[sims] Capita too big and too slow

[Steven_Cleaver]

After reporting an issue with Cover 7 which was caused by the Autumn Upgrade I have had to wait 6 weeks after it was escualed to various teams within SIM's for them to tell me they can't do anything about it as yet and that hopefully it will be fixed in the Summer 12 release. I am so glad I only rely on the minimal SIM's modules and use other products linked into SIM's to deal with Attendance, Behaviour and Parental Portal etc. and that these companies provide a much higher quality of support and turn around to fix issues even software issues, maximum of usually a week but usually much less.

[PhilNeal]

Steven please let me have the case number and a description of the problem so that I can investigate.

[vikpaw]

@Steven_Cleaver - just contemplating going to autumn so interested in the issue, pls share.

i've had similar issues in the past: functionality that should be there but doesn't work has to be logged as a change request, a patch that I requested that has to be made for my school is made for two releases ahead of the one I'm on!

If it is fixable they are usually pretty good so it must be something major you've found.

[glennda]

@Steven_Cleaver -As Phil doesn't make it overly clear and just encase you think his request is a touch random he works for capita!

[Sivadam]

@Steven_Cleaver -As Phil doesn't make it overly clear and just encase you think his request is a touch random he works for capita!

Works for? Phil will love that description I bet!

 

Steven, I'd be interested to hear what your problem is!

Have you used the SupportNet Forum to ask other users?

[Steven_Cleaver]

Hi Phil

 

 

Thanks for responding to this.

 

I'll get the Case Number tomorrow as we use the LEA for support so raised the issue there first so to be honest it was a week or so with them before it went to Capita and then 6 weeks there.

 

I'll also post a proper outline of the issue tomorrow if that is ok as it was sometime back now and I will need to check everyting out to be completely clear but it is an issue with Cover 7 and the way we were able to allocate staff and move rooms to cover more than one class if they are already shown as teaching a specific class for a session before the Autumn Upgrade, as Senior Management (Head and Deputy Head) here take more than one class in the Main Hall. This has also caused a number of issues including having to edit the Cover list Manually every day to dispaly on our VLE with the correct information and also inaccurate Cover statistics since the beginning of January. Sorry this a bit vague but will add a more acccurate explanation Tomorrow.

[Sivadam]

Hmmmmmmm........

That seems rather a lot wrong with it Steven.

Our Cover Manager has not mentioned any Cover7 issues to me! As far as I am aware we can still double up staff and move rooms. We had a lot of that happening today as part of our Y11 Science re-sit exams arrangements!

Edited March 1, 2012 by Sivadam

[glennda]

Works for? Phil will love that description I bet!

 

Steven, I'd be interested to hear what your problem is!

Have you used the SupportNet Forum to ask other users?

 

You know what i mean! and got the point across! A Cheeky tweet got his attention here!

 

With regards to the Cover Problem I will talk to our cover ladies tomorrow if they have the problem. I'm fairly sure they are able to setup "Mass sit" as its referred to here as they did it yesterday and i haven't received any complaints about not being able to setup so it might be site specific (although sounds like a client issue rather then a DB) as they have been setting up "Mass Sit" for a least the 2 years i've been here.

[Steven_Cleaver]

Works for? Phil will love that description I bet!

 

Steven, I'd be interested to hear what your problem is!

Have you used the SupportNet Forum to ask other users?

 

I have sort of seen Phil's name a few times on the Forum on a few posts and sort of realised he was involved with Capita.

I did look around SupportNet but couldn't find anything and also the LEA I think tried this as we have very good support from the LEA (mostly very good ex MIS staff from schools) but sort of thought if the LEA support or Capita support were looking into it, I would leave it with them.

[glennda]

I have sort of seen Phil's name a few times on the Forum on a few posts and sort of realised he was involved with Capita.

 

Quoted from Twitter

 

@Phil_Neal

Capita Children's Services Managing Director. One of the original creators of SIMS

[Steven_Cleaver]

Hmmmmmmm........

That seems rather a lot wrong with it Steven.

