[sims] Autumn Release 2011

[vikpaw]

This is the latest on the pulled release, posted yesterday.

 

*** SIMS 2011 Autumn Release - Please Read 25/11/2011

 

We have completed our investigations on the Pastoral Structure changes caused by the SIMS 2011 Autumn Upgrade and can confirm that there is an issue.

Who is affected:

Customers who have Registration groups which have been in different year groups in the past. This could be caused by a number of reasons including:

1) At some point in the past the school have amended their pastoral structure to include a mix of Horizontal and Vertical Year groups. The registration groups would therefore have moved years from Year 1/Year 2 to Year 2 for example.

2) The school have decided to rename a registration group and assign it to a different year. In other words, instead of creating a new registration group for someone they have renamed an existing one and moved its year.

 

What effect does it have?: In SIMS it will appear as though a new Year has been created (for example Year 1/Year 2) and it will appear to take some of the Registration groups with it.

A hypothetical example of the end Pastoral structure view from an originally straight forward Year 1 and Year 2 structure might therefore be

Year 1

• Reg: Year1A
  
• Reg: Year1B
  

Year 1/Year 2

• Reg: Year 1C
  
• Reg: Year 2A
  
• Reg: Year 2B
  

Year 2

• Reg: Year 2C
  

We are working on producing an updated version of the SIMS 2011 Autumn Release that will not amend the Pastoral Structure. In the meantime, the existing SIMS 2011 Autumn release will stay withdrawn in SOLUS2 and SOLUS3 and we would urge customers not to upgrade to this release using any copies they might have made before it was withdrawn.

We are working on a number of solutions to correct the data. Customers are also advised NOT to attempt to resolve the issue in the software yet as that will only correct the data from today going forwards, not for the historical information which might have changed.

 

 

I will update this news item on Monday with further details when they are finalised.

Regards,

Jonathan Wood

SIMS Product Manager (Technical and Releases)

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[TD=class: tabletextsmall, align: left]Posted: 25th November 2011 by Jonathan Wood[/TD]

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[vikpaw]

So, i've been playing with the update - the broken one i downloaded before it got pulled. No pastoral structure issues on my data so thought i'd update on some of the features.

 

The new ability to add Tiers to staff is great. It adds a new section to staff details, section 10, and this just lists the tiers out of the pastoral structure so even admin staff can be allocated one. It's viewable by all staff by default, i guess that's why it's in a separate section so you could prevent access, not sure why you'd need to though.

 

I made up a false tier in the pastoral structure just for admin, so they aren't associated with any of the schools, as our admin are global. We could tick multiple tiers, but for some reports, we will want to just search for admin, so it works ( or will, hopefully) better this way.

 

The cool thing is Cover can now be filtered by Tier, so i don't have to tell primary school to add their absences late in the day so as not to affect the upper school cover. The downside is that we have to first go and allocate all staff to a tier in the staff section, it only automagically picked up the senior managers, i.e. head and deputy heads, from the pastoral structure. unless this error is tied to the issue in pastoral structures. Also in this version it's not affecting historic data even if i create new absence historically, but that's fine. Current stuff works and prints separately.

 

If any Capita lurkers are listening, then please add this filter to the missing registers homepage panel, please...

 

The other nice little treat is the ability to bulk change result sets in marksheets. don't need to use my script anymore !

The only slight issue is, you have to plan how you need it, as it does a blanket change across the whole marksheet, so if you want to progress a marksheet by a year or term, start with the last resultset and work your way back down. Do it in the wrong order and they all end up the same, but that's just common sense really.

 

[vikpaw]

The results are in, and patches are being sorted. The latest notification on the pulled release:

 

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[TD]*** SIMS 2011 Autumn Release - Please Read 01/12/2011

 

 

01/12/2011

We have concluded our investigations into the issues with the SIMS 2011 Autumn release and can confirm that two issues were present

1. The upgrade could change the pastoral structure of the school if a registration group has historically been in a different year.
   If this has affected you we can now confirm that it is safe to correct your pastoral structure within the SIMS software. A Knowledge Base Solution is being put together containing the details on how to do this and will be published here when it is complete. If you are unsuccesful in correcting the pastoral structure yourself please escalate this to us for further investigation
   
2. The Registration certificate will display an incorrect address for a student if the student either had no contacts or their primary contact had no address.
   A Patch will be created for this and its ID number will be published.
   

