Office 2021 SIMS.net

[aac]

Hi there

 

Is anyone using Office 2021 LTSC yet and does this play nicely with SIMS as it is technically not supported on the SIMS technical roadmap.

[ConTheITGuy]

I’ve deployed it throughout our school to all teaching and admin staff and haven’t had any issues as of yet!

[aac]

Cool, I am considering deploying it this year but will have to stick with 32 bit version as I know that at the very least Sage accounts doe not play well with 64 bit editions of Office. Just to clarify you are actually a SIMS school?

[ConTheITGuy]

Yeah we are a SIMS school, I've had staff using both 64bit and 32bit versions of office 2021 and haven't encountered any issues as of yet. We do use SIMS FMS which didn't play nicely with office 2019 but worked fine with 2021.

[aac]

Thankyou, much appreciated.

[lafleur1977]

Thankyou, much appreciated.

 

I'm currently looking at upgrading to either office 2019 or 2021, but have the same issue as ESS still do not support 2021. Has it been working okay for you since upgrading, particularly with SIMS & FMS?

[ConTheITGuy]

I'm currently looking at upgrading to either office 2019 or 2021, but have the same issue as ESS still do not support 2021. Has it been working okay for you since upgrading, particularly with SIMS & FMS?

 

We’ve been daily driving office 2021 for over a year with SIMS and FMS and haven’t had any issues to date with it.

[aac]

Been using 2021 LTSC for over a year now (32 bit version) absolutely zero issues so not sure why they are still not supporting it. Our local LA is aware this is what we are using and have not flagged any concerns...

[lafleur1977]

Thanks for ConTheITGuy & aac - I think I'll look at 2021 as it has MS support until 2026. ESS are a pain with their roadmap, we just upgraded our SIMS server in Feb and they wouldn't accept WS2022, had to be 2019, and had to use SQL 2016 as they wouldn't support 2019 (not even listed on their roadmap). I raised a complaint about the migration work and they told me they now support SQL 2019 a week after we've upgraded our server...

[DrCheese]

Ignore whatever ESS say & just use the full fat version of Office 365. Don't use the LTSC versions, you lose out on so much.

 

We have the 64 bit version of it deployed (& have done for *years* now) and it works absolutely fine with SIMS & FMS

 

(From the SIMS ESS Roadmap - ESS recognise that a local install of Office applications under the 0365 licence takes place in schools. While our testing does not cover this scenario specifically, we continue to monitor any difficulties schools may raise via the Service Desk.)

 

Worst case you get issues you can drop back the odd few clients to the LTSC version of Office - I wouldn't want my whole school stuck on old builds of office just because vendors are stuck in the past

[lafleur1977]

Ignore whatever ESS say & just use the full fat version of Office 365. Don't use the LTSC versions, you lose out on so much.

 

We have the 64 bit version of it deployed (& have done for *years* now) and it works absolutely fine with SIMS & FMS

 

(From the SIMS ESS Roadmap - ESS recognise that a local install of Office applications under the 0365 licence takes place in schools. While our testing does not cover this scenario specifically, we continue to monitor any difficulties schools may raise via the Service Desk.)

 

Worst case you get issues you can drop back the odd few clients to the LTSC version of Office - I wouldn't want my whole school stuck on old builds of office just because vendors are stuck in the past

 

We have an OVSES agreement so I was thinking of deploying office 2019/2021. How do you find the office 365 package compared with office 2021 for deployment and features?