Sivadam

Sound advice krtek. And exactly what I have been trying to imply thoughout this thread! Patience is a virtue!

I assume that the screenshot is a Course or Year Marksheet produced from Exams Organiser for an entry in a future series. To remove the exam entry in this case then just overtype the Y with an N and then resave the marksheet. If an Entry file has been sent to the Exam Board then an Amendment File needs to be created and sent. I find it very strange that an EO Marksheet has been created with results columns in unless it is for a past series! What you do with this result will depend on whether this is a current entry for a future series or one for a past series. If it is for a future series then you can overtype the result when the real result arrives. In yhe meantime I would probably amend it to an X. The EDI result may even overwrite though I suspect that you will get an import error. This wll act as a reminder to change the result. If this is simply an internal AM7 Marksheet (i.e. not from EO) then is an easy job to just remove that result via the Tools, Assessmnet, Remove Result method!

I suggest you contact Capita directly. Ask for Georgina Trodd - she is the UAT Manager. Check out the Sticky Items document on SupportNet called 'SIMS User Acceptance Test'. Also watch out for the announcements on SupportNet and apply to attend one of the sessions!

Ah! The one we do not opt in to!

The entitlement statement should list the exact names and costs of the Modules that the statement refers to! I would suggest that you are not looking at the original statement from Capita.

I agree with you. And normally delays are the result of functionality not working on a test dataset. This delay is slightly different! But in my opinion well founded! The issue with UDGs had been on the system for many years. I myself had written a CR to amend this years ago, but it seems that the issue had been misunderstood. Phil recognised it as a software error and acted on that. Indeed, I was consulted for my opinion on the topic and I was able to feed back to them before the issue was resolved! From a user point of view it was difficult to ascertain whether it was a fault with the early development of the system, i.e. not developed to spec, or if it was a software malfunction - which it proved to be! And well done Edugeek! I know that Phil reads the Forums on here quite regularly!

I am afraid if we waited while everything was 'right' then the SIMS Software would never be released! At UAT I nearly always suggest things that 'are not right', in my humble opinion. What suits me and my school may not suit somebody else, so how can Capita 'get it right' for all 21,000+ schools who use SIMS? Sometimes the delays are caused by UAT Testers, like myself, finding something that does not work with their own particular data. This has happened on a couple of times with my data, when the functionality that was planned has not been released 'on time' and has gone back to the developers. On other UAT test data it probably did work!

I would urge any high end users of SIMS that share these opinoions to volunteer for SIMS Field Trials and for UAT!

I would dare to suggest that you guys that do not have problems with Office 2010 may not be using SIMS to it's full potential? Apologies if you are! For example, do you include Assessment graphs within AM7 Reports? We have a case open at the moment where the Axes Labels on the graphs are currently delivering points scores rather than the Sub-Levels that they were delivering prior to the Autumn Release. This is Office 2007! Quite a sophisticated use of Word and, at some point, we need to test this sort of thing on Office 2010 after the Spring Release. But it will only be done on the one workstation first! I had enough problems converting from Office 2003 to 2007 in terms of Templates for AM7 Reports, Profiles Reports, Merged Reports to produce all the Letters and Certificates within Attendance, Exclusions, Detentions etc etc.

You will be able to deploy the Spring Release via Solus3.

Your Profile Location is 'On the dance floor'. I could not find it on AA Route Finder!

Have you got a Post Code for 'Dance Floor'? And what is the Google Map reference?

You'll have to meet me at the O2 in April! Awwwwwww shucks, I ain't got a spare ticket for you!

Strange ain't it Graham? I answer questions honestly and somebody is likely to get upset! I am now waiting for the deluge and, hoepfully, a few Red Square reps! At least I ain't attacked crease re. his Kylie reaction! Not sure whether he don't like me .... .......or don't like Kylie!

As I have told you before! The campaigh to challenge, as strongly as possible, those that knock SIMS in an inappropriate way and/or by making untrue statements, and/or as a result of lack of knowledge of how the system works. These threads were quite common at one time and were not being moderated in any way. My responses were then obviously not fully appreciated by the moderators and so I consequently had to try and correct their attitudes and their responses both to what I was trying to do and also to myself personally! I still do not respond to any post, either here or on SupportNet, by one particular person! Which is a great pity really as there is much help that I could give in response to some of that person's posts! Edugeek is the poorer for that!

