GeneralDreedle

Well, we play by the rules. So, with no time to go through tender before 31st Dec we now we have to send a cancellation letter to ESS at 11 Kingsley Lodge, 13 New Cavendish Street, London W1G 9UG. Drafting it now. The ill-will that this has generated, at a time when schools are already on their knees, is difficult to express politely.

Just got this notification. Are they kidding? From the new "Customer Success Team"(!) The same bug that they introduced over a year ago is still being shipped? Or reheated in some way? Is this some sort of celebration of the introduction of GDPR by "spaffing all their customers up the wall"? We hold off every release till the last possible moment, but now they've got us. And this at the time of year when we are importing hundreds of new pupils. Absolutely incredible. They should be facing a class action now. And their decrepit cash cow "product" should be booted out of every school. Unbelievable.

Thanks for posting this timbo, didn't work for us :-( We have massive performance problems this term. Reported to SIMS 3 weeks ago and still no response. Every user finding the system really slow. So something clearly broke in one of their million "patches" at the end of summer... If there are other "patches" that clear the log file and reindex their tables I'd love to have them, but how do I get them? (When I logged the error I specifically asked about Patch 20647 and KB104766 which were referenced yonks ago in the ironically named "knowledge" base.)

LOL. Yea, obviously I'm not telling anyone to do this. Just saying the only effect a query can possibly have on a database is on performance. That one runs in milliseconds, and in space no-one can hear you query...

While researching this issue I did come up with a workaround, which anyone wanting to bulk email out reports themselves might use. I share it here for any cheapskates lacking the might of Schoolcomms (which we find useful for Attendance etc so I'll continue using). It's pretty simple, if you're used to monkeying around with SIMS reports and Excel. 1) Install Doug Robbins free Merge Add In for Word which enables you to merge attachments. See here: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_word-mso_win10-mso_2016/adding-attachments-in-mail-merge-in-word-2016/612d1278-aecd-457f-b608-fef497450d7b 2) Knock up a Pupil report in SIMS to create an excel list with the email of all Parental contacts for the pupils in a particular year (you probably have something similar already with whatever columns you would need for a mailmerge to parents). Make sure you include a column with the pupil's admission number - we need this to link to the filenames later. In Excel, manually sort on the emails and remove any parents with no email - you might also want to choose "home" over "work" if you included both as columns. You should now have one email for every parent in the file. 3) In SIMS Individual Reports Upload your reports to the document server for your year group, and also Export them to a folder, choosing "PDF" from the dropdown on the Export button. 4) In Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio run this query to get a list out of the SIMS database of all those reports you created (Just change "Year 8 Summer 2018" in both places to whatever you called it): use sims; SELECT substring( sims.dm_document_710.attachment_name, charindex('Year 8 Summer 2018',sims.dm_document_710.attachment_name)-7, 6 ) as AdmissionNo, replace(right(sims.dm_document_710.attachment_name,len(sims.dm_document_710.attachment_name) - 9),'.xml','.pdf') as PDFFile FROM sims.dm_document_710,sims.dm_document_doctype, sims.dm_document_status WHERE sims.dm_document_doctype.lookup_value_id = sims.dm_document_710.document_type_id AND sims.dm_document_status.lookup_value_id = sims.dm_document_710.document_status_id AND sims.dm_document_doctype.description = 'AM Individual Report' AND sims.dm_document_status.description = 'Public' AND sims.dm_document_710.attachment_name LIKE '%Year 8 Summer 2018%' 5) Paste the result from this query into a second page in the spreadsheet that you output from the SIMS report in step (2). Use Excel to prefix all the filenames with whatever the path is to the folder where you exported them (or modify the SQL to do this). 6) On the main page of the spreadsheet Do a vlookup on the AdmissionNo column of the SQL page. You now have a spreadsheet page with whatever columns you want in your merge message plus two crucial columns: an email address and a filename for the report. From this you you can mailmerge your attachments. 7) Create your mail message in Word, and add mailmerge fields as normal, then use the Merge with Attachments button. Doug's Add In is grumbly in only one way - initially it put up a message saying it only works with a "Letter type mail merge document". Actually that just means you need to stick at least one mailmerge field in the Word document before you click on Doug's Merge with Attachments button. (I put Forename in, as in "I enclose $Forename's Summer report". I'm sure you have many other fields you may want to use which you include in that SIMS Pupil report as normal). That is all.

