michael2k6

Hi all, Just a note to say anyone considering this position should absolutely go for it. I applied for a similar position in the past at the college and kick myself everyday for not taking it - but unfortunately the benefits of my current position outweigh what a school can offer. And that wont change... so enough about me... The staff are pleasant and good to work with, judging by the 10 or so i've met and spoken to. The kids actually hold doors open for you and let you go through first... it's a lovely village community vibe to it and the surroundings are absolutely stunning. I was seriously considering the 1.5 hour daily commute each way, just to be able to work in those settings, and for the drive. The school have a sound future in terms of IT and John is a great guy to work with, as i'm sure many a folk on here will agree with. I've worked with him for countless hours on various different projects and who was then a colleague is now a friend. Anyone looking for this kind of position, couldn't ask for a better one than this. Whats more, the school has less than 500 kids including 6th form, so it's an easy one in terms of data and admin. There are so few kids and staff there in this ideal community setting that everyone knows everyone by name. I certainly would by now had i of taken a job there. I cannot stress enough how much i fell in love with the place when i visited. And, Johns biscuits rock. And if you're up there for interview, i can recommend a cafe in the village called the naked man. Mic The above post is the opinion of myself and not of my employer or anyone/any company associated with my employer.

And, aisle two aisle two, that is the place they found the raghu.

I should probably also explain a bit. John's refering to some beans we found in an xml file which i believe are causing issues. ePortals basically getting a little bit flactulant, potentially caused by the beans, which i'm sure i'll resolve on monday when i test this theory with my own beans. As John said, it may be because they are not of high enough quality, or could be stale. Michael Sanderson Technical Engineer Serco Learning

John, You can purchase extra beans as an addon. These are priced per student (per tin, not individual beans) however, the size of the tin may vary. We would recommend you purchase consultancy to install these beans is it is not as easy as simply pouring these into your server and setting it on simmer. Please do not instal toast at any time during this process (or in your case John miniature sausages). If anyone else has issues with their Serco provided beans please let me know. Mic @ Serco

Alice, Thanks for pointing this out. As i'm not sales related i don't know about the cost of the MIS i support. Please do identify yourself though so your post is credible, i'd like to know who you are too! Thanks Michael Sanderson Technical Engineer Serco Learning

Be careful there are so many things that can go wrong with that i don't even know where to begin.

Hi all, I think i've done pretty well but i'd like to post up to see if anyone's willing to compare - I pay £40 ish per month, for which i get the phone line, unlimited evening and weekend calls, 2 v+ boxes (one in the lounge one in my bedroom) - both legal registered, got the XL package on the telebox, and 50mb net. And i didn't pay for the V+ boxes when they were upgraded from normal ones (i had one normal one, went to 2 v+ boxeS) as i convinced them i'd run the cables myself, cabling which i already had as i do a fair few digital coax installations, and managed to get the boxes free somehow. Anyone beat that / paying more, etc? Mic

It's nice to see more people discussing best working practices. Keep the suggestions coming.

I only know about Mondeos but they use the same head units so in theory its the same - it's something known as a quad block. If it doesn't fir, Halfrauds will sell you one, and theyll sell you a face plate too.

Anyone thinking about this role and not knowing a lot about the school or people, go for it. I've met some of the staff, and the kids, on numerous occasions, spent a week or so in Settle now, and worked with John on several occasions. The staff, school, kids, setting and resident 'John' are all top notch. If this is the kind of job you're wanting, jump at this opportunity! It doesn't come up very often, trust me i know! Mic @ Serco

@Humbug1873 Thank you for offering assistance to Ranj. It's good to see everyone on the forum giving some input. I don't have experience myself in the roombooking side of our software as i am in a different part of the operations team. I was merely suggesting that it might be worth looking into. We do offer an API, but this is for use by our partners, not by individuals. This could be achieved using a TSQL or could as was suggested by someone be a simple spreadsheet (obviously the disadvantage is you can't automate that). The advantage to it is that you can create the report in Facility and you don't need to work out the database. Thanks again for your input, it's nice to see users helping each other out. Mic @ Serco, outside of work hours. My posts are always my own, and have nothing to do in any way whatsoever with my employer.