Our Cover Manager has not mentioned any Cover7 issues to me! As far as I am aware we can still double up staff and move rooms. We had a lot of that happening today as part of our Y11 Science re-sit exams arrangements!

 

It may be the way we do the Time Tabling differently don't take this as gospel as I am only the lowly ICT Admin Manager:) as ours are sort of split sessions so they can select them to cover half the sessioon but not the other half and sometimes first half other times the second half.

[Sivadam]

I think that if you post the problems you have on the Curriculum Forum of SupportNet then you will find lots of help from the expert users that contribute to the forum!

There is a thread on there that does refer to a similar scenario. It is:- Conflict resolution (34577)

And using half lesson cover is pretty standard stuff anyway!

 

And if you don't know Phil - he is the 'main man'. He is the MD for the SIMS and ONE sections and is also one of the co-founders of SIMS!

Edited March 1, 2012 by Sivadam

[Steven_Cleaver]

I think that if you post the problems you have on the Curriculum Forum of SupportNet then you will find lots of help from the expert users that contribute to the forum!

There is a thread on there that does refer to a similar scenario. It is:- Conflict resolution (34577)

And using half lesson cover is pretty standard stuff anyway!

 

And if you don't know Phil - he is the 'main man'. He is the MD for the SIMS and ONE sections and is also one of the co-founders of SIMS!

 

 

Thanks I'll take a look on Suport Net and thanks for reference number.

Cheers I sort of feel though that the school pays a fair price for support, SIM's licencing and doesn't really want me to spend too much time fixing problems with software due to issues caused by Software Upgrades when the school pays a vast amount of money for these services. Don't get me wrong I like a challenge and myself and the MIS Manager, Cover Person and Deputy Head spent sometime looking at ways round this that would fit in with what we do, but couldn't come up with a reasonable solutiion that wouldn't cause us issues else where.

[witch]

I would also detail your problem to @vikpaw as he requested - he is very experienced with the software and may well be able to help

[PhilNeal]

Steven, I'm now away from a computer until Tuesday so please don't PM me email [email protected] Gary is in charge of the service desks.

[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

[Sivadam]

These may be of help to you. From Solution Serach of SupportNet:-

KB91569 - Cover 7 - Closed rooms without any timetabled classes do not appear on the Notice Board Summary Full Grid

KB85274 - Cover 7 - How to add cover to a class without a teacher

 

I am not sure that what you are trying to do has ever been possible! Though, as I do not have unroomed classes, I may be wrong on that one! But it isn't anythign I have heard of since we have used Cover& since the Field Trial days.

Edited March 2, 2012 by Sivadam

[Steven_Cleaver]

These may be of help to you. From Solution Serach of SupportNet:-

KB91569 - Cover 7 - Closed rooms without any timetabled classes do not appear on the Notice Board Summary Full Grid

KB85274 - Cover 7 - How to add cover to a class without a teacher

 

Thanks but these aren't relevant to the issue we have.

 

I am not sure that what you are trying to do has ever been possible! Though, as I do not have unroomed classes, I may be wrong on that one! But it isn't anythign I have heard of since we have used Cover& since the Field Trial days.

 

It was possible up until Autumn Upgrade as we had been doing it exactly this way for at least 18 months the length of time I have been here.

 

The thread has got a bit off track although I appreciatte eveyones help, but as well as the problem I have I feel that the time scales for support to resolve this issue was poor and this is really my take because Capita are so big things don't get dealt with or resolved quickly enough ( 6 weeks to tell me that they will probably fix it in the summer update) and just get added to a list somehwhere of fixes they need to apply and then they do some and not all, to be honest this isn't just Capita but other large companies within the education sector and I am not sayin all just some.

 

I appreciatte Phil's response and offer of help and I have taken this up but just sorry that this has happened once I have posted on this Forum and not before, just this sort of response needs to be done at a lower level in the company.

 

I'll keep you informed how I get on.

[Steven_Cleaver]

Just checked my Email got message below oops bit of bad timing, still trying to sort out issue from last upgrade.

