PhilNeal

There are changes to exam entry formats that JCQ issued two weeks ago. These will be in the August release. You need to be on August or later before starting your next season of entries.

My tips: This will put a lot of pressure on the co-ordinator as they will have to chase staff they will need SLT backing Make sure comment banks don't contain lots of words that mean satisfactory Make sure each comment is highly focused Think of specific students to try out the comments on before the banks are closed I'd ask the same question on SupportNet as there are a lot of experienced users keen to help.

Bossman yes the problem with the whole exams area is that information is released very late. DCSF define the points allocations by June. We review them and often have to go back to DCSF which often results in finements. When schools get the results there are usually qualifications that were unknown and we have to go back to DCSF for clarification. This can result in a re-release. This year JCQ altered the entry formats about 2 weeks ago. That has to be put into the August release too.

If you have a case number I will look into it.

You should really ask this question on SupportNet. We now have 300 schools hosted by us and 1600 hosted by LAs.

Not everyone has the right to change the label!

It could well be that the text has been editted but that seems unlikely. You could raise a case with us and we can help more.

I suspect that Netbooks won't last as the screens are too small! SmartPhones like Apple etc could well take over and laptops survive!

Could you exand a bit please.

Attendance 6 is withdrawn - its death date was announced over 12 months ago. There is a patch that has to be applied by your support provider to switch on Attendance 7. Attendance 7 is no longer accessed via an icon, it is an intergal part of the application. Teachers click on the timeline and the register appears. There is also a menu route. If you still have a problem pop me an email and I will check out your situation.

We strongly recommend that SLG is hosted either by an LA or us because we cannot provide the detailed level of support for SharePoint or routers that is needed if you are hosting it yourself. Hosting it yourself does give you significant advanatges in terms of what you can achieve so I can understand why some schools choose to do so. If we can't resolve a SharePoint issue we have to get assistance from MS and this incurs significant cost. Now given that Sharepoint hosts our SIMS Learning Gateway, we have invested in quite a bit of expertise, but the product is immensely powerful, and highly configurable, making issues (particularly network issues) very time-consuming to resolve. We therefore would ask that where it is a Sharepoint-specific issue that it is first considered to log a call with the provider who is providing you the specific Sharepoint expertise. If you have done this and drawn a blank, then please escalate with us, consider speaking either to your account manager. It is most important to us that you are both Live on our software and happy with our software.

VikPaw, as far as you are concerned there won't be an issue with UK law. I'm still fairly sure you can't use something like an admission number to link systems together as a number issued for one purpose shouldn't be used for another.

Russ could you raise a case please. My memory is letting me down but there is a legal issue around when the AdNo can be issued. Also you might also be breaking DP rules by using this field as a link to another system but again I'm not an expert. (bit of a useless post really - sorry)

Understood - I remember them all - SMAC, SCRIPT, SAMS, SCAMP etc.!

I'm surprised there is anyone on this forum (other than me) that is that old!

"Writing a complete, monolithic Management Information System (MIS) for a school is a large undertaking. MIS' are the very definition of "enterprise software" - the dull but neccesary applications that take up the bulk of programming effort worldwide." DHicks - I have to take issue with you!! We don't consider applications that can change children's lives for the better, to be dull. It is fantastic to go into schools that use our software to the full, enthusiastically. As it happens many many years ago there was a government funded project to build a school MIS, millions were spent. Our school couldn't afford it and I wrote what became SIMS in my spare time. The trouble was I couldn't support it in my spare time because people were using it during the day and I was teaching. Hence it went commercial.

We're looking at the whole mobile area to see what we should be doing. There would need to be a generic solution too but the iPhone is just too good to have an average application.

Matt are you trying to set me going! I'm pretty sure that SIF doesn't do document transfer and would it really be wise to send out potentially huge files to any school that is listening? I'm not ruling out "setting a standard" on our own but we did that with school/LA data transfer and offered it to all suppliers FOC but agencies don't like propietary standards.

We have considered inventing a solution because this comes up a lot. Trouble is that as soon as we did it would be a proprietary solution. We need Becta/DCSF to define a standard.

See SupportNet - Sticky Items

Unfortunately I don't know the detail of how to do this. I think Kiran is right there is a tag that you can place in text through the drop down. SupportNet has a community of really knowledgeable users that are able to help with SIMS specifics.

I don't think we are for the reasons given above. It would almost be lulling schools into doing a pointless excercise. I recommend talking to your fire service.

Fire drills are a perpetual issue and something we have thought a lot about. Any system can fail. A printout may be half complete when the fire alarm sounds. A computer screen is virtually unreadable in the sun and not take kindly to heavy rain. The fire could be in the server room etc. Traditional registers are just as vunerable - they may not have got to the office. Fortunately, the fire brigade will completely ignore any information that a school provides and sweep the buildings - what ever you say. (Several schools have asked).

Word with my HP printer!

Please log a case. There was one operation that was slow, now fixed though.