[sims] Problem printing reports

[UncleScar]

Before I begin with this problem description, I'll start with a caveat that I'm new to SIMS as a whole.

 

So, here we go:

 

We're having issues with one of our staff running reports through SIMS, essentially any time he selects/generates and prints a report it will work the first time through, but if he attempts to perform the same action (with a separate group of students) SIMS simply drops off the task after clicking "Print".

 

Winword.exe hangs about in task manager and will stay there until it's killed.

It doesn't appear to hang and I've searched high and low to see if it's leaving any temporary files about that might be causing an I/O error but there's nothing that I can see.

 

I've spent some time searching for any SIMS related temporary files I've found a lot of XML files relating to the students filtered for the reports, I've attempted to delete these and rerun the Generate/Print action but the same issue persists, the status bar appears and SIMS begins going through the motions of printing the report then it falls over mysteriously and the only solution we have at the moment is to restart/relog the user's machine.

 

I'm sorry if this is all a bit vague but as I said, I'm new to all this SIMS malarkey and this is my first foray into trying to fix this issue, I've had a good search about the forum here but I'm still none the wiser.

 

Windows 7 32-Bit Professional and Office 2010 32-Bit

[NorthernSands]

Hello @UncleScar, and welcome.

 

To aid diagnostics can you confirm the following:

 

SIMS Version: 7.13? (Help > About SIMS .Net)

Which reports: SIMS Reports (Reports > Run Report) or Individual Reports (Focus > Assessment > Individual Report)

How widespread: Is this just happening on one machine, or many? Does it work on the Server? Is it every report or just one?

How long: Has this just started happening? If so, any changes made to SIMS / Office / the workstation?

 

Versions of SIMS earlier than Spring 2011 (7.138) have had issues with Office 2010. Strange one, never-the-less...

[Brucy]

Is it just to that printer? I know I have a problem in individual reports where it will only print 7 then hang, however print to the photocopier or same printer with a different driver and it works fine

[vikpaw]

@UncleScar

 

It's worth checking out the other threads on this topic both here and on SupportNet. If you don't know, SupportNet is Capita's dedicated support site for SIMS, all the release info, documentation etc is available there. Here you can get more in depth support for links to other areas and third party apps that might link in, and get to mix with people from LAs and other bodies. SupportNet

 

With regards your issue, i've seen this as mostly to do with profiles, for us linked to windows 7. Try using the administrator account, which is usually with a local profile. Plus it eliminates permissions issues over folders on the C drive, mostly the Temp one if you are dealing with Office.

 

The key folders to delete would be my sims documents and tempsimsrpt, in the users profile.

 

Definitely give us the info @NorthernSands requested, in addition, the current OS and version of office.

[NorthernSands]

Windows 7 32-Bit Professional and Office 2010 32-Bit

 

in addition, the current OS and version of office.

 

 

Unless you meant the server!

[bossman]

@UncleScar:

 

Is the printer local or networked?

 

I have found that a local printer is much better than a networked printer for printing Sims reports or basically anything from Sims.

 

I think this is the way Sims interacts with the network print spooler indirectly and the office packages rather than directly having the print spooler on the workstation where Sims and the office packages are installed together.

 

I could be totally off the mark here and no doubt someone on here will have gone into greater depth but this is what I found out over the years.

[vikpaw]

 

Unless you meant the server!

 

No, just didn't read the full post again after seeing it last night on me phone. i'm an idiot!

[bossman]

i'm an idiot!

 

Here! Here! hehe! ;D

[UncleScar]

Thanks for the responses folks, I'll get the info you require and try some of the suggestions and let you know how I get on.

[vikpaw]

Here! Here! hehe! ;D

 

i wish i was there there there!

[UncleScar]

Okay, here's a few more bits of information and some details on what I've tried so far.

 

We're running SIMS version 7.138 Build 24, I have deleted the temporary folders mentioned by @vikpaw (mysimsdocs &tempsimsrpt).

I've set up a local printer and attempted to print the reports to that but still no joy.

 

The reports it has issues with are Individual Reports, if I click view I can see all of the reports in Word so it's clearly not having any problems actually generating them, it does however seem to be something to do with the SIMS -> Printer process.

 

I'm going to attempt running as a local user rather than an admin this afternoon and see what joy if any that brings.

[vikpaw]

Similar issues in a thread on SupportNet and so far everyone that has tried the administrator account has solved the problem, now they just need to fix it for their own accounts.

 

I know for us, it didn't matter that the logged on user was in local administrators group, nor if the user was a domain admin, it had to specifically be the administrator account. This was due to it having a local profile, so no issues with folder redirection etc. Running SIMS 'as administrator' was also not good enough. It's all the windows 7 security getting in the way.

 

Do you have the option to test with a different OS?

[UncleScar]

Similar issues in a thread on SupportNet and so far everyone that has tried the administrator account has solved the problem, now they just need to fix it for their own accounts.

 

I know for us, it didn't matter that the logged on user was in local administrators group, nor if the user was a domain admin, it had to specifically be the administrator account. This was due to it having a local profile, so no issues with folder redirection etc. Running SIMS 'as administrator' was also not good enough. It's all the windows 7 security getting in the way.

 

Do you have the option to test with a different OS?

 

We're going to try and run him as a local administrator as soon as we get a chance (unfortunately we can only test/troubleshoot when he's running the reports).

We're exclusively W7 now but if we have no luck with a local admin account I'll build an XP machine and test on that.

[UncleScar]

Sorry to double and necro post but I thought I'd post my eventual solution to this problem:

 

Because Sims dislikes roaming profiles and I didn't like the idea of creating a local admin account for our SIMS data manager to use, I elected for another solution.

Now, rather than printing the reports he exports them all as xml documents to folders in his area.

He then drags the folder onto a vbs script I wrote which sends them to our massive industrial printer in our Reprographics area next-door, so not only can he now print the pesky troublesome reports, he also prints them at a massively increased rate.

[vikpaw]

good to hear you got a workaround @UncleScar - it might be worth trying some of the microsoft hotfixes, which have helped, the majority of people with report printing issues: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/mis-systems/55154-office-2010-compatibility-5.html#post732035

 

The primary interop one didn't do much but the subsequent post, mentioning the office 2010 hotfix has been really useful, it's also part of the general june office hotfix roundup.

 

There are a couple of threads with scripted work arounds for exporting to file then printing, i had to make a couple of registry hacks to allow bulk printing in Windows 7, and allow right click print on xml files, so that they didn't just have to print a whole folder.

 

I'm just wondering, do you still upload to the DMS and if so, have you had any problems with that, i've got a feeling, that it might still be problematic until you can resolve the underlying issue.