Thanks for your help Schoolcomms. Having looked into this I'm happy that Schoolcomms normally sends the files as PDF. Just on that day something happened on the sending machine and the conversion failed so they went as xml. I'm going to use Schoolcomms again for Year 9 today.

Well, if I was Schoolcomms I'd convert to pdf on the fly as I grab them out of the server. But they don't, and probably this is regarded as an old fashioned way to do things so they never will. But we've used it for years and years and Schoolcomms makes it so simple: when in their emailing interface you just say "all parents of Year 10" and select the Summer report from a list of Individual Reports and off it trots... Nothing in life is that easy it seems. Doesn't explain why its gone belly up now, of course, after working for so long. I'll just have to take the butt slapping using it with the Year 8 parents next week and find a replacement (PROBABLY FOR SIMS AS WELL AS SCHOOLCOMMS!! )

Cancel my profuse thanks there. My joy has turned to tears. I'm not exporting nothing! I upload to the doc server by pushing the Upload button. No PDF option on that. Is there somewhere else you can set it to store as PDF?

... and how do we do that?

We email out Individual Reports via Schoolcomms. Have done this for years. Last week I had 20+ parents who couldn't open the report. Never had one complain before. Most were trying to open it on their phones, and most of those were iPhones, but several were android, and several were failing on grown-up devices too. Testing it, they fail on my android phone, and I have xml reports from last year and they fail for me too now, so I'm thinking this isn't one of the billion SIMS upgrades changing the file format... So that leaves me wondering: Has something changed on phone OS's so that they won't go to Microsoft links to resolve the tags in the XML? Has anyone else experienced this? Maybe they never worked, I just imagined it, and no one complained? I feel like I've entered The Twilight Zone. Also, why on earth have SIMS not moved to storing PDFs? Or, if they don't, why on earth does Schoolcomms not convert to PDF on the fly when it sends out the files? We have the next year group to send this week and if that fails as much we'll have to ditch Schoolcomms. Is the SIMS parentapp worth investing in?

What Graham said will work but it's over the line of cost/benefit, even for the 300+ we need. So dragged the xml from LRS into excel which nicely translates the xml tags into columns, pruned the garbage out, and got admin to cut and paste ULNs into SIMS for me.

I have low expectations of government websites but this sorry mess is the worst I can ever remember. Websites that fail with no error message, logins that only work when you reload the page, All files failing with LRS error codes that no one will provide documentation for, And a shocking runaround from the support providers. The LRS now smugly saying everything there is fine, its just S2S that's a basket case. After multiple support requests, phonecalls (especially like the LRS helpline where a bloke was reading out a 50 character url and telling you to bog off there), frantic repetition of effort, I have now found these XML output files which get dumped in the LRS site. But there is no way to input these. The XML is not even close to CTF format. I can manipulate it in Excel to create columns with Surname, UPN and ULN, but I don't know of any way to bulk import ULN like this (anyone?). So the two options are manually paste ULNs from this file or wait and hope that the S2S service gets fixed. But the deadline is a few days away now. Anyone have any other ideas?

Ditched SISRA a couple of years ago as it was more of an overhead to load data into it and staff were confused. Found it hard work - a sledgehammer to crack a nut. We've been happy 4Matrix users for last 2 years. It's simpler to get the stuff from SIMS into it, and it shows the headlines very clearly for management.

Just had a look: CR 1101-838092 26th January pretty much says it all and has 23 votes (now 25! :-) ) but hang on... that's 5 months ago. Of course it must be configurable, but I have parents emailing me daily asking for event details. If a teacher says "no equipment" the parents don't know if it was gym shoes or a protractor. Which is useless. So they then phone / email the school. Which makes the web access a waste of time...

