Banjo

Devon seem to do a good job. SIMS Terminal Server

Progresso used to allow LA clusters and was built with this in mind. I'm just not sure that any LA took them up on that offer :-)

Then why not offer the option for LA's to host SIMS 8? We look to be moving from a Local, LA or Capita environment, to just Capita hosted. This is a business decision not a technical argument. Other cloud based providers offer a variety of solutions?

Looks like a grab for the support money by the software provider that's cutting Link2ICT out of the loop. Short term gains, long term market share losses. Unfortunately, Capita look to be moving in this direction with SIMS 8. Only offering a Capita hosted solution is a strategic business decision and not a technical argument that reduces the LA Support units role and 'encourages' schools to go to Capita Direct for their support. I don't like this approach, other LA's I've spoken to don't like it either. Maybe Capita have become overconfident that it can win the LA tenders that moving to SIMS 8 will trigger, whilst at the same time biting the hand that feeds it. This then has implications for the LA's Capita ONE team. Without SIMS in the vast majority of schools and it's tight integration via B2B, do you then take another look at the other EMS suppliers knocking at your door? It's much easier to sell to an LA with 100+ schools than spend hours and days in staff/SLT/governors meetings after school trying to 'flog' your MIS school by school. Some interesting times ahead!

Remember to change your points values in your aspect for GCSE's to 1-8 this year, in preparation for a move to a 1-9 grading system in the following years. You couldn't make this stuff up?

I don't know the specific errors but this can be done. You will very carefully need to go over the two files, your and a 'real' one produced by SIMS to spot the differences. You may even be better creating a test file by just typing in the basic information and getting that working with the correct syntax and formatting, before automating the process. I hope your testing on an 'offline' standalone version of SIMS and not the schools live one!

If you already have SLG then get the Teacher APP SIMS Teacher app | Capita SIMS

You still need to produce a census file to the DfE. Splitting attendance data away from the rest would be far from ideal!

Forgot to add, also factor in the ongoing ~50% license cost of Facility per year when you move to your new MIS if you ever want to access historical data? Or you could restore Facility into MS Access, then dump everything into Excel for easy and 'free' access.

You do have to re buy licenses from Capita and also your AM payments go direct to them as well as you are an academy. Those prices sound about right. If the LA has purchased their SIMS licenses recently, they may have 'portable' ones that they could give/sell you if they have any spare and are feeling very generous. AM payments would still go to Capita though.

You can't at present, just subject estimates. If you purchased FFT via your LA then they may have downloaded the FFT Live databases that were available last year. These will have school level estimates (5+ A*-C E&M etc), although they will not take into account student mobility since the last time they were updated.

And how much do you pay per year?

That doesn't mean you database has to be in the cloud, just a browser based front end.

Stay local - there are plenty of ways to provide access to staff that are robust, easy to manage and don't cost a fortune.

Over the last few years we have had schools move away from Facility and back to SIMS and this process is still ongoing. Several years ago the owners at the time made a statement where they stated that Facility would no longer be developed. This was later with drawn and policy was changed. Only the users of Facility can really judge for themselves what development has taken place in the product over the last 5 years outside of making the product compliant with DfE statutory reporting to justify any substantial price increases.

You'll need Office on the server for this to work fully.

I'm assuming that all local connect.ini files are redirects to the .ini on the shared folder? You will need to stop/start SQL to boot the exisiting users off the system, and swap over the workstation you want to use SIMS to a drirect connect.ini to the SQL instance.

@PhilNeal: It's not the same. If Assessment Manager treated the 'school' and maybe even 'national' in a similar manner to students it would make life so much easier. Schools would be able to enter data into aspects such as overall attendance for the schools and national outcomes and link so they could be reported on. Headline performance measures such as 5+ A*-C EM (old money) or Progress/AT8 could be entered at school level and national into apsects that would then feed into discover. These values could be displayed on the first/last two rows of any marksheets with a tick box on/off option either in the marksheet or at template level. This turns AM from just a student level tracking tool into a school level tracking system that would allow for comparisons to national.

The main issue with assessment manager is that any results are stored against the student record. It would be nice to store them against the 'school' or a Dept within the school. The same goes for behaviour. Requests like this would become alot easier then.

LA Support units will provide them to the schools - Strange that Capita don't for their schools going direct?

Clone the report and try edit /replace function ?

What gets pulled back into the SIMS db during the transfer? I thought this was mostly 1 way traffic into the Discover db not the other way round. Otherwise what was the point of having a second db in the first place?

Do you store student/staff photos in SIMS? If so what size were the images that were uploaded?

I'd say a DB size of 2-3GB would be the average for a school of that size. When you run the SIMS backup from system manager how big are the .bak files? If these were around couple of gig mark, I'd be tempted to restore one of these backups and check the file size. If the restored DB remains at a resonable size, switch the live and newly restored over and see if you get a speed boost.

I've seen huge .ldf's that filled the harddrive and crashed the the server, but not a 17GB SIMS mdf file, even in schools with over 1600 students. Was it this size before the move to SQL2014?