[sims] Are you using Solus 3

[smalls001]

Are you using Solus 3

[vikpaw]

Haha no!

But a lot of people do.

[synaesthesia]

Yes, in all the schools I manage. Makes life so much easier. UI is still designed by someone who's never seen sunlight let alone a decent interface, but it's otherwise functional.

[Cache]

Yes and apart from a couple of odd issues I work around with in the new version, it all works pretty well!

[SHimmer45]

not using it yet its a planned change however. ive heard some horror stories about it however.

[neilenormal]

Likewise, yes in all the schools we support. I would echo the sentiment that it has been designed by "non school experienced developers. It has many annoying features, like being impossible to use/resize when viewed over an rdp session, like inconsistent programming in the screens, but on the whole it can be used to good effect. Do not sell it as something that will take the pain of upgrades away from non technical staff in the school office, nor as something that will be "totally automated". It is a work in progress. For an estate of tethered machines with "spot on" DNS, that never change it will be great. Not all our schools are like that, when you factor in real world issues like teacher laptops, two domain schools, firewalls, machine rebuilds/renames etc etc etc

[WingnutKid]

Just upgraded to Solus 3.7. Seems to be better than earlier versions of Solus 3.

[FN-GM]

No, It makes life much more difficult we are unable to push out the SIMS installer via SCCM with Solus 3.

[LeMarchand]

Yes, in all the schools I manage. Makes life so much easier. UI is still designed by someone who's never seen sunlight let alone a decent interface, but it's otherwise functional.

 

Ditto this. Though one of our LEA SIMS team was praising the interface - so it must make sense to some people...

[clockend25]

Yes. We moved back to SIMS in Easter having used CMIS/Progresso for a few years, and I was apprehensive about the deployment side of things having had a less than pleasant experience in the past, but I have to say the initial deployment and subsequent updates have gone through without any issues.

[PhilNeal]

I agree that the old interface was unintuitive. Personally I think the new one is pretty clear and efficient!

[localzuk]

I agree that the old interface was unintuitive. Personally I think the new one is pretty clear and efficient!

 

I'm not convinced. I just took several minutes trying to figure out how to add a deployment of FMS to a system which already had SIMS on it. The add button looks like it is for adding new targets entirely, rather than being also used for adding individual packages to a target system.

[superfletch]

Having used both S3 interfaces I don't like the new one. But I'll qualify that by saying only because it is a change to something I was familiar with.

 

Looking at it the new interface it does seem more logical with the sort of dual tabs at the top. I guess there are so many different places to go in S3 that it takes a while to get used to. It's like when they re-organise the supermarket and you can't find anything initially, you soon get used to it.

 

On balance I now prefer S3 over S2 but it's taken a while and there is still the odd occasion when I hate it.

[round2it]

Yes we use it but the UI was made by chimps, it does what we need.

 

at least we can install Sims discover and FMS in one go now

[synaesthesia]

I agree that the old interface was unintuitive. Personally I think the new one is pretty clear and efficient!

 

Try telling that to anyone that doesn't work for SIMS please, Phil. Several menus go round in circles or exist in different places - it seriously needs work. It's a step in the right direction compared to Solus 3 of old but it is counter-intuitive to anyone that actually uses it. If you like some proper input on exactly why this is the case feel free to reach out to your users - I'd be happy to throw some suggestions. Those dual tabs are the main culprit of the problem IMO.

 

K.I.S.S applies. Settings. Deployment. Reports.

 

Get rid of the whole Agents/Targets/Environment thing. Utterly pointless, those can be put in one section with a little common sense.

Edited September 25, 2014 by synaesthesia

[sparkeh]

Try telling that to anyone that doesn't work for SIMS please, Phil. Several menus go round in circles or exist in different places - it seriously needs work. It's a step in the right direction compared to Solus 3 of old but it is counter-intuitive to anyone that actually uses it. If you like some proper input on exactly why this is the case feel free to reach out to your users - I'd be happy to throw some suggestions. Those dual tabs are the main culprit of the problem IMO.

 

K.I.S.S applies. Settings. Deployment. Reports.

 

Get rid of the whole Agents/Targets/Environment thing. Utterly pointless, those can be put in one section with a little common sense.

Agree with this. The UI is still confusing and overly complicated:

 

• Why can't the Agents/Targets/Environment stuff just be on one page. It would even make more sense to go for a Sophos Console type of design where you have a list of machines on the left, info on those machines in the centre of the screen and have tabs that alter the info being displayed (rather than completely separate lists on each tab).
  
• Why under 'Agents -> Targets' do machines get a separate entry for each component they have targeted? Its irritating.
  
• Why do we have 'Agents -> Targets' *and* the main 'Target' section? Just put the info in one place.
  

 

And the deployment system is a mess that I don't have time to get into.

 

However, I must say that despite this I do prefer it to S2 now. However if we were just given the msi to distribute with something like SCCM as many people want then this would all be moot.

[Cache]

Try telling that to anyone that doesn't work for SIMS please, Phil. Several menus go round in circles or exist in different places - it seriously needs work. It's a step in the right direction compared to Solus 3 of old but it is counter-intuitive to anyone that actually uses it. If you like some proper input on exactly why this is the case feel free to reach out to your users - I'd be happy to throw some suggestions. Those dual tabs are the main culprit of the problem IMO.

 

K.I.S.S applies. Settings. Deployment. Reports.

 

Get rid of the whole Agents/Targets/Environment thing. Utterly pointless, those can be put in one section with a little common sense.

 

I agree mostly with this as well. To the extent that I actually prefer the old interface to Solus 3 more then the current one. Atleast in the old one, I could got to a section and know what I was expecting to find most of the time. Now to deploy an agent I can get roughly in the right area, but still have to click almost every tab in 3.7 to find out the exact bit I want, remember that I need to choose my domain and enter the username and password again before browsing for the computer otherwise I get duplicate entries for all my existing computers and then have to repeatedly enter my username and password to deploy it.

 

In the old interface I could go and enter my username/password once and I was done.