Justin, we are experiencing things slowing down, reports grinding to a halt, people getting thrown off etc. I reckon it started after the spring upgrade and rebooting the server every 2 weeks or so is all that fixes it for us. Could a big fat memory leak or some dodgy processor-intensive loop have been introduced in the upgrade? (We have 8Gb database, 4Gb RAM, poorer processor than yours, the rest similar)

Sivadam, Have you got behaviour events that show parents the teacher's name and lesson details? Because we can't get that to show even though it's recorded in SIMS. So we have 1000+ parents who were used to ePortal for 4 years who are now pretty cross that on our SLG replacement the behaviour events make no sense to them. The other downside of SLG for us has been the need for active directory provisioning which, thanks to the input of our LA (CIA level security) and tardiness of our BSF supplier, and the SIMS insistence on only provisioning those with Parental Responsibility (so long grandma and aunty Flo!) has been a nightmare to administer. ePortal was just a website with a password. Dead easy to run. You could generate reports and mail merge to send out whole year group of users.

At risk of full disclosure... 1) A school pays £20K a year to an MIS provider for several years in a direct relationship. Then it is persuaded to join a BSF scam. As part of this it must use SIMS because that is what the managed service will provide. The contract is between LEP and Service Provider, (and in BSF land the details are assiduously concealed), BUT at no time in this story has the school been in any SIMS-based relationship with the local authority. 2) At commencement the Service Provider installs SIMS servers and facilitates migration, and supports and upgrades SIMS. School pays £250K annual fee to BSF project for managed service which includes this SIMS software/support/work/license. 3)Now the school becomes an academy it gets a £25K bill for SIMS. Surely SIMS cost is included in the managed service? So the service provider will now get a rebate from Capita? But BSF contracts are set up like life sentences, so the school gets no rebate passed on, and now pays twice. Remember, as an academy it is now in a Direct relationship with Capita, but the software and support it gets are worthless because it has no control of the installation and is already paying for SIMS and support. How can this be right? Is our Service Provider obliged to sort this out? I bet they don't see any obligation to get into academy negociations with a supplier. They never costed that into the Dick Turpin plan... and Capita are knocking at the school's door with the milk bill. To get back in your boat, are you saying that schools who have been receiving SIMS from LA never paid the LA for that service? And therefore gained no cost reduction from that on gaining Academy status?

It's not about a decision, there's no decision allowed. It's about two conflicting contracts that don't make any sense. 1) The school has a BSF support contract for 10 years whereby a supplier (the managed service provider) is bound to supply SIMS and SIMS support, and the school is bound to pay a quarter of a million pounds of public money every year for this service. 2) The school is then told that as an Academy it must pay Capita £25K directly for SIMS and SIMS support, software and support which it cannot use because it cannot touch the servers and already has support from people who can touch the servers (the managed service provider).

I'm a bit vague on this. What level of public money being squandered is worth worrying about? 50K? 100K?

"Just to confirm, the school pays the LA (or such), the LA pays Capita, school becomes an Academy, mid Capita year, the LA gets refunded, pro-rata, the Academy gets charged, pro-rata, the LA would ideally, pass on the refund to the Academy" Ah, but the BSF contracts are written "You pay £Xmillion every year for 5 years or we shoot your dog" (Something like that, I don't know the financial details). So how is "passing on" the saving ever going to happen? Not just for part of a year, but possibly for a decade?

Creese, any idea how many or who? And what they did about the double SIMS bill?

"Can BSF schools go Academy? Anyone know if any of them have done this?" Oh yes. Could we maybe have some dim sum as well? And obviously proper deserts like bannoffee pie and stuff.

So all these schools have been through BSF in recent years and have managed service providers. These have BSF contracts for 5 or 10 years whereby the service provider supplies SIMS and SIMS support. Then one of them becomes an academy. It now has to pay Capita 25k even though it is still paying for SIMS via the managed service contract, and in fact cannot take the upgrades/ support etc from Capita Direct which it gets for it's 25k because it is not allowed to touch the servers - they may not even be in the school... How does that work then?

Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency.... Our *three* weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.... Our *four*...no... *Amongst* our weapons.... Amongst our weaponry...are such elements as fear, surprise.... I'll come in again.

Burnley... I was there man. It was like 'Nam... lost a lot of good people...