resin1

Couldn't quite believe that when I read it, as had successfully used it over the summer. But just tried and you are dead right. Speechless. What baffles me more, is that GIAP is still clearly showing as "BETA", and therefore I haven't been trusting it much apart from finding UPNs for pupils where we hadn't managed to source from a previous school (hallelujah they finally gave us that ability!). And I seem to recall last year, when comparing the previous funding list export from K2S against what GIAP was giving, there were some differences, so again reason to be wary of GIAP in Beta. So now they add something only on a Beta site, and then introduce a bug that makes it impossible to export. Class!!!

Have been interested to read this thread. Are supposed to be launching Sync right now but have had delay in setting it up. Kinda worried that even if we take that step, all will not be smooth sailing right now. As potential route out, also contacted Salamander but they told me their order books are full and cannot guarantee any installations before November. Would be highly interested if they have told you otherwise.

So today seems to prove once and for all what a bunch of jokers this company is. I read something the other day that they would be doing something to at least flag up where communications have actually failed due to invalid e-mail address i.e. their e-mails bounced. So what do I see today - their method of flagging this appears to be that they change the "Last name" on the record in question to "BOUNCE". Hey - so you are trying to use their eCode management search facilities for a particular record and search by the surname you know, and... what??? no such record??? But it was there this morning??? What??? Oh... now I see why there's no match. And hey - why is my cross checking where I have been copying the list of eCode redemptions, and I use a join of surname and forename to lookup against clean pupil lists, now showing mismatches?? Oh... now I see why. Meet The BOUNCES meets Meet the Fxxx'ers Thanks for the flagging guys but how goddam crude is that solution?

Just wanted to check if anyone else has successfully had orders move to Fulfilled that were placed on 29/4 or later? We have 3 over the period 29/4 - 1/5 all still showing as Paid. That's a full week delay on the first one. Whilst something has clearly changed that means the queue lengths are right down on the admin site, and at times no queue at all, I can only see fulfilment has got worse. So just curious on others experiences in the past week. And when are these cowboys going to realise that the biggest improvement they could make on the admin side is the ability to correct existing e-mail addresses on a pending or fulfilled order, so that the former goes to the right place first time when it finally goes out, and the latter e-code can be re-sent without having to cancel and re-order (and wait and wait etc etc).

Haven't done the self-distribution route as yet, but I assume if you go via eCode Management=>Self distribute eCodes, and click search with no parameters to get all, or specify an order date range to narrow it down if you have multiple orders, to then get all for that order, the only option I can see is to use the mouse to select the rows in the table, Ctrl-A and Paste Special as Text into Excel. The downside is that this whole web-site is so poorly designed, you'd have to step through each and every page from that search, with its small number of display rows, and repeated that, just to get a full list into Excel to then cross check. Considering the site performance, the repeated server errors, and orders that might have 30-40 pages like that in the output, that's not a job I'd wish on anyone. But a job I'm shortly about to try to do for ours, since I want to do exactly the same cross check on a regular basis. So if anyone comes up with a simpler method, I'm all ears!!

Totally agree - would be a decision based on context. Was just highlighting that there is one major difference that could easily drive the decision to not be the one that those administrating the system would want to be taken, in the best interests of those in need. The gov ought to be taking steps to eliminate that dilemma, but they seem intent on pursuing with a system which, despite the positive "update" messages being put out, simply isn't fit for daily administrative use. I see today they have put a queuing system in place. That surely should be on the order stage, not on the main login page? All i want to do today is log in and check if an order has gone to fulfilled, or check if any from a previous order have been redeemed, in order to deal with queries from parents. That's just all site traversal which should put virtually no load on any key processing part of the site surely? But no - you're not allowed on the site at all. It's stuff like that which should make it a no brainer to ditch it in favour of an alternative method. But then that financial factor could force schools to be dictated by their trusts to persevere with the approved system, while we all wait and wait and wait!

Most school and trust Finance bods will have looked at that exceptional costs funding guidance and the allowance limits, and decided to take a risk averse financial position of not wanting to commit expenditure direct to Wonde (or another) where there isn't a cast iron guarantee they will be re-reimbursed, when they can persevere with an approved system that doesn't require them to do that. Considering the pain to those that should actually be benefiting right now, you could argue that to use the approved system in its current form is crazy when there may be an alternative that is better put together, but the above seems to be the factor that would influence their decision far more, don't you think?

