Sivadam

Well at least the problem we had has been resolved with the Spring re-release, which is now available!

Tee Hee! I posted that info on here on Fiday in the Sticky Thread!

One wonders what you guys charge your Customers by the hour........! Maybe I should start and send you an Invoice! What with the help I give you directly, and now on here, I reckon I could earn a fortune! Told you that you should employ me to work from Home for a couple of days a week....... to support your Support Team! http://support.capitaes.co.uk/newforum/images/smiley2.gif Then again, if I left here - I'd fall behind very quickly!

This is an excellent example of why SIMS Direct Schools and SupportDesks should be able to 'talk' to each other on SupportNet Forums! We could be 'mutually supportive'! The issue was also reported by another school - possibly just before I did - their data went in on Wednesday and mine at 7.00am Thursday! Issue:- [TD="class: tabletext, bgcolor: #fafafa"]Two Science Teachers marking a Double Lesson Register last week, in the same lesson. This brought up an error screen with a big red cross over the Lesson Register and a crash out of SIMS. This was the same when the Attendance Officer, or myself, tried to 'Take Register'. Fortunately we could mark the Class Register via 'Edit Marks' routine. Both Classes had a pupil withdraw to an AC Intervention Group, one Class in the first part of the double and one in the second part of the double. Strangely, we tried the same classes for this week and the Class Registers were available! The offending lessons were actually live during the deployment of the Spring Release, but I don't know if this affected things! It may be that this Case caused the delay of the Spring re-release or it may just be coincidence!

Oooooooppppppsss....................... This is a quote from the Case I logged re the issue with v7.144! [TD="class: tablesubheading"]Advice [TD="class: mainparagraphs, colspan: 3"] [19/03/12] - This requires an Application Fix, which will be included in Spring 2012 re-release. All messages of thanks will be gratiously accepted! http://support.capitaes.co.uk/newforum/images/smiley1.gif Most of you guys shouldn't get the issue now! So it may have been me that delayed the re-issue!

It'll give our Staff a respite from deploying (or re-deploying) upgrades. An extra day to pursuade 'em all to get those laptops logged on to the network and leave 'em there ready for the appointed deployment time! A lot of 'em won't tho'! Did you get your SIMS Spreadsheet Timetable prints sorted Matt? Complicated innit?

Hmmmmmm..... A further delay in releasing the Updated Spring Release due to another Support Case. One wonders if it is 'owt to do with mine ..........

There are many that do not realise that the functionality of using the Template to select recipients is available. On many, many occasions I have had to explain this to people who moan that the Template appears as well as the whole report! They are usually amazed when I tell them about this routine! There are many, many schools that do not use SIMS to it's full capacity. Maybe there is no school that does. We think we are pretty good (and have the SIMS Partnership School award to prove it!) but I know there are areas we should improve on! Unfortunately, when I first started posting on here, there were many users who did not understand the software and how to use it and attacked SIMS itself, when the real reason for their frustration was that they did not understand it! Thankfully that has died down a lot now - but I did make myself very unpopular in my crusade to contradict the many unwarranted threads that used to appear. I still prefer to offer my help via SupportNet but I will continue to try and do so here as well!

As with any SIMS Mailmerge Report, running this Report produces different windows. 1) the whole report 2) the template 3) (in this case) the choice of uploading the document to the pupils' linked documents The whole report is exactly what it says - it is a letter to all the selected pupils. If you go to the template you can actually select the recipients, from the original choice, that you want to send the letter to. Once selected you can just print these or merge them to the original letter, via the Finish and Merge Icon. Once printed you can then choose which to upload to the DMS. You can also save the letters from the whole report to a different destination, should you need to do so. You should not save or edit the Template from this view - just close it! The Template should be edited via Tools, Setups, Attendance Setup, Letter Definition. You can follow this 'selection of recipients' routine from ANY Mailmerge report on the system, whether devised by CES or by members in the school! In the 'rpt def' you will probably already have filters (e.g. for Reg Group). This extra functionality in the Report Template enables you to select from the list of pupils that have been produced via the report filter. For ordinary mail-merge reports, you will not automatically get the upload to DMS screen and the Templates are obviously accessed via Reports, Design Report. Please be careful if you follow this procedure that you do NOT save any of the Templates! Using the method I have described, you can select the exact 45 pupils that you require, from you original list of 90! Ain't SIMS Wonderful?

