Banjo

One of the issues that we ran into was hidden permissions. The assessment coordinator role has permissions that you cannot assign to other/custom groups. The workaround we had to do was to empty this group out of it's permissions, and give it to everyone (all staff) to get access to certain areas of Sims. We then created a custom assessment coordinator groups with the Sims default permissions to give to the select few in SMT.

Do all your schools go single site then? What Becta have missed out from this report is the total cost to a school (or LA) of changing their management information system, with respect to installation, support, training, possible new hardware. All the report covers is annual maintenance, licences and support, and in that respect it is very limited in terms of cost savings from more competition and 12 monthly procurement processes.

The live data does not automatically go into Facility via the Assessment | Advanced | Read Fischer Data - it used to, but not anymore, as the export from FFT does not match the import routine, even with tweaking the Excel files. Hopefully this will be fixed in version 10.3. What you can do is create a custom data import routine Options | Data Transfers and you can import whatever column(s) you want into the database.

Facility with server 2008 and SQL2008 is fine, x64, big no no

Given that you can't move Facility to the 64bit box, install SQL2008 on box 1 and move the FMS databases to that instance (deattach/reattach), and update the .ini files with 08 rather than 05. You can move the facility databases across to SQL08 and turn off SQL2005. This way you keep 1 MIS server, rather than having MS server 08 x64 + Full SQL08 running FMS. Just a thought

http://i666.photobucket.com/albums/vv26/banjo789/Snap2.jpg Let's hope the dedicated graphics card gets dropped from the spec.

Facility for one

What MIS software do you use at the moment?

Did you mean the newish point system (2009) that have been added to P levels? They used to be all classed as having 3 points, now a P8 is worth 7, P6 is worth 6 etc..

Should still work with other platforms :-)

Serco are bringing out a new MIS called Progresso that's fully web based and hosted, but you'll have to wait 9-12 months for that.

Ofsted Framework: 3. The effectiveness of the school’s engagement with parents A school's LP, SLG and text messaging service would all fall into the category, along with more traditional methods.

One of our schools went to a new style Academy on the 1st of this month. The only change is to the School Name (and URN if this field is even filled in on their system) The argument being, that these schools would not want to throw everything away for a fresh start, as their attainment, attendance etc, and associated process, would fall into the outstanding category. The DfE might change this guidance when un/satisfactory schools start to convert.

If your schools don't quite grasp the deal that's on offer I'm sure some of mine would at that price

It sounds a steal at £500 compared to the list price from Capita.

Is it the express version of SQL and have you virtualised it?

I hope you have migrated to SQL 2008, or that's a lot of local connect.ini files you'll have to go round and change.

Set the SQL2005 instance to local connections only and reboot it before the migration. Stop any external services on the server that link to the database - groupcall/RM exporter etc as the migration may fail with these running.

As far as I am aware there is no agent for Capita One, so I think your out of luck.

Why the Dfe/DCSF would spec two CTF address versions is the real question, Capita went with one version & Serco the other.

I'm sure it used to require just the 'dataexport' role, but this year we have had to give it more rights to get it to work. We do not support CM so I have know idea what’s changed and what it pulls out. We just added these roles to the dataexport role, so any other apps that use this account also get the elevated privileges as well

That's ok, there's more than one standard of CTF (address format) but generally it works. A 21st century solution to exam entries/basedata/results would be most welcome. With 80%+ of the UK market maybe Capita (Phil) should take the lead on this, bring a new format to market and slowly phase the old style out of the next few years. I have the feeling it's not the MIS suppliers that would drag their feet on this though

Re -download and import the latest basedata from the OCR website, then re import the latest results files (re released today) This should solve all the issues with A* and double awards for OCR Why the exam boards and MIS suppliers can't get together and move to XML files rather than the antiquated file system they use now, baffles me.

From experience 2008 should be quicker in both express and standard edition, and in some cases it really gets a move on. If Sims is still on the 2005 then you can flick between the databases and compare speeds. Does it work quickly on the server?

Bromcomm or RM? "I was also led to believe that it was SQL based, but soon realised that it was a set of programs up to 15 years old with a bolt on web interface" Didn't think it was SQL?