techyphil

Thank you EduGeek, That's helped me greatly and hopefully others in future!

Thank you oldtimer. I'll look at the Group Analysis report.

Good evening all, I've always wondered if there is an official calculation to work out attendance summary data? For example, I'm not entire sure how SIMS calculates the % attendance for the entire school. I've tried to manually calculate this in the past and then compared it with the summary data SIMS reports and it's a little off. We now have Go4Schools and that displays a summary but it also states underneath the figures "* Please note - the attendance statistics include school leavers who are not included in the on roll count." So does SIMS also include leavers into the overall cumulative percentage attendance figures? Is there an official calculation? Aaaargh!! There's no transparency! Also, sixth form attendance is not a legal requirement, we take it anyway for fire regs and safe guarding etc but are they included in the whole school summary? Go 4 Schools show a % attendance by year and an overall, which presumably includes years 12 + 13. We're only interested in years 7-11. Is it the end of the world to take years 7,8,9,10 & 11 overall percentages and get the average of them? This is just a random rant, it's not the end of the world. If someone has discovered the official calculation for these summaries, please let me know. *rant over*

Same issue here. Not looked into it in great detail yet. Running a Sims report opens Excel and then crashes. Works fine on my PC just not some staff members. I searched EduGeek and somebody mentioned an issue with Smart Ink causing the problem. I think I'll be checking this on Monday.

It was installed by a Capita engineer. I've ticked the box "Show all updates" and it's listing everything back to 2011.

Blimey, okay so do we really need everything prior the newest install files? Considering we only installed Solus on 23rd Dec, it's massive! I'll give Capita a call to see if they can shed some light into this matter.

Happy New Year all! We've moved to Solus 3 and was wondering if the repository folder should be 14.4GB's. Considering the actual SIMS and FMS installers combined are only 250-350MBish, I feel it's rather excessive. Is this normal? Thanks

Thank you, I'll google shop estimated prices.

Hey localzuk, May I ask what speakers you're using with your setup? I've been roped into a meeting later and they want to know estimate costs. (Yeah I found out I was involved in this an hour ago). Our current system uses 4 speakers (old tinny things) and there's no bass what so ever. We're losing out on potential external business because it's not fit for purpose. A dance class was cancelled because it didnt sound good. Could I also be cheeky and ask how much your setup cost (ex fitting) please? The amps, speakers, mic's and mixer. Sorry, I'm honestly not being too lazy but it'd give me a good idea what to put forward. We have a hall that sits about 300 people (using chairs) to give you some scale. Thank you!!

Super, yeah R1 has been very unstable on the majority of our servers. Yeah I too was quoted £260 for the SLG re-install. I'll speak to him/her tomorrow about this. I'm Northamptonshire I'm tempted to install the SIMS server as a Hyper-V Guest this time if Hyper-V is as good as they say in R2. As I understand, it's even better on Windows Server 8? Maybe a doddle to transfer the guest in a few years time when we do our server refresh and save a few quid on Capita costs. Thanks matt40k

Hey all, There are many threads about schools wanting to migrate SIMS from one server to another or to simply rebuild their existing server for various reasons. My SIMS Server has been playing games in recent months and various internal systems are glitching at random times of the day. We've worked very hard to resolve the issues only to come to the conclusion - REBUILD. We've had some serious sims outtages this week and the only way to perform a quick fix is to hold down the power button. (it won't shutdown gracefully) So in a bid to be more proactive and increase the chances of fixing the deep issues, I thought we'd install Windows Server 2008 R2 (Currently 2008 R1) and reinstall the SIMS Server Software and any bolt on's such as SLG. I called Capita for advice or to assist to ensure we don't screw up sims all together and they want £942 to do this. We've just paid £24k to Capita as part of our transition to an Acadamy. That cost includes two half days for onsite visits, only they're "strategic planning days". They're not offering any advice at all, they claim there are no guides and if I did do this myself that any future problems will not be supported. I feel that we're at the mercy of Capita everytime! It's my server and if I want to do anything at all, then we either have to pay the earth or stand down. We could continue to search for a solution to our Windows problem but that takes a lot of time and I don't think I'd be happy anyway. I like the occasional refresh, it's cleaner and generally faster. Does anybody have any guides? I have a general idea as to what the process is, but things like B2B probably needs configuring too. On a side note, as an Academy, do we need to run B2B? I didnt know that even existed until a few years when a guy called to say it was not working and they remoted in and re-configured it. Any help or advice is very much appreciated! Cheer guys, Phil

Guys, you are awesome. It's good to know of these problems. So how does Mac OS work with regards to home directories? I've heard of two methods... 1. Their home drive is directly mounted to our Windows Shares. Files are instantly worked on from there. 2. Their home drive is downloaded to the Mac Client, where applications work directly with the "cached" copy on the client. Changes are sync'ed back to the Server. I can see flaws with either method working with massive file types. How's the external hard drive system working out for you Carter? What's the general file size being saved to the drive? Do they have to remember to save 5mins before logoff to ensure it has time to copy fully? Thanks again!

Sorry I forgot to mention that we've got very little money.

Hey, Yup we're looking to rip out our music suite and start over. I've spec'd up iMac 21.5" with a Mac Mini Server for management. We was hoping to use the existing home directories on our AD network. However, since visiting another school, they found space was a huge issue and therefore got xTB of storage. I put my concerns to our consultant who will help with the install and he agreed you would need a lot of space. He assumed we had loads already on our existing network. So, here I am hoping you guys would help me find a storage server that's extremely fast and capable of storing lots of music projects that's Mac Lion Server compatible. I've heard Lion manages SMB shares differently. Should we go SAN? Locally attached Storage? If I got a Mac Pro Server with a RAID Card and xTB of storage, I'd need another NAS/SAN to store the server backups! Christ, this stuff is incredibly expensive Thanks for any suggestions!

Has anybody actually been using Google Apps day to day? I've got a few questions as to how good the spam filter is for email and if you needed a third party system in place to handle that? I'd like to get in touch and discuss everything in a bit more detail Thanks