Primary Framework Interactive Planning Tool

[Guest richard]

I have been asked to download and install on the network Interactive Planning Tool off the Primary Framework for literacy and mathematics section of the DFES Standards site here. I have got the file downloaded and its a self contained exe file that runs fine on my laptop and when I put it on a networked pc's local harddisk and logon with my administrator rights.

 

However it will not run if I put it on a network drive or try and run it via a shortcut on the desktop it just comes up with a message saying that the application cannot be found. The same happens if I logon as a member of staff even. They want to use this on tomorrow and and I need get this iinstalled on about 10 pc's.

 

I've done a bit of digging and the software seems to be using a variant of the Firefox browser "Minefield" and is completely self-contained. If anyone has any ideas I would really like to here them. By the way the PC's are running XP Pro SP2 and Viglen ClassLink 7

[Jobos]

The tool needs to be installed for each user and the proxy setting changed. Also after the install the tool overwrites itself so make a backup. As installing and changing the proxy settings is too much for some teachers here and I don’t have an MSI packager. I made a small vbs script to copy the files to the local profile. All the user needs to do is run the vbs script. You will need to copy the Application Data\Capita folder from a working machine to a shared location. Change the copyfolder to suit your system.

 

-------------------

 

Const APPLICATION_DATA = &H1a&

 

Set objShell = CreateObject("Shell.Application")

Set objFolder = objShell.Namespace(APPLICATION_DATA)

Set objFolderItem = objFolder.Self

 

Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FilesystemObject")

Set oNetwork = CreateObject("Wscript.Network")

 

foldername = objFolderItem.Path & "\Capita"

 

Wscript.echo "This may take a few minutes. Click OK to start"

 

fso.CopyFolder "P:\PC Planning Tool\Capita", foldername

 

Wscript.echo "Done"

 

 

set oNetwork=nothing

Set fso = Nothing

Set objShell = Nothing

Set objFolder = Nothing

Set objFolderItem = Nothing

 

--------------------------

[Jobos]

Forgot to say. You will also need to copy the planning tool application (650KB or so) from a working machine to a shared location as it doesn’t get copied over with the script.

[becktonboy]

jobos, I'm totally overawed that you've managed to get the thing working! what a 'mare.

I wonder whose bright idea it was to issue an *.exe without checking out whether it would work/how to get it to work on primary school networks where staff generally don't have admin rights?

 

All this hassle for a cut and paste tool which looks a bit better than Notepad and has no other advantages!

[Guest richard]

Thanks jobos. I thought I was the only one who was having a problem getting this pile of crap running

[eean]

I wouldn't worry about it too much. In my professional opinion as a primary school teacher, it's rubbish. Install it on one or two machines and teachers will quickly realise the same.

All it does, over normal copy and paste, is allow you to pick up copy multiple items at once - and it does this very slowly. My laptop is pretty high spec, I dread to see how it runs on a our p500s.

Basically, you need to find something that lets you copy multiple items at once - like the feature in office. Not sure that that works from IE but I'm sure there must be a shareware program out there that does the same.

 

You'd have thought if the government were spending the millions on relaunching their primary strategy, they'd give you a decent program to do it with - something that has all the objectives built in and I can drag and drop in quickly. Oh, hang on... the reason is possibly in the App Data path: 'Capita'!

[spacecadet]

Hi - I'm having problems with the interactive planning tool too :? . How do you run the vbs script? Is it complicated?

[enjay]

Ah rubbish - I've just been asked to install this too. Looks like I've either got a mare on my hands or I'll have to explain to the new Head of Primary that it's not possible on our network. Grrr.

[becktonboy]

Nick, spacecadet and anyone else considering installing this waste of bytes, just put it on a local install, show it to one of the peiple who want it installed, let them use it, then ask if it is worth half a day or more of your time to get it up and running.

[enjay]

show it to one of the peiple who want it installed, let them use it, then ask if it is worth half a day or more of your time to get it up and running.

My time is free to them, so they will say yes...

[Jobos]

The manual way of installing this is:

 

Download and save file from Standards site and Install on one machine.

Copy the folder C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Capita to a shared location.

Copy Planning Tool.exe (651KB) to said shared location.

Save attached install.vbs file to said shared location.

Change line 14 of install.vbs to suit network setup.

Tell users to run install.vbs and thereafter run Planning Tool.exe (651KB)

 

The install.vbs copies the files to the local profile and this will need running on every machine the user uses unless you’re using roaming profiles.

install.vbs

[crc-ict]

I'd have to second what every one here is saying about it being crap. It doesn't work properly on a lot of my standalone XP machines and even the teachers agree it is crap.

 

As an aside, it appears to be a dirty hack of Firefox, presumably from fiddling with source. I had a problem on a couple of Acer laptops with missing DLLs, and it threw up error dialogs with 'firefox.exe' in the title. Also, if you go into the options dialog, it refers to 'Minefield', which appears from a quick Google to be a development platform for future versions of Firefox. The GUI is very Firefox-ish too.

 

I wonder if Mozilla are aware and happy, or if it was a similar caper to the infamous copied Iraq WMD dossier??

[Guest richard]

By the way it hates Vista by the sounds of it. One the teachers tried to install it on her nice shiny new Dell running Vista Home Premium had it crap out on her last night at home. She wanted to see if I would try and intsall it on my home box as it has Vista Ultimate installed.

