[sims] SIMS ID/ self-onboarding....

[mikelj99]

Hi - has anybody gone through the self-onboarding process for SIMS ID to O365 with SDS & OneNote integration?

Would be interested to hear how easy or otherwise you found it....

Cheers

[lmrogers]

I'd be keen to hear how people have done this as well

[Esteban_Child_of_the_Sun]

I work for a SIMS support unit and we've done it for some of our schools (which as we support multiple sites has complicated the process). The help site (https://id.sims.co.uk/support/) is reasonable, and we currently have 5 schools using various bits of the integration with O365 etc.

There was quite a bit of back and forth with Capita, where by we had to do something, then log a call for them to do something, wait then do the next task but they are slowly automating processes or making them self-service through their website.

Were there any particular things you wanted to know?

[lmrogers]

So I'm having an issue where by SDS was setup by my predecessor and it had been working and synced across data. Then when the academic year rolled over it seemed to promote all the years/classes correctly, but it has not synced acrossed any new users or provisioned the new classes/groups correctly. I recreated the SDS profile through SIMS ID but still getting the same error before where it says "[TABLE=width: 968]

[TR]

[TD=width: 968]A value is required for property 'displayName' of resource 'User'" and "

The student could not be added to the class. Confirm the class SIS ID and student SIS ID is correct and that the class was in scope for sync."

 

Have you come across these errors before?

 

[/TD]

[/TR]

[/TABLE]

[Esteban_Child_of_the_Sun]

I've not come across that one before. The process starts in SIMS Services Manager, I'd suggest looking over the logs SSM produces to see if there are any errors there. I'd also recommend logging a call with your SSU/Capita now as you can always cancel it if you sort the issue before they get back to you.

[lmrogers]

With SDS when it creates the classes from SIMS it seems to have created 2 Office 365 groups per class. One with seemingly just the teachers and another with the students as members as well, should this be the case?

Also emailing these Office 365 groups does not appear to be working?

[mikelj99]

Had something similar, yes. We deleted the sections (groups) and recreated the profile and reran SDS. Now the sections look OK (other than the fact that they seem to be called "-untitled class") but the members are all missing!

Capita alluded to being aware of this issue and trying to sort with MS.

My own view of this is that it seems pretty clunky, almost a "beta" feel to the SIMS ID onboarding. There are also mixed versions of Capita documentation around as well so be careful to find the latest.

[lmrogers]

I was going to go through and delete all the groups and recreate and resync SDS but I think that would make me worse off by the sounds of it!

 

I will have to give Capita a shout and see if they actually have a solution.

[mikelj99]

Monty Python springs to mind....aaay, group members ?! You were lucky ! We used to dream of group members....

:-)

[chrisjako]

any update on this?

 

Had the same issue, "untitled class" groups with no members which is on office365, then the same class name on SIMS ID without "untitled class" which has all the members however is not loaded onto office 365

 

Had a case open with capita since end of september, seem to be getting pie'd by them on both emails and calls

[mikelj99]

According to our LEA, Capita developers are aware of both issues and “speaking to Microsoft”. Has been dragging on for ages, to the point where I am considering baling out of SDS. Did they ever bother testing it I wonder....Painful.

[lmrogers]

So for my issue I had to log a case through here https://edusupport.microsoft.com/support and then I have ended up in communcation with our SDS Deployment Manager, who I never knew existed.

 

We are still having issues but he has been good at communication and remoting on with me.

 

I don't know how it can be so difficult for Capita and Microsoft to work out. I worked with Salamander at a previous school and it managed to do it just fine. If only I had the budget for that here.

[mikelj99]

We had same with Microsoft, but he was unable to do anything (I think he perceived the issue to be a Capita one - certainly the Untitled Class bit as there's a ref to this in Capita's API documentation I think)

[mavhc]

So for my issue I had to log a case through here https://edusupport.microsoft.com/support and then I have ended up in communcation with our SDS Deployment Manager, who I never knew existed.

 

We are still having issues but he has been good at communication and remoting on with me.

 

I don't know how it can be so difficult for Capita and Microsoft to work out. I worked with Salamander at a previous school and it managed to do it just fine. If only I had the budget for that here.

 

Capita never finished reading Windows 3.11 Programming For Dummies.

[chrisjako]

I'm scrapping all hope of capita sorting this and about to pull the trigger with salamander SDS - spent the last few days cleaning up our AD ready for the extraction

[lmrogers]

I'm scrapping all hope of capita sorting this and about to pull the trigger with salamander SDS - spent the last few days cleaning up our AD ready for the extraction

 

https://www.salamandersoft.co.uk/sds/

 

Is that what you're going to use the free utility one? Or have you purchased a full Salamander package?

 

If its that free one I'd be interested to know how you get on with it.

 

Thanks,

[AndyC]

We are using Azure to sync to 0365 for email accounts, SDS and OneRoster for groups. However there are duplicate groups with no owner and no members in the duplicate. Capita seem to think its a Microsoft OneRoster issue. I'm stuck in loop between Capita and Microsoft to find the solution. Anyone else had similar issues ?

[lmrogers]

We are using Azure to sync to 0365 for email accounts, SDS and OneRoster for groups. However there are duplicate groups with no owner and no members in the duplicate. Capita seem to think its a Microsoft OneRoster issue. I'm stuck in loop between Capita and Microsoft to find the solution. Anyone else had similar issues ?

 

I am having the same issue and I did notice that in SIMS Online there are duplicate groups/classes in there. I had a remote session with Microsoft who also saw this and basically they say that if there are duplicates in there then thats what SDS pulls across. Capita then basically said you must have duplicate classes in the on prem SIMS as it syncs from there but we have been unable to track these down as yet.

[mikelj99]

Gave up in the end. Capita were hopeless. Blamed Microsoft who blamed Capita.

[AndyC]

Many thanks for the reply. I will look into our Sims system and have look. I will reply with any results too.

[AndyC]

This search lists all the problem groups that have no owners and no members that are being pulled from Sims by SDS.

School Datasync\Groups\sections (Advanced Search)

Status tobedeleted

SDS is pulling the groups with the tobedeleted attribute and syncing with O365 and the OneRoster API.

 

Is this something in Sims that can be resolved to prevent this from happening?

I have do have a case open with Capita but as of yet not found a resolution.

 

Any help would be appreciated.