Ecclesbury

We have Capita Direct support, but only since October 2012 when we became an academy. Until then we were LA supported.

LosOjos, you are not alone! I can't find resource number 20246 anywhere on Support Net. I've often had trouble finding things that others seem to find easily, but I thought it was just me being dense (it probably was!) However, I could download the Discover CD image from the link Vikpaw posted.

I stumbled across our on FFT Live at the beginning of December. I was very surprised, having told our leadership team it was likely to be January. I didn't realise they filtered out the data, I'd guessed everyone receives them at the same time? I didn't receive any notification though, I just happened to look on FFT Live and saw them there.

Hi Steven, I don't know if this is something specific to our school, but I have noticed that including multiple assessment result sub-reports makes them run incredibly slowly! Not only that, I find that if I have any more than 3 or 4 the report will just hang or SIMS will crash. For this reason I try to avoid adding assessment fields into SIMS reports. However, I can see why this is your only option here! Be wary of results with no result set, as you may find multiple results coming through. The 'display first result only' tick box in the sub reports filter may come in handy here (or filtering the subreport by result date might be more effective.

Thanks for the reply blc. I've got to admit I'm sorely tempted to apply, but for various reasons it's not suitable for me. I'll certainly flag it up with some other people who I know might be interested. It's funny actually that I have had a few meetings with our Head recently about how I can avoid spending all my time distributing reports etc and spending more time developing new/more efficient systems. Perhaps I should point her in this direction! Saying that, we are much smaller than blc. Good luck with the hunt!

I hope you don't mind me asking on here, but who would this person report? The Data Manager? Or does the data manager have additional responsibilities beyond data management? I'm surprised it hasn't been filled as the pay seems very generous for a deputy data manager! I get paid the same (although am all year round) and don't have a deputy! I'd be intrigued to know (but won't ask!) what grade your data manager was on!

Thanks again vikpaw, I'll admit I didn't really understand why certain files might be in use. The specific problem that we are having currently is that if I try to allow a single user full control (for example) of the S:SIMS\SNOVA folder on it's own when I try to apply I get various "unable to change permission, access is denied" error messages for each individual timetable file in the 2012 folder. This means that the user in question is unable to access the current timetable file. Strangely, when logged in with my domain admin account, if I try to view the permissions to an individual file in the SNOVA\2012 folder, it tells me that I do not have permission to view or edit the permissions settings. I have now discovered that I also can't access the timetable table files through Nova using my domain account, but can with my standard account (which has no additional specific permissions granted) The plot thickens!

Many thanks to all for the advice. Vikpaw, that's really useful, thanks. I just have one more question (which really comes from my network manager.) What services would you need to stop in order to make wholesale changes to the S Drive permissions? It appears some of the problems are down to the fact that permissions won't change while SIMS is running since certain files are constantly in use. In other words once the SIMS server has been re-booted how can we then effectively stop SIMS running? Hopefully I've asked that in a way that makes sense! Cheers.

I have no idea whether this is the best place to post this, but you never know! Are there any data managers out there that have done the SSAT National Data Managers Award (NDMA?) If so would you recommend it? I'm always keen for CPPD opportunities (and they don't come along very often!) but don't want to jump into something if it's going to be a waste of time/money. Cheers, Jonny.

Morning all, Please excuse my ignorance, I am a data manager starting to get his feet wet in the murky waters of server administration so this question may be naieve! I wondered if anyone could advise on setting permissions on the S Drive. Over the summer our IT team installed new domain controllers, and pretty much gutted everything. Initially the default permissions to the S Drive for staff were pretty locked down which meant certain key staff couldn't access things like Exams, Nova and CTF creation. Some individual accounts were given access to certain folders on a kind of ad-hoc basis but at some point this went wrong and now we have some users not able to access random folders and/or files and trying to adjust the permissions gives lots of errors along the lines of "cannot change permisssions for blah blah blah) My question is, how would we go about re-setting staff permissions on the S Drive, and what would be the best/accepted way to grant individual users permissions to either the entire S Drive, or specific folders. Any other advice for a novice would be greatly appreciated!

