Banjo

It also depends on training. Most LA's bundle their training into their support costs, other providers will charge per delegate or a consultancy fee per day to come out. I remember when Cover 7 was released, we did an awful lot of 1-2-1's in schools configuring the system and training the staff that was all covered in the headline price. Every schools needs are different - so its making that informed choice.

If you have sysadmin rights, reset the password of any user and logon as any one you like.

We tend to keep them as even though the servers have S3 installed, we still pull updates at the workstations via simsload in most schools.

Yes if they know what they are doing and have admin rights in Sims. I thought you could browse the doc server directly, but the file are encrypted.

Will Schoolcomms lose the write back facility into Sims in the future>?

If you are going down the VM route this is what I'd do. You can run the whole of SIMS off one VM, just use fast local storage.

Do you mean the SA password for SQL? I've always used the SA password in Studio to logon rather the Windows Auth. From memory when you install SQL (instance) you have the option to put your own SA password in. /SQLSYSADMINACCOUNTS="BUILTIN\ADMINISTRATORS" /AGTSVCACCOUNT="NT AUTHORITY\Network Service" /SECURITYMODE="SQL" /SAPWD="PASSWORD-HERE" /ADDCURRENTUSERASSQLADMIN=True /TCPENABLED=1 /NPENABLED=1 /IACCEPTSQLSERVERLICENSETERM

It used to be a pain but it's really easy now. Apply patch to unlock school details panel and amend your information and save. If you want you can make all the students leave and then bring them back in on the start date of the academy conversion, most schools don't.

You could bodge it. On the MIS server right click on the \Program Files (x86)\SIMS\SIMS .net folder and create a hidden$ share. Map a drive from the laptop to the share and then create a shortcut from Pulsar.exe in the folder to the laptops desktop.

Please do tell :-)

For a better word, your actually testing the disaster recovery procedures if you build it from the backups. I remember going to a school (Facility) that had somehow wiped most of their assessment data for that year out of the system. Unfortunately their SQL backups were not configured correctly and wouldn't restore. Luckily for the school the TT'er had taken an offline copy in Access about three works earlier that we could single table restore back into the live system. You would be surprised at the number of schools that don't test their DR until the 'doo doo' hits the fan.

So is this a primary school MAT without timetables and cover? That would make it much easier to match data from the curriculum element of the SWR to the HR staff details side. This could probably all be done in a central HR system, our LA does this for primary schools without the need to trouble them for much. Alternatively; A secondary school with SIMS that doesn't use the cover module? You must be looking for a pretty snazzy HR system to be able to replicate this functionality unless you plan on ditching the lot and moving to a paper based system. I think you have more chance of finding that elusive crock of gold than something that you appear to have in mind.

Its easy to do with a VM if your using either SIMS or Facility. Just keep pushing the application updates across to the VM and restoring the backups into the the database. You can play to your hearts content.

Your not using FMS in the future is what you said. You don't need FMS to do the SWF return. You will still need staff records in SIMS and you will need the timetable/curriculum element for the return out of an MIS.

With SIMS ?! Routines | Stat Returns | SWC

I think you have misunderstood the process. The LA can reuse the licence they have purchased on another maintained school within their LA. Schools are listed in the annual maintenance agreement with Capita, but that's annual maintenance and nothing to do with licencing. The LA has to hold enough Sims licences to cover all the schools listed in its annual maintenance agreement and these licences have to be fully topped up. If the LA has 50 Sims licences and 1 school moved to another supplier then it will have 1 spare. Another school (maintained) wants to move to Sims from less say RM. The LA adds its name to the annual maintenance agreement and crosses off the other schools. This way, the new school wanting to use Sims is spared a big licencing bill and only has to pay AM from day 1. If they were using a cloud based system do you think their current provider would allow them to access historic data for free, indefinitely, after they had moved to a new solution? I think your coming at this from a 'something for nothing' perspective which doesn't wash these day.

Schoolcomms all the way Data Integration Our data integration isn’t about exporting details from your school MIS and then importing them into Schoolcomms. Nor do you need to key in parents details (or get someone else to do it for you). With Schoolcomms, you can automatically update any changes you’ve made in SIMS – it’s massively time saving! Key Features: ‘Send Message’ buttons in SIMS Messages can be sent to individuals or groups All SIMS groups are available, including user-defined groups and groups for dealing with pre-admission students Dynamic access to absence information in SIMS Automatic write-back of reasons for absence into SIMS Attendance Write back to communication log in SIMS Exam and curriculum timetables Behaviour and achievement notifications SIMS Assessment Manager and profile reports SIMS Dinner Money integration Wildcard feature allows for mail merge of key data

The licences the LA's have purchased are treated as 'assets'. If you can reuse them to save another school money in licencing costs then you why wouldn't you? The onus is on the school to ensure that they are compliant with data retention regulations. To me, the issue the OP is experiencing is that the ongoing Sim licencing cost was overlooked and not factored into the procurement of the new MIS. If the school want's to keep 1 machine with Sims then they have to pay up or go to Capita and buy their own licence.

I've done this. A school has become an academy, I've then used this 'free' licence on a school moving back to Sims. The school moving back to Sims just needs to pay annual maintenance as the licence they will be using is fully topped up. I'm just pointing out in this circumstance, where a school is moving away from Sims and only every paid annual maintenance, the LA may not be able to hold a spare Sims licence for them indefinitely. I know there are different licencing models, but I would get clarification from Phil Neal on this set of circumstances. If Phil says its Ok then fine.

If your a maintained schools then the LA would still own the licence . The LA could in theory use your 'old' licence to convert another school from another MIS back to SIMS now you are not using it. My understanding was it was only perpetual if you owned the licence, which by the sounds of it, you never have.

Be very careful doing this. I've known it substitute results from one aspect to the other due to a clash of internal IDs for the aspects. Capita may have fixed this issue but make sure you have a backup, and check every template old and new to ensure they have the right aspects in them.

What's really annoying is that there is no user/password for the Solus3 deployment GUI. The amount of 'techies' or external ICT contractors that login to the SIMS servers and tinker with the settings and we end up with an incompatible database is getting ridiculous. Solus 2 required a user/pass to run an upgrade so why is this missing from Solus 3?

We were told 2022 was the end date of the current version of SIMS . Having played with the next generation of SIMS it will be interesting to see what Capita bring to BETT.

Or you can pay and go offsite. Redstor Backup Pro | capita-sims.co.uk

You can delete .bak files with explorer. Sometimes it's a good idea to have more than one days backup. E.g. Someone deletes all the assessment data and keeps quiet about it. A couple of days later someone else notices, then it's too late to restore. Its also a good idea to backup to another server in case of disc failure. Why not change the backup path to a different server with plenty of disc space. Just map a drive to it and change the drive letter to point to it.