 

"SIMS Spring Main Release 7.144

We are pleased to inform you that the Spring Release of SIMS.net version 7.144 and SIMS FMS 6.144 is now available.. This is an essential upgrade in order to complete the Summer (May) School Census 2012 and your Summer 2012 Key Stage returns. However, before running this release, please ensure that your Spring School Census 2012 has been accepted by your Local Authority or, in the case of academies, your returning body."

 

You have to laugh

[Steven_Cleaver]

Hi

 

Just thought I would update this and then call it a day with this post I emailed Gary Hill as Phil as suggested see below the response received, I checked that it was ok to post this first.

 

"Hi Steven,

 

I have looked into this case and I can see why you feel such frustration. Whilst the data did take a week to arrive with us, our communication throughout the process, especially through February, was poor. Due to the complexity of the issue, your incident was being worked on by a number of Product, Business Analyst and Developer team members, but you have not seen sight of this for which I apologise.

 

That complexity is why the fix needs to go into a full blown release and unfortunately not able to be patched as a workaround. As these decisions or conclusions were being arrived at, our teams should have engaged you in conversation about the progress, then even if it were ‘bad’ news offered, you would have been able to make a decision about the situation. As the Spring Release code had been ‘locked’ at the time of the case, the only natural course of action was to assign it to the Summer Release, with a high priority. This Release is currently scheduled for the end of June, but will obviously be confirmed nearer the day .

 

For future reference if you feel that you have been waiting too long or need an urgent update, then I would advise contacting our Team leaders, whose Direct Dial can be found in the Customer Charter, this can be located on Support Net within the Sticky Item section. Alternatively you can contact their line manager Lia Worthington Ellis, followed by me if you do not get an adequate answer.

 

Kind Regards

 

Gary"

 

I then emailed back see below and CC'd Phil in.

 

Hi Gary

 

Many thanks as regards your prompt reply and take on the situation. As you say I think your companies response was poor and as you say I am bit frustrated with this, I had raised this issue with our LEA after having trying to resolve the issue here ourselves so both ourselves and then the LEA had looked at the issue and we had pretty quickly come to the conclusion that it was a software issue, that was caused by the Autumn Upgrade as prior to this there was no issue.

 

“For future reference if you feel that you have been waiting too long or need an urgent update, then I would advise contacting our Team leaders, whose Direct Dial can be found in the Customer Charter, this can be located on Support Net within the Sticky Item section. Alternatively you can contact their line manager Lia Worthington Ellis, followed by me if you do not get an adequate answer.”

 

Thanks as regards the information above but I go directly to the LEA for SIM’s support as this is excellent and they have great expertise on their team and always keep me informed but they can obviously only do so much and I just feel let down that the issue was not dealt with as efficiently when they get to Capita. I am sure the LEA will find this information useful though.

 

The issue has also meant that the member of staff responsible for cover is wasting a lot of time editing cover information manually before uploading it to our VLE and also keeping a manual electronic copy of accurate statistics as the issue with Cover means that the statistics held on the system are not accurate.

 

I just want to confirm it is ok to post your response on the forum where I raised this on “Edugeek” as a couple of people have asked me to keep them informed as regards the issue.

 

Again many thanks in taking the time to respond.

 

Many thanks

 

Steven

 

Phil also responded to this with the information below.

 

"Steven just to reiterate Gary’s response to you. We strive to turn things around in hours not weeks and normally we succeed. In this particular case we clearly didn’t and I very much regret that. I have raised questions of the directors in charge of support and development to ensure that we learn from this; there will be times when something takes longer to resolve than is desirable but where something works and then doesn’t I want to know why.

 

You can of course quote anything that we’ve written on EduGeek.

 

Best wishes

 

Phil"

 

 

Obviously if this is an unusual case as Phil states I am happy to accept the explanation and I am sure Phil will look into this as he states as he seems to respond to a lot on the forum, I would just like to thank Gary and Phil for getting back to me so quickly once they responded to this post.

[PhilNeal]

At yesterday's board meeting we discussed this case and exposed a problem with our processes. Some other schools have also had to wait too long for a response and the development & service directors are reporting back in two weeks time to let the board know how things will be improved.

[Steven_Cleaver]

Thanks for your response to this.