Hosted SIMS down?

[Ratcliffepg]

Sims Next Gen says no.....

[Homer]

Their certificate expired. Only issued a few minutes ago, to Cyber Security Leader | Imperva, Inc. with all of the various PPG sites as alternate names. Interesting setup... 

[bobsmith]

03/12/2025 12:29:22 GMT - SystemAdditional comments

03/12/2025 12:28:58 - Graham Ankin (Additional comments)
Good afternoon,

We are pleased to advise that we have identified the issue impacting on SIMS ID and access to SIMS Connected has now been restored for all users.

Work remains ongoing to restore access to SIMS Next Gen and a further update will be provided as soon as possible.

We apologise for the disruption and thank customers for their patience as work remains ongoing.

[skunk]

Next Gen is now back up, interesting reading on the SSL certificate:

 

[Ratcliffepg]

Poor... we have an on going inspection..... luckily we use Class charts for registration....

[Ratcliffepg]

[AnglianEdu]

We still can't download the latest SIMS version update to deploy across our sites, just gets stuck on verifying the download. 

[OkayiDave]

19 hours ago, Ratcliffepg said:

Meet back here on July the 1st then?

[psydii]

15 minutes ago, OkayiDave said:

Meet back here on July the 1st then?

I think we've found who is responsible for certificate renewals at ParentPay. 😆

 

 

It expires on 1st June.  We should meet back here at 31st May, and if the cert is unchanged, brief our schools to expect downtime for the following day.

Edited December 4, 2025 by psydii

[jthompson]

If you pay me an annual fee of £150 (minimum term of 3 years) I will let you know if the certificate is about to die.

[AHSS]

Is anyone else experiencing an outage right now? There have been a few blips over the last couple of days as well

[CHiLL]

It appears to be working for me.

 

Though I'd like to know who made the genius decision to reset user passwords and change the default version of SIMS from classic to NG on a Wednesday in the middle of term. That change went down really well here yesterday...

[jaydee]

Anyone else finding that random users can't get in to "old" SIMS via the SIMS Connected Launcher button this morning? This is after the SIMS Connected button was replaced with the SIMS Connected (NG) launcher tile yesterday, which goes straight in to Next Gen 😐

Edited January 28 by jaydee

[rossibIT]

Hi Jaydee, 

 

Yes we found that surprise yesterday but apparently it was told but I never saw the message. 

On the Nextgen page click the 3 dots on the top of the right hand side and select 'SIMS connected launcher'

 

 

[jaydee]

3 minutes ago, rossibIT said:

Hi Jaydee, 

 

Yes we found that surprise yesterday but apparently it was told but I never saw the message. 

On the Nextgen page click the 3 dots on the top of the right hand side and select 'SIMS connected launcher'

 

 

Ah I meant when users click the 3 dots then SIMS Connected launcher link , it basically comes up with a 404 page for most users (works fine for me weirdly). As far as I'm aware, it did work fine yesterday after the switch over but came in today and no luck

Edited January 28 by jaydee

[CHiLL]

We got forced to Next Gen by default before Christmas.

 

SIMS Connected did have issues this morning, we could log into SIMS ID, but Next Gen wouldn't load and thus we couldn't access SIMS Connected for SIMS.net or FMS. It appears to be working now.

 

Regarding the dots not showing, that can happen due to either them having an issue/downtime or sometimes pressing Ctrl+F5 fixes it.

[SIMS_Customer_Support]

39 minutes ago, jaydee said:

Ah I meant when users click the 3 dots then SIMS Connected launcher link , it basically comes up with a 404 page for most users (works fine for me weirdly). As far as I'm aware, it did work fine yesterday after the switch over but came in today and no luck

Hi @jaydee 

 

A subset of users were unable to access SIMS Next Gen and SIMS Connected between 09:00 and 09:30 this morning. Our teams identified the issue and carried out immediate remedial action. Service has now been fully restored, and users should be able to access the platforms as normal.

We continue to monitor performance closely. 

 

You can subscribe to portal updates via https://ppgsl.service-now.com/csm

[bobsmith]

So we just got hit by the new interface move.

 

phone call from random teacher - I can't get into SIMS - I'm justing seeing this new website!

 

there's no option to remove that tile and put the old one back that I could find - so I've had to send out an illustrated guide on how to get back to regular old sims to the entire staff.

 

cue our support team getting emails, phone calls and visits from confused staff for the next few days......

 

Does ParentPay (this weeks owners of SIMS) just really hate their customers?

 

If you wanted a step by step manual on how to destroy a successful product just do what the succession of owners of SIMS have been pulling for the last 10-15 years.

 

/rant over

[3s-gtech]

Not available in the Tile Store?

[bobsmith]

if you can find it let me know - I waded through every page of tiles and couldn't spot it.

Edited February 12 by bobsmith

[3s-gtech]

Hmm, mine still shows SIMS Connected on the home screen and Next Gen as a tile to add.

[bobsmith]

1 hour ago, 3s-gtech said:

Hmm, mine still shows SIMS Connected on the home screen and Next Gen as a tile to add.

 

from other threads I've seen it seems they are rolling it out to schools on some internal timetable of their own.

the tile that loaded sims connected has simply been replaced with one that loads next gen.

Be prepared for the changeover without any notice!

[3s-gtech]

1 minute ago, bobsmith said:

 

from other threads I've seen it seems they are rolling it out to schools on some internal timetable of their own.

the tile that loaded sims connected has simply been replaced with one that loads next gen.

Be prepared for the changeover without any notice!

That'll go well!

Meanwhile I can use the TPC version we use for Wonde, for now...

[TooOld4This]

22 hours ago, bobsmith said:

 

from other threads I've seen it seems they are rolling it out to schools on some internal timetable of their own.

the tile that loaded sims connected has simply been replaced with one that loads next gen.

Be prepared for the changeover without any notice!

To be fair, this was communicated to Support Units a while ago, but it looks like yours never passed the message on.

Parent Pay are desperate for schools to start using Next Gen, so are giving them an obvious nudge.

They’ve learnt the hard way with Next Gen adoption so they’re now forcing all schools to move to the New FMS. I can’t wait for the chaos of that changeover to start.

[bobsmith]

Hosted giving anyone else connection issues since yesterday - intermittently?