[becktonboy]

Nick, you need to consider your position.....

[enjay]

Nick, you need to consider your position.....

Excuse me?

[becktonboy]

Sorry for any confusion: I found the idea that someone in your school could leave you with the feeling:

My time is free to them, so they will say yes...

quite outrageous. I have some idea of and respect for your input to your school and the wider ICT community from your posts here and elsewhere.

 

Did I misinterpret the implications of what you were saying?

[enjay]

@Becktonboy: No, I think you got it about right. "Outrageous" is perhaps a little harsh, but you're on the right hymn sheet :-)

 

The thing is that if I say "I can do this, but it will take me four hours of solid work", there are some people who would walk away from that conversation having heard "I will have it for you in a few days" without giving much consideration to the other tasks which would have to get shelved in order to do it. Some people have a (partly understandable) narrow view that causes them to focus solely on their own subject or their own bit of the universe and not the "bigger picture". Thankfully these people are not senior to me :-)

[alonebfg]

by the way the tool is firefox in a crappy coding and they have not even hidden the fact or given mozilla any credit (someone could be in trouble) if you ctrl-alt-del then right click on aplications on the tool and the click goto prosses and it take you to ????? have tried it on two machines and its firefox. Not happy as they have not given mozilla any credit for coding and its made a right hash of my test machine which did have firefox on it and it seems to have crupt my plugins as they try to work on this tool??

[Geoff]

Well that's a trademark violation for a start. If your using it but modifying it your not allowed to call it firefox or refer to Mozilla in any way, shape or form.

 

I'm unsure of any license difficulties though as I am not as well read in the MPL as compared to the GPL, BSD or Creative Commons licenses.

[danielson81]

Hi there,

 

Managed to get it working using the VB script, thank you !!

 

However, is there an easy way to create a shortcut on the users desktop?

 

I am thinking something along the lines of a script doing the following after the VBS file has run:

 

copy c:\docume~1\%currentuser%\applic~1\capita\framew.lnk c:\docume~1\%currentuser%\desktop

 

however what is the correct code for "%currentuser%" ? .

 

Of course I could be barking up the wrong tree!

[alonebfg]

We have had a bit of a pullback and now been told to hold fire on installing it

[Jobos]

After another school wanted it installed despite me telling them how well it was programmed I set about changing the script.

 

Change the fso.Copyfile line to suit your system.

 

 

Const APPLICATION_DATA = &H1a&

Const DESKTOP = &H10&

 

On Error Resume next

 

Dim Desktop_path

Dim Desktop_filename

 

Set objShell = CreateObject("Shell.Application")

Set objFolder = objShell.Namespace(APPLICATION_DATA)

Set objDesktop = objShell.Namespace(DESKTOP)

Set objFolderItem = objFolder.Self

Set objDesktop = objDesktop.Self

 

Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FilesystemObject")

Set oNetwork = CreateObject("Wscript.Network")

 

foldername = objFolderItem.Path & "\Capita"

 

Desktop_path = objDesktop.Path

 

Wscript.echo "This may take a few minutes. You will told when it's finished." & vbCRLF & vbCRLF & " Click OK to start"

 

fso.CopyFolder "P:\Primary Framework\Capita", foldername

 

Desktop_filename = Desktop_path & "\Planning Tool.exe"

 

 

fso.Copyfile "P:\Primary Framework\Planning Tool.exe", Desktop_filename

 

Wscript.echo " Finished" & vbCRLF & vbCRLF & "An icon has been placed on the desktop"

 

set oNetwork=nothing

Set fso = Nothing

Set objShell = Nothing

Set objFolder = Nothing

Set objFolderItem = Nothing

[TechSupp]

Was asked to install this on the network last week, found your vbs very usefull untill I had a bit of a play with it (the software not your vbs) and found the software a load of rubbish. It just does a very long winded way of copy and paste, then at the end you are left with a document that is not much use if you want to edit it easily. Save the document to word! Hah, only creates a web document not a proper word document.

Managed to so far convince them (though that didn't take alot!) that it was best left alone and just go back to copy paste as they do normally.

[CESIL]

I got this to work a different way.

 

I did a local setup and then copied the Capita\FrameworkApp folder to a network share.

 

Then edited \Capita\FrameworkApp\greprefs\all.js

 

and entered the proxy settings in the sections below (there are actually about 5 to do...

 

pref("network.proxy.type", 1);

pref("network.proxy.ftp", "xxxxxx.xxxx.xxx.xxx");

pref("network.proxy.ftp_port", yyyy);

 

Then created a shortcut in the teachers icon pool pointing to firefox.exe in the shared \Capita\FrameworkApp folder.

 

First time they run it it creates a local folder in their profile.

 

From what I can see it does not do any more than could be acheived with Word/Internet Explorer and a bit of cut and paste...oh and they have to use a totally new javascript based editor...I am just waiting for the first call to go help someone...

[TekkyMatt]

Spent a good hour explaining to my head this morning that this program is a waste of my time and a very poorly conceived piece of software. You have to be an administrator to attempt to run it. Also doesnt like you if you cant save things to desktop (which none of our staff can), its totally unconfigurable. This is totally a teachers tool for home use.

PS has anyone found its uninstaller yet