Migration to SIMS

[RoyG]

Manglement seems keen to migrate from Integris to SIMS - we had the glossy demo yesterday.

 

Can anyone give me a rough estimate of techie time spent per month on SIMS support and what technical issues we may have.

 

Although Integris is now a bit old & clunky it's rock solid & costs me hardly any time at all - just the odd update now & again.

 

RoyG

[Domino]

hmmm, how long's a piece of string..?

 

I'd say when you first get staff using it you'll be up to your ears with support, but thats true of any new system.

 

I'd say make sure you get all the training/support you can yourself, and be used to the system before you need to tell staff how to use it.

 

Also do yourself a favour and set up mediawiki on a internal server, with instructions on how to do the most often used functions (take register, find student details, etc) with lots of screen shots and annotations.

 

It'll save you time in the long run, as staff will learn to just check there first before bothering you with the same old question.

 

I'd say though, when SIMS is running along well, I have very little to do with it. Recent updates (move to SQL 2005, etc) have made the whole thing a pleasure to work with now, as oppose to the mess of a couple of years ago.

 

If your county do any techy, rather than user, based training I'd get on that too - its useful to know how the system works as a whole.

 

.....anything else you wanna know?

[zag]

I spend more time on sims upgrades than any software I have used in my life!

 

Their upgrade cycle is ridiculously frequent and really badly managed(way too often and too many small things that cause big problems). Upgrades often go wrong for no reason, and client machines need all sorts of special privileges to be kept up-to-date.

 

The biggest problem is capita don't seem to think ahead very far, 2gb limits on databases, upgrades to sql 2005 when 2008 is just coming out. Web parts that need to be bought as part of a complete vle instead of just a small app we can integrate into sharepoint. The list goes on.

 

Saying that, the software is improving and now we are on sql 2005 I can at least see a few years without major infrastructure upgrades to be needed.

Edited January 31, 2008 by zag

[Domino]

upgrades to sql 2005 when 2008 is just coming out

 

to be fair, you wouldn't go straight to a new, unproven (in a production enviroment) technology anyway would you?

 

its not like everyone immediatly upgraded to vista, and I'm sure I won't be using server 2008 until at least service pack 1

[sahmeepee]

If you can hold on until every module is running .net code against a SQL Server back end, you will probably have a more reliable SIMS experience. Of course, if you are over 40 you will have retired by then.

(har har)