Hi Wes, I'm having exactly the same problem, and am 95% sure that it is due to the fact that at some point the entire QAN catalogue has been imported into Course Manager. If you're still having problems can you do me a favour and have a look in Tools>Academic Management>Course Manager>Maintain Course Classification and have a look at the QANs. Have you got thousands upon thousands in there, with all sorts of bizarre titles, or have you just got QANs for courses that you run at the school? It would be interesting to know if you have the same thing to comfirm my theory. If (like me) you have thousands of them, I believe there is a patch that will delete all un-referenced QANs (12879) and when combined with a re-index patch (14265) has been reported to solve this problem. Our school is currently in a strange limbo because we've just converted to an academy so our support contracts are a bit unclear so I haven't actually had a chance to do this properly myself. However, I plan to try and again next Monday, but would be interested to know if you have any luck with the same method. Cheers, Jonny.

Morning all, Everytime I have to stop and restart PX I have un-told problems getting it back up and running again. Usually a bit of virtual "percussive maintenance" makes it magically spring back to life, but not this time, alas. Can anyone advise on what might be the problem if when I log into either the Monitor, or any of the home school DBs, and check the Focus>School>Partnership>Configure screen it tells me that the Agent is "Not Running." However, both the Start and Stop buttons are greyed our so I can't actually do anything. If I open the Zone and try to test the connection I get the message that I can't do this until I have stopped the Agent...which I can't, because it's "not running!" The Windows services are running correctly and have been restarted. Strangely when I first open the configure screen the "Start" button is active for a few seconds. If I use my cat like reflexes and click it before it greys out, the stats changes to "The Agent is Starting" but never actually starts, and reverts to "not running" when I log back in. I've logged a call with our local support team, who will in turn log a call with Capita, but while I wait for that process to tick away, thought I would try the experts on here! I appreciate more information is probably needed, but if anyone had encountered the problem before and knew a quick fix that would be great! IN the meantime, I'll bury my head in the log files!

Morning all, I won't bore you with all the detail of why I'm asking this, but could anyone explain what the following error message would/could/might mean when trying to login to SOLUS 2 on our PX server: "This version of SOLUS 2 deals only with Managed Sites. Please contact your support team for further advice and ask them if your school has an incorrect setting for 'Managed Site' in School Manager." As I suspect it's something to do with the way the SIMS upgrades work with LA schools would it be too much to ask for someone to explain in simple terms how SOLUS works and how SIMS upgrades are distributed/authorised etc. Please don't underestimate my level of ignorance! I've been working with SIMS for around 4 years now, but have only very recently got involved in any way with upgrades/server side stuff and feel like I need things clarifying in my mind. More info available on request!

Hi Dan, This is setup on the individual users SIMS homepage. Click the "Configure" Spanner on the top right, and add the 'missing registers notification' to one of the panels. This panel will then list all missing registers for the current day. The user can select them and send an automatic message. You can change the default message, and the time it takes before the register is considered missing by clicking the little 'configure' spanner on the panel. There are probably some permissions needed to use this, but I don't know the exact details. If you find the panel isn't there, it's probably a permissions thing. Cheers, Jonny.

Hi Richard, I'm pretty new to SLG as well (just about to roll out a group of trial parent users) so this might not be the definitive answer, but have a look at the "Student Classes" web part. This is a list of the students classes on a given day, which defaults to the current day, so is effectively what you are after (it is not, as I originally thought, a list of all the student's classes). Each class is hyper-linked to a list of all the students in the class, but if you don't want this feature you can just remove/break the link in the settings (this is what we've done for parents)

Our SLG is hosted by the LA, so I don't know this for definite but I have definitely read threads on Support Net that suggest that this functionality is not available with Capita hosted SLG. Might be worth a ring just to confirm, in case they have changed this, but don't hold out too much hope.

Yes, using AM to publish the results would mean that the reports would have to be generated/published when there was no embargo in place, otherwise they will be blank. Temporarily lifting the embargo, generating the reports, and putting the embargo back would work, but would completely destroy the point of the embargo! It would be much more convenient, as Mike says, to publish any exam info (timetables/results/entries) via the exams module. Nice to hear this is being discussed!

Sorry, another thing just occurred to me that you might find it useful to look at the Tools>Performance>Assessment>System Utilites This includes various bulk update tools which you might find useful if you find you have to re-design anything and tidy things up without losing any old data. It is these tools which often become much easier to use if you have used result sets correctly.