Yes - the site did that for a while on Saturday morning, when it appeared to be responding well first thing, then wouldn't accept a valid password mid morning but would happily allow a password reset then still not let you in, then sorted itself later. I assumed they were doing yet more maintenance at that time. But today its bound to be load issues again. Good to see all those updates are having such a great effect!

Just wondering if anyone can give experience on lead time from creating new order this week, to e-codes actually going out and the order showing as Fulfilled. I've seen 3 days on a small order. Admin site responsiveness has clearly improved, but the issue will continue to be the FSM site that parents use. That Trustpilot page makes for painful reading on that side of it if you have a look!

Yup - same experience for me. Although I was going to leave it, my curiosity got the better of me mid evening and tried again. The site was clearly a lot more responsive and the last step took the test order to paid. When the vouchers will finally reach the recipient is entirely another matter but at least I'm reassured the order was correct!

Yes - saw that earlier. I'm giving up for today. Have a pending test order that is small with only 3 pupils on it, that falls into the "on or before 17/4" category. Have tried 3 times today and it still gives an approval error every single time. With no support available, there is no way to be sure whether the error is for another reason. So until, and IF, it goes through successfully, I'll never know. The fact that some appear to be having success makes me think there is something wrong with it, but it all looks fine when I check it. I'm certainly not about to call them up and sit in a queue for hours to then be told "keep trying". So will see if any different tomorrow.

Well I managed to get in. Waited patiently as I stepped through and as it creaked to get me to the point of accessing our first pending order. Waited even more patiently as the order page refreshed enough simply to be able to tick acceptance of T&Cs and hit Approve. Waited and waited until, yes, exactly the same error. Looks like they need to shut the site down until they can fully resolve this, or simply accept they don't have a viable platform and hold their hands up to the Gov to make alternate arrangements!

Oh yes - site now says "Your platform is temporarily offline. We will be back up and running as soon as possible." Let's see how temporary that is. Am curious about the Gmail antispam comment - are you implying that you are getting the vouchers sent to the pupils' school e-mail accounts, rather than direct to their parent/guardian e-mails? And is it consistent - like every single one ends up in the Spam folder?

Same issues already reported - even simple small csv upload keeps spinning. Might be right re. Smoothwall but haven't tried. And same error on Approval no matter how many times tried for a "pending" order. Gov is facing a major embarrassment here. Don't see these as teething troubles - the provider's technology cannot cope with the load and with the current situation, provider simply doesn't have enough staff to cope with the support queries, so is simply not responding. Gov should have put their eggs in more than one basket and shared the load. Wonde have a working platform that could have probably done the job much more effectively, but for whatever reasons are not approved. One of these cases where we can only hope someone waves a magic technology wand over the weekend, and it stops creaking. Otherwise we will all be continuing to fend off enquiries from desperate households that think each school is dragging their heels!

Thanks for the quick reply 3s-gtech. Based on your blog, I was going to try the change to NT AUTHORITY/SYSTEM perms in Management Studio, but since I'm no expert with that, I'm not sure I'm looking in the right place, or seeing what I should be seeing. I opened the SIMS db=>Security=>Users and looked at Properties for NT AUTHORITY/SYSTEM and the Membership page of that. But these are the tick boxes. I guess I'm in the wrong place? #### ignore that. Have found how to add it after further searching on SupportNet. Lo and behold, I'm in business. 3.7 updated. 3.8 going through as I type. Interestingly, I found KB119666 on SupportNet which includes the line: "We have included the SQL patch 'SOLUS3 SQL2012 NT Authority Patch.rar' inside the ZIP file for Solus3 installations experiencing issues with SQL2012". Probably my naivety, if that happens to be their fix for this issue, could they not have pushed that out on S3 so that users would at least be aware and see it, and know they might need it? If there is a known problem which has caused some sites to have to re-install S3 from scratch because no solution was forthcoming, to get round it, and other sites like ours that are only now hitting it when they would like to move on to 3.8 but necessarily it needs to move to 3.7 first, perhaps there has been time to help users out???? Grrrr!!!