Hi, What has been said is correct. The easiest way to do this is report. What i can't understand is why if you're using it for room bookings you need a list of which rooms are free, not which rooms are in use and by whom? I might of read it wrong or got the wrong idea - apologies in advance if i have. We have our own room booking system in ePortal which does just that. Phone sales and ask them about it. I negates the need for importing and exporting etc. If it does not meet your needs, and you choose to use a different system, then one which runs completely stand alone to the database and just works using exports is going to ruin your timetable. If you want to find a member of staff and you're using two softwares like that, you'd first need to lookup where they should be, then lookup on the other software whether theyve moved? What you need is something that can read and write. We wouldnt support any software to do this unless they are one of our partners. I'm not sure whether or not we have partner software that can do this, but if that's a route you'd like to go to PM me your details and i'll have someone contact you and let you know (else i'll find out and contact you myself). @Robk - If he had a list of events it would not include free rooms. Now i've re read the post i think what he's after is a report of all rooms and what's in them right now, so he can see which are free and what's in the others - a list of the events occuring now would only produce the rooms with peoples in. Mic @ Serco

Hi, Things like a forgotten password would be dealt with in house as it would be reset from within the software by another user. For example, the eportal (web access to the teacher end) passwords are set in the office end of the software. So anyone with access to the software and permissions to edit the password can reset it. We usually find there are just a few users in the school that would actually contact us. So yourself for technical issues, whoever does the timetabling would contact us for such issues, the exams officer, etc. More simple issues and really all issues from teaching staff would be dealt with internally. We can't help with things like password resets because we'd need to contact someone else in the school with permissions to them and remote in to fix it, would turn something that takes seconds into something that takes minutes or hours and involved 4 or 5 people rather than 2. People in school will be given training as part of the implementation process and the people receiving the training (depending who recieves what) will learn how to configure these passwords. You're right about the SLA's and the unique references. You can log calls online, or log them on the phone, and once they are logged, you can view them online, add status changes, update us with attachments, etc, all through the same site that you can download knowledgebase articles and training from. It's late... if i didn't answer that very clearly, or if you have more questions, fire away. Mike @ Serco

Hi, That's right. The PIN referred to in the first post is something generated for you and is unique to you (not just your school). This tells us that the person we're speaking to is who we say we are. If we have the need to remote in, we generate a 6 digit pin and you put this in a box on a website. The 6 digit pin is a 1 off and only lives idle for 20 minutes (as long as you connect within that 20 minutes it stays connected until someone ends the session). It will the prompt you to download a small .exe file which is the client end for the remote software. It then allows is to take remote controll, has a chat feature, send and recieve files (it's all encrypted with a one off key) and view things like system processes (like a remote task manager / resource monitor), send events logs back to ourselves, etc. It even has a clever little feature that allows us to ask you for your windows credentials. It captures them without telling us them, stores them encrypted, and this allows us to reboot the server, it logs back into windows and reconnects the remote session (we'd only do that if you'd already given us permission to restart). The only day to day issues that i can think of are the same as any other piece of software, people forgetting their passwords, etc. Hope that's of some help Mic Sanderson Technical Engineer Serco Learning

Hi, The dataset is stored in the CDB file. The users should each have their own cdb file which will live in the clientfiles folder for each user. The only way you could force it is to save a cdb file and overwrite everyone elses with that one. It will change a few other things though too such as the last place a backup was taken to, etc. Mic @ Serco

Hello, This is a bug, which i don't have the details of the fix with me at the moment as i'm on leave but if you contact support they will be able to assist you in resolving it. Mic Sanderson Serco

Hi, Sorry, i miss read some of that. It has a piece of software called Scheduler which is built in. Timetable changes can be made in Facility, but the automated event scheduling process is done in Scheduler. It's a standalone app which doesn't connect to the DB. How it works is you go into Facility, take an extraction, which takes your timetable (and selectable other data) out to a '*.ttd' file. You then open this in scheduler. Do the work. Save the file. Go back into Facility and integrate it. This means you can take an extraction, mess it all up in scheduler, discard it, and take another extraction. It also means you can install scheduler where ever you want, for example on the timetablers laptop, and they can take it home for the summer without needing any remote access and live access to the db. Mic Sanderson Technical Engineer Serco Learning

