resin1

Have a look at KB118461 on SupportNet. Simply says: When attempting to apply any update which targets SOLUS 3 the following error occurs: Critical Target Version Error

Would suggest that the target audience for the OP's query would know (and similarly shorten!) the product name in question, which is Go4Schools. We have it but yet to get it setup so cannot offer feedback. I will read replies with interest :-)

Wasn't meant to be a judgemental statement :-) You did what you needed to do in your time critical situation, and based upon what I guess the support person thought was the best advice i.e. you didn't have to have 3.5 in order to do the SIMS update, so you could go ahead with the SIMS update. In my case I have no urgency to get the SIMS update done, but did have the time to try to get a "more reliable" Solus environment in place before I do. A laudable but laughable decision in hindsight me-thinks. I should know better by now :-)

Naturally Matt - my hope is that by having 3.5 in place before we do the Spring update, there will be less problems doing that than we have experienced with updates in the past. Did not seem to make any sense to me to do what JHLEHS has ended up doing - an update using an existing version of Solus that can't possibly be better than what is now available (can it??), that we know is less pants than it was, but still briefs all the same ;-) Last thing I expected was to have hassle with the agent update itself. I'm sure the folks at the likes of Bromcom and Aspen must love reading about all the hassle that this mechanism has provided - hours of endless amusement no doubt!

Was similarly eager to gain benefit of the “improved” Solus, so decided to bite the bullet and deploy the 3.5.20 agent whilst things were quiet and had time to check it out this week. Sad to say – experience so far is that this is yet another not entirely clean/reliable piece of Capita software. Set a deployment overnight and checked the UI to see how it had gone the following morning, knowing that only a percentage of machines across the school would have been left on. Happily the majority of those appear to have updated ok. But there were a handful still showing as 3.4.118 and with status “install failed”. So looked into those one by one. Tried a re-install – this failed. Tried a removal from list and fresh add as an agent machine. This failed. So logged on to the workstation to make sure nothing unusual. Seemingly environment ok, so ended up deciding to manually remove the existing agent using Control Panel. This would not work since it indicated it was looking in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Capita\Solus3\Deployments\a5c4366a-53ea-4143-a3a1-b7a8da59fb65\Packages\2b9f5dd9-c3fa-45e1-8a65-727205b469e1\Unpack\ or the like and the SOLUS3AgentInstaller_x86.msi wasn’t there – which was true when I looked myself. Whether it had got into that state from the previous 3.4.118 install or as a result of the failed 3.5.20 install is impossible to say. Oddly, in doing some searching, I found a 3.4.64 version of the msi in C:\Documents and Settings\NetworkService\Local Settings\Temp, which as I have later discovered, appears to be where the 3.5.20 install actually leaves it. So whether the deploy method has been recoded between versions or perhaps something on our network caused these specific 3.4.118 installs to end up in a different package area, again I can only guess. But it left me with several machines where I couldn’t use the clean manual method to remove the existing agent and try the 3.5.20 install again, so I tried a crude “delete the install directory and links and try again” method! Doing this, the UI would actually complete the install as a new agent add, but the Agent version would simply not show and it could not display any target info when I queried the agent. Finally, I took the largest sized spanner to it – uninstalled the 3.5.20 using Control Panel (which of course now worked), went through the registry and cleaned out what I felt were any potentially important Solus 3 references, and then found the C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Capita\Solus3\Deployments area where it puts the downloaded stuff and wiped that completely! Only then, when adding as a new agent machine would it install and show itself online correctly with Agent version. What an unholy mess. Also noticed, when doing that last Control Panel uninstall of 3.5.20, the removal doesn’t cleanly delete the C:\Program Files\Solus3\ folder or the All Programs link for the agent, which you’d tend to think any well coded application ought to do? What else – oh yes, I see several machines that apparently updated to 3.5.20 ok the first time, showing more recent messages of “Successfully finished downloading update.” (actually the exact text is that with only one quote at the end and the full stop – sloppy!). Excuse me – why is it re-attempting to download what it already successfully downloaded and used earlier? Just want to add load to our network do ya?? And… I also ended up having a look at C:\ProgramData\Capita\Solus3\Logs\ds_systemlog on the server at one stage when trying to understand what had been happening, and my eye caught regular entries (every 30s or so) in this saying that a particular agent machine is “downloading update 296ccde2-f7e1-40e1-9b46-3c78861b587e for target SIMS Workstation”. That machine isn’t on, wasn’t on when I did the deploy, and probably hasn’t been for some time. So why on earth is it spending time trying or thinking it is trying to download to something it cannot get to??? And... I have now gone and switched on one machine that would have been on the original deploy list but wasnt on at the time. I watched the UI to see what would happen automatically - it soon showed that it had downloaded the update, but so far, it seems unwilling to install itself. I assumed this would work the same way as the SIMS updates i.e. once a machine on the deploy list became live again, it would go ahead and update? Oh, and just for afters – does anyone else get the same issue, when looking at the new Targets tab in the Deployment environment part of the UI – I get no scroll bar on the right hand side. So the list of machines show alphabetically up to a certain point, you can of course reverse alphabet using the column header, but I find no way to key scroll the list to be able to see those machine in the middle of the alphabet that are not displayed either way. Nice eh? If I could bill back the number of un-productive days to Capita, at their daily consultancy rate, for all the time I have spent re-solving issues with Solus 3 over the past couple of years in our school, I could happily give up work for a year or so, and every time I’m dealing with it, that is exactly what I feel like doing!!

