harryeds

Thanks Vikpaw. Yes I've seen the job posts on SupportNet and many of Sividam's forum posts too - a job like his is the sort of thing I'm after! I suppose timetabling is a love-it-or-hate-it kind of thing and there will be others like me who enjoy it too much to let it go. On the plus side though, I've known people in the past who hated doing it... I'm currently responsible for ICT and SIMS in a primary school but have done secondary timetabling using Nova-T6, T4 and the old DOS Construct module when it was about

Hi Will, Of course I'd be delighted if you could help; since Special Agent disappeared I've lost my source of job adverts for this kind of work. I can email you my CV if you like. Perhaps when schools contact you looking for a SIMS manager you could ask them if they'd like the postholder to do their timetabling too - I know many deputies find it a horrendous job and some schools outsource it; as I said I'd love to find a job which combines these two roles. Be good to hear from you about any possible openings you might be able to find for me. Thanks, Harry

Hi, Has anyone ever known a school where the SIMS/Data manager is also primarily responsible for constructing the school timetable? I've seen one such job advertised but they used CMIS, which I have no experience in. I have considerable SIMS expertise but also a number of years' experience constructing school timetables using Nova-T and whilst a Data Manager position matches my knowledge I also thoroughly enjoy timetabling (!) so clearly a job which combines both would be exactly what I'm looking for. As I'm sure many of you will know, timetabling has traditionally been a Deputy Head's role but given recent school workforce reforms, aren't such tasks now increasingly being offloaded onto support staff with the appropriate skills? I'll keep scouring the net for the job I'm looking for (difficult, I know, to find a particular job when you're trying to invent it for yourself!) but if anyone had any pointers I'd be delighted to hear from you. Thanks for your help. Harry

I phoned up our SIMS support team today and requested Launcher access. I was put through to the manager of the SIMS team, who demanded to know WHY I wanted access to it and said that no schools in Bristol had access to Launcher and that if he enabled us to get into it we could "damage" existing data. How could accessing pre-SQL data possibly damage data held within the SIMS .net database? Anyway, I told him I thought he had no right to lock us out of our own software and he said he would need a disclaimer from the head saying that we would pay for any damage to the data ourselves - he then phoned our very busy but very obliging headteacher and told her the same thing, and of course she believed him. I now have to convince her that what he says isn't the case - which I presume I'm correct in thinking?...

Hi, Does anyone have any setup disks for Launcher or for any of the old DOS SIMS modules? If so, I'd be eternally grateful for a copy of them. I used to use Timetable Construct (TTCONSTR.EXE) to do the timetables, and although I'm fully conversant with Nova and aware that TTCONSTR cannot be used to create a timetable recognised by SQL, I'd still like to have the use of it back for nostalgia purposes. Similar scenario with Launcher; we still have Launcher on our SIMS server but our support team have locked us out of it (I'm sure some of you will appreciate why I object to this!) BTW: I'm ICT/SIMS manager in our school - I have no intention of reinstalling Launcher to gain access to it but I would like to set up a new instance of it on a standalone machine. Please get in touch if you can help!! Harry