Toby.Belfield

All, Just to let you know - I am completely committed to ensuring that the releases are delivered on time. Especially something as important as the August Main Release - given the impact that it will have on schools. The plans are to make it available before Wednesday 1st August - before 10 am. Thank you for your kind comments - I am hoping that planning our upgrade to SQL 2005 to meet our August Release will give schools a window to carry out the upgrade. That being said, however, I am also well aware that many schools have really embedded SIMS into their school - in such a way that they find it difficult to live without it. So - any "inconvenience" is big. I will do everything I can to minimise this inconvenience. As you will know, my responsibilities also extend to Examinations Organiser - and even though there are plans to enhance the product as part of the August Release, these enhancements are not necessary for the Results sessions mid-August. There are no plans to change any part of the Performance Tables this year. I will be mindful of the importance that there must be no disruption in the Examinations area in August. Regards, Toby Belfield Capita

Mr_T, The documents are all on the SOLUS website - for direct access go to http://www.capitaes.co.uk/solus/help.asp From here - I would recommend the document - Automating SOLUS 2. However, if you want to automate site-specific patches, you can run the DBUpgrade utility from the Windows Scheduler, passing the same parameters seen from the Automating SOLUS 2 document. So - create a scheduled job that looked something like: dbugrade.exe /server:abcd /database:abcd /user:abcd /password:abcd /auto /forceupgrade /sauser:abcd /sapassword:abcd Regards, Toby Belfield Capita

This is interesting, because MSDE does not have a connection limit. Although, some non-server operating systems, such as XP, have a connection limit of 10. Could you be referring to a "performance penalty?" With MSDE there is a performance penalty when more than 8 simultaneous connections are "busy!" You can view the application event log for SQL Server 3629 messages or use the DBCC CONCURRENCYVIOLATION statement to assess how often the workload governor is activated. If the governor is frequently activated in a well-designed and well-tuned system, and the system is generating a lot of logical reads and writes, you should consider upgrading to SQL Server 2000 Standard Edition. Incidentally, we will be looking at a move to SQL 2005 (inc Express) which have no connection penalties. No timescales for this move, as yet. Hope this is of some help. Regards, Toby Belfield CAPITA

Yes, Mark - you do currently have to Refresh the Home Page as the messages/reminders/reports all appear there. Clearly, on first log in the Home Page is automatically refreshed. To make it automatic would have caused performance issues. However - we will be looking to enhance the Alerts functionality, to possibly include the choice of sending messages/reminders/reports to either the Home Page of SIMS, or email software (such as MS Outlook.) Have a look at the Handbook for full details of the functionality. The Release Note just gives a small amount of detail. I demonstrated Alerts at the Independent Schools Conference in November, and it went down extremely well - particularly the ability to schedule reports. The idea here is that Heads of Year (for example) could have a regular report of their Year Group's attendance/behaviour etc. Every report in SIMS can now be scheduled. We will be updating and improving the SIMS Home Page - examples of which can be seen at BETT in January next year. Regards, Toby Belfield CAPITA

SIMS December Update - is now available Please visit http://www.capitaes.co.uk/solus for further details - including the Release Note. Further details of SIMS software can be found from this website. This release has been made available to all Bedford and Cirencester supported schools to receive using the SOwLUS 2 Wizard. All Support Units have been authorised to distribute this release to their schools. More detailed information about SIMS software and releases can be found from Support Net (http://support.capitaes.co.uk). Regards, Toby Belfield CAPITA

I can agree with Steve - the Cover part of SIMS .net, is going to be very good indeed. The demos, although impressive, only show part of what is going to be a very successful part of our software. It will be time-based - and will seemlessly link with the rest of SIMS (including timetable - NOVA-T and Personnel - the HR module). Clever use of colour will enable teachers, once logged onto SIMS, to see easily their lessons of the day - as well as their cover lessons. Of course, SIMS already has a Cover module - which is part of NOVA-T4 and is used by most Secondary schools. The release date for the new Cover will be announced early in 2007. Regards, Toby Belfield Product Manager Capita