I'm with you. Countless times over the past couple of years I have said - let's go back to Solus 2 - I'm wasting way way too much time sorting out each update with S3. But it has got steadily better. The peice of the jigsaw which I am sure Phil Neal mentioned on here at some point, or maybe it was on SupportNet, is that they were going to finally add in functionality that basically allowed a client to fallback to the old S2 method of updating itself, if when the user ran SIMS, it checked and found that it was not the same version that the network had been updated to. Not sure when that is due, but it cannot come soon enough for my liking. That would at least take away the burden on the likes of yourself having to sort out end users when, for whatever reason, the update didnt take with a client when you did the deployment. One intance of that I have seen a number of times is simply that a user had left themselves logged in and with SIMS running. If the S3 update cannot write over the solus.exe because its locked by a process, it updates all the other files but not that one. Then of course its out of date the next time a user re-starts and you get the incompatible database error, but S3 logs that the update was successful. Great eh?

I may be speaking out of turn here as I never got the time to investigate this properly, and now its not an issue for me, but last time I looked (about year ago I think), that wonderful mechanism that Ralph created had got b'ggered since Capita decided to add some additional export refid information in the xml when you do the export (which never used to be there when he created the concept). I can't remember if that came in to play on cloning aspects or templates, but it certainly meant that even if you followed that mechanism, importing back in causes complaints of duplications etc - so at that point I gave up using it myself as I couldn't trust that I wasnt screwing up stuff I didnt want altered :-(

Also noticed a severe degredation of loading whole year/course marksheets in the last week or so, similarly up to a minute when previously 10 seconds or so. Ended up trying the re-indexing patch (14265) and that appears to have sorted it. Cannot be sure it was down to the latest update, but it certainly had only been noticed since that. Not saying that is the solution, but it sorted things for us.

Matt is absolutely right - it is the school's responsibility to check and make sure that the info held there is valid and up to date. All schools that go through the KS4 (and I assume also KS5) results checking exercise should be aware of this, as it is stated there that they need to use that site now to maintain the accuracy of the basic background info on their school. I'm due to have a look at that over the summer to determine if it additionally still gets refreshed from any Census activity, or if its simply a snapshot from a certain time that will now only get updated if the school itself makes the change. I suspect, based on the warnings given, that it's the latter.

