pjshots Posted November 19, 2015 Posted November 19, 2015 SIMS are pleased to advise that the SIMS 7.166 and FMS 6.166 Autumn 2015 Release are now available for you to apply. This release is necessary to run the Spring 2016 Census Returns. Autumn 2015 release_ Secondary_ESS.PDF
pjshots Posted November 19, 2015 Author Posted November 19, 2015 My Dep Head wants me to apply it quite badly, but I'm refusing at the moment.
SimonCygnetIT Posted November 19, 2015 Posted November 19, 2015 I have it running on a test bed with schools data and so far it's been ok. The only issue we have with deploying it is simply down to the recomendation to not upgrade until Autumn Censuses are approved by the DFE. Jim Haywood of Capita has now confirmed (on My Acoount forums) that if you do upgrade to Autumn 2015 you will need a patch and a latest fileset to do any amendments to the Autumn Censuses.
pete Posted November 19, 2015 Posted November 19, 2015 I'm waiting for more info on: Known Issue Please note that during our early release program we have identified an issue within Assessment Manager individual reports. We believe there is a conflict between the individual reports template and some versions of Microsoft office that have some slightly older .dll files. We are continuing to investigate, and will provide an update when we have confirmed this. In the mean time we would suggest you do not take the Autumn release if your office installation has a version of VBE7.dll (c:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\VBA\VBA7.1) that predates version 7.1.10.49. If you wish to update your office installation to take the Autumn release please make sure you run all available Microsoft updates. If you have any issues please contact your infrastructure support provider in the first instance. 1
SimonCygnetIT Posted November 19, 2015 Posted November 19, 2015 There is a post on the notifications on My Account [h=1]SIMS Autumn 2015 Individual Report Issue[/h]Giving you an update on the Assessment Manager Individual Report Issue 12/11/2015 We reported in our main release notification that we had discovered a potential issue between SIMS Assessment Manager Individual Reports and Microsoft Word 2013. We believed that the issue was with a particular file not being on the latest version: File: VBE7.dll Version: 7.1.10.49 Since the main customer release has been shipped, we have, to date, not received any further cases where MS Word crashes when the Individual Reports from Assessment Manager are run. Further information on the subject from customers has also indicated that they have upgraded SIMS to the Autumn Release, run Assessment Manager Individual Reports and even though the file is on an earlier version, the reports run fine. We can therefore only establish that this was an error in one particular hosted scenario, which running Office Updates resolves the problem. We therefore conclude that the risk to customers having issues running the Individual Reports is very low. It is perfectly safe to upgrade your SIMS to Autumn 2015 and if you do experience issues, please run all MS Office Updates (part of your Windows Updates inside the Control Panel, Critical and non-Critical). If issues persist, please log them with your SIMS Support Team. As a precaution, schools could perform their MS Office updates on machines most likely to use Assessment Manager before attempting the SIMS Autumn Upgrade. For more information about the release... If you want more information about the release, don't forget to look at the SIMS Release Hot Topic. Still have questions? If you still have questions about this issue, please log a call with the SIMS Service Desk. Regards Paul Featherstone Product Manager (Exams, Core and Releases) 1
winng Posted November 19, 2015 Posted November 19, 2015 Just watching and waiting..... maybe aim for Saturday 5th December (if only to avoid Christmas shopping)!
splattthecat Posted November 20, 2015 Posted November 20, 2015 We have started upgrading schools in Somerset, and it hasn't gone too bad so far. We are using SOLUS 3.10 for the upgrades, and it's coping much better with multiple SIMS / FMS databases than 3.9 did. A few download failures which we don't usually get, and several schools where the FMS upgrade hasn't run as the SIMS upgrade was still running (FMS is scheduled to run an hour after the SIMS upgrade starts).
ICTLady Posted November 20, 2015 Posted November 20, 2015 Couple of schools on the Data Managers Facebook group have reported problems with Individual Reports.
Simcfc73 Posted November 20, 2015 Posted November 20, 2015 I did mine last night but our data manager is off today
vikpaw Posted November 20, 2015 Posted November 20, 2015 I should take a look at that group... Aye. It's run by sisra people I think , but open and agnostic.
matt40k Posted November 20, 2015 Posted November 20, 2015 If they know VBE7.dll needs to be a certain version, why didnt they at least add in a check in the installer, oh wait... Never mind
ITGURU Posted November 20, 2015 Posted November 20, 2015 Update will be done on the last week of term like to let everyone else find the issues before we upgrade, especially after the dot net issue earlier this year when an MS update broke the date picker
CAM Posted November 20, 2015 Posted November 20, 2015 Aye. It's run by sisra people I think , but open and agnostic. Yeah I just joined. Got to wait for approval though.
Seb1780 Posted November 23, 2015 Posted November 23, 2015 Well, we've jumped in with both feet as our IT team didn't have the settings correct on SOLUS3 so we came in this morning to find the server had upgraded itself but a lot of workstations had not!
SHimmer45 Posted November 23, 2015 Posted November 23, 2015 I usually wait till the xmas break before upgrading wait for the bugs to get ironed out.....
markwilfan Posted November 23, 2015 Posted November 23, 2015 To be fair 7.166 has been out for weeks. It was release on 3rd Nov to us and we upgraded on 13th November after waiting a while for re-releases and have had no issues reported.
CAM Posted November 23, 2015 Posted November 23, 2015 any chance of a link to that group please? Can't at work but search for Data Managers in Facebook and it's the first result. I think someone at SISRA manages it.
localzuk Posted November 23, 2015 Posted November 23, 2015 Only 350?! That seems low. Half of Somerset should've been updated by now, and that's nearly that many!
PhilNeal Posted November 23, 2015 Posted November 23, 2015 @localzuk - it was a number I was given last week. Things do move quickly. I think we put people off by suggesting that the DfE Return should be completed first.
vikpaw Posted November 24, 2015 Posted November 24, 2015 any chance of a link to that group please? https://www.facebook.com/groups/sisradatamanagers/
vikpaw Posted November 24, 2015 Posted November 24, 2015 How do you monitor if a school has updated? It's been released to them on SOLUS and they have downloaded...? Is there a way that the system reports back ? I'm just thinking, I used to download but not install because I knew it would take time. Now I would only download the ISOs and check SOLUS for any patches. It would be good if there was a dashboard like some systems have, but I guess schools would have to opt-in or agree to this.
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