PhilNeal

I suppose being on EduGeek you're interested in the technology. I'm interested in what something can do and I've seen enough revelations in schools to know that this is a very powerful tool. The development team's brief was not to make it run on a hairdryer; it was to produce a very powerful tool that was really easy to use. You do need to understand assessment result sets to get valuable information out however or you will be reduced to finding out how many Italians eat sandwiches! As it happens in will run on fairly ordinary kit but integrated graphics are of variable quality.

There are changes coming to address formats and we will keep the sourcing of the address validation under review.

I assume you've seen our Quick Reference Sheets. Can't say we get too many complaints about teachers not being able to use LM.

The address data is provided by DfE although we host it. We have chased them for an update but they haven't provided one for 18 months.

Use SOLUS3 - Matt may be able to assist you as you're in his area.

SLG can be hosted by the school, LA or Capita. A school would host SLG if it wanted to develop Microsoft Learning Gateway as part of a holistic experience probably as a subsitutute for a VLE, document management system, its own web site and email system. Many LAs host SLG and that gives the advantage of shared infrastructure costs and of course parents only need one log in across the whole LA - it also gives the other advanatgaes. Capita can host SLG and do most of the management for you and this saves schools the infrastructure costs. SLG can take on your school look and feel - I agree that our original web parts were "workman like" but things have come a long long way since then.

The home page has a number of tools designed to assist form teachers and heads of year/house. Can't remember if it has lates.

Brucy is correct - post back to SIMS and use the features in there.

I think we are intending to expand ER to cover depreciation something that academies require.

Tiers are really for schools with lower, middle & upper school structures. We are about to introduce the ability to have separate timetables for each tier. I'm not convinced that they are for the purpose you have in mind - this sounds more like houses?

ctbjs - I spoke to one of our product managers this evening but it was late and I don't think we've understood all of the issues yet. In LM I'm sure you know that it is possible to bulk assign behaviour or achievement incidents. Right click against pupils for recording simple things really quickly or shift click against pupils and then press the buttons on the right for a more comprehensive form. You don't need to record house at all. Is the problem you want to run a house detention? I'll pursue a little more. If you'd like to PM me I can get the product manager to talk to you.

I wasn't after cash! Just want to find out what the issue is and hopefully resolve. Please don't all rush together I'm out for the next 3 days!!

Do you mean responded to what our customers have told us

OK thanks Lynne

Lynne have you got a call placed?

ctbjs - thanks. I'll get someone to look at this and get back to you.

Houses are really important particualarly in the private sector and SIMS knows what house someone is in. I'd be grateful for a little more explanation of the issue. Thanks Phil

We will be producing a standard backup for Discover soon. Unless you are storing lots of predefined graphs already you don't need to worry too much about backups as most of the data is copied out from SIMS.DB and groups are stored in SIMS.DB too.

Number34 - how long did it actually take? I still haven't had anyone contact me about this despite 3? reminders that the offer to investigate is there.

I'd certainly buy Mike several drinks!

Matt I'm sorry it wouldn't be appropriate for me to enter into a debate with a competitor.

The main change is that it can use a full screen so more lines can be seen at the same time. The grey pre 2000 look has been replaced by much lighter screens. Sub menus are down the side now rather than across the top.

It's in the next release ie summer.

Sivadam I think you need to declare an interest or those red blocks will start to reappear. (or is that the plan?)

Glennda I object! It's listed in our booklet describing what we are doing for annual entitlement published ~ Nov 2010. SIMS Direct schools are sent our booklet and so do LAs. On this occassion I plead not guilty.