We will be releasing a new SIMS 2011 Autumn Release (Autumn 3) with these issues resolved by Monday the 5^th December. Customers can upgrade to this release from the SIMS 2011 Spring, Summer and previous Autumn releases.

Please be aware however that if you do upgrade to this new release (Autumn 3) from either of the two previous Autumn releases that whilst the Registration Certificate Issue will be resolved, you will still need to correct your pastoral structure if it has been incorrectly modified.

 

Once again, we apologise for any inconvenience that this may have caused,

 

Regards,

Jonathan Wood

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[matt40k]

*** SIMS 2011 Autumn Release 3 - Now available

 

 

An updated version of the SIMS 2011 Autumn release has been made available via SOLUS to

1) Correctly maintain the pastoral structure upon upgrade

2) Correctly display the addresses in a registration certificate where the student has a primary contact with no address

 

 

We would recommend that all customers upgrade to this release. Customers can upgrade from the SIMS 2011 Spring, Summer or previous 2011 Autumn releases to the SIMS 2011 Autumn 3 release.

[Avalon]

apologies if this has already been mentioned but I cannot find any reference to it.

 

Are SLG users able to install the autumn update? We usually have to wait for Capita to update SLG before we can update sims but since the autumn was withdrawn I have not heard anymore about SLG ...

[matt40k]

To quote the great Jon Wood:

 

SIMS Learning Gateway 2 (SLG2)

 

 

An update to SLG2 has been made available to ensure compatibility with the SIMS 2011 Autumn Release.

Customers on SLG2 should wait to apply the SIMS 2011 Autumn Release until the SLG2 Autumn Release has been applied to their system. Details on how to obtain this update will be distributed to you via email shortly.

There is also an update to the Active Directory Provisioning Service.

[vikpaw]

More fun: 2 More issues to take note of - a new release and an FMS issue.

 

Autumn Release 4 is now out which has an extra issue to do with Fees sorted:

 

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[TD][h=2]*** SIMS 2011 Autumn Release 4 - Now available[/h]An updated version of the SIMS 2011 Autumn release has been made available to Independent Schools and Northern Ireland Fees users only via SOLUS to

1) Correctly maintain the pastoral structure upon upgrade

2) Correctly display the addresses in a registration certificate where the student has a primary contact with no address

3) Correct an issue in Fees. The Transfer Bills functionality will now produce correct narratives for posting into the General Ledger System.

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Also there is an issue with FMS Autumn release that affects Academies who are not VAT registered. I wont bore you with the details, but take a look on SupportNet for full details.

[Cache]

Well I get an Autumn SIMS Database update yesterday, still waiting for the actual SIMS update though.

[matt40k]

Also there is an issue with FMS Autumn release that affects Academies who are not VAT registered. I wont bore you with the details, but take a look on SupportNet for full details.

 

Another lovely patch

[DrCheese]

This is getting stupid >.< ok it's fine now... ok it's fine now.. ok it's fine now! No really guys! *15 releases later*

[vikpaw]

Maybe i'll wait until the new year. spring time ish.

[matt40k]

This is getting stupid >.< ok it's fine now... ok it's fine now.. ok it's fine now! No really guys! *15 releases later*

 

Why? Are you using Fees Billings? Otherwise you're not affected and shouldn't need the new re-re-re-release.

[vikpaw]

If you are having problems, it might be worth a look at this forum thread on SupportNet: SIMS Errors

(34392) There seem to be a number of issues where SIMS is crashing out for various reasons. It is under investigation.

[Steven_Cleaver]

Cheers Phil I will email Gary with the issue and Case reference Number.

