Jump to content

Issues with Impact and IDManager - First time thread from a newbie so please forgive


Recommended Posts

Posted

First things first - I'm not a tech guy, I'm a humble receptionist, but it has fallen on me to try and sort the issues we're having with Impact and IDManager. A google search has led me to this forum, and I'm hoping that my inexperience with the more hardcore computer stuff will be forgiven.

 

What there seems to be is a complete lack of communication between IDManager and Impact. For example, ticking someone for Free School Meals in IDManager doesn't bleed through to Impact, which is causing issues in the cafeteria since the child in question doesn't come up as entitled to FSM down there.

 

We're also having issues with registering temporary cards, or any new cards for that matter, to accounts. I would always just do it through IDManager and had no issues until recently. Basically what happens is that I can still scan in and register a card to an account, but it will never be picked up as registered to the tills or revalue machines. I'm assuming this is linked to the communication error between IDManager and Impact but obviously I could be very wrong.

 

If you need more information, just ask (= Sorry for the very basic language but as I say, this is really not my area of expertise.

Posted

On you cunninghams server normally in canteen on the desktop you should have something called update impact. run this and it will update impact manually from Idmanager. But sounds like the service is not running to automatically update things for you.

 

Give the Cunninghams Technicians 01564 829999 a call and they should dial in a fix

Posted

Do you not have a company that supports this system?

 

I assume you can login to IDManager on the till? I'd double check the connectivity from the till to the machine with IDManager on it and vice versa. Do you have an IT guy on site? If so then they should be able to do this for you.

Posted

Cataclismic - I have the answer for you (I think!) and it is in terms of the BioStoreUpdate.exe on the server. What server are you running? (2008? 2003?). You need to tell your IT guy to add a scheduled task for it.

 

For instance, the location of our file is "D:\Cashless Catering\Impact\BioStoreUpdate.exe" and the argument is "/C". This file runs every hour which updates our biostore and impact etc.

 

Give me a PM if you need some help

  • Thanks 1
  • 2 weeks later...
  • 3 months later...
Posted
Cataclismic - I have the answer for you (I think!) and it is in terms of the BioStoreUpdate.exe on the server. What server are you running? (2008? 2003?). You need to tell your IT guy to add a scheduled task for it.

 

For instance, the location of our file is "D:\Cashless Catering\Impact\BioStoreUpdate.exe" and the argument is "/C". This file runs every hour which updates our biostore and impact etc.

 

Give me a PM if you need some help

 

This may be long dead but just verifying the above tip works a treat. Had to sort out the same thing as manually running bioupdate was becoming tedious - that /C switch is just what I needed to know. For some reason Cunninghams seemed incapable of getting the task to work themselves.

They also wanted to charge call out for installing ID Manager on additional machines when it was all a simple MSI and pointing to the licenses.

  • 4 weeks later...
Posted

Not sure whether to bump this or start a fresh thread, but :

 

Does anyone know the switches involved to automate exportphotos.exe (preferably with year groups checked)? I can't find any materials about it online whatsoever..

 

Thanks!

Posted
Does anyone know the switches involved to automate exportphotos.exe (preferably with year groups checked)? I can't find any materials about it online whatsoever.

Which exportphotos.exe is this, and from which application/vendor?

 

Peter

Posted
Which exportphotos.exe is this, and from which application/vendor?

 

Peter

 

Swift reply!

 

It's '\Cashless Catering\Impact\Data\exportphotos.exe', drags the pics from (I presume) Impact which have in turn been synced from ID Manager. It's a Cunninghams setup.

Posted
Swift reply!

 

It's '\Cashless Catering\Impact\Data\exportphotos.exe', drags the pics from (I presume) Impact which have in turn been synced from ID Manager. It's a Cunninghams setup.

Ah, so it is - I have Cunninghams but I hadn't come across that .exe before.

 

I had a quick look at our scheduled tasks on the bio server and it runs:

 

C:\Impact\SimsV4\ImpactSIMSProcessor.exe "Student Photos"

to get the photos - there's no tasks for exportphotos anywhere I can see.

