Ecclesbury

Afternoon all, Just in case it helps anyone else who is heading down the SIMS macro editing path and can't find the C:\Program Files\SIMS\SIMS .net\tempRpt\ReportData.xls folder as described in the excellent document linked above (as I couldn't!) I found mine in the My Documents\tempsimsrpt folder on my roaming profile account. Pandora's box has been well and truly opened.

I may be being incredibly dense but I can't see any active surveys when I log in to Support Net. It's the first time I've tried but I only see the headings Mini Surveys, Feature Surveys and Markey Surveys and none of these headings have any current surveys. Is that because of my access to Support Net? I signed up a few months ago and have not really used it very much (certainly not as much as I probably should...not enough hours in the day!)

HI all, I'm after a bit of advise really, and I should start this post by saying that I'm the SIMS data/system manager, not an IT technician or otherwise (I don't have access to our servers) I have a meeting soon with our network manager to discuss potentially purchasing the CAPITA active directory provisioning tool to automatically provision users form SIMS. What we'd ideally like to do is add a new user to SIMS (either Student or Staff) and enter a username into a User Defined Field and have AD automatically generate a user with these details (with the username we have defined in the UDF) So, the questions are; is this acually possible? Does the CAPITA product allow for this? If it is possible are there any pitfalls that we should be aware of? Anyone have any better suggestions?

Hi Charlotte, I am also interested in this. I notice in Tools > Setup there is an option labelled 'Data Change Management' which can be turned on but with a warning about resource consumption. Does anyone have any experience of using this? It seems to say that it only tracks certain data items, does anyone know which. Lastly, where is the log document stored? If I get a chance I might test it myself, but thought it might be useful to get some feedback here first. Thanks, Jonny.

Sorry, bit of additional info that I've just discovered: I've checked different workstations so it is not just my machine that is running slowly (or slower than usual!) The problem disappears once I have assigend a QAN to a course. When I open up a course to update it, is SIMS doing something in relation to the QAN? It seems odd that just opening a course to view it is taking about 10 times as long for courses with QANs assigned than those without.

Hi all, Just a quick query really, and apologies if this is a query I could find the answer to elsewhere, I dont' have time to hunt around for the solution and thought I might get a quick win from a post on here! I'm updating QAN codes in course manager, but it running painfully slowly. It will take around 30 seconds to a minute just to open up a course. Changing the course description also seems to make it drag. The problem seemed to start after I'd updated the QAN catalgue (this was previously just about empty, since we had no Post-16, but this has changed) I think I may have made the mistake of importing all QANs rather than just those I needed, so does anyone know if I can clear the QAN catalgue, or amend it? Or is there something else which might be making course manager work so slowly? Thanks, Jonny.

Or alternatively a "win, win" scenario for the more cynically minded!

Thanks GREED. Point taken about the individual reports, although part of the reasoning behind my tidy up is a complete over haul to our reporting processes so new individual reports all round! Massive Undertaking sounds about right!

Thanks NorthernSands, that confirms what I thought, i.e. that there are no technical reasons for not changing aspect names, just operational ones. I find it slightly frustrating (although understandable) when I'm told that I can't do something when actually I should be told that I can, but be careful. Even, "you can, but we advise you not to" is better than "no you can't do it."

Evening all, I was told recently by a member of the LA support team that I "can't" change the name of an aspect in AM7. Can anyone comment on this? My instinct tells me that this is similar to the warning against changing the name of a registration group in pastoral structure (i.e it is dangerous in that it changes the name of the group for all historic members) Basically, for various reasons I am wanting to do a major tidy up of all my aspects and want to be able to re-name some of them. Are there any unexpected consequences of doing this other than changing the name of the aspect for all historic results? I'm worried about being told that I can't (i.e. physically can't) when I know that I can... EDIT: For clarity I'm talking about the aspect name as well as the column heading. I'm also aware that the column heading name will not change in any existing templates.

I'll second this. I spend a lot of time working with our personnel officer when adding new staff/making contract changes etc as it can often be very fiddly. Certainly not as simple as it first seems.