 

Please see below the issue (Vikpaw\Witch) we are having that was investigated by us and then more at our LEA support team (Excellent by the way) who kindly provided me with the exact info they sent see below;

 

"In Cover 7.

1. We have a class with a teacher(ST) and no room if we assign this teacher (ST) to cover another class we do not get the displace class option, this is a change from 7.140.

2. Cover is setup in half period mode if try and assign teacher(ST) to this group as well, we do not get the option to displace the room for this class and the class has !NCR, however if we do the same for the second half of the period we do get the option to displace the room and all is ok."

 

Thanks

[vikpaw]

Above post detailing issues, copied in from separate thread.

[Steven_Cleaver]

Above post detailing issues, copied in from separate thread.

 

Cheers Vikpaw I have noticed that you haven't installed the SIM's updates when they sort of say they should be installed by , I was just wondering how you get round Census as I always get told by our LEA if I don't install the SIM's updates we won't be able to do Census or some other school critical thing we don't use FMS so is usually something to do with Census or Exams.

 

Sorry if this is a bit off thread.

[glennda]

Cheers Vikpaw I have noticed that you haven't installed the SIM's updates when they sort of say they should be installed by , I was just wondering how you get round Census as I always get told by our LEA if I don't install the SIM's updates we won't be able to do Census or some other school critical thing we don't use FMS so is usually something to do with Census or Exams.

 

Sorry if this is a bit off thread.

 

He works in the middle east!

[vikpaw]

Cheers Vikpaw I have noticed that you haven't installed the SIM's updates when they sort of say they should be installed by , I was just wondering how you get round Census as I always get told by our LEA if I don't install the SIM's updates we won't be able to do Census or some other school critical thing we don't use FMS so is usually something to do with Census or Exams.

 

Sorry if this is a bit off thread.

As @glennda said, i'm in the middle east, so we're an independent and don't need to upgrade. Though we do have to keep at least 2 upgrades behind to maintain support, assuming we need it that is.

 

I'm actually contemplating Spring 12, if there are no big issues over the coming weeks. The changes to FMS and Fees look particularly appealing to us.

[Steven_Cleaver]

He works in the middle east!

 

Cheers should have noted location.

[matt40k]

I'm actually contemplating Spring 12, if there are no big issues over the coming weeks.

 

I had an issue with ISO image, upgrading from Autumn 11 (r1) to Spring 12 with it missing a patch file. Be interested if you find the same thing.

[vikpaw]

I had an issue with ISO image, upgrading from Autumn 11 (r1) to Spring 12 with it missing a patch file. Be interested if you find the same thing.

@matt40k - i just did what i thought was a successful upgrade of Autumn to Spring via iso and it all went swimmingly purportedly. However on login i get an error about a missing table 15. I did notice that on the upgrade patch list, it seemed to have a discrepancy in the numbering. e.g. you are on 3.782 and you can run these patch files 3.788 to 3.794 and then 3.794 to 3.800, so effectively missing 3.782 to 3.788 is that what you were thinking?

 

Going home in a sec' but could be an issue. I think it was Autumn first revision that i had on, or maybe the second, will have to check. is there an easy way to do that?

[vikpaw]

The iso that i've unzipped are labelled 032 and 033 but that isn't to say i didn't run 023. will have to see if i can run an interim dbupgrade file to fix it.

[vikpaw]

@matt40k you're right. V1 cannot be upgraded from. the 023 file name does an upgrade from 3.61.749 to 3.61.772, future revisions take it up to 3.61.778 and that is what is included and expected in the Spring 11 release. So if you never went to Autumn 1 that's fine you can leapfrog it. Hopefully nobody would have kept a borked install would they?

[matt40k]

If you look at the to and from version, it looks like they've either included a extra upgrade file or missing one - depending on how you look at it.

 

Just guessing, but it's a small enough patch to download and putting it in the setups directory sorts it - at least it did for me!! Still only affects people who are naughty and didn't take the Autumn 11 r3 release.