November Update 2008

[enjay]

Very true - and that "someone" should work for Capita and be part of a pre-release testing team.

 

That said, I still stand by my practice of letting other people go first - much like the old adage of "wait for SP1". Some people have to upgrade immediately, others want to; I don't fall into either of those categories, so I wait.

[kmount]

I have extensive experience in the open source software arena and trust me internal testing can't find every single bug in every release, it relies on real users in real environments. - That said, tier 1 support is required to minimise any impact caused and we have that with SIMS so I'm happy to run upgrades immediately and deal with any repurcussions.

 

I'm not saying you're wrong to wait, far from it, but I'd hate to see a world where we all did that through lack of the level of support I speak of, or through lack of confidence etc.

[matt40k]

Nov '08 v.2 really is need for secondary school.

[enjay]

I'm not saying you're wrong to wait, far from it, but I'd hate to see a world where we all did that through lack of the level of support I speak of, or through lack of confidence etc.

 

I wasn't suggesting that we all wait, merely that you should wait if you a) can wait and/or b) can't afford to deal with a bad update for whatever reason. I fall into both those categories, so I'll continue to sit here on the August release.

[enjay]

Nov '08 v.2 really is need for secondary school.

 

Not quite true. Nov 08 v2 is needed by those secondary schools who have to do school census.

[zag]

So has anyone installed Nov v2 yet? Any issues?

[ChrisP]

Phil Neil should offer a bloody apology and good reason every time this happens.

 

I DELAYED UNTIL LAST NIGHT to move to November, watching the forum looking for the usual its broke post, even though I was getting pressured for it as it’s a required update for us.

 

We have to download the ISO and apply from CD, why couldn’t they have given me the download link for MAIN2 when I called for the URL YESTERDAY, or at the very least told me to hold on for a day or 2.

 

I have both Technicians going round the school and manually upgrading the workstations, that don’t upgrade themselves, even though simsperms has been run on all of them AND sims is launched in the correct way.

 

Now I have to do another upgrade again tonight and the techs will have the same job to do again tomorrow as my Sims manager is telling me it’s broken our rewards system and other things.

 

It’s bloody August all over again, you truly are amateurs Capita.

[matt40k]

I would be looking at getting your SIMS support team to come out and have a look.

 

You should be downloading it via SOLUS, which you can automate and if clients aren't updating I would get that looked at. I would guess if you've been installing manually from a CD your SIMS setups path in your sims.ini would be incorrect. I would be suprised if it took any good SIMS team more then a day to fix all your "bugs".

 

If I am correct and your setups path is incorrect let me know and I can provide a script to fix this.

[enjay]

So has anyone installed Nov v2 yet? Any issues?

 

Not me, I'm going to hold out for v3 :-)

[matt40k]

Not quite true. Nov 08 v2 is needed by those secondary schools who have to do school census.

 

The content was if you've applied the Nov '08 release, you'll need to do v.2, really, if your a secondary school. I don't know many schools that don't need to do the school census. After all, the government and such use the Census return to determine funding as well as 3rd party who use the Census to collect information.

[enjay]

The content was if you've applied the Nov '08 release, you'll need to do v.2, really, if your a secondary school.

 

Ah, I see what you meant.

 

I don't know many schools that don't need to do the school census.

 

2000+ independent schools.

[matt40k]

Compared to the 22,000 that do... still amazed they don't have to submit it to collect. Still I suppose they have there own method.

[ChrisP]

You should be downloading it via SOLUS, which you can automate and if clients aren't updating I would get that looked at.

 

Solus doesn’t work for us behind ICT solutions (last time i checked). Last time we tried getting it sorted, Capita said it’s not our problem as ICT Solution was using multiple proxies. ICT Solutions said it’s not our problem it’s bad coding by Capita, both were aware of the problem, no one wanted to take ownership of it; ergo CD Updates.

 

 

I would guess if you've been installing manually from a CD your SIMS setups path in your sims.ini would be incorrect.

 

We are updating the server from CD using solus, not the clients.

 

The problem is not consistent, local connect.ini on a client that upgrades and one that doesn’t are both the same, a redirect to the sims network share.

 

 

Thanks

Edited November 18, 2008 by ChrisP

[matt40k]

@ChrisP

 

On a workstation (with the error), go start, run, type sims.ini hit enter

Note the setupspath.

 

You SIMS server appears to be missing an SQL instance name, which may cause issues (DocStorage mainly). Tho it does "work".

 

SOLUS is a HTTP service. If your downloading direct from Capita, I would ask your LEA (or such) to setup a mirror. Perhaps looking at using HTTPS which would prevent dig. sign failures due to the proxies caching on top of the no-cache and limiting the ips etc.

 

I would recommend creating a no-cache rule on the cache boxes for SOLUS.

 

PS: SIMS support I mean Capita\LEA\such.

[zag]

I have both Technicians going round the school and manually upgrading the workstations, that don’t upgrade themselves, even though simsperms has been run on all of them AND sims is launched in the correct way.

 

Just add your teachers and admin AD OU's to the local power user group and Sims should upgrade itself no problem forever.

 

You really should not need to spend technician time installing the updates manually.

 

Oh and as mentioned previously, its always best to wait a week or 2 after a capita release for them to find all the bugs and re-issue the release Its hardly the first time this has happened.

[matt40k]

Oh and as mentioned previously, its always best to wait a week or 2 after a capita release for them to find all the bugs and re-issue the release Its hardly the first time this has happened.

 

I'm sure we don't know what you mean

[zag]

Installed November Update 2 today all seemed to go well except for the odd permissions error on client machines.

 

The server update went smoothly and was pretty quick for a change.

[Opensource]

Updated our test system Monday and it seemed OK. How much of it CAN you exercise?

 

Live update last night went OK.

 

It was more of a rush job than I would like as our exams officer could not print exams cover and this one fixes it. And it did too:D

[moggy]

I had planned to do the upgrade on Tuesday afternoon, but after a rush of blood to the head I decided for the first time to do it remotely from home (you don't get the problem of trying to get all the teachers off the system!).

 

So on Monday evening I started, luckily the V2 package was there so I ran that. It seems to have gone without too much trouble - just 4 or 5 clients didn't upgrade properly so I had to re-install.

[matt40k]

Oh how we all miss the button where we could just kick everyone off the database while we do the SIMS upgrades!

 

I've aways state SIMS will be offline from 4pm on the day of the upgrade. Stop the MSSQL service, backed up, disconnected the network cable, started the service, run the upgrade then plugged the cable back in. You do ofcourse need to send a lot of reminders so when they moan about losting data, you can say, well don't say i didn't warn you, also you need to have it re-downloaded.

 

Remember, check any machine that doesn't auto update at next logon. There is no reason why it should happen. An extra few hours of investigate now saves you having to keep going back and visiting each sims upgrade... specially if they are annoying people!

[AyatollahPies]

Been running the V.2 upgrades for the past few days and flying through them. Don't think we've ever run them so quick. No reports of any issues. Aside from needing to pull it and re-release it, well done Capita.

[matt40k]

Nov wasn't pulled. Just for the record.

[WithoutMotive]

Just checked my work email and have been given the green light to install the November Update. Ours goes to the LA first for them to fiddle about with first. I'm sure it gets to us more broken than it was.

[jcollings]

Just for the record the November release(s) do break reporting on staff absences. I have a report that ran fine to tell me all the absences for staff and now it doesn't. The response is "oh yes - it MAY be fixed in December or January release."

 

Very useful as we prepare for the Schools Workforce Census pilot!

[kmount]

In what way doesn't it work?

 

Our SWC related reports function ok post upgrade?