It looks like the controversial threads have dried up, at least for now. So I have no reason to upset anybody. It may be just coincidence, but I will regard my campaign as having been successful (so far!). Hence I have no option but to either disappear or to help people! Mind you - I have always done that for those people genuinely asking for help, in what I regard as a professional manner! Just as I have through the years on SupportNet! Trawling back thro' all the threads I have contributed to, it is so obvious that I have been helpful on the vast majority. However, as in all walks of life, people tend to react to the negative and ignore the positive! Andy Gray can testify to that!

Exactly as I feel about Kylie ...... I should be so lucky.....................

That is exactly right Creese. It is aimed at high end users to help them with the data analyis, especially on the fly. I know what will be coming next - everbody will start wanting it on SLG! Now that would, I assume, be a big 'No! No!' for a very long, long time to come!

That is exactly what I have been saying in previous posts. And hence why I have not offered advice previously! It is also the reason that Capita cannot currently give you a definite spec! Thanks creese!

How's about:- Intel Core 2 Duo Cpu, 4Gb Ram, NVIDIA Quadro NVS 135M Graphics Device (with apologies to the colleague on SupportNet who suggested this option!) The performance on different specs has seemed to be 'not logical' in some instances, but I currently have no way of quantifying that statement! What is advised, as I said before, is a dedicated graphics card of some sort! And 4Gb of Ram! Now if you go out and buy machines with that spec do not blame me if it is a) Too high and therefore unnecessary or b) Too low a spec for Discover to perform efficiently! I have been saying regularly that the FT Schools are feeding this info back to the Development Team. And I have not yet seen the Spring Version of Discover never mind been able to test it! My Worksatation spec is:- Intel Core Duo PCU, E6750 2.66GHz, DDR2, 1.96Gb Ram, NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS. Discover works but refer to my earlier post! Many years ago when buying a home PC I was advised to decide what spec I wanted now and to ensure that it would be compatible for the future to come, to double that spec and then to double the spec again! Sound advice at the time!

We received this via Email on 5th January:- SOLUS3 3.2.74 - now available! Then again we trialled SOLUS3.2 (except we had issues at the time which meant we could not fully test it). It may be that it was not available generally in this format. Though I think it was delivered with the Autumn Upgrade (but I may be mistaken on that score!). Sometimes it's hard to separate Field Trial conditions to Normal Setup conditions! One tends to forget that one is operating under different circumstances!

The reason that you cannot find documentation on SIMS Discover is that this documentation is, in itself, being tested by the Field Trial Schools/LAs. The documentation we have now only applies to the current Field Trial version and will be, presumably, greatly altered before the main release. Indeed, the version of Discover we have now has to be completely uninstalled before the Spring release can be installed. The documentation for the Install and for the User will no doubt change massively before the Spring. We are one of the sites that had problems with the install - issues that you will, hopefully, not have when you get the release. The documentation and the install simply did not work on our version of the SIMS Server until the developers remoted in and 'discovered' what the issues actually were! As for specs - it is no good trying to issue a minimum spec until the Field Trial Schools' results have been analysed by the UAT/Discover Team. On the first workshop I had a old laptop on which the performance was painfully slow. This is not replicated on my school workstation, though I would like a higher spec machine if I had to use the program in earnest, rather than just test-drive it. And before you ask - No! I will not publish those specs here - they have been fed back to UAT, as all test platforms specs should have been, as an integral part of the trial. Capita are trying to improve the performance and this will be continued in further development work after the Spring Release. What you get in Spring will be a massive improvement on what we have right now (as a Field Trial School) and that improvement will hopefully be sustained in subsequent versions! When Capita ask for volunteers to participate in Field Trials they often do not get a large response. For this project the response was massive and they simply could not accommodate most of the requests. They obviously chose a cross-section of schools to test on and obviously look to high level SIMS Users, who they know they can rely on to provide the software with a fair trial. The main object of attending UAT sessions is to try and break the software using your own school data. Then all schools will benefit from those issues being resolved prior to the official release of the software. Field Trials are no exception to this rule!

You should be so lucky ........... Lucky........ lucky......... lucky!

I may know more about how different specs have performed after the next workshop (on 11th Feb for me) when we will be testing the Spring Version of Discover.

You may be lucky and be able to do it all in the Easter Holidays! Maybe! I don't have a release date yet either!