SIMS: Practical question on using Linked Documents

[TeacherDave]

Hi all

In our school we often ask staff to fill in a 'Round Robin' on pupils if there are concerns or if there are conversations/meetings with parents imminent. I would like to use the 'Linked Documents' function on SIMS to link the word document to the pupil file. However I can see a problem:

1. Staff A opens the file, then gets distracted (as we all do at times) and leaves it open on their computer.

2. Staff B opens the file and fills it in and saves it onto SIMS.

3. Staff A remembers to save the file and saves it onto SIMS.

 

Does this overwrite the one that Staff B uploaded, thereby effectively removing Staff B's comments? Would Staff B be able to open the document if Staff A had it open already (or get at 'read only' message like Windows gives us)?

 

I can see it going horribly wrong if Staff C, D, E and F have all written lengthy comments and then Staff A uploads their almost blank document over the top!

 

Thanks

Dave

[PhilNeal]

This wouldn't work for the reasons you describe. You'd be better off creating a comment Aspect on a marksheet.

[vikpaw]

For similar reasons, i would create separate aspects, for each teacher / subject to avoid 'collision'.

With linked docs, i think there was an option to sort of 'check-out' while you edit, and anyone else going in to open it would see that the document wasn't there. The user effectively saves a local copy, makes amendments then uploads again. If it's still there it should be listed in the documentation.

 

EDIT: meh, it's not great. open the linked documents panel and hit F1 - there's a brief description. I'm sure there used to be a different icon you could click on for editing, but maybe it's just that one that shows up when you've made a change, which indicates a new doc needs uploading to update the system.

Edited February 1, 2015 by vikpaw

[TeacherDave]

Thanks guys, I will investigate this further.

Dave