I think I see what you're after now, but I don't think SIMS will go quite this far. Presuming these reports are Word style A4 sheets, or similar, you would want a "Monthly Report" template, for example, which you could run, select the required result set from a tick list and hey Presto! Unfortunately it doesn't work quite like this. The best you could do would be to have a separate template for each result set (the first report would have to be cloned and the result tags all updated with the next result set and so on) In terms of on-going maintenance if you had to add a new result set, you would have to create a new report template each time, and presumably a new marksheet template (and with your current set up, a whole set of new aspects) If you haven't already, have a look at the "Individual Reports" section of Assessment Manager as this is where you would want to produce the reports. If all the assessment points are fixed then you could set up the system so that it didn't require any annual maintenance (other than new class marksheets.) The only problem would be if they wanted to change/add any assessment points. Using single aspects and result sets would mean that in order to add a new assessment point you would just add the results set, create the new marksheet template (or add the new column to an exisiting marksheet) and then create or amend a new individual report. With the new 'replace result set' tool in templates, this isn't as arduous as it sounds. Just a case of cloning various things.

I'm not 100% sure I understand the question, but that sounds like a very convoluted and messy assessment setup which is actually doubling up the work needed. In an ideal world discrete aspects (without a result set) are only used for entering data which is static/fixed, and not dependent on the date it is entered. Things like prior attainment group, or an end of key stage target etc. When you want to enter specific data at a series of dates, and be able to easily report on this data, you should use a single aspect but multiple result sets. So you would have a single aspect called 'English Comment' and then a series of result sets, "Week 1", "Week 2" etc etc. This way, any time you want to report on a particular result, you would also include the result set you are after. If there is no result in the aspect with that specific result set, then a blank will be shown. If the result set is left blank, the most recent result will always be shown (unless specific filters have been applied.) If you are using individual reports to create the reports, then historic reports should always be available providing you have a different template for each one. Even if you haven't, the underlying results will always be available if the result sets have been set up correctly so the reports can always be re-created. You can also upload each template when they are complete, so a copy of every report will be available in the student linked documents. Be wary though that if you upload a template a second time, it will replace the original linked document. If you were using the same template to create/upload multiple reports you would have to clone and re-name the templates first. I have a feeling that some might suggest it is good practice to always include result sets, even to static results, since there are various tools in AM that only work effectively when result sets are used. I haven't always done this, but am starting to see the benefit. Hopefully that makes some sense.

True, now that the cookie jar is closed, no more bruised fingers for Capita! Chortle. I jest, sorry that was below the belt!

Thanks again @localzuk Seems that the implication in their response then is that if your contract is 'inside' (as it were) the framework then you're onto a winner. So it depends how they define 'inside'... If only there were more clarity is this world!

This is venturing out of my depth, but that sounds like a major cop out to me! Capita have agreed to be part of a framework that describes this practice as "Patently Unfair" yet they are quite happy to keep doing it to schools that are already customers? The posted document deals specifically with schools opting out of LA control, but I wonder how many schools will actually be able to take advantage of this? It feels to me that in the current education climate this change will benefit very few schools, if any. I understand that it prevents it happening again in future, in other situations, but in that case why draw attention to it and mention opting out of LA control specifically? Isn't that just going to anger all those school who have already/are just about to forked out the money? p.s. I may be mis-reading this, and would appreciate any expert guidance, but looking at the following quote from the posted document: The reassurance provided by this condition applies where: (a) Solutions are procured via the mini-competition process (b) Where customers procure directly from the Framework by identifying the best value solution © Where customers renew with their existing supplier (by identifying the best value solution) specifying the Framework Terms and Conditions Can point © not be exploited somehow? So a school considering becoming academy would be best advised to renew their LA SIMS license before converting, specify the Framework Terms and Conditions, then convert and save some pennies? Timing is everything it seems!

That's very interesting, would it be lazy of me to ask for any more detail on the context of that document? We are currently starting the process of becoming an Academy and I think our business manager would be very interested to read it but if I send him it as is, he is going to ask where it came from, and in response to what. I tried deconstructing you link, but got deined permissions or broken links. How did you originally find it?

I'd asked a similiar question to a member of our LA support team recently and didn't get a clear answer. Specifically I was thinking about linked document and the inordinate amount of space they currently take up on our DMS (another issue entirely but one that prompted the question.) We are a relatively new school but I wondered how other schools coped with decades worth of student records and the physical space that they take up in the database and DMS? Presumably backups would also be affected? I'm far from a technical expert so apologies if I'm talking nonsense.