humbug1873

From the INSIGHT homepage: Where does INSIGHT get its data from? INSIGHT displays the data held in your SIMS.net database.

Okay I've been fiddling around a little with the CMIS data (they should really offer an API for access). My problems are that we have a two week timetable. The data itself is modeled quite strangely as it not uses database fileds like weekID or periodid. Instead our week is 14 days long starting on Sunday and the periods are entered as fixed values in a string (d'oh). Luckily the database is poorly designed so a lot of information is flying around (now I finally know why the data consistency in CMIS is so bad). This is what I've come up with so far. You put in a start-date and an end-date and you get a list of busy periods. Of course this is highly specific to our school but I guess you should be able to modify. -- In date range -- Out busy periods declare @startDate as datetime declare @endDate as datetime declare @setID as char(10) set @startdate = '20091101' set @enddate = '20091130' set @setID= '2009/2010' select cm.mapdate,tt.lecturerid, tg.groupcode, 'Lesson' = CASE WHEN tt.startTime = '08:45' THEN '0' WHEN tt.startTime = '09:05' THEN '1' WHEN tt.startTime = '09:15' THEN '1' WHEN tt.startTime = '11:05' THEN '2' WHEN tt.startTime = '13:25' THEN '3' END, tt.starttime, tt.roomid from ccalmaps cm inner join timetable tt on tt.setid = cm.setid and tt.weekday=cm.dayposn inner join teachinggroups tg on tg.setid=cm.setid and tg.groupid=tt.groupid where cm.setid=@setID and cm.mapdate <= @endDate and cm.mapdate >= @startDate and tt.roomid is not null -- and tt.roomid=@room order by roomid,mapdate, lesson .... now how time to put this into the mrbs_entry table ...

Pretty plain simple .. forget Frog. They promise a lot in their nice shiny sales presentations but they don't deliver. Once you've payed lots of money you'll only have lot's of questions. The documentation is a mess (or completely lacking). Last but not least once you are on Frog the way back is almost impossible, as they don't offer exports in a standard format like SCORM. The only thing they have is a FRG file format, and even that only in beta. If you are not already into Frog save the money for something more useful. Hire a programmer that builds what you need for you as a Moodle block for example (and then share it with the rest of us --- Frog the other 4-letter F word

That is a 'nice' beginning. But now comes the hard part translating the WeekDay ID into a 'date'. At least if you are using a two week timetable - as my school is doing. Suddenly life becomes complicated especially as the week structure in the database is a bit of a mystery to me. There a table 'weekstructure' that has a week number and a start date. Unfortunately in mu case the start date of a week is always 'Tuesday' even though Facility thinks different. Anybody now if there is some mapping going on elsewhere I am intensely curious about that. My ultimate goal is to have an importer script that copies the current terms timetable into MRBS. Any other booking can then be done in mrbs.

Mic, now this gave me something to laugh about. The room booking as it is in ePortal has quite a lot of flaws: * I get exceptions all the time trying to book a room. * I can't even see who is in there. * access rights management!? (i.e. who can actually cancel a booking etc) .. I have to admit I haven't been that far yet as even the 'simple' things won't work. * Last but not least ...it's really complicated to use. Maybe in a far far future in a funny/happy place eportal room booking will actually work, Right now it's a waste of money and time. -- Rene

Hi there, I am currently trying to set up CMIS to send SMS to tardy students. I've done the setup as detailed in the Serco docs. For testing purposes I just use an internal server first. I made sure this server can be reached from the CMIS server and that it basically accepts anything (it's in fact a simple PHP script that just dumps the parameters send). When I try to send an SMS I get - after a delay - the error message 'An Error has occured ...'. Not only is this message completely useless, I can't seem to find any other log that might give me a hint on what actually didn't work. What I know is that CMIS didn't even try to access my local server. Any suggestions on where I might find some clues on why SMS sending is broken?