 

I've done a search for "photo" in the Impact folder which shows a readme but that implies to me that you run it manually as a GUI - not every application has a command line interface so it's possible you can't run it on the command line as you presumably want to?

 

Thinking outside of the box, have you seen this app which might be useful to you depending on your project?

 

Peter

Posted

Wow.. they like messing about don't they, Cunninghams? All installs seem to be different.

 

There was talk of Impact syncing with SIMS but like so many things it never came to fruition. We've been using exportphotos.exe -which is a GUI yes, very similar to biostoreupdate.exe - and copying to a staff area which is then incorporated into SIMS, so Impact is the source of photos rather than SIMS.. Seems your app is for someone with the reverse to my problem, typically :rolleyes:

 

Thanks so far though!

  • 2 months later...
Posted
@Mr_Andy - can't believe I missed this one! We are all syncing with sims here, using groupcall jobs? Do you not have these set up or am I completely missing the point?
  • 4 weeks later...
Posted

Hi.

 

This is my first post here so I hope this is OK, if not feel free to ignore. I work in the dev team for Impact and thought I would help with some of the issues noted below.

 

...I had a quick look at our scheduled tasks on the bio server and it runs:

 

C:\Impact\SimsV4\ImpactSIMSProcessor.exe "Student Photos"

to get the photos - there's no tasks for exportphotos anywhere I can see....

 

This task exports any new or updated photos from SIMS to Impact for a non-Biostore school.

 

Swift reply!

 

It's '\Cashless Catering\Impact\Data\exportphotos.exe', drags the pics from (I presume) Impact which have in turn been synced from ID Manager. It's a Cunninghams setup.

 

The ExportPhotos program is a quick utility to get photos out of Impact and save them as files. It doesn't run as a command line program but if there was demand for this as an option when it could be added.

 

Many thanks.

 

Chris

Posted
Hi.

 

This is my first post here so I hope this is OK, if not feel free to ignore. I work in the dev team for Impact and thought I would help with some of the issues noted below.

 

 

 

This task exports any new or updated photos from SIMS to Impact for a non-Biostore school.

 

 

 

The ExportPhotos program is a quick utility to get photos out of Impact and save them as files. It doesn't run as a command line program but if there was demand for this as an option when it could be added.

 

Many thanks.

 

Chris

Welcome Chris.

 

How do you define a Biostore school - we are Biostore yet we use that method which you say is for non-Biostore schools?

 

Peter

Posted
Welcome Chris.

 

How do you define a Biostore school - we are Biostore yet we use that method which you say is for non-Biostore schools?

 

Peter

 

Hi Peter,

 

Do you use Biometric ID for the cashless system ?

 

Thanks.

Posted
That is interesting then ;)

 

What is your data flow - MIS->Bio->Impact ?

 

I'm not aware Bio gets to know about our MIS data other than somehow knowing that [My_Fingerprint]=[My_Person_ID] - AFAIK all that happens is ImpactSIMSProcessor runs nightly pulling in Staff and Students, plus Photos at the weekend.

 

Peter

Posted
I'm not aware Bio gets to know about our MIS data other than somehow knowing that [My_Fingerprint]=[My_Person_ID] - AFAIK all that happens is ImpactSIMSProcessor runs nightly pulling in Staff and Students, plus Photos at the weekend.

 

Peter

 

Aha - The BioStore / Non-Bio relates to who is the source of data to Impact, ID Manager or something else. You are running a BioStore 1 link (another wrinkle ;) )which is why you are using the non-BioStore link software. Your data flow would be

 

MIS -> Our Link (ImpactSIMSProcessor) -> Impact -> Bio

 

A BioStore 2 link is driven by ID Manager, so the flow would be

 

MIS -> MIS Link (GroupCall or our own) -> ID Manager -> BioStoreUpdate -> Impact

 

We try and fit in with however the site wants to work, which is why we can have quite a few variations :ear: . Hope this helps, any more questions let me know.

