PhilNeal

Graham it has taken too long - in our defence I would point out that some things have been delivered such as AD integration and SOLUS which were part of the SM vision.

System Manger should be ready for field trials by April 2011.

So that's why we get so much stick on EduGeek!

Discover is on a field trial and the requirements may well come down as we have an optimisation phase before release. It has a massive amount of processing to perform both datawise and graphically. Tests on kit are inconclusive at present we can't see what is causing one pc to run slowly when another lower spec one runs fine. It is designed to excite SLT.

Around 20% of primary schools input attendance in the classroom saving 1.6 hrs/week or 50 hrs/year. Many of those that take the register in the classroom do it on the whiteboard with the children marking themselves present.

For the record we support LA teams (or their outsourced team) in exactly the same way as we support our own service desk. All cases are treated in the same manner, priority is assigned according to severity of problem. There are no special arrangements for cases raised by Bedford/Chelmsford as it is vital that all cases are treated equally.

I get to hear about bugs that have escaped our normal processes in the main from SupportNet, User Groups and EduGeek. We will try to get them fixed especially if the result is a wrong answer or plainly stupid (OK subjective). Enhancement requests go through a process that helps us manage lots of opinions and suggestions. Sometimes one person's enhancement is someone else's bug. If you are reporting a bug and are asked to log a change request then please raise the issue to a manager. I can't promise that we will always agree with you or act immediately, it will depend on how many people it affects, what the side effects of fixing it might be and where we are in a release cycle. This particular issue was a bug and one that turned a great feature into an annoyance.

Becta modified its appoarch to "live" info for parents quite a while ago. I don't know many schools that would agree to live updates on behaviour issues being reported to parents. It's still considered to be important to be current with info. ASCL strongly supports the concept of sharing data with parents in a timely manner.

We have a patch to allow the number to be changed. It also makes some adjustments to a few tables that are linked to the DfE number. If you drop me a PM I will make sure that someone calls you.

Thanks - I'll get that looked at.

Please let me have the case reference from Capita's desk. Fronter is a Capita partner and there should be no passing between companies.

.. and software companies!

I think what you are asking for is not wise, possibly illegal. AM/PM registration is a legal requirement and marks taken in class can be used in court as proof of presence or absence. There has to be a definate action on the part of the register taker to say someone is absent rather than the computer filling in the blanks. For the same reason you can't just store exceptions in the database there has to be definate presence mark.

Mike & Graham you make a very fair point. When I discussed this issue internally I discovered that it had not been properly understood. Frankly it should have been treated as a bug and not a change request.

This issue is fixed in the November release which is due late November.

Perfectly reasonable to rant on this one! You should have heard me when I saw it!!

This isn't very smart. I will see what we can do.

iSAMS Multi-tenented for 1000 schools?

RM & Pearson

You can create mailmerge headers in the report generator if you want a school wide template.

Sorry that I've overstepped the mark in this posting; I was trying to correct a factual inaccuracy and got carried away.

Off site access is under control, a normal business expectation for most users.

If the data is broken you raise a case and if necessary send the data to us. As long as the data has been input by SIMS or a partner product we will do our best to rectify things although on occassions we may need you to go to a backup.

If I'm understanding what happened then encrypting laptops will make no difference - data is not held on the local machine. I think what happened is the laptop was put to sleep and on wakeup still showed the screen it was on.

This doesn't make any sense to me at all. Have you got a case number?