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

TIL: In EMBC land there does not need to be a separate proxy. Thanks for your help. EMBC are on the case and will hopefully unblock this on their firewall for me.

Thanks nephilim, TIL T.I.L. (Today I Learned) Often used as a space saver on websites such as Reddit or DIGG when writing the titles of links to interesting things the submitter has learned that day. TIL that a meter is the distance light travels in 299,792,458ths of a second.

Hah TIL that Ftp had 2 ports... 1 for command 1 for data I assumed it was all through 1 hole! Right well to "test" EMBC's Theory that it's my end I just setup 2 machines, 1 server 1 client. They connect instantly internally to each other. I setup another FTP server at home and I can't connect to that from within work. So EMBC must have Port 20 or 21 blocked then? Thanks for the suggestions!

Sweet, thanks I'll give it ago tomorrow!

This is exactly my thinking... is there a rule at EMBC that blocks FTP connections unless we specify an unblock. Just to be clear, the FTP server is hosted externally on the internet. I can understand if the FTP server was hosted internally and I was trying to access it from home. I've bypassed the ISA server too. I'm connecting using this proxy server ----- proxy.embc.uk.com:80 I want to ask the lady the same question, scared she'd hang up on me for wasting her time.

We use EMBC and I'm trying to connect to an FTP server hosting a website. For some reason I can not access them to save my life! I've been working on a fix all week with no luck. My host said it's not them as everybody else in the world can connect. They've checked their "blacklist" to ensure we're not banned. They've given me various server names I could connect to and Ip addresses incase it's a bad DNS record. I've flushed our DNS server cache. I contact EMBC and they said it's the host. So I've just brought another cheapy host and still I cannot connect! I've brought another domain name encase EMBC have filtered it or something. My theory is that the port is blocked at EMBC's level. I don't get an error message, My FTP clients just hang on "Trying to connect to server..." then it times out. Firewall's disabled, anti-virus removed - I've literally tried everything plus more knowing it's not nothing to do with it. I can't seem to get through to anybody else regarding this issue at EMBC. The lady on the front desk has been pretty patient with me calling up these past 2-3times with suggestions but it doesnt get elevated any further. She tested it her end and it also worked fine. Arg, someone please tell me there's a port block or something so I can go back with something as they're no longer prepared to spend any more time helping me. I don't want to be rude to the lady on the font desk and ask to speak to someone else. I think she's new, so I have no idea of her technical abilities but I've dealt with some engineers before who could help me when the first line support couldnt. Please help, I can't sleep at night TRIED PASSIVE MODE AND SFTP TOO

Indeedy, we'll I've had an interesting dialogue with a sale rep for Impero. She can't budge on the £8 per workstation * 450 machines unless we purchase today and pay in April. We're in no position to be purchasing this sooner as we've got higher priorities but consider buying after April if there's funding. I'm glad the vast majority of you are positive about the software. The teachers are very happy as it gives them more control over password resets etc and we can maintain better control over which teacher see's what classrooms. Centralised Management and AWESOME logging capabilities! Interesting idea Sylv3r, any schools in Northamptonshire interested in purchasing?

Hey all, We've been trialing Impero v3 over the past 2 months and have been very happy with it. In fact it's been so good we're looking to replace Ranger for Networks and Ranger Remote with some help from Win2k8 Group Policies and Impero. Just wondering what you was quoted? I've been quoted £8 per workstation yet it's been brought to my attention that it's £5~$8 on their website and prices reduce the more you purchase. Thanks!

As far as I'm aware, they are separate DVD's installations. I might be wrong though. If they did make a DVD with multiple installs then surely they'd add the option to install 64bit a bit further on in the install. Sorry I couldn't be of any help.

@timzim - Having had this issue before, how did you resolve it? I mean, we're now wondering whether or not future updates will work properly. I've got a guide on how to reset Windows Update in the hope that'll put everything back to normal. Thanks!