[sims] Office 2010 compatibility?

[zag]

Has anyone tried Sims and Office 2010?

 

We're running it here on a few machines and its superb but I'm a bit reluctant to roll it out to the office staff if its going to cause problems with Sims.

Edited April 29, 2010 by zag

[AIT]

in the same position. you try it first please and let me know ;-)...

[creese]

2010 is not supported yet, so not worth the risk IMHO.

[SteveB]

At a Capita Software Update Seminar yesterday, they mentioned that they would be supporting office 2010 (Office14) from 6 months from release date.

[featured_spectre]

It works on my machine no problem. Just because it isn't supported, doesn't mean it won't work. Windows 7 wasn't supported for a while, but it worked fine before they supported it!

[creese]

Release date is said to be 30th June 2010. So supported from the new year 2011.

[localzuk]

We're still rocking 2003, so 2010 is a way off yet... *Dreams*

[SteveB]

It works on my machine no problem. Just because it isn't supported, doesn't mean it won't work. Windows 7 wasn't supported for a while, but it worked fine before they supported it!

 

I appreciate that, but if a user starts experiencing issues with a particular element of reporting, Individual Reports, Profiles etc, you will be by yourself.

[zag]

6 Months is a long time to wait... did capita not have access to the beta and RC's?

 

The whole point of those I think is to get partners ready for release.

[PhilNeal]

We do not test on pre-release software as revisions completely invalidate all the test work that has been done.

[SteveB]

Ahhh! Beat me to it there Phil

[AyatollahPies]

Has anyone tried Sims and Office 2010?

 

We're running it here on a few machines and its superb but I'm a bit reluctant to roll it out to the office staff if its going to cause problems with Sims.

 

When you say it's superb, is that just your view or the view of the end user too? (Specifically the office staff)

 

If they will have to use it day in day out, I'd check with them first.

[localzuk]

We do not test on pre-release software as revisions completely invalidate all the test work that has been done.

 

What about RTM software? As it has been RTM'd (which is final release, to manufacturers) as of a week or so ago, that gives you several months before retail release. I'm struggling to see a reason for taking 6 months from retail launch, which is effectively (as RC's don't change much) almost a year after the nearly finalised version is launched, or 9 months from RTM before support.

[DrCheese]

We do not test on pre-release software as revisions completely invalidate all the test work that has been done.

 

no... if office was anything like Windows 7, any major changes that would affect developers are locked down by the RC build. Any fixes done afterwards are bug fixes only and even then are heavily tested to ensure it doesn't cause a change in behaviour. This is why a ton of software was working brilliantly by the time Windows 7 was released.

If a company's software wasn't compatible and wheeled out the "we don't test on pre RTM" line then customers just moved onto something that was. In this case, SIMS virtually owns the market so...

[zag]

Office 2010 is nice, especially the outlook update. Not rolled it out to staff yet but I can see the advantages already, hope they do as well.

 

I'll give it a go and see if it works

[featured_spectre]

I appreciate that, but if a user starts experiencing issues with a particular element of reporting, Individual Reports, Profiles etc, you will be by yourself.

 

its only installed on my PC and works fine everyone else is still rocking 2007!

[MACIT]

Speaking for myself, i would not recommend anyone go to office 2010 that is using Sims. The Sims.net package really slows down when it comes to ammending indvidual reports and as for report designer its pretty much slows to a crawl. Just unistalling it and putting it back to 2007.

 

I do agree though that Capita needs to support new releases of office faster than this. tThe final RTM for 2010 has been available for some time. Its fortunate other software developers dont do things the way capita does as if they did the world would grind to a halt everytime a new office release comes out.

[vikpaw]

We stayed on 2003 as i was concerned with 2007 and had some issues with it when it first came out and SIMS support wasn't there yet. We now have a dozen or so 2007 users and it's all fine.

 

We are planning to go straight to Win 7 with Office 2010, from XP with Office 2003. So far, i like Office 2010 a lot. 2007 is nice, and 2010 gets better.

 

Not had many problems so far with my testing of SIMS. All my templates are created in 2003, and seem to work ok in both 2007 and 2010. I've even done some edits and it's not slow on my experience. The templates open in compatibility mode when editing, and i'm trying out some more complex reports with rtf templates to see how they fare as all the file extensions are obviously different.

