[sims] SLG - Access denied and any other advice

[Griff]

Alright,

 

So we have had SIMS SLG for about 2-3 years and it has never been used. I am now tasked with getting it up and running but after playing around with it again today I can see why I gave up on it before its extremely clunky and very very very slow. Anyway enough moaning..

 

I keep getting Access denied when I log in as any teacher do they need to be in a specific group or something for this to work?

 

Also any general tips/advice/documentation on how to make the thing look and feel usable would be great..

 

Thanks

[BKGarry]

Scrap it and get Bromcomms Teachers Web Folder for staff and their MyChildAtSchool for parents, I found it a far more polished off system that works very well.

[creese]

Has it been fully updated?

[Griff]

Scrap it and get Bromcomms Teachers Web Folder for staff and their MyChildAtSchool for parents, I found it a far more polished off system that works very well.

 

hahaha we went from SIMS to Bromcom now we are back on SIMS soo....yeah

 

Has it been fully updated?

 

I thought Capita did the updates or is there another process I have to complete?

 

Thanks for the replies

[creese]

 

I thought Capita did the updates or is there another process I have to complete?

 

 

There is a separate process to updating SLG. We stopped using it months ago, but it should be more than a couple of upgrades off SIMS version.

[Griff]

Logged it with support waiting for the call back

 

Not suprised it was ditched its pretty clunky and not very user friendly but thats what you get if you use Sharepoint..

[PhilNeal]

Strangely enough I had a conversation with one of the mods on here on Friday who sang SLG's praises!

[BKGarry]

Personally, I cannot give a comprehensive overview of SLG, I used it 3 years ago, as part of a very complex BSF setup, which is now slightly less complex (the LEA pulled the ICT contract) and I found it frustrating and unintuitive at the time, and IMHO I thought bromcoms MCAS was better for our parents than SLG.

 

But u also fund sharepoint online hard to use, and as such never touched it.

[matt40k]

You have to remember SLG is a web part\App for SharePoint and SharePoint is more of a framework and neither are a out-of-the-box solutions. Saying SharePoint is clunky and not very user friendly is untrue. If you look at successful SharePoint setups you'll notice they don't look anything like the out-of-the-box SharePoint setup. It's not that they haven't heavy customized it, it's that they've planned it correctly and set all the options correctly. SharePoint is very flexible, almost to a fault. With that said, would I use SharePoint in a school. Prob not, why, well unless your going commit to it, it's worthless. And I don't mean throw money at Capita! The problem is it's a framework, if you think about it in terms of PHP, you can get a PHP developer, but if your using a framework like Zend\Laravel, you'll be counter productive if your PHP developer is not following the framework rules, so you need to get a web designer who knows SharePoint. SLG certainly isn't set and forget which I suspect most people were expecting.

[Griff]

Strangely enough I had a conversation with one of the mods on here on Friday who sang SLG's praises!

 

I don't have a problem with SLG as a concept I just have a problem with the amount of work involved in getting the thing in a presentable state for use in school this is more of a criticism of the amount of resources the school needs to commit to the project. Sharepoint is a complex beast and I don't envy the team working on the backend of things but compared to other products I find it difficult to work with however saying that I do realise not many products offer the same level of customisation as sharepoint hence why its so popular globally.

 

@matt40k - You're right maybe my expectations were for a more out-of-the-box product. The school have definitely under estimated the amount of commitment needed to get this working how we want it. When I say clunky I am alluding to the manner in which you have to configure the front end I find there a many clicks needed to achieve something that on similar 'platform' would be far easier/quicker however I conceded these other platforms don't carry the same amount of flexibility that sharepoint offers. Maybe I will retract my clunky/not user friendly comments until I have it up and running

[Bananas]

Alright,

 

So we have had SIMS SLG for about 2-3 years and it has never been used. I am now tasked with getting it up and running but after playing around with it again today I can see why I gave up on it before its extremely clunky and very very very slow. Anyway enough moaning..