Actually, I foolishly forgot to say that the latest version of the SOLUS 2 wizard will allow you to download and upgrade FMS, without having SIMS! You should notice that there are now 2 login boxes on the front of the SOLUS 2 wizard, and if you have Level 5 permissions for FMS, you can enter your FMS Username and Password in the FMS login box - which will deploy and upgrade FMS. We have now completely separated SIMS from FMS in terms of the upgrade process. Also - you can automate the download of the FMS files (in the same way as the SIMS files). We will be releasing a new version of the SOLUS 2 Wizard (version 2.06) which will allow the deployment of SIMS Learning Gateway to both schools and Local Authorities. Regards, Toby Belfield Product Manager Capita

I have just posted another document to our corporate website, which gives more details regarding SIMSPERM.bat - I hope this is of some use. The link is: http://www.capitasolus.co.uk/Solus2Help/Workstation_Update.pdf I am in the process of reviewing all of our SOLUS & Upgrade related documentation, and will update the corporate website with new documents early next year. Regards, Toby Belfield Product Manager Capita

With a normal installation of SIMS, the SIMSLOAD link is included in the shortcuts to SIMS (both on the desktop and within the SIMS Applications link from the Start Menu.) Some people, however, remove this link to SIMSLOAD for a variety of reasons. If SIMSLOAD is removed, then the workstation will not automatically update. Some schools do include the SIMSLOAD as part of the login script. Full documentation can be found from our corporate website - http://www.capitaes.co.uk/solus (click on the link to documentation on the left hand side.) SIMSPERM.bat does modify the permissions on the workstation to allow upgrades to files on the workstation to take place. This is also fully documented. Regards, Toby Belfield Product Manager Capita

If you are using our FMS product, you have "free" access to Equipment Register - as it is part of the SIMS Financial Management System. There is no additional licence or cost to using our Equipment Register. Therefore - if you have FMS, you could just have a play! Regards, Toby Belfield Product Manager Capita

SOLUS (version 2.05) has roll-back functionality, meaning that if there is any problem with the upgrade, then the workstations should not be affected. The wizard actually performs the application update in a temporary folder, and only copies the application related files into the Setups folder if there is a successful database upgrade. SIMSLoad, which is run on each workstation - prior to launching SIMS, ensures that the Workstation is at the right version. If not - it will upgrade/downgrade as appropriate. Further documentation on all of this can be found from within the SOLUS section of our corporate website - http://www.capitaes.co.uk/solus (click on the link to documentation.) Regards, Toby Belfield Product Manager Capita

All, In order to force all connections to be broken, you can run either the SOLUS wizard, or the DBUpgrade utility with the parameter /forceall. However - if there are people logged on, to log them off you will need the sa username and password (which can be passed as parameters /sauser= and /sapassword=) Next year we are looking at modifying our upgrade processes so that it will not be necessary (in all cases) to force connections to be broken. For the full list of parameters, run SOLUS from the command line - followed by /? Regards, Toby Belfield Product Manager Capita

Have you looked at the SOLUS.log, which is found within the My SIMS Documents (inside My Documents on the machine that runs SOLUS.) Also - are you running the latest version of the SOLUS application (version 2.05)? This version resolved a number of update issues. We will be releasing v 2.06, to deal with more proxy server issues, as well as being able to deploy our SIMS Learning Gateway application. Finally, try automating the SOLUS application - through a batch file and Windows Scheduler. You can download or both download and upgrade out of peak times, which should make for a smoother process. Regards, Toby Belfield Product Manager Capita

Some confusion here! The SIMS Registrations and Admissions module is used, mainly by Independent Schools, for recording Enquiries, Visits, Reg & Deposit Fees and Applications - prior to Applicants and Prospective Pupils entering the school. It has recently been updated - in the November Release - and integrates well with the rest of the SIMS system. The SIMS .net reporting engine can be used to generate good marketing reports etc. The SIMS Lesson Monitor (which includes Lesson Register) is used for recording lesson by lesson attendance and has also been recently updated. There are links with the rest of the SIMS system, including Behaviour Management and Reporting. Hope this helps. Regards, Toby Belfield Product Manager Capita

There is a CD available to download. The link to download is: http://www.capitasolus.co.uk/CDImage/FMS682.zip This will download an iso image of an installable 6.82 FMS release. However - to unzip, you do need a password. You should request this password from your support unit - or if supported by Capita Bedford or Capita Cirencester, send an email to [email protected] Regards, Toby Belfield Product Manager Capita