Sims Options Online

[the_quick]

Hi All

 

We use Sims options online. Last year it worked fine, but this year after students get a registration code, they login with their school Google account and they just get a blank screen just with option to logout.

 

We found that is possibly send a verification email, but we are not getting any of these at all.

 

Anyone had a similar issue?

[David44]

If you go to https://admin.sims.co.uk/ Options> Permissions, do the students who should be signing in have a tick in the student column? Good luck if they don't, you need to tick each one individually.

[the_quick]

Hi David

 

Thanks, yes we did check this before, as we had this problem last year. Still doesn't work.

 

We though it might be our email system, blocking some parts of the emails. But we changed one pupils email to Hotmail and try register him, receives email with invitation, but no email with verification.

But staff users have no problem at all, it looks like students are not being sent verification emails for some reason. We have reported the problem to Sims support, waiting for resolution

[skyline_17]

Did you resolve this as we are having the same issue

[lmrogers]

I have gone through problems with SIMS Options last week and some very familiar sounding symptoms. When users logged in and got the blank screen, we had to reinvite them to SIMS ID. Get the students to use an InPrivate browser window, copy and paste the link and invitation code and then verify their DOB. If at this point they got a blank yellow box above they had to restart the process of opening the InPrivate Browser windows, register with external service, click google/microsoft, sign in, paste invitation code and it would then verify DOB on the second attempt. After this they would have then been able to access Options Online.

 

This has happened the last 2 or 3 times we have used the system. I spoke with ESS support on the phone and they advised that they were having issues with the load on their servers which was causing these problems where by users were accepting invitations but the backend system was not completing the registration on the server. But then there was no helpful errors to point that out. Apparently they have since increased their server resources so time will tell.

[richieh]

We had something similar with one of our staff, who was registered and setup with the correct permissions from last year, but this year she just logged in using the Microsoft Logo and got a blank screen. Our SIMS support team said it was because she could authenticate with her Microsoft Account and log in, but her account was actually linked the SIMS ID account which is why she was getting a blank screen.

 

We had to go to https://admin.sims.co.uk/ and use Manage users - unregister users to unregister her then re-invite her, she could then re-setup and we made sure she used the option 'Register with an External Account' and link it to Microsoft (in your case Google)

 

I think if they put their e-mail address in the activate your account on the link page from the activation e-mail then it won't work when they sign in with external accounts, you get the blank screen.

 

Also looking at our student user guide for first time sign in it has changed since the last time we did options-online and it isn't quite as intuitive to get the students setup so they can login with their Microsoft Account, possibly due to the change to ESS?

[bobsmith]

We're doing it semi manually having collected their options choices via google forms.

 

We've used it properly before - but the number of students I had to manually sign up due to the above issues was beyond a joke.

 

 

The issue with server load would explain why we can't do more than a handful of changes before it hangs up on us at the moment.

 

Thank god this is the last time we have to use it. Provided we can get all the choices in and some blocking suggestions output in the next 7 days we'll be good. If not it's gonna be a start from scratch exercise on a different system

[the_quick]

Sorry, I didn't get back to this topic, no we haven't fixed. We used other ways like forms etc. Not impressed !

[sjatkn]

You also need to watch out for the KB0022325 bug. This says that do not give permission to Options Online before a user has registered otherwise it does not work. If you do then they go to Options and get an error message. We tried it again this year and found it was a very frustrating process for the timetabler, students, staff and parents. We gave up and used MS Forms.

 

I did raise the problem with our accounts manager at ESS about this and some other issues with Options Online and they now have Paul Featherstone looking into it with a view to fixing the problems if they can. All without any promises or timescales of course. I suspect, unless there are some guarantees, that we will not be using it again.

 

It would be much better if we could simply say to SIMS Online Services, that specific students will be signing in with their M365 account and that they are essentially pre-registered. Adobe managed to do it with Creative Cloud!