Hi, A quick answer to the above post, we have a partner scheme for companies wanting to pull and push data to and from the database. Fronter are one of our partners. That means that once ePortal is installed (it comes included) you have the API module. You simply point the Fronter software at the ePortal box (no idea how - that's a Fronter question) and in a config file on the ePortal server you set the IP of the fronter box to be allowed to communicate with it. Simple. And there's API support too. Fronter will be able to tell you where the file is in ePortal you need to edit, or we can. As for the others to be honest i'm not sure. We don't support writing back to the database from none partners for obvious reasons. Nor do we support reading from it, but i do know some companies do. But that's going to get messy - unless theyre a partner, if we change the table structure or fields in a release, they aren't going to know until they stumble accross it by which point it's too late for you guys, and could mess up your database in the mean time. A list of our current partners is here Serco Partners If you have any technical questions, fire away or PM me. Mic Sanderson Technical Engineer Serco Learning

Hi, Not really answering the original question, but... In my experience, it is best to give one clear target. I can understand why you would want to compare afterwards, but it's absolutely imperitive that the teacher and the student (and the parent for that matter) can only see one, they are only aware of one, etc. Everyone needs something to work towards which needs to be very clear and definative. And if in doubt, go with the higher grade. The problem we always had was to motivate a student give them a high (achievable) target. The trouble with this is that the departments and staff then dont meet their numbers if the students don't meet actually achieve their targets. To me, that's tough, a school isn't there for the teachers it's there for the students. The staff should see it as a target too - and if you are constantly setting high targets in order to motivate people, this should be taken into account when analysing results. Figure out where you're going to have your targets. Then hide any other form of target the absolute best you can. Only give permission to view it to the people doing the analysis, as those people will understand the difference. Mic Techy at Serco

Hi, I'll make this clear from the start - i work for Serco, i'm a technical engineer. If you have any specific questions you want answering of a technical nature, PM me and i'll send you either an answer, or if a little more in depth my phone number. I also worked in a school with 2100 students as Data Manager and Assistant Exams officer. Was also the admin network technician in a sense. So i have it from most angles. Mic Sanderson

Be careful with the Haynes - if you have a sound mechanical knowledge you're ok but dont go too far into it if you're not that way inclined - in the Haynes mini manual it says the dizzie cam (and so rotor) goes the oposite way to which it does (i think it goes clockwise but it states anticlockwise) and it also has the wrong cam information in one of them in relation to the dizzie advance. They're great in theory but if you're working on a car you're relying upon and doing a tricky job if you get stuck you're up the creek. What turned into a simple job of drilling and tapping a dizzie for the threads for the cap turned into 2 days of random confusion. Until i thought what if haynes is wrong, which is something i'd not considered before! Luckily it didnt matter to me because its a second car, so it just stayed there. But if i'd of been on the bus to work i'd of had something to say to Haynes.... sorry for hijacking the thread, a nice little Haynes rant there! I have a friend that works at Pug if i can get hold of him tomorrow i'll get you an answer.

60k should be ok with it being a diesel. Be aware also that when manufacturers build a new engine they dont really seem to know a lot of the time - i had an astra which originally came out saying every 70k and they've brought it down 10k 3 times and now it's every 40k, because theyre forever snapping. The other thing to do is ring Pug, don't tell them your mileage so you know they aren't just ripping u off and ask them when it needs doing on that car they'll look it up if they dont know.

You can start SQL in Single User Mode by adding a switch to the service in the configuration manager. The next user to connect will have sole access - so make sure it's you. Or, you can specify the image name of the process to limit it further.

Hi, No, Facility and Sims are not the same - Facility is made by Serco Learning and SIMS by Capita - will just of been a very rare typo on Tony's part i'm sure :-) All i can think of is as suggested, get it into an excel spreadsheet and do a VLOOKUP on a string like forename and surname.

Hi, If you changed the server.xml file to port 80, it should be using port 80. If something else is using port 80 on the server (but i know you said you turned IIS off) then it might be causing a problem. Maybe run a port scanner to check. Other thing is check that you didn't accidentally edit the example, there is an exmaple close to the actual setting in the server.xml file, so make sure the bit that you edited isn't remarked out. If you want it to work with IIS on port 80, then you'll need the eportal service to be running on a different port (8080 is usually fine, again, unless something else is using it) and then to configure IIS to work with it. If you get stuck with the guide give me a shout. Mic@Serco