How to reset default Academic Year for all users

[MaggieMilligan]

Hi there

 

Does anybody know how to push all users into the correct academic year on SIMS by default, without having to log into every account separately. Across our staff we have most people on the wrong year!

 

I am aware I can remove their permissions to change their own AC year, but this doesn't push them into the current year first, it locks them into the old year they are in, which is worse!!

 

Can't believe their is no 'overide' facility for this.

 

Any help gratefully received

 

Maggie

[Esteban_Child_of_the_Sun]

I asked Capita about this a couple of years ago. They said they could develop a patch to do that for £600 (ish). Unsurprisingly we declined.

[MaggieMilligan]

WOW:scared:!!!! Bit cheeky as the problems is a failing on their side to begin with!

 

If they come back to me with anything free, I'll let you know!

[PhilNeal]

Are you sure your calendar is correctly set up with term dates?

[dapaulio]

Not sure if this would work but I am just going to throw it out there.

What happens if you archive the academic year. (in line with your housekeeping procedures of course)

 

you can add a couple lines to the sims.ini to load a specific year in NT6 but don't think it is possible within SIMS

Edited May 17, 2016 by dapaulio

[MaggieMilligan]

Good suggestions, but I had already archived all but the last couple of years and people some people are in 2019.10!!!!

 

We did think about the ini file as you said, but while it has an area for the NT6 it doesn't have it for the academic year - you would have thought Capita could build this in but our advice has been that we have to get every staff member to do this themselves ..... that'll work!

 

Thanks though

[bobsmith]

Just to confirm, you're talking about Tools > Academic management > set Academic year?

 

This doesn't affect day to day operations as far as i know, would only be an issue for the admin staff who make class changes etc.

[Nickfinn]

Hi Maggie,

 

There is a good reason for not defaulting back to the current Academic year, each time a user logs back on, especially if they are doing some work in a different Year and get side tracked, it would look like they had lost their work. However, there is a highly voted change request to show the Academic Year the user is working in, so it is very clear they are not in the current Academic Year, this is planned for the Autumn 2016 release.

 

I appreciate the change is not going to help you right now, in the mean time can you send me your case number at [email protected], and I'll chase down your case for you.

 

Kind regards

 

Nick

[MaggieMilligan]

We are Bob, and while it doesn't affect day to day usage it affects reports with predefined 'current' year filters - for example, 2 of our SLT were running that same Lesson Monitor attendance report with exact parameters and getting different figures, then I discovered one was in 2010.11 and one was in this year! I have also had reports where the year group of students has been displayed incorrectly (ie; last year's year groups) where there are predefined filters in the background

 

Problem is, they don't know the data is wrong because they would never think to look at the AC year, or know if it would affect their report.

[MaggieMilligan]

Thanks Nick, I don't have a case number as I just went through our local authority help desk, but I will forward my trail to you.

 

I understand the reasoning for not defaulting back for a very small number of staff (timetabler, SIMS managers etc. who deal with curriculum management) but there are very few staff who ever work outside their academic year so a reset button would be great!

 

Glad to hear that this year identifier is coming in though, that will definitely help

[Esteban_Child_of_the_Sun]

We had a situation a couple of years ago where nursery staff were trying to create CTF files for leavers but the "leavers current academic year" filter on the CTF export screen was bringing up pupils from many years ago. Capita told us to change the academic year but back then you couldn't get to the academic year menu route in a nursery. In the end someone from Capita remoted in and went to a table in the DB and just changed the "Current academic year" for all staff to the current one. It looked like quite a simple change (which is why I asked Capita for a patch to do the same thing again next year) but in the end they just made the academic management menu route available to nurseries to solved the problem.

[MaggieMilligan]

Shame they didn't share the DB fix instead! Okay if you have a small number of staff, but when you have about 150 sims user editing every single member is unreasonable!

 

Nick above has been in touch so hopefully things will move in the right direction starting with this visual to show you what year you are in, after the next upgrade.