LosOjos

@garethedmondson have you just tried it anyway after dismissing the error? I have seen a similar issue recently in SQL, but it did actually make the changes despite the error suggesting otherwise...

FAIR WARNING: I work for an SSU (SIMS Support Unit) Totally understand your concerns about using an SSU, you would think that the best support would come direct from Capita. However, in my experience this is not the case. Although we as an SSU do occasionally have to escalate to Capita (i.e. if there's a genuine bug in the software), this is rare and as we represent a large number of customers, it is arguable that when this happens we have a bit more "clout" than an individual customer may have (of course there's no way I could prove that) Based on my own experiences, the support from a good SSU is unbeatable. It's why I decided to go and work for one!

Open SQL Server Management Studio, go to DB properties, options, set recovery model to simple. Right click DB, Tasks > Shrink > Files. File Type: log. Will shrink the log files and improve performance.

Simplest method for a single client is to open the SOLUS3 agent on the client (double click the blue/white 'profile' icon in the taskbar) and initiate the upgrade manually

Is that £3 a day after running costs?

Hi all, I work for a large SIMS support unit and we're very interested in Marval's ITSM solution, in fact we have them coming in to give us a demo soon. The system looks great, but I'm keen to talk to anyone who has actually used it, in particular any other MIS support units? If anyone is using this and wouldn't mind chatting to me about it (and maybe letting us come and visit?), please drop me a PM

Anyone?

I believe that they will get it once they come back online. I've never actually tested it, but I have set up a fair number of new SIMS schools and the install was done entirely via SOLUS3, never had to go to a physical machine and touch the connect.ini manually, and some of those machines certainly weren't online when the settings were pushed

Hi all, I work for a large SIMS support unit and we're very interested in Marval's ITSM solution, in fact we have them coming in to give us a demo soon. The system looks great, but I'm keen to talk to anyone who has actually used it, in particular any other MIS support units? If anyone is using this and wouldn't mind chatting to me about it (and maybe letting us come and visit?), please drop me a PM

You'll have to abe a bit more specific - Visual Studio is just an IDE, not a language. Using VS, you could write a site based on ASP .net in either VB or C#, or a PHP based website, a Java site, Ruby, Python etc. etc. Alternatively, you could just use it as a fancy text editor for plain old HTML/CSS. Which programming language(s) do you already know, which do you want to learn?

The school in question isn't using Smoothwall, but they are handing off most traffic to their ISP's proxy who may be using Smoothwall - is there some odd issue with Smoothwall I should be aware of? Might give me a clue... EDIT: their internal proxy just captures ADFS requests and allows them straight through, redirects everything else via the ISP proxy. Works fine for everything except Teacher App on an iPad

I'm hoping this is something simple that I'm missing. We have a school that is able to use Teacher App without issue on Windows and Android devices on their staff network. However, their iPads will only get as far as entering the email address to login. At this point, the Office 365 login page shows the "Redirecting" message (as expected) but never gets any further than that. However, the same iPads work fine on the school's guest network, suggesting that the issue is with their staff proxy. They can login to Office 365 apps on the iPads no problem on the staff network, and as I said Windows and Android devices work fine on the same proxy, so it appears to be some combination of proxy setting and iPads in particular that is causing an issue. Any ideas?

I work for a large SIMS Support Unit now - not tied to any LA or MAT, our customers choose to come to us. It's been a breath of fresh air (and made me realize how little I know about primary schools!)

@CAM - or move to a support unit; better/equal pay, less responsibility, less stress, easier/more standard hours. I don't miss it!

Do you have any third party software accessing your SIMS database? I've seen software trying to run HUGE SIMS reports every 30 minutes, totally locking the database in the process. Solution was to reduce the updates to every couple of hours instead.

Probably sick of getting half stuck in Pokéballs every time the app crashes

I'm wondering what people are doing about printing from Android devices? Recently bought myself a laser/LED printer for home use and this is the one sticking point I have. The printer is connected to the home network and I do have a Server 2012 box managing it, working fine with the various Windows machines in the house. I've tried Google Cloud Print but aside from not being particularly keen on my every print job passing through Google's servers, it seems to heavily compress everything resulting in unacceptably poor quality prints. Any ideas?

I'm enjoying NMS. Yeah, it's a lot more simplistic than I'd hoped, but I think that's largely because I came at it comparing it to Elite (like a lot of people) when actually, it's got a lot more in common with Minecraft. I can easily lose hours to it just exploring planets looking for weird creatures and gathering resources to build up my starship, and I appreciate the simplicity when I've had a long day and just want to space out to something. I do hope that they'll keep improving it, and I honestly think that they will. If you played the Minecraft Alpha/Beta builds back when it was browser based (or even the RPi version), you'll know how basic that started out with just a few basic blocks, a couple of mobs and a handful of crafting recipes. I think that's the stage NMS is at now, and I think all the hate Sean Murray is getting is a little harsh. I understand he made some grandiose claims about what you'd be able to do in NMS but I honestly believe it was just his mouth running away with him and his relatively inexperienced team now realising quite how mammoth a task they had ahead of them to deliver. They probably really did want all those features on launch day but also realised if they put it off much longer, they'd lose much of the player base before they even got off the ground. I'm happy to pay my £40 over to support the game in the hope it'll grow in to something amazing but if it doesn't, well i still have a pretty cool game to chill out on. I can live with that.

Great that you've got a couple of solutions, thought I'd chime in with one more very easy one: Reports > Student Analysis Reports All sorts of handy reports there! They're fixed (i.e. you can't edit them) but are a really quick easy way of getting at some common cohort breakdowns

Yes, that's how I understand it. So it's worth putting all your students in for Lit even if they're not expected to do very well, so that their English grade will be doubled. New system, different game!

Same rules apply as for VA, so ff they have no KS2 results, they're discounted. Make sure to check the rules for TA substitution too (P30 of this document): http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/performance/2013/secondary_13/KS2-4_Performance_Tables_General_VA_Guide_2013_FINAL.pdf

It definitely won't - it's a completely different technology, it doesn't use radio, it uses light. Why would they need to do that? If your computer lacks WiFi, you buy a WiFi dongle, not a new computer! No, but it's not as bad as you think. We're talking extremely high speeds here, so although the light would technically be on, it'd be blinking so quickly you wouldn't be able to tell it was on - it'd be receiving power but emitting negligible light. All that said, there are some pretty major flaws with it as touched on in the article, such as range (anything that blocks light will knock the signal out completely) and interference from other light sources. I can't see it taking off in the way WiFi has unless they find some genius way of addressing these two major drawbacks, but I think it'll see some use in certain business cases, such as super high-speed building to building connections.

Yeah, they're starting to roll out such a service soon: Sky Q - Overview - Your wireless home entertainment system It won't be completely internet based, but it's a step in that direction. Essentially, this is how Virgin works already. I doubt the cost to consumers will drop - Sky's costs will certainly drop, but they won't drop their prices much (if at all) as they'll be happy to rake in all that extra profit.

I don't own that particular box, but myself and family have all owned various Humax boxes over the years and they've all been fantastic. They tend to be a bit pricier than the competition, but well worth the investment in my opinion. If you can afford a Humax, go for it!