MattMitchell

There are ways to do class lists using the existing reporting mechanism (and sometimes a little external help from ms access or the like) - I exported the relevant data and ran off timetables without touching either of the nova variants we have, and I use a similar process to produce many of the class-focussed data review sheets we have. There's normally a way of doing things ;-) - I would strongly echo Sivadam's point though: supportnet is a FAR more effective place to get information on SIMS than here, and a lot of very knowledgeable SIMS users do not come anywhere near edugeek (no insult either to this lovely site or to regular edugeek posters intended).

Misses, of course! No comment on the SOB bit... ;-)

I'm not a fan of UDFs - I know they show on student details and make for faster report output but I tend to put all our stuff into assessment aspects

All you need is a file with name, sob, gender and upn and you can match to the fft file to get the upns before import - access or excel can do it. Your la might help if you're stuck and ask em nicely!

It's not really such an issue these days, windows has come a long way from NT now, and certainly central management and deployment is much easier using windows servers IMO. Linux has a lot of great benefits as a platform but managing a few hundred windows clients is not one of them.

Multiple subreports gives you all the various combinations -it's best to have each subreport in a separate report, unless you filter them so each can only return one line.

Do two separate reports and inner join on admission number - upn isn't guaranteed to have a value.

I've recently (!) discovered that ms publisher now supports automation since 2003 (don't laugh) if you fancy rolling your own, or you could generate PowerPoint slides from vba too

Not messed around with dtd's but I'll bet that removing the (URL) bit will fix it... Other things to try: - put the dtd somewhere separately and reference it by urn - miss out the dtd altogether - your XML looks well-formed and you don't need it

You can do hyperlinks with a formula (and inspect their properties) - if you're still stuck lemme know

CR would be a sensible idea... Posting the CR on supportnet helps too!

I don't have SIMS running from home at the moment (long story) so I can't look at the reporting tree, but it should be feasible. Attendance in general is certainly possible; AM/PM split may be, or at least you could export all the attendance marks and aggregate the data outside of SIMS if need be, although that way would be fairly inefficient. I'm exporting our attendance data as summaries, in order to import previous attendance data into assessment aspects (since you can't show what we want in a marksheet otherwise) and it can be done, one way or another. If you're doing it for online reporting, though, there is a strong case for using something like SLG, as the authentication issues involved are solved that way. "Rolling your own" auth mechanism is doable, but to make it really robust is a whole other matter! Many LAs, and certainly Capita themselves, offer a hosted SLG service, which would allow you to show data without having to worry about the implementation side.

We use webXchange (does everyone miss out the 'E's these days) and thence to sims exams organiser and the sisra. It's a shame the btec and OCR stuff was handled awkwardly by the boards though. I'm looking forwards to next year though, as we'll be set to do all the pi stuff in sims early in the morning - much much easier!

All quals in one broadsheet, including previous years, would be nice - although there is the issue of handling institutions that cover ks4 and ks5. I'll vote anyway!

Sims works nicely but we have a lot of qulifications that don't come in through the edi route - those were less fun! Sims does an excellent job of calculating derived stats like capped points score (in exams organiser) so it's well worth putting them in that way. Our exams officer uses sisra as well, which is particularly good for residuals and allowing subject leaders a bit of interactive reporting.

It works ok but is very time-consuming - would be nice to have an import option there

Thanks Sivadam - I may need that luck! I met a former colleague of yours yesterday actually - it's a very small world!

I thought about putting key stage supervisors into sims, but there is the issue of responsibility for students on ks4 courses whilst in year 9 -I treat these as ks4 for marksheets but they are in ks3 tutor groups...

Looks like my first ever exams run on Wednesday is going to be fun then...

Are you sure it's as low as 99.9% ;-)

That's now your official catcphrase, Sivadam! Joking aside, Shuriken, it's well worth posting questions like this on supportnet - almost all active SIMS users have an account there and you are far more likely to get a useful solution to tricky problems... There are some very knowledgeable people there who don't actively post on edugeek! It's also a private forum, so your problems won't show up on google the same day like they do here...

I was expecting SIMS to have a larger share, at least in secondary maintained schools.

Almost everyone uses SIMS, quite a few of the rest use Facility CMIS, a handful use Integris, very very roughly speaking...

Writing a certifiable agent looks like a very large task, and getting one certified looks like an expensive one... I'll have a read of the SIF spec in my copious free time, but it may be a feasible task and provide the chimeric open interface we keep discussing!

Might be needed as a core function anyway as a result of things like partner xchange...