 

Cheers

  • Thanks 1
Posted
Aha - The BioStore / Non-Bio relates to who is the source of data to Impact, ID Manager or something else. You are running a BioStore 1 link (another wrinkle ;) )which is why you are using the non-BioStore link software. Your data flow would be

 

MIS -> Our Link (ImpactSIMSProcessor) -> Impact -> Bio

 

A BioStore 2 link is driven by ID Manager, so the flow would be

 

MIS -> MIS Link (GroupCall or our own) -> ID Manager -> BioStoreUpdate -> Impact

 

We try and fit in with however the site wants to work, which is why we can have quite a few variations :ear: . Hope this helps, any more questions let me know.

 

Cheers

 

Ah - I wasn't in charge when it went in so that's why I didn't know exactly.

 

Cheers

 

Peter

  • 3 weeks later...
Posted

Hi @ChrisMoore - apologies for the delay in response, the notification was lost in the mass of unread mail post-holiday.

 

I've been looking around at our setup and asked the office staff a few questions. It seems our system is completely independent of SIMS. Staff manually add the students into ID Manager, then bioupdate into Impact. The photos are then exported from Impact to use in SIMS.. seems like we're a bit backwards here and doing things manually which shouldn't have to be done.

 

ID Manager -> BioStoreUpdate -> Impact -> SIMS

 

What exactly would need to be done to sync the data and photograph from SIMS into ID Manager? I've seen Groupcall knocking around, but what is the recommended approach?

 

Thanks!

Posted
Hi @ChrisMoore - apologies for the delay in response, the notification was lost in the mass of unread mail post-holiday.

 

I've been looking around at our setup and asked the office staff a few questions. It seems our system is completely independent of SIMS. Staff manually add the students into ID Manager, then bioupdate into Impact. The photos are then exported from Impact to use in SIMS.. seems like we're a bit backwards here and doing things manually which shouldn't have to be done.

 

ID Manager -> BioStoreUpdate -> Impact -> SIMS

 

What exactly would need to be done to sync the data and photograph from SIMS into ID Manager? I've seen Groupcall knocking around, but what is the recommended approach?

 

Thanks!

 

You need to have Groupcall exporter to export the data from sims - then store locally on the sims server and have ID gateway collect the data and feed through to IDmanger which then feeds into Impact! Best bet is talk with cunninghams (if thats who you got it from) as they will need to setup the groupcall and id gateway stuff.

  • Thanks 2
Posted
Hi @ChrisMoore - apologies for the delay in response, the notification was lost in the mass of unread mail post-holiday.

 

I've been looking around at our setup and asked the office staff a few questions. It seems our system is completely independent of SIMS. Staff manually add the students into ID Manager, then bioupdate into Impact. The photos are then exported from Impact to use in SIMS.. seems like we're a bit backwards here and doing things manually which shouldn't have to be done.

 

ID Manager -> BioStoreUpdate -> Impact -> SIMS

 

What exactly would need to be done to sync the data and photograph from SIMS into ID Manager? I've seen Groupcall knocking around, but what is the recommended approach?

 

Thanks!

 

Hi,

 

Glennda has it right. Cunninghams use the GroupCall exporter to feed BioStore which then feeds Impact and other applications with account details and photographs if you need them. We use GroupCall or our own exporter for the first part. So the flow would be

 

SIMS -> Exporter -> BioStore ->Impact (and other systems if required)

 

This way you manage all data via SIMS and you have a single repository of data. From SIMS we can extract students, staff and pre-starts (for visits) - staff and students have the option of photographs as well.

 

If you contact Cunninghams and tell them you want a BioMetric link from SIMS they should be able to set this up for you - I may get involved myself if there is any data syncing to be done as part of the setup ;)

 

Cheers

 

Chris

  • Thanks 1
Posted

Brilliant - that sounds like how it should've been done in the first place.

Thanks for your help all, really appreciate it.

 

I'll get on to Cunninghams then!

 

Cheers

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now



×
×
  • Create New...