 

I seem to recall needing to patch SIMS before you could use Office 2007, so maybe something similar will be needed for 2010. Reinstall the base templates i guess, with any alterations to the built in macros.

 

So far it works ok, the extra fields and stuff goes into the Add-Ins ribbon though i do get one set of dropdowns on the left, and they are then repeated on the right too. Both seem to work.

 

I can't see that for general users it would be a problem. The most anyone is likely to need to do is view a previously exported report which runs fine, and export a marksheet to Excel, which i'm going to test today.

 

Worst case i'll leave an editing machine for reports with 2007 on it, and also will be leaving the server on 2003, until we migrate when i'll either go for 2007, or a dual install.

 

There are a few features that have been removed in Office 2010, but none of them seem to be relevant. I'd be interested to hear from anyone using mailmerge reports as that area seems to have changed a little.

[zag]

All of our admin staff are now on Office 2010 and no problems so far.

 

Its not that different from 2007.

[vikpaw]

When you say it's superb, is that just your view or the view of the end user too? (Specifically the office staff)

 

If they will have to use it day in day out, I'd check with them first.

 

showed it to management and they like it, not much different to 2k7. also people are quite keen to try out win 7 and office 2010 generally, must have some really good marketing this time round.

 

Head of IT (subject) just testing out a machine and if she gives it the thumbs up and i find no SIMS issues, we'll be going with it from the start of next year (Sept 2010).

 

so far, export of marksheets to Excel, went really well, formatted and unformatted. i've had someone in the office today writing reports in AM7 Individual Reports, i.e. comment aspects and it's all be problem free.

 

I've done some major template edits for AM7 reporting, and the only slow part has been when you first open it, after that it's fine. My templates are 38+ pages, full of at least 8 aspects per page. lots of report sections. so far the only problem has been the odd class teacher tag going astray and not printing the correct name, but i think that's user error, as some of our course names have changed so the tags have become invalid. the verify routing works okay too.

 

still need to do some rtf template work...

[pritchardavid]

Well for some reason 2010 does not work with the boradworks powerpoint files. Had this problem on a staff science laptop the other day. Another laptop installed by the same deployment image (windows 7) the only difference between the laptops were that I uninstalled 2007 after deployment and installed 2010.

 

Think it only needs macros, which were all enabled in the trust settings

[SYNACK]

Well for some reason 2010 does not work with the boradworks powerpoint files. Had this problem on a staff science laptop the other day. Another laptop installed by the same deployment image (windows 7) the only difference between the laptops were that I uninstalled 2007 after deployment and installed 2010.

 

Think it only needs macros, which were all enabled in the trust settings

 

Were you using the 32bit or 64bit version of Office 2010, some macros and extentions won't work with 2010 64bit along with a host of other stuff like mobile device syncing in outlook which is why we had to go with 32bit Office on 64bit OS.

[pritchardavid]

that could be it, was using 64bit, i'll have to test that one out then

 

 

thanks mate, didnt think about that, keep forgotting there are two version of office 2010

[vikpaw]

okey dokey, just to update on my findings above i'm using 32bit Win7 and 32bit Office 2010.

got a problem trying to run SIMS mailmerge report. cannot start a new one, open a template, or edit an existing one. tried different file types but the only one allowed to be opened is the .dot

no joy so far, getting errors like "No file is open", unspecified error, "unable to do that" sort of thing.

i managed to do one in office 2007 really easily, and am going to try and get it to work in 2010 today.

not a big deal as we don't really use mailmerge reports much and if we needed to, could always dump data to excel or a csv and use that as source data.

i would appreciate if any of the people using it now could try it out too, and confirm my findings . . .

i wondered if it could be a permissions thing, as by default, my user didn't have any write permissions to the program files folder, where the default templates live..., taking ownership and giving permissions didn't help..

[Stuart_C]

I sitll can't get 2007 templates into my reports. That would seem to imply a failure to support 2007 fully, let alone 2010.

 

Having said that I'm eagerly awaiting some keys so I can install 2010.