DeeGee

In the seven years I've been here, we've been through several different assessment systems, using a variety of aspects with different gradesets. As the trust expands I'm going to need to get other staff working on assessment, and although it's easy enough for me to know which aspects are used or not, it's not so easy for the others. So I want to do some housekeeping to remove the unused aspects from being able to be chosen. I can't make these aspects Inactive as they contain results. Is there a more elegant way of doing this than putting Zs at the beginning of the unused stuff, like we can with unused result sets? Or is there another way that I can archive old results so they are no longer getting in the way?

I had to create a bespoke permission group just containing View permissions for this which I've added all teachers to. Permission suddenly disappeared a while ago, I thought it was intentional so worked around it.

Actually, I've finished deleting the last of the marksheets. We now have 9500 and it takes now just over a minute. That's a tolerable amount of time in all honesty, how it will be after lunch when there's a massive server load is anyone's guess, though. I'll have a go at reindexing to see if that does any better. No way am I giving that sort of permission to all and sundry...

Hi folks, just after a bit of advice. If staff want to see marksheets for classes other than their own (Curriculum Leaders and so on), they go through Focus - Assessment - Marksheet Entry. Now, we have been using SIMS for assessment since at least 2003, we have 2300 students, and all that data is swishing around in SQL. Consequently, it takes several minutes for SIMS to show the list of available marksheets. I have deleted any templates we definitely no longer require, both from AM7 and Exams Organiser, and have now deleted any marksheets that we currently don't require as well. I'd say it's probably a bit faster having done this, but it still takes long enough for the CL to put the kettle on and make a brew before settling down to look at all their lovely data. Is there any way I can speed this up. It doesn't take anywhere near as long at our partner academy, with 700 kids and five years' worth of data.

Our assessment database now takes forever to load via the route Focus - Assessment - Marksheet Entry. I was looking to delete out old templates. I thought about starting with the templates which are automagically created when you create Forecast and Entry OMR sheets for Exams. So I thought I'd disable one first to see if it would lose data. Can't do it - the tick box is greyed out. Figured I'd delete the attached marksheets and then that might let me delete out the old templates. Can't do it - the delete icon is greyed out. A few questions, therefore. Can I delete out these templates? Will the data remain? Do I need some super-swanky permissions to do it, or to disable the marksheet, or to delete out the classes? ##EDIT## It has to be done via Exams Organiser! Can I just check that this will only delete the marksheets, and not actually the data!

Cheers Phil. It's good, but it's not quite what I'm looking for. Unless I don't have permission to this specific set of data? [EDIT] Although now looking at the long version...!

I've been asked if I can create a report which shows the % attendance of different groups of students up to a specific date. I have written a report which shows me the % attendance of different groups, however, I can't make it show the data for the date requested - just the current attendance % There is a report Group Analysis by Vulnerability, but that doesn't have the relevant groups. Is there any way I can filter the attendance summary on a report so it only shows %age between certain dates?

The final checking process, one day before we're due to print, has thrown up a grammatical error in our pastoral reports, and also in all our Science ones. The comment bank has been corrected. I really don't fancy opening every report and hitting Refresh, but that's the only way I can be certain it's been done. Or is it. Is there any way, at all, I can do a bulk refresh?

I'm working on one site, but doing most of my SIMS work remotely on another site. This means that I have two SIMS screens open sometimes. Now, obviously, I could just look at the title bar to see which site I'm working on, but is there any way that you know of that I can change, for instance, the background of the homepage so it's a different colour on each site, so I can see at a glance whose data I'm about to kick into touch :-(

So it might be pathetic of me, but the bit I'm liking best about this release is the fact that Assessment Manager is going retro, harking back to 2007, with the welcome removal of tick-untick functionality to hide and unhide columns or make them read only and more frequent random crashes.

I've added the colour to the grade column after I stuck it on the progress column, yes. Also, the staff don't actually input into that column, as its value is calculated based on another cell where data is input. The process is: Data input into Column A. This is converted to a letter grade in column b via a marks to grade formula. Column C contains a target. Column D works out the difference between the value of Column A and the value of Column C, and Column E has "Nested If then Else" based on the contents of Column D which gives a comment and colours the cell, and also colours column B. I'll remove "Read Only" from Column B and see what happens...

Hi, I'm putting together this year's Individual reports, and I'm trying to get somoe colours in them to denote progress. We have a column for progress with Above, Below etc... and a colour for each comment. In the marksheets I have managed to get the column which contains the actual assesssment grade to colour in the same colour, as well. I'm trying to replicate this on the Individual report, and have come up against this: As you can see, the progress column works fine, but in some circumstances the grade column doesn't have a colour that matches. Any idea what I might be doing wrong?

