PhilNeal

Don't your teachers have access to SIMS? If they did assessment manager traffic lights would tell them everything they need to know.

EasingtonCollieryPS_thelearninggateway has some teachers & parents talking about how sharing data makes a difference. They are using SLG but this piece is about primary schools and the fact that they do have useful data to share.

The work for this issue is now complete and is about to be checked into the Autumn 2011 build. In the meantime we are making the patch available immediately to all known affected customers and all LAs

Sorry people there is a fault. We're working on a patch and I'll get a news item posted ASAP.

These days it is normal for MIS support units to be traded.

Lisa who did you want to chat to?

Cache the export/import did get released. The hosted guide should be available as strictly speaking its for Citrix type deploment and some schools do use this. Please raise a case with us.

Thanks Matt - the biggest change in the autumn is optimisation for centrally hosted installations. We've reduced the bandwidth demand considerably. That won't have much of an impact, if any, for locally hosted schools.

Default printer issue is fixed - I think with the summer release.

How's this progressing now? Thanks Phil

In this case the software is behaving as it was designed to and many many schools are happy with that so this isn't a bug in our terms. A change request to the effect that a school should be able to restrict this operation would be the right course. I think its likely that we will review the behaviour area over the next 12 months.

It should be simple but some legal advisors are making it hard and schools are listening to them even though the advice is unhelpful.

With regards to our charges our sales desk can assist. I'm afraid the guidance that we are getting from DfE regarding the pupil database is that the DfE won't guide schools; they need to get their own advice about data protection law. Some firms are advising that academies should remove staff and pupils that have left which is hard work. Other firms are saying that all data can be transferred. I am trying to get better advice.

As you say there are export and import facilities in ER. We will check with Baxter & Co as to what the accounting rules are - we aren't sure whether the old equipment value is written off on not.

I haven't got SIMS open in front of me but I'm pretty sure that if you are on the registration page you are just one click away from the student details screen which gives you a complete summary of everything that you need to know about a pupil. We've had debates on exactly what we should/could show on the registration screen. Many medical issues are highly confidential and many schools do their registration on a white board which would be far too public to show this type of information. I'd be very interested in opinions on this issue.

Here's a response from one of the experts! "Its a tricky one to phrase as you almost always want to fit RAM in matched pairs which means that most 32-bit systems have 4Gb of RAM (2x2Gb or 4x1Gb) in them but do only have 3Gb accessible. Hence why RAM recommendations on software is usually 1Gb, 2Gb or 4Gb. You can confirm that 3Gb is sufficient for Discover to run well (it is!) and you do not need a 64-bit operating system. I'll look at the phrasing of the minimum requirement"

This is where the power is!

The problem in Norfolk was highly regretable but down to indentity management going wrong rather than hosted SIMS.

We are planning an evaluation session in Birmingham on Tues 20th Sept focusing on Assessment and Finance should schools want to find out more about how SIMS handles these issues.

Vikpaw - have you seen some of Matt's posts - he definately doesn't work for us! We've installed SOLUS3 in around 100 schools now and although we had issues to start with, its now going well. We are still finding things that need resolutions with some LA level installations.

Well I am reading this but not sure what the message is now!

I don't think we've added that dimension to permissions. Who would add a student to the group?

If you own the licence you should not have a quote of this size - feel free to PM me and I will check. LAs reclaim any unused maintenance from us and they may pay it back to you - most LAs do. This is detailed in our academy booklet. You may or may not require our services in order to implement the necessary changes to your databases. If you are a phase 1 academy ask the DfE if you can keep all the data including the old number - if you can you won't need us to help you process very much. Phase 2 academies can keep all data and the DfE is trying to reduce the admin burden further by reducing the changes but advice is variable! The FMS service saves many days of keying in data if you want to replicate much of your existing data - you can't just use the old structures because they do not fit an academy's requirements. The service also helps staff understand the new reporting requirements that come with academy status.

I think this is a reasonable speed! I used to have to print for 48 hrs when I first started profiles some 20+ years ago!

That's a great reply - thanks synaesthesia! .net is pretty fast - we do have some "technical legacy" to deal with which will speed up things again in the autumn release but it isn't bad today and certainly a lot faster than it was when it was on beta.