PhilNeal

Oxfordshire run SIMS on Terminal Services for most of their schools. I will try to find out how many servers they use but I think its around 6 for 150 schools including secondaries.

Something very odd indeed was happening here. A re-install of SQL Server has, I understand, solved the issue. We just could not replicate on our set-ups.

Your support provider, presumably us, issues the updates. If you can't see an update it will either be because you are up to date or the latest release hasn't been authorised by the support provider. If we support you, email [email protected] and they will be able to help.

This is bizarre – the service desk has booked a LAN desk into your system to see what is happening on your site.

Just to confirm what the SIMS Service Desk have done. We have taken your data onto our machine and run the report without exhibiting the problem that you describe. They were able to replicate it by doing the following: • Go to Control Panel • Select Regional Settings • Select Regional Options tab • Top drop down menu to English (United States) • Customize button – select date tab • Changed short date format to MM/dd/yyyyy So this would indicate that it is an environmental setting at the school in Regional Settings. Hopefully you will be able to resolve this now.

I will ask someone to try this out for you again. I don't suppose you have a case reference?

As a guess the machine you are using has an American date setting.

There isn't a reason that I am aware of that would cause SIMS or Integris to cause this problem with your server. I note that you say that my guys aren't being helpful, that's probably because they haven't come across anything like this. If you'd like to contact me directly, I will assign someone to try to help.

The PDF stupidity, and I agree it is, is bing addressed now. It will probably hit the streets in the summer. We may even be able to hosting manuals on a central server so even the server upgrade times reduce.

I work very closely with the Bedford Service Desk and they are very keen to provide an excellent service. When I see postings on EduGeek of this nature I always offer to investigate so that we can improve our service but rarely does anyone contact me. Our Service Desk Managers would like to hear from you if you feel that we have failed and in that way we can help our staff to better meet your needs. Details of how and who to contact are listed in a document in "Sticky Items" on SupportNet.

SpuffMonkey, you are far from being on your own. Please feel free to contact me directly should you want to discuss anything.

No we haven't done the additional work that would be required to make Open Office deal with graphs. The free MS viewer will.

I 've checked and we don't support or in QuickLetter. Don't forget that all subsitutions work in the report generator and that if they are called up from the student page they only print for that student.

Our sales desk can be contacted on 01234 838080. They will also be able to let you know if your LA has expressed interest in rolling out SLG.

A report that is called from a student record is filtered to apply for just that pupil. The "links" section does not apply a filter.

Just for clarity - this is only required on older dBase related software. No current SIMS modules require this to be done.

Nothing in SIMS will use the older service after you have upgraded.

Just to recount Capita has supported the proof of concept in Birmingham and between Northern Ireland and Durham University. We have given up a lot of time to working on the data model with Becta. Our concerns are from very direct experience. If we exchange data between SIMS systems SIF will lose lots of data - its a problem!

I'd love to follow this up because a patch should not be needed.

The CTF is not sent automatically. If you chose LA you will get all pupils in the range. The school option will only export pupils for that school.

Nick is quite right. A system admin person would not have automatic rights to see staff data which is highly confidential. You need to be assigned rights to see/amend staff data.

The infrastructure costs arise from the LA or RBC having to set up and more importantly maintain the ZIF servers. The model being proposed is that the servers will be maintained at the LA or RBC and that will require staffing that does not exist at present. We estimate that to modify SIMS to deal with SIF will cost >£1m and at least one other major supplier has come to a similar conclusion. Whilst we can spread our costs over our user base and it will amount to a little extra for every school our competitors are not able to do the same. We have indeed raised our concerns over SIF with DCSF and Becta. We all want a solution to these issues but we must choose a model that will deliver the benefits.

Capita has no concerns about losing market share through interoperability standards such as SIF. We have over 100 third parties that link to SIMS and compete with us already. If anything the cost of SIF to suppliers will cut out competitors! The issues that we have with SIF are: the UK data model is not yet fully defined and will require considerable compromise, certainly on our part. We are working with SIFA UK to help refine the standards. the agent development costs and more importantly the infrastructure costs will have to be financed there are quite a number of processes that we think that SIF will not deal with such as primary to secondary transfer. (This is because of dual ownership of data items which is not permitted in SIF) the use of SIF needs to be mandated in the UK schools own the data not the LA. This raises data protection issues as a SIF agent has to respond to an annoyomous request for data. We would like a legal opinion on this point

Strange that Apple have not gone for a browser approach with iTunes. Could it be that browsers are a tool to be used in the right circumstances rather than "more advanced"? I've tried Google WP/Spreadsheet and would not use on a regular basis but I was impressed that it managed so well in a browser. I often ask people that are experiencing difficulties with SIMS to drop me an email, a few do and we will help sort out the issue. SupportNet does not require you to know KBs - you can free text search our solution database.

Why don't you try the offical route! If you are a legal user of SIMS you should get a fast service.