[sims] Sims - CTF Import Queries

[cgilmour]

Hi,

I received a CTF file from another school - after importing I found that a number of fields imported incorrectly

 

a) the adresses of pupils imported incorrectly e.g. just a house number or a town instead of the full address.

 

Looking at another CTf file which imported successfully I notice that a successful file from another school has the following xml

 

11

some street

Some Town

Bedfordshire

AB1 2CD

United Kingdom

 

 

 

For the inavalid format it is of the form

 

44 The Road Name

Some Town

Bedfordshire

AB1 2CD

Serco

 

 

Any Idea if I can quickly edit the CTf file e.g. then reimport to import the addresses? i.e. does Sims overwrite existing data on CTF import and what xml forms for address can it handle e.g. is there a missing schema definition somewhere?? .

 

b) The year data also came in incorrectly i.e. Year 11 instead of Year 12. Is this a manual edit in Sims or can I also find and replace this data in the CTf file so that the import will overwrite it.

 

Many Thanks for any help

 

Cheers

Chris

[creese]

It would be a hell of a lot quicker to manually edit the fields, why bother with reimporting the XML?

 

A CTF will not overwrite.

 

EDIT: The CTF could well be right and the sending school had the data wrong.

[cgilmour]

YEs - the sending school had exported the wrong year for the pupils but as regards manual editing - there's some 25 addresses to manually edit in Sims - hence why I was hoping to do a find and replace in the xml to reimport the addresses.

[creese]

Once a field is populated in SIMS the CTF is designed to ignore it, for good reason. So manual editing is the only way I'm afraid.

[garrysaddington]

Hi,

 

 

11

some street

Some Town

Bedfordshire

AB1 2CD

United Kingdom

 

 

 

For the inavalid format it is of the form

 

44 The Road Name

Some Town

Bedfordshire

AB1 2CD

Serco

 

 

 

According to the CTF file standard both of the above are valid formats for address. Perhaps SIMS has decided to deprecate the addressline format before the other suppliers or is not mapping them correctly to the BS7666 format?

[BatchFile]

There's an address convertor tool for CTFs from other MIS's - it's available from supportnet here http://support.capitaes.co.uk/user/detail.asp?params=%91%D5%CB%DD%E5%F3%9D%D7%E3%DE%D9%EF%99%C4%E5%E5%A0%C8%DD%D7%E1%F3%9B%B0%DC%D4%D5%DB%E4%E1%E1%A3%DC

 

but I downloaded it for you in case you can't find it XMLAddressLinesConverterV7_132_17006.zip

[creese]

There's an address convertor tool for CTFs from other MIS's - it's available from supportnet here http://support.capitaes.co.uk/user/detail.asp?params=%91%D5%CB%DD%E5%F3%9D%D7%E3%DE%D9%EF%99%C4%E5%E5%A0%C8%DD%D7%E1%F3%9B%B0%DC%D4%D5%DB%E4%E1%E1%A3%DC

 

but I downloaded it for you in case you can't find it [ATTACH]8043[/ATTACH]

 

Am i right in saying that would be okay for the future but would not overwrite the ones already imported?

[BatchFile]

Am i right in saying that would be okay for the future but would not overwrite the ones already imported?

 

Probably - but there's no harm in (taking a backup and) giving it a go anyway...

[cgilmour]

Thanks to all!... I ran the tool (quite neat!) and converted the input CTF files.

 

I then deleted the naff addresses associated with the students and reran the CTF import ( selecting pupils address only) and it imported correctly formatted addresses - great!

 

I'ts a lot quicker to delete addresses for a group of pupils then enter new ones manually.

 

thanks Again

Chris

[garrysaddington]

There's an address convertor tool for CTFs from other MIS's - it's available from supportnet here http://support.capitaes.co.uk/user/detail.asp?params=%91%D5%CB%DD%E5%F3%9D%D7%E3%DE%D9%EF%99%C4%E5%E5%A0%C8%DD%D7%E1%F3%9B%B0%DC%D4%D5%DB%E4%E1%E1%A3%DC

 

but I downloaded it for you in case you can't find it [ATTACH]8043[/ATTACH]

 

Begs the question "Why is the tool's functionality not integrated with the CTF import utility?"

[Banjo]

Begs the question "Why is the tool's functionality not integrated with the CTF import utility?"

 

Why the Dfe/DCSF would spec two CTF address versions is the real question, Capita went with one version & Serco the other.

[creese]

Why the Dfe/DCSF would spec two CTF address versions is the real question, Capita went with one version & Serco the other.

 

Sounds incompetant to me. But I'm sure it's not

[PhilNeal]

It's not clever at all to have an either or. SIMS went for implementing BS766 standards (as opposed to free text) and there is a validate from a central database option. It's pretty easy to go from BS7666 to free text but the other way round is tricky to say the least.

 

The pre-processor was developed to cope with the ambigous specification and was meant to be temporary because there were plans to move completely to BS7666.

[garrysaddington]

Why the Dfe/DCSF would spec two CTF address versions is the real question, Capita went with one version & Serco the other.

 

I think it's probably historical (although Phil would probably be able to put us right on this), where the original version years ago was the addresslines. The DFES wanted to change to BS7666 but suppliers have been slow to change. So both are still allowed.