PhilNeal

We would have liked to have developed automatic links but at the moment there are no concrete plans from the Government agencies.

This is a really important area. A system manager should not automatically have access to everything as there is lot of sensitive data held in SIMS for example staff salaries. Typically if a workstation does not upgrade that is not a SIMS permission issue it is that of the network user and how the workstation has been configured. If you use our standard SIMSPERM.BAT when the workstation is commissioned you won't need to give your network users special rights.

I've checked out the minimum spec for SIMS and its 1024x768 and I am told that FMS has not exceeded that requirement. Some of the errors in Feb & May should have been picked up and we have reviewed our processes to ensure that the traps that we fell into have been closed. We have a large workforce and proper procedures are followed including code branching, load testing, user acceptance testing etc etc. We do get time constraints when we have to release new statutary requirements that are woven into new features but there is a full release process which identifies barriers. We will not release if such barriers are found.

Sounds right. I would take a look at the behaviour & attainment parts too as these have had measurable impact in schools. If you also assign the pupil summary page to teachers, rather than the admin view, you will have a very powerful desktop to look at in reviews. It can all be done in the hour that you have already assigned for teachers training.

We will be looking for volunteers to field trial the new system in the autumn term so that it can be released in the first quarter of 2009. The deployment engine is using MSI. Changes to the EXEs can be patched which means that upgrades will be much faster. It will include notification to people using SIMS that they have to get out and allow you to throw them off too.

We do monitor upgrades to see how well upgrades are going. There's no probem from a contractual point of view in creating a test system.

My advice would be to get a bit of training. There are devices in AM that will make life a lot easier such as Result Sets but these take a little time to understand the implications of. Set up correctly AM will provide your school with easy means to set targets and report to parents.

I think it was "Thinking hard - please wait"!

Thanks for pointing this out - a fair cop I think. I have had a word with the Development Director!

Its only been tested on the June release but to my knowledge nothing was changed to make it conform. We'll help people using pre-June on SP3.

We have tested SP3 on the June release.

It shouldn't be looking in a specific place for Office. I can't see a case in Somerset's queues so if you haven't done so please raise one. We aren't testing on 64 bit yet but we will try to assist.

If you post this question on SupportNet you would almost certainly get a response. I've no idea if it can be done but if it can't you could raise an ehnacement request.

Roll out depends on your support unit. We have released Cover and there are training notes available. Support units will need time to get on top of the software.

The standard SIMS set up allows you to upgrade without Admin rights.

They are the old ones. Don't know why they haven't been updated!

For something as mission critical as SIMS we do test extensively on all supported operating systems. We don't say that something is supported until we have done those tests. Every operating system release increases the testing burden and so we are cautious about taking on new systems without dropping support for older ones. As far as I am aware there are no specific issues with this release.

x2Online - the only thing I can think of is that the upgrade size is causing the network to overload. Please send me your details and I will get it investigated.

They are fixes not work arounds. Timeouts are not a reported issue so please lodge a case and we can follow it up.

An answer to the question posed about OpenOffice. We have tried to minimise the need for MS Office to be installed on all workstations. However for designing certain things we can do a much better job by calling Word/Excel. For example drop down field lists can be made to appear in Word and quite sophisticated layouts can be created for school reports in Word. What is more our users know how to use Word and that makes it very accessible. Once created, these features can be called up by OpenOffice. I'm sure that we could put the same features into OpenOffice but at the moment we have higher priorities. The files outputted from SIMS can come from a number of different sources: The Reporting Engine Files produced in .xml, .rtf and .csv format should be able to be read straight away by Open Office when run. Files produced into .doc and .xls need to be run first in Microsoft Office and then saved into .doc or .xls so that they can be read by Open Office. Mail Merged files The merging for these files should be done using a Microsoft Office System. Once complete, the files can be saved into a .doc format for reading by Open Office. Assessment Manager / Profiles Templates need to be created on a machine with Microsoft Office. A report using a template should be generated using Microsoft Office or Word Viewer. Once the report is created, it can be exported into an xml document. This is the document which contains the header information ‘ These xml files should be able to be opened by Open Office providing the correct Java Runtime Environment (JRE) is installed on the workstation.

I've had no other reports of problems with FMS associated with the May release and we met late on Friday to review all issues. I'd be grateful if you get a support call logged so that we can investigate.

The biggest mistake that we made was in not recognising the need for a patch to sort out the potential census issue that we had found. A patch isn't always possible but in this case it was and should have been created as an option. When we did realise and create a patch it was after our message to support teams had gone out. The May release is a major upgrade to the infrastructure i.e. moving to .net2 and was bound to have some issues in view of the number of user permutations there are. Forcing an upgrade of this nature to solve a relatively minor occurance of the census problem was misjudged. The team is working through the weekend to ensure we get things sorted by Wednesday.

Firstly, I'm sorry that you have all had problems. Frankly we could have produced a patch for the potential census issue rather than force those of you with Sixth Forms to take such a large upgrade before a census. We will learn that lesson. The problems with spaces in directory names is down to .net1 vs .net2 and although we did realise this we made a bad judgement call on how many people it would affect. Full details of the 7 issues in the May release are on SupportNet and a re-release will be available on Wednesday. Anything that doesn't need a full release has been issed as patches and are available on SOLUS after your support unit authorises them.

Sorry I can't help you but if you post the same question on SupportNet you are quite likely to get a response.

In SIMS family links are formed automatically when you pick a contact that has parental responsibility. SIMS relies on the flag that is put into the contact link to the student. If one or more students have the same contact that is flagged as a parent they are in that family.