days.

 

Paul

[PhilNeal]

@minimoo I'm pleased to say that V3.8 is planned to allow forced closure of SIMS and immediate upgrading should SIMS not be at the correct version.

[minimoo]

Cool!!! I still remember Sally (previous solus analyst) giving the answer that came back to her of "we don't really want to kill sims.net if it's open when an update happens", and thinking that's nuts

 

It sounds like 3.8 may fix some of the last 'design issues' in solus3 that actually cause grief on a regular basis - at least for us. The only issue that I think will remain if the fixes you describe go in, and I believe is specific to us - is that we sometimes see the contents of some of the supporting DLL files for the agent get zero'd, if a PC Bluescreen's. I've never seen that in my life to any file apart from 3 dll's in the solus directory, and i'm fairly confident I can't blame Capita for this...

 

So It's definitely getting there

[PhilNeal]

@minimoo I agree that killing the SIMS session can't do any harm as the upgrade taking place would have invalidated any changes that had been made by that user.

 

When Jon calls you please discuss the bluescreen.

[MrMat]

Great news everyone!!!

 

[TABLE=width: 100%, align: center]

[TR]

[TD]SIMS 2014 Summer Release - Update Please Read

 

We have fixed the problem with blank columns in reports, however further concerns have been raised over Assessment Templates, Individual Reports and the Post 16 Return.

 

We are investigating solutions to these and will post an update on SupportNet as soon as we have a confirmed release date.

 

We apologise for any inconvenience that this might cause whilst we investigate this issue further.

Regards,

Jon[/TD]

[/TR]

[/TABLE]

Edited July 4, 2014 by vikpaw

[vikpaw]

Oh dear, it's going to be one of those releases is it?

[TheScarfedOne]

Jon is gonna be pulling his hair out @PhilNeal. Glad the problems have been spotted quickly. With the amount of changes in reporting and assessment, its not surprising that every situation couldn't be foreseen. At least not many schools will have applied it.

[PhilNeal]

I haven't got that much hair left to pull out

[TheScarfedOne]

Lol! I can't talk either

[SHimmer45]

looks like i will be holding off rolling this out until the summer holidays

[Bananas]

^ exactly what I was planning on doing probably after results day (just in case)

[MrMat]

Don't have that luxury unfortunately as most of our Secondary Schools use Exams Organizer

 

Doesn't really give us much of a window to get all the upgrades completed!

[vikpaw]

Don't have that luxury unfortunately as most of our Secondary Schools use Exams Organizer

 

Doesn't really give us much of a window to get all the upgrades completed!

Use SOLUS 3 it's magic

[MrMat]

Use SOLUS 3 it's magic

 

We do!!

[SHimmer45]

in the past under support from our LEA i did it about a week before results days and then waited for patches.... if they appeared.

 

would it be better to bring this forward then as we use exams organiser