Looks like Greg/Emma have provided the answer to the original poster, so as tli suggests, suggest this post is finished and someone start the discussion re. assessment in different MIS thread?? It's one I've actually thought about myself, but simply never seem to have the time/energy to do so and deal with the follow up from what I'd probably state there. But it would be based on curiosity into what basic model other systems follow for the definition/storage/analysis of assessment data, as I personally would be surprised if there arn't significantly better models than the SIMS one out there. I mean - having to give a name to a "holder" of a piece of assessment, and that holder is really only linked to the student, and then having to refer to that holder by the name string in any work you do. What I'd expect a decent system to do is allow you to, at definition time, have it associated with the type of course/qualification that the assessment is for, that where performance measures are relevant, have the system know, by that definition, that the grade in question has whatever weighting so that performance measure analysis is simple and handled by the system. Moreover, the system should, by that model, allow an easy top down/drill down model for viewing assessment that is stored in the system i.e. management get a front page where they can click on KS4, then see Y10 & Y11 listed, click on one of those, see all subjects running within that year, click on a subject, see all classes that deliver that subject, see summaries at that level etc etc etc. Go4Schools (albeit an assessment/reporting system rather than a full MIS) is an interesting example of that type of approach. And the model should make ad-hoc reporting easy i.e. "give me all targets for Y10 GCSE Maths" for example. You wouldn't need to know the name of the "holder", as you would know that the holder is a "target" type, and the relationships are such that you'd be able to specify: Year = 10, Course = GCSE Maths. That type of thing. All that criteria is there in SIMS, but you have to mess around with marksheets to relate anything, and it makes ad-hoc reporting by referencing name strings extremely messy and either with poor performance for anything complex or a non starter in the worst cases. I've never understood why the basic model can't be more sophisticated :-)

ok. Not gonna take this off topic any further - other than to admit I'm not "in the know" on their plans, but have always assumed that they would see the need for a much slicker interface that would inevitably be browser based, if they wish to stay ahead, and when (rather than if) they do, that certainly wouldn't be SLG :-)

Sorry - but fell off me chair laughing at that one :-) Probably taken out of context, but the statement implies their next gen platform will be based on SLG. Oh my... my stomach's hurting :-)

Very common story unfortunately isn't it Charlotte - you find something that will save many many person/hours and deliver exactly what SMT and teaching staff need, and decision makers perhaps prefer to be seen to be keeping costs down. Working longer hours is never the answer in my opinion as is simply helps to hide a problem. Good luck with it though. Discover will be worth looking at, although I'm guessing you may have to implement a lot of the calculations you are currently doing in your "analysis", back inside SIMS for it to be able to "present" the results of those and then allow interrogation by focus groups etc.

I was about to write a longer reply, but having seen that comment, I'd only offer that you might find a way out of that situation, which is so common in so many schools, by getting a suitable dedicated tool in place. Although it of course means spending money when there is so little about, products such as 4Matrix seem very cost effective to me considering the amount of time many of us spend either becoming Excel "experts" and continually try to meet all the internal requests we get or wrestling with limited tools within our MIS that may help with the calculation side of things but are not that hot on presentation. Sorry - doesn't help the immediate predicament, more thinking long term since you have to repeat that process time and again.

Go4Schools is the re-badge of Stars4Schools, so that reduced that list by one :-) For KS4 only currently, highly recommend 4Matrix. You might also want to look at SISRAonline & Dashboards for School Improvement. The SIMS Discover tool will start to give you some of this, but has a long way to go to provide much of the computational analysis that is offered as standard within these sort of 3rd party tools. No doubt you will get a post or two suggesting that you have not actually used AM to its full functionality (e.g. it does traffic lights), but I certainly dont blame you if you are looking at other tools that give a really professional analysis, presentation of data and ease of engagement with the data for staff. Good luck.

Thanks for that John. Much as I expected. Usual moral of the story - there is rarely ever one answer to a problem, and the marketplace always needs choice!! ;-)

Thanks for the detail - that’s interesting. My only question to you was actually the clarification that you are using with SIMS as the MIS, as opposed to Bromcom as the MIS. The rest was more referring to the OP dilemma. As it goes, what you describe isn't how I assumed they structured things. My assumption was that they simply had some sort of process at the SIMS server end that talks to SIMS (via the Capita API's or whatever they call them), and therefore acts upon retrieve/input requests that come from the hosted gateway. I didn't realise that these actually go to their own local database, which is only a mirror (same approach they have always taken with their registration system). Bit less than SIMS Direct then ;-) But who cares if it works - provided it always mirrors 100%.

