[sims] Reports - Cause SIMS to crash

[Edu-IT]

Would anyone running the latest version of SIMS .net be able to try the following for me.

 

From the reports focus, there's a report that produces a list of all the pupils in a year group. I think this is a built in report. When you run this you choose on roll, leaver or ever on roll etc and choose a year group. If you run this for one year group then close out that report and go back and try and run it again for the next year group SIMS .net throws a wobbly and you have to close down the whole application in order to run the report again.

 

Is this the same for you?

[vikpaw]

Not sure what you mean mate, can you be more specific please.

From the reports menu, you can run reports, in here there might be built-in ones that could give you those choices. I don't have a built-in one for this, but do have my own year list report.

The other way would be a student list report, e.g. general list, and you could filter that by year group. This report might be easier for you to use and hopefully not crash the system.

[Edu-IT]

Sorry, I was doing it off memory.

 

Somehow you can get to a 'focus' option then from here there's a report to output students list. I thought this was a built in report but perhaps not. Either way, when running this report you choose a status (on roll, leaver, ever on roll) then a year group (1,2,3) and then run it. If you choose on roll then year group 1 the report runs. You cannot then however go back to run the report on roll year group 2 as SIMS throws an exception.

 

Does that make sense?

 

[vikpaw]

That's a normal data report which is mostly likely handmade. It would say CES is the supplier if it was built in. Hand made ones can go funny, it might be timing out doing a filter or something, or running out of memory. Usually, it outputs the data to word / excel and then should be fine. You have to close the document or save as, before running the same report again, perhaps there could be some minor permissions issue where it's not allowing you access to the template again.

 

Do you get a fault code? Search for solution could have a clue, or the 'more details' button could have revealing info.

 

Unless the format it comes out in is particularly specific you would be better off with the student list reports that came out a few upgrades ago. I don't see the option in your image, which means you either don't have permission to run them, which is odd as they should be for all, or you are on a very old version of SIMS. Do you use custom permission groups?

[vikpaw]

You could design your own new report based on that old one and see if it's any better, and / or change the parameters slightly, like make it default to on-roll, as if not on-roll they wont be in a year group anyway.

 

Also, if you can't see the error, it sometimes happens to me, you might have to ALT+TAB to fine the hidden window.

 

Off home now, but will check in later to see how you get on.

[superfletch]

You have to close the document or save as, before running the same report again, perhaps there could be some minor permissions issue where it's not allowing you access to the template again.

 

As Vik says, you have to close the document (and template) the first report produces (normally a word or excel document) before you can run the new report or it will say something like "Check the previous report is not still open". Are you definately doing that?

[Edu-IT]

That screenshot was one I grabbed from Google to show where I was talking about. The report is CES.

 

As Vik says, you have to close the document (and template) the first report produces (normally a word or excel document) before you can run the new report or it will say something like "Check the previous report is not still open". Are you definately doing that?

Yes. Definately.

 

The error is Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

[Edu-IT]

Focus > Student > School List by Year Group is the name of the report.

[superfletch]

Does it occur when you run it for a particular group or only when you have run it more than once (as you've described)?

 

Also - since it is a CES report try reimporting the Capita standard reports:

 

Reports | Import | Browse | Pick the latest version of "Predefined Reports" | Import.

 

This should overwrite the report template in case there is an issue there.

[Edu-IT]

Does it occur when you run it for a particular group or only when you have run it more than once (as you've described)?

 

Also - since it is a CES report try reimporting the Capita standard reports:

 

Reports | Import | Browse | Pick the latest version of "Predefined Reports" | Import.

 

This should overwrite the report template in case there is an issue there.

Only when you have run it more than once.

 

We recently did the SIMS upgrade so the reports have been reimported.

 

Does it do this for you or not?

[vikpaw]

Okay, found the report now. It does not do that for me, i can run consecutively, with no problem. It's rather slow, i'd still try the new style reports which are from Student list as mentioned before.

 

I'm on XP with Office 2007 on top of Office 2003.

[Edu-IT]

I'm using Office 2010. Do you have a machine to test that?

[vikpaw]

yep, hang on. win 7 i take it?

[vikpaw]

Win 7 / Office 2010.

Not only can i recreate but i think i can solve it for you too.

Is there any chance that the logged in windows user used to be a windows XP user? When we had this situation that was the cause due to problems with the roaming profile storing application data - now appdata differently. It also didn't help that that was a folder we redirected.

Try a user with a non-roaming profile, or the main [domain] Administrator account ( which is usually local profile ), and i reckon it will work for you.

I had exactly this issue with running photo reports for all of our users that were here when we had Win XP.

Try running a photo report and i reckon you'll get the same issue.

[vikpaw]

I've just been toying with some issues we've been having and the network manager thinks it's possibly due to some corruption in the appdata folder. We're going to try deleting parts of that folder and force a recreation, so the whole profile doesn't need resetting. I reckon it's going to be the Office folder or subfolders that are at fault.