I would like to publicly thank Phil Neal and the Support Team at Bedford for the excellent support that we have been given in getting SOLUS3 working to deploy the re-issued Spring Release. All being well, deploying the updated release once it is available will now, hopefully, be seemless! I must add that most of our problems were caused, not by withdrawing the original release (inconvenient though it was!), but by a failure on our part to follow though with SOLUS3 for the past few upgrades.

I would like to publicly thank Phil Neal and the Support Team at Bedford for the excellent support that we have been given in getting SOLUS3 working to deploy the re-issued Spring Release. All being well, deploying the updated release once it is available will now, hopefully, be seemless! I must add that most of our problems were caused, not by withdrawing the original release (inconvenient though it was!), but by a failure on our part to follow though with SOLUS3 for the past few upgrades.

We installed on just one workstation. We have separate InBoxes and Outboxes on the workstation. We then manually copy Files from there to and from the SIMS Server Boxes. This allows us to keep a copy of all files - just in case we need to edit them. We often have to do this due to problems caused by the Exam Boards issuing some files in the wrong version. It also makes it easier if we have to split a large Result File in two. We can work with the copies and still have the original if we mess things up (a big 'If' )

I have received confirmation from Phil Neal that the original release can be re-issued to us. You should request the same from the Support Team. Thanks Phil.

I asked that very question and was told that this is not possible!

Not Hurrah! Quite the opposite in fact! This was a very minor irritiation compared to having the Upgrade withdrawn mid-deployment! Neither issue merited a total withdrawal!

Sally, I have posted on SupportNet how you get the Fileset - it's very simple!

Snap! Phil, I can usually see the reason for withdrawing a Release. However! There should have been consideration for those that had already taken this release! No thought appears to have been given as to the effect on those of us in this position. We have finally begun to get SOLUS3 working as a result of deploying the Update on Friday and thanks to work by Ellis from the SupportDesk, who spent several hours with us yesterday in a remote session to sort out problems with our Workstations. Now I find that several laptops and number of workstations have not upgraded for a variety of reasons. We now have no way of fixing these this week because of the withdrawal of the Upgrade. Unfortunately, many of the laptops that need attention are those of the LT and they now have an 'incompatible database'. Had the problems with SIMS been major then I could understand a total withdrawal, but they are so minor that this should not have been done! We often have to download and Import the Filesets for various reasons - they are often upgraded after releases anyway and so this was not an issue! And the error in AM7 is almost non-existent. These SIMS issues pale into insignificance compared to the issues we now have re. SOLUS3 and SIMS Upgrades. I just hope we do not get our expected Ofsted Inspection before this is resolved! (Response sent by Email and posted on SupportNet)

This might not be relevant but have those that are having problems with AM7 and Profiles Reports read KB103768 on SupportNet?

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.

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!

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!

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?

Funnily enough we did do this! It was dead simple! A note was written and posted on the Staffroom Noticeboard! Job done! Remember - all Registers were in the old 'Official' Register Books or, for classes, in a teachers notebook! Happy Dayz .......... No Pinboard for me! I had a foolscap steel sheet and thin cut out magnetic strips on which I used to paste paper strips containing the blocks. I could then move them around using a pair of forceps! I had this duplicated for Staff and triplicated for Rooms! Doing it that way meant that I could photocopy (yes we did have 'em back then!) the changes at any time so that I could revert back very easily! Once complete I hand wrote the whole lot onto to three Timetables - Pupil, Staff, Rooms Am I glad when Clive Stott arrived with his Nova Timetable (Pre-SIMS!)?

I used to! There were no PCs in those days. (..and SIMS did not exist either!)

It ought to be on the Exam Officers workstation. As a backup you could have it on another workstation but the InBoxes and OutBoxes would be duplicated on the different workstations so there is the potential for the files to be split between two machines. We had the same with AVCO's Exams Centre. This was installed on our Exams Officer's PC and on mine. When the Exams Officer was off for a couple of months - I picked up her work but ran EO from her workstation rather than my own so that all uploaded and downloaded files were in the same place. We have it installed in two places just in case we get a major crash on one machine! We could then still carry on on the second! (In our case we do not up/download directly into EO - we manually copy and paste from the A2C {and previously Exam Centre!} Boxes into the EO ones and vice versa. This means you always have an original copy of the files in case there is any problem with them during processing!)