I assume you mean - both linked in to a SIMS MIS environment, as per the OP implied scenario? If so, it’s interesting to hear that SIMS Direct interface is actually working really well. Although, like a number of other Capita partners, Bromcom are well proven in their use of Capita's API's to create products that interface to SIMS well, when it comes to a teacher interface that will be used day in day out for 2 way data, my only worry would be the old adage of - are you safer relying on the MIS vendors own web interface that they develop and guarantee to be compatible with the MIS, as opposed to a 3rd parties interface that is implemented "at a distance" using provided API's. It could be that both use the same API's. It could be that the latter cannot do some of the things that the former does, because in fact the MIS vendor can use some internal stuff that they don't publish to partners. An example with TWF is the stated support for data entry into both SIMS AM & Profiles. I've not seen it demonstrated, but I do wonder how much of the Profiles work can be done through their web interface compared to how much can be done within SLG. Anyway - in terms of the OP, really depends what problem the customer is trying to solve - purely teacher web based usage or parental engagement or both? And what are the real priorities within any of that usage. And of course the technical environment/preferred technologies/skillsets with the customer. Both appear to be capable solutions and should do a job. But you/they probably need to go visit some users of each to form a better opinion.

I just had a look on Capita's site. It says "To use SupportNet you must be registered account holder. Staff in schools and other educational establishments, and support staff in LEAs and other IT support organisations are welcome to apply for an account. Accounts are for named individuals, not establishments. Setting up an account typically takes about 24 hours." LA supported schools can definately use it - I'm one of them :-)

I've always assumed that any bona fide SIMS users can set up a SupportNet site without issue in a matter of moments - Direct or LA supported. I'm curious as to what scenarios are not authorised to have access to SupportNet then?

back on topic please :-)

Your findings there znova confirm what I always felt about the framework, in that a school could quite easily show outstanding engagement without having such current internet trend approaches in place. Even that revision proposal that Jenny has posted, only touches on "different forms of communication" and "frequent information about progress" and is pretty much a re-word of what was there. Having "on-line reporting" with, or complimentary to a VLE will not guarantee an outstanding judgement on engagement - indeed I suspect many examples of online reporting that have been put in place so far do no more in terms of "information about progress" than the establishment was already doing with hardcopy. The VLE on the other hand ought to clearly be demonstrable as an additional & different way of supporting learning in the home. Both have great potential - unfortunately the previous Sep 2010 "deadline" caused many to panic into spending money or making bad decisions to get something in place for what was an artificial deadline anyway and not a statutory requirement. Now, I personally think the "wise" establishments should be taking their time to ensure they select the right technology, or defining use for what they have which goes above and beyond what they could achieve through traditional methods. The downside to that is that, in a lot of cases, what is implemented is very much constrained by the features/capability offered by the chosen technology, and in that sort of scenario, a rushed selection on technology often leads to disappointment when it is subsequently discovered how limited that technology is.

Wasn't trying to imply that it's easy money per se - just highlighting that local factors that arn't your making, like the imposed time pressures from eager schools management, could actually lead to you retaining more customers than if due process could be followed in a decent timeframe to consider what the "new establishment" wanted to do. I'm well aware that an existing customer could very much still decide that SIMS is as good as anything out there if they followed that process, but forcing themselves into a situation where there is no time to do that, and still have to spend money on re-licensing, is clearly their problem but somewhat of a gift for you :-)

The quandary I'm seeing with respect to a Phase 2 conversion, is that, as I understand it - the application process can be complete with 3-4 months (or maybe less?) and the desire from management to get up and running as an Academy asap can be understable with respect to access to funding and freedoms, so they will not want to wait. Then you get this situation with Capita and the obvious thing you'd want to do is take a fresh look at the market, compare pricing and capability and decide if there is merit for change. But even if you had the time to do that, and initial cost wise it looked favourable - the time pressure I just mentioned could well mean that you could not do all of that, and plan in an appropriate time to migrate from your existing MIS to another (lets assume always the summer break?), within the short window that management then decide as the time prior to Academy "go"! So you end up paying out to stick with what you have cos it's the least risk scenario and the only path feasible in the timeframe. Capita must be laughing all the way to the bank on this one.

Not something I've investigated, but I'm wondering whether Bromcom are also putting themselves in a position to compete for the SIMS "mobile interface only" user market with their Teachers Webfolder SD - I mean for a SIMS school who don't want to replace the predominant desktop SIMS client access, with Teacher Webfolder, but would like the mobile version for the types of usage that this Groupcall solution meets. I think typically you'd be paying for both the TWF software and the TWF Mobile option on top (per annum), so suspect they'd be pricing themselves out if the school is only interested in solving a mobile user requirement. But might be worth someone pushing on them to see what they could do ;-) For them it might be a way of levering in the interest for TWF to then have it spread to all SIMS users at a site.