trolley01

Hi, I've just sent you an email with the details and some templates that you can use. However for the benefit of others: It should be possible for you to make it work, it might just require a little bit of work putting the data in the correct format first. There are 3 types of data that can be imported into the workbook; classes, absence and cover data. I have detailed how each of these need to be laid out below. Classes: XLS Document Row 1 = Headers Column Headers required: Class Teacher Subject Code Subject Students Girls Boys The students, girls and boys columns are totals for each of the classes. All other records should be in consecutive rows. Absences: XLS Document Row 1 = Headers Column Headers required: Preferred Surname Preferred Forename Title Absence Start Date Absence End Date Absence Type Role Cover: This one is likely to be a little more tricky, as the workbook is designed to read in SIMS Cover sheets. The following format should work though. In cell A1 there needs to be the header with the date in the format: "Full List of Staff and Room Details: 06-Jun-2015" Row 4 = Headers Column Headers required: Period Staff or Room to replace Reason Activity Rooms Staff Assigned Staff or Room The Period should be in the format "Mon:1" with the day and period number separated by a colon. The period number is the number that will need to be listed on the Periods worksheet. The 'Staff or Room to replace" should be in brackets - e.g "(Hill, Mr J)". The remaining columns are imported as they are found in your file that you create. The assigned staff name should be in the same format as the 'Staff or Room to replace, just without the brackets. Supply staff names should start with a $ sign and then a space - e.g "$ Hill, Mr J" Hopefully that all makes sense. If anything is not clear though, let me know. If it all works and you get some meaningful data then I may be able to look into making it compatible with CMIS reports.

bobsmith is correct in what he has said. The workbook does not have any concept of Part Time staff or staff that have other commitments that mean that are not equivalent to 1 FTE. A lot of the focus of the workbook is looking at the effect on students and identifying trends. If you have any other questions just let me know.

The spreadsheet itself has no concept of time. It only deals in periods. Unless something has changed in a very recent release of SIMS, every day has to have the same number of periods, however you can choose whether or not to use these periods for teaching or leave them unused. I am not sure whether any of the reports would actually use this information. Typically Absence reports are using whole days, and Cover reports only relate to information about cover that has been imported from the Notice Board Summary. If you have a particular requirement that the workbook does not currently support, then let me know and I can see if it can be included in a future version.

Hi, I have got 1 x SIMS OMR Reader - fantastic condition - still working. We have stopped using OMR, but I know a couple of places still have them. All reasonable offers considered. Includes the 9pin-25pin adapter cable. :-)

Hi all, Another new version and a few more updates - nothing major - but some may be useful. No Cover Required is now populated correctly when running Generate Data, where it was missing out some records before and showing records in charts with no information. The limit of 32768 records for cover has now been removed (never thought that there would be that many records in a cover database!), and finally a fix which allows two digit year numbers, e.g 07 has been put in place. A little more tidying up of the code and a couple of minor performance changes. too. As usual, any suggestions will be much appreciated. Link to the information and download is: Absence & Cover Analysis | Weird & Wonderful IT Still going to look into a table similar to the SIMS Attendance Chart for a student, but for a member of staff instead. I'm looking forward to that as a challenge - but may be delayed due to other work for a short while.

Thanks BKGarry. Radio's don't seem to work on this site (new building - lots of metal!) but will see if we can organise a way of communication. Unfortunately we are a managed services provider, so when the school ask, we don't have much leverage to say no - after all, they are paying the bill and that is what they want us to do.

We are being asked to attend lots and lots of ALAN testing at the minute as a technical presence. We do start the tests, but generally sit their and do not a lot. This is now the 10th day of being in the tests, and I am told that there will be manay more to come! I wanted to know if it is actually required that their is a technical presence in the room for the exam. I know it is stipulated in the exam conditions for Functional Skills, but can't find any confirmation for the ALAN tests. We could train someone else to start the exams and upload the results (which we currently do), but most staff do not have the access rights or knowledge to fix things if and when they break. If anyone has any information or guidance on what we can do, or what you do in your schools, it would be much appreciated!! Thanks!

We are also running a mixed environment - the majority of users have SIMS installed locally on their laptops or desktops. It is installed as a remoteapp mainly to allow the local college to access SIMS so they can fill in registers for the classes that they teach for us. @british_government - our server is virtual, 4gb ram, 2.8ghz quad core. Only 4 -6 users of sims as a remoteapp concurrently. Other remoteapps are on the server adding load for other subjects/departments Does SOLUS 3 not help this by allowing updates to be deployed? - doesn't help if the device is off until 2 seconds before they try and use SIMS, but should help? Failing that, we just kept reminding staff to load SIMS up 10 mins before they needed it after an update. Then it is their choice if they wish to ignore the advice and potentially ruin the first 10 minutes of the lesson...

I am not sure. I have only used RDS/RDP when it has been presented through either UAG or Barracuda SSL VPN. I think given what you have said I would look at the following: 1. Use Routing & Remote Access to create a VPN connection into the school. 2. Create your RemoteApps and publish the RDWeb to an internal only url. 3. Give staff a copy of the VPN connection file and instructions of how to access the RDWeb url once connected on the VPN. This way all of the apps and the data is only available once your are connected through the VPN - providing a good layer of security. Has the added advantage that any staff with laptops can connect and then access all resources on their laptops once they are connected. Just a thought anyway - others will more than likely have their own opinion of how to do this given the parameters.

UAG would be an additional cost - no price can be be put on security though. Are you planning on just publishing the url to the internet? No - you will not need to install the Virtualization service - unless you plan on presenting a virtual machine to them to use. I would stick with an RDP session - will be easier. We have not had any issues with SIMS as a remote app here either - it is used daily here by external users through UAG - one of the best things we ever did!

You are on the right lines. The two services that you have selected will allow you to deploy a RemoteApp. Are you looking for this to deploy applications internally, or externally? If externally then you may need to install the RDS Gateway - and probably want to look at something more like UAG to provide good security. SIMS can be deployed as a RemoteApp too - meaning that they don't have to connect to a full RDS session just to access that one application. The alternative is to just have a full remote desktop session and have all the applications/drives/etc in there - one place to access everything. We have recently rolled out RemoteApps internally for those 'once in a blue moon' applications - the things that teachers use once a term for one lesson. This works well for most stuff. Remotely, staff have got laptops and use a VPN connection to access the data through Microsoft UAG.

Thanks Garry - that makes sense. Something like the SIMS Student Attendance should be able to be created - I will try and have a look at it shortly. Craig.

What sort of thing are you looking for BKGarry? There is a lot of data in the workbook, so may be able to use it to create a calendar like what you are looking for? Craig.

Just received the response from eInstruction...

The Promethean boards can open the SMART Noteboo files - but the staff here we not too keen on them. What were your other reasons for choosing the SMART solution? I have contacted eInstruction, and am waiting for a response.