We have new Smartboards and Casio projectors. If the Smartboard is switched on, then there's a clash. If it's off, then the remote works properly. So our workaround is to switch the smartboard off at the button on the board. Might that work?

We've been working with SIMS for assessment here pretty much since time immemorial. We're having a big old rethink about how we do things, and as such there are a mass of obsolete result sets which we no longer use. Problem is, because results exist within them, I can't make them inactive. Is there any way, at least, that I can hide them from the selection list when building a new set of marksheets?

I think that's the solution. The ladder is actually a grid, showing progress from one assessment to another. The highlighting of the grades showing, ideally, an upward trend. I think we're just going to have to publish the grid with the targets, which doesn't vary by student, and put the results underneath.

But I've been using Assessment Manager for about 7 years! Maybe I can't see it. I've found a solution, but one that requires, for the requested implementation, literally 25*18 Nested If Then Else aspects to show one of the highlights. Which will take forever to generate. Actually, VBA isn't an option. We want to keep everything in SIMS.

I've had a request, and I'm wondering if this is possible. They would like to show a "ladder" of all possible results for a subject, and highlight the current result and the target result on it. Then they'd like to do the same again for the next term, something like this: 10 10 9 9 8 8 7 [7] [6]{6} {5}5 4 4 3 3 2 2 1 1 Where {} and [] are highlighted cells. Ideally a colour to show above, on and below target as well. Has anyone done anything like this? can it be done using SIMS out of the box, or do I have to delve into the murky world of VBA?

I'm setting up profiles for our primary partner. We'd like the ability for the head to have a comment bank to make comments for every student. Is there a course that can be applied to the comment bank for this to happen? Or does it become possible during the "review" session?

I wish I could afford Kent/Sussex borders! I'm East Midlands/Yorkshire.

Realistically, how's the best way to find out where roles like this are being advertised? I'm technically an IT technician but I'm effectively the MIS guru. I need to move to progress, though. Any ideas where to look? Any private companies or agencies who might be able to help out?

I've been asked to spec four new camcorders to loan out to staff. We're currently using JVC Everios - MG750BEKs, 3 years old. They have an 80GB HDD, which is a feature that interests me, but the battery life is not sufficient even to record 1x50 minute lesson. I suppose they were probably about 200 quid when new. They're OK for us, except we'd probably like the possibility to shoot HD (though maybe to have them set on SD as a default), and the battery life is a real deal-breaker. Our PE department need to use them to film footage for BTEC lessons, and they realistically need at least 90 minutes if not two hours. They're currently taking all four camcorders out and swapping batteries as need be. I asked if we could order new batteries, and the request came to spec new camcorders instead!!! Any suggestions what might meet my criteria? Cheers

I have made the report to do this in the past. However, I can't for the life of me remember where I have to paste the UPNs!

I’m having issues creating a ULN for upload to Secure Data Transfer to request ULNs for 1400 or so of our students. Firstly, I tried exporting the simple CTF using the “CTF for ULN request” function – Routines – Data Out – CTF – Export CTF – CTF For ULN Request This did not contain any address/postcode data and therefore is not accepted by the DFE. I then tried to export a partial CTF with the data requested by the DFE helpline, Basic Data and Address Data. When try to upload this data the DFE site is giving me the error message below: - This file does not appear to be a valid 10.0, 11.0 of 12.0 CTF File - Please contact your school MIS vendor - The element 'BS7666Address' in namespace " has incomplete content. List of possible elements expected: 'UniqueStreetReferenceNumber, Locality, Town, AdministrativeArea' in namespace". Any ideas how to proceed? I've raised a support call with Capita. Obviously, the size of this place, I don't want to have to do this manually...

Cheers Vik. Looks like the 6 cloned copies method is the way to go.

Hi, We've been printing profile reports with names and job titles, no signature, for a while, but it has been decided that it would look more professional if signatures could go on the covering letter of profiles reports, the first page of our template. The problem is, with 400 students in each year group, it's impractical to do this manually. I reckon I can put the Principal's signature on there as a jpeg, and as that would need to be on all the covering letters that would be fine, but there are also six pastoral heads, whose signature would need to appear on only the reports for the students who are under their tutelage. I merge an assessment filed to print their name, so I clearly can't do that with their signatures. Does anyone have any clues how best to do this, or is it a case of producing one covering letter per house?