[sims] web parts

[truebluesteve]

Hi.

 

I'm looking at installing sharepoint at my school and one of the uses would be integration with SIMS. Now I will have professional help setting up SP would like to use the SIMS web parts as provided by Capital. The school is an Academy and our contract with includes the use of the web parts.

 

The question is how do I get hold of them - i.e. will I need to get them from Capital or are are provided as part of a SIMs server install and if so where?

 

Many thanks

 

Steve

[steve]

They are a chargeable item from Capita.

 

You can get some features from Salamander Software

[truebluesteve]

They are a chargeable item from Capita.

 

You can get some features from Salamander Software

 

We dont have to pay for them as long as we pay the annual maintenance costs which is a few hundred quid. I think it was Capitas way of deflecting some of the critisism levelled at them by Academies over licences for SIMS.

 

 

Thanks for the link tho, I will take a look.

[vikpaw]

You should contact Capita / your account manager if they have a special agreement with Academies. Even if they are being offered free, in order to be supported, they will no doubt insist on installing them for you, as well as the Active Directory Provisioning server/service that is required to populate the user data. Would be great if you got that free too

 

The cost of webparts is only part of the cost of the whole SLG suite, so you may need to pay some additional costs, at the least i'd have thought some form of install. I don't think they will just send them to you.

 

It should be fairly easy, if you can give them access to a sharepoint install, then they can go in and add a site for SLG and install the webparts. Once they have done this, it is possible to make use of the webparts in other ways, but i think you have to get the official install first.

 

I'd recommend virtualising the whole setup. I had ADP put on in the summer, and am preparing a sharepoint server ready for webpart install hopefully some time in the new year.

[truebluesteve]

Thanks for the info.

 

I hadn't intended installing SLG as such - I don't think its a particularly nice product, so the thought was to use the web parts in a dev enviroment initially and see how we could use them ourselves. We are also considering using Talmos, which also uses SIMS web parts but needs no involvement from Capita. I will contact our account manager and see what the situation is.

 

I had intended to virtualise the setup - have you installed SQL and Sharepoint on the same server or on seperate ones?

 

Thanks

[matt40k]

What? Academies get it free?!? Nice!!

 

Normally SIMS one box, Sharepoint on another. Both have SQL installed.

[truebluesteve]

Well its kinda free

 

We had to buy our SIMS licenses outright (as opposed to getting them from the LEA), so the up-front costs were high but in the long term we will save money. Capita have said we can use the web parts as long as we pay the support costs each year.

 

Regarding the server setup, what I meant was that you can install SP and SQL on seperate servers (the so-called farm configuration) or on the same one. I just wondered what others have done.

 

Steve

[matt40k]

We had to buy our SIMS licenses outright (as opposed to getting them from the LEA), so the up-front costs were high but in the long term we will save money.

 

It's aways like that, your LA bought the license (normally) many years ago then they just charge your the annual maintainance, it looks cheaper to go direct because most LA bundle other services with it.

[truebluesteve]

Our LEA charged us an annual fee for the licenses and another for support, which worked out about £3k a year more than we pay now via Capita for support. After about 3-4 years, the licenses will have paid for themselves as it were. What remains to be tested is the support we get direct from Capita (as opposed to the LEA which has ironically has outsourced its SIMS support to.....yes you guessed it...Capita!)

[vikpaw]

Farm. Gives you room to expand. One box for web services, the real sharepoint front end so to speak, other for backend, the SQL side. Haven't done the sharepoint bits yet as playing with clustering. Adps is on a multi-purpose SQL server that currently has sims emerge and other little DBson it.