[sims] Can WONDE sync ParentPay? if not what can?

[coolhands]

hi can anyone tell me where / how to run the report which is an xml and find it to upload manually?

 

I have the report in sims so can go Reports>Design report, open it and run it. It says it created it but I can't find it / the xml version of it so I can upload to parentpay manually? I can find a 'File' named 'parentpay2020' which I guess is as a result of running the report, but it is not xml. I tried renaming it to file extension .xml and it seems to be ok, is that sufficient? Is that what I am meant to do if I want the xml version of it?

 

 

any ideas? I've searched everywhere including my user profile

 

here's how the report output is setup:

 

 

edit

 

I tried uploading the renamed by me xml file to parentpay but it says failed. I don't know if it's something I'm doing wrong (ie the xml is no good) or not

 

Edited May 26, 2021 by coolhands

[coolhands]

hi

 

well in answer to my own question above, where to find the xml, I will post my solution here for future searches: you have to click through the Design Report in sims until the output screen ('Define Presentations') and where it says 'Filename' I clicked the little box to say 'Allow these settings to be changed at run-time'. This allowed me to select the file path to save the report as an xml and find it, see pic when you click run. It also makes me think that previously it wasn't actually going anywhere. (Although as pointed out by others that shouldn't actually matter as they scheduled task doesn't run the report? I don't understand that)

 

(edit - when you get the xml you upload to the Communications>Files area, not the manual upload area which wasn't clear. ps change an item eg give a student FSM as I think each upload it would have to sense a difference otherwise it fails automatically!).

 

(edit 2 - after all that they came back to me and said I should have uploaded the template! Which is not what they asked for lol. So I outputted the report as csv and now uploaded that. Some of the headings are named differently from the csv example she sent me eg they have '*AdmissionNumber' as a heading whereas sims is 'Adno' so don't know if that is causing the problem? But the report is their own report imported to our MIS so silly if so)

 

(edit 3 - it appears the problem may be they thought we were CMIS and we are in fact SIMS. Fingers crossed!)

 

 

• One question if anyone is reading: What should be the location that the report outputs to? Is it C:\Program Files (x86)\ParentPay
  

 

Edited June 4, 2021 by coolhands

[bobsmith]

 

as it's actually missync running the report you don't need to specify anything. see above.

 

edit - well you would see above if my picture didn't get removed when posted.....

Edited June 8, 2021 by bobsmith

[coolhands]

ok well to sort-of close this, it is now working. But only because my IT person has got the scheduled task to run from the MISSync that is installed on my local machine. Currently polling every hour I will reduce frequency now. He cannot get it working from the MISSync installed on the sims server. So whether that is because it connects to the internet differently or what I don't know.

 

proof!

 

[robk]

Can anyone confirm if they have managed to get this to work with Hosted Sims? I can get the manual sync to work, but the schedule does not seem reliable.

[thimon]

Can anyone confirm if they have managed to get this to work with Hosted Sims? I can get the manual sync to work, but the schedule does not seem reliable.

 

We’re hosted with SCOMIS SIMS, can confirm we’ve got ParentPay setup as a twice daily scheduled task that works.

[robk]

Can anyone confirm if they have managed to get this to work with Hosted Sims? I can get the manual sync to work, but the schedule does not seem reliable.

 

Coming back to this one...

 

We have ESS (capita) Hosted SIMS, so the missync app is installed on site on a VPN server, which links back to the ESS server farm.

 

Manually clicking sync works, but the scheduled ones all fail to connect.

 

Does anyone know a way round this?

[mikemcsharry]

Looks like the merger was approved. https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/montagu-slash-parentpay-merger-inquiry

[coolhands]

Mine is proving not very reliable. The Task Scheduler on my PC appears to running it correctly at the times I've set as triggers. But many times there is no upload to the parentpay website (when I look at the Uploads history). Does anyone else have that? ie some days there's simply been no upload (it's not there as Failed). It's very random but I would say less than 40% are being uploaded.

[thimon]

If there are no changes or additions then it won’t show up in the history log, even if it completes successfully.

[coolhands]

Ah I didn’t know that, thanks