 

I keep getting Access denied when I log in as any teacher do they need to be in a specific group or something for this to work?

 

Also any general tips/advice/documentation on how to make the thing look and feel usable would be great..

 

Thanks

 

Have you manually run the provisioning script, when you provision new users in Sims it's not instant in SLG. There should be a shortcut on your server desktop to privision users instantly, try that. If it's not that are you putting the the full username in ie abcd.smithf?

[Griff]

Have you manually run the provisioning script, when you provision new users in Sims it's not instant in SLG. There should be a shortcut on your server desktop to privision users instantly, try that. If it's not that are you putting the the full username in ie abcd.smithf?

 

Yeah mate all good found the shortcut yesterday cheers

[vikpaw]

Strangely enough I had a conversation with one of the mods on here on Friday who sang SLG's praises!

 

I bet i can guess who that is

 

Yeah mate all good found the shortcut yesterday cheers

 

That's good if you got it working now - they do need to be a specific OU which the provisioning script should do for you. I thought it should run on a schedule though, and could actually be initiated from within SIMS. Worth checking if you're going to pursue using it.

 

You can use other third party tools with SIMS to replicate SLG behaviour - they do have lots of partners and they are all mentioned in this forum in one place or another so no need to name drop

 

The one current benefit is that you have access to the SIMS app which is FREE with SLG - so ask for that, it looks way better, though functions may be limited currently.

 

Also, if you are interested in skinning your sharepoint installation i met a guy a while back who designed or had some product that would do that for you, i can dig out the details if you need. I think the website was down for update when i last looked.

[Griff]

I bet i can guess who that is

 

 

 

That's good if you got it working now - they do need to be a specific OU which the provisioning script should do for you. I thought it should run on a schedule though, and could actually be initiated from within SIMS. Worth checking if you're going to pursue using it.

 

You can use other third party tools with SIMS to replicate SLG behaviour - they do have lots of partners and they are all mentioned in this forum in one place or another so no need to name drop

 

The one current benefit is that you have access to the SIMS app which is FREE with SLG - so ask for that, it looks way better, though functions may be limited currently.

 

Also, if you are interested in skinning your sharepoint installation i met a guy a while back who designed or had some product that would do that for you, i can dig out the details if you need. I think the website was down for update when i last looked.

 

Cheers Vik, I just setup the script on a scheduled task found some good documentation on SLG via another LEA site which I have been skimming through. I think our main objective is just to get staff using it for remote work then push on from there. Link here if anyone else is interested.. https://learning.calderdale.gov.uk/SLG/ResourcePack/default.aspx

 

I just spoke with Capita and they are getting someone to fix our theme as it had a few white spaces in strange places. But I wouldn't mind grabbing those details off you mate if its not too much trouble

[Bananas]

Nice link chap, very handy

[Schoolcomms]

I just have a problem with the amount of work involved in getting the thing in a presentable state for use in school this is more of a criticism of the amount of resources the school needs to commit to the project.

 

We can't offer the number of configuration decisions that some other systems can, but if you are looking for a more out of the box solution for providing information to parents and students then we might be worth a look.

 

From a standing start, we can have you set up in less than 20 minutes with parents able to log in to a website or smart phone app and seeing the SIMS data you want them to see. Give us another 10 minutes and we can have you collecting for trips and lunch money on there as well if you like.

 

Edited June 10, 2014 by Schoolcomms
grammar

[Griff]

We can't offer the number of configuration decisions that some other systems can, but if you are looking for a more out of the box solution for providing information to parents and students then we might be worth a look.

 

From a standing start, we can have you set up in less than 20 minutes with parents able to log in to a website or smart phone app and seeing the SIMS data you want them to see. Give us another 10 minutes and we can have you collecting for trips and lunch money on there as well if you like.

 

 

Thanks for the info, we are more interesting in just getting our teachers on there plugging in data. We use ParentMail for trips/money...etc