SIMS Upgrade

[laserblazer]

Our Bursar is the SIMS Manager but asked if I would do the latest upgrade. I had a quick look and it says that all reports should be exported first and any broken or unused ones removed. Presumably then, I need to contact every SIMS user to see what reports they have created. The School Manager has 100s!

[Edu-IT]

Is this the Autumn release? Our upgrade documentation never said that.

[laserblazer]

Yes it's the Autumn release. The documentation I have is provided by our LEA.

[Edu-IT]

Yes it's the Autumn release. The documentation I have is provided by our LEA.

So was mine. Interesting that there's no standard instructions. I did the upgrade on Friday night and it seems to be working fine, and I didn't perform those steps.

[matt40k]

Never heard of this. I've heard it's worth exporting user defined reports when you move servers (really it's a fail safe). Only reason I can think of is the new reports will overwrite the old reports. But you should rename any Capita reports you change.

[vikpaw]

@laserblazer / edu-it - are you in the same LA?

 

i have never heard of this process for reports during an upgrade, though it makes sense to have a tidy up, though as you are no doubt aware you can only delete your own reports.

 

i export all of my reports individually as a back up, because some processes can corrupt the reports and especially the linked document templates.

 

you can also export them as a group, so it can be worth doing that, though if you have many, that could take some time.

 

ADDITION: To be honest though, if you have a full backup of the DB before the upgrade and you also back up the document storage, then there should be no need to separately back up the reports.

 

I find virtual machines really useful for backup / restore scenarios because it is nigh on impossible to restore just a tiny part of SIMS e.g. a marksheet template, single report, photo etc without having to restore the whole hog and lose a day's worth. I restore to a virtual server and then manually copy the template / data i need back into the live system, that way you don't lose data.

 

i find VMWARE Server satisfactory for this, albeit slow. It is free however, just bung it on a reasonably powerful machine that you don't need often. I used to run it on my local machine but it's best if you dont also need to use the host.

Edited December 7, 2009 by vikpaw
addition

[laserblazer]

I expect it is a belt and braces thing and maybe a way to get users to tidy up their reports. Iknow our School Manager's are a mess.

[PhilNeal]

A few years ago we did have a few customers loose reports in an upgrade. I suspect your support team is just being ultra cautious - we don't include this process in our procedures.

[Edu-IT]

@laserblazer / edu-it - are you in the same LA?

No, we're not.

[GREED]

Never had this, although Vik is right if you have a db backup it should all be fine.

 

We backup a few of the folders within the SIMS share every night too, such as the doc storage. Not sure if report templates are stored here? (Not the reports, but the word templates for them).

[vikpaw]

yep GREED - templates are in the docstorage too, hence when you make a new server (real / virtual) reports wont work until you move over the docstorage folder, and map it correctly.

[GREED]

Of course, I forgot that!

[vikpaw]

Soon, you'll forget all about SIMS, and then you'll forget about us, and turn into a 'borg, that just rings up schools trying to sell home-brewed software.

TRAITOR! :P

[GREED]

Funny that actually Vik I gotta tell you about this really good MIS system I built, looks exactly like SIMS and all that....

 

 

lol

[ReverentCreature]

Our LEA strongly advises that all user created reports are exported in case the upgrade corrupts them. Normally re-importing a report resolves the issue.

[MattMitchell]

If you've got the database and DOCSTORAGE backed up, and can restore to a VM somewhere, you should be covered. Exporting reports now and again probably isn't a bad idea anyway...