Sounds like adding a current start date will solve your problem, but just in case it is useful I would imagine that the above problem could probably be solved by changing the "population" search field at the top of the window when adding a new user to system manager. I'm not at my school machine so I'm not sure exactly which filter criteria you would use to find them, but I'm guessing that would work. This might come in handy if you ever, for whatever reason, wanted to add a staff profile without an employment start date but still wanted to give them SIMS access (although I can't think of a situation off the top of my head where you would want to do this)

We've recently trialled and started using Keep Kids Safe. I haven't been heavily involved in the set up so couldn't comment on it's good features, but a couple of practical problems have arisen: Texts cannot be sent in the middle of the night (there is window when texts are sent, something like 6am until 9pm.) This might not seem like a problem, but we had a school trip recently which was due to arrive back into school at 3am and the organiser wanted to text parents to update on arrival times. This was impossible. Texts cannot be sent abroad. Again, a foreign trip wanted to be "contactable" from back home so that the school could pass messages to the lead teacher via text but again this was impossible. I believe both probelems were reported and I don't know wheter they are being rectified or not but thought I would mention them. Can anyone comment on whether these problems exist with other texting services?

Well, they say you learn something new every day. I think I've passed my quota for the year today! I think I'm going to spend my afternoon playing around with reports.

Apologies for potentially high-jacking the thread, but while nosing around at the imported report in question I learned a few things! I've never used imported reports (just assuming that they were basic reports I could set up myself) but I see that this report outputs a nice pivot table and bar chart. Is it possible then to set up user defined excel reports? Can I create my own report which exports to excel with a pivot table template or otherwise? Or is this the beauty of imported reports that I have missed these last couple of years? Or more simply, I notice that the Count column in this report exports to excel as a number, not as text as usually happens when I set up my own report. Is there an easy way for me to do this on my own reports? It drives me bonkers!

Hi Charlotte, I've just had a look at the report on our system, and without seeing your SIMS the obvious thing that jumps out is the date filter on the subreport. When you run the report are you prompted on various filters? If so make sure that the dates are for the current academic year and then you have either selected the relevant year/reg groups, or clicked the "accept all" box for year and reg group (actually, you must have already done this if students are appearing!) Apologies if I'm stating the obvious! If this doesn't work, or if you are not prompted for any filters, have you tried opening the report in Design Report - Open existing report and check the filters on the subreport?

Nooooo! Discover was my ticket to a higher spec computer! Now, how do I hide this new development from my SMT? While I'm on it, would anyone be willing to advise me that there is just no way that Discover can be effectively used without 2 monitors? Or a beer fridge in my office?

Thanks for everyone's speedy/informative responses so far! For those already using Capita support, do you install upgrades/patches yourself? How does that work in practice? When each upgrade is released do Capita just send you the upgrade and let you get on with things, or are there any restrictions? And can anyone confirm that if we required it Capita would do this work for us (and presumably have remote access to our SIMS server? The licenses point is well taken, I will definately raise that (money talks round here!)

To be honest creese, I don't know. As far as I was concerned they were dedicated SIMS support, but reading between the lines of what I've been asked suggests it's not the case (not discounting the relatively high chance that our Head is misinformed). As is the way with these things I have only been given very minimal information which is why I'm having to speak hypothetically most of the time. My main concern (and apologies for any technical inaccuracies, my background is not in IT!) is that a lot of the support we currently receive from the LA is things like migrating the database, installing upgrade/patches, technical server stuff etc etc. Am I right in thinking that if we moved to direct Capita support they would not support this, and this kind of thing would have to be taken up by whoever supports out IT provision (whether that be In-house or another managed service?)

Thanks Vegas, I've got to admit that was my initial reaction. However, there is an implication that the priorites of our support team will be changing which has prompted out Head to ask the question. Suppose the LA support ceased to exist, what would be your recommendation? I'm just thinking theoretically so that I can clue myself up on the alternatives so that I'm not lead down a blind alley by the whims of our SMT.

Morning all, This is my first post on this lovely site, so please bare with my naeitvity! I'm working at a secondary school that is currently going through some major IT changes (all of which are typically vague and undecided) and I have been asked by our Head to consider a change to our SIMS support. Our SIMS service is currently supported by the LA and our IT is a managed service (but this is almost definately going to change) Our Head has made it clear that they would like to be supported by Capita directly but has asked for my comments etc. ...which brings me to you! Any comments or advice on SIMS support services would be much appreciated, anything to consider really when making this change.