michael2k6

The more you do, the more they come to expect. It's the same in all walks of life.

I have random ring tones which my mates like to change to confuse me, unless the girlfriend rings, then i've got arctic monkeys, mardy bum, just because i know she'll never call me when she's in vasinity of my phone. Until the day i lost it and asked her to ring it. She didn't see the funny side.

The CDB file only holds a few minor things such as the path of the DSN and the last dataset used, etc. Creating a new one is really a quick job. The things such as size of windows, visible columns in list windows etc aren't stored in the CDB but in the ini files. Michael Sanderson Technical Engineer Serco Learning

Yes, that would be useful!

You should be able to run a cable through the buildings where the fibre exists? There must be a pipe between the two to carry the fibre, there should be a pull through left in the pipe. Otherwise, what about running VGA to a wifi video sender and then reciever at the other end to take the VGA onwards? Obviously this depends on the range of the video sender and the distance between the building. I can't think of the company off the top of my head, but i know wireless VGA senders are fairly common. I've used them quite a few times in sitiuations where projectors are in ridiculous places and we didn't want to cable the VGA to a wall, so we just had a sender with a male D plug on it. That went straight into the laptop VGA socket, of anyones laptop and the projecter had the reciever on the other end. I've done distances of about 200m but it was probably only travelling through air of an average humidity. I don't know what it would be like outside, through walls, or in the winter when the humidty increases and the air becomes denser. I'm going round in circles now in my head, but if i think of anything else i'll post again.

I completely agree. You always have the choice, but that's what it's there for. It will also do all of the analysing for you, but i know sometimes people would rather use Excel, etc. I've worked in a school needing to both import and export data. It took me around 3 or 4 times aslong to make the transfer work than it did to type the data. As for yourself, it was not a one off transfer, so the time spent was well worth it. We did the bulk of our assessments in ePortal, the need for data transfering was to import targets we had in spreadsheets. Providing your assessment is the same for all years, or atleast for each key stage, it should be fairly straight forward to to change it between each import. Perhaps if you are looking at making life easier for the teaching staff and getting the best out of the system in terms of return on investment, and ultimately improve the assessment within school, it would be a good idea to review your assessment model and how you enter and analyse the data? If you know what you want and how you want it, but you need the technical advise, support is your best bet. If you want advice in terms of best practice and exploring the capabilities of the MIS, a good option would be to speak to your RSDM. If you need more information on contacting support, or your RSDM, feel free to PM me. Lee - What you said about bulk entry and then changing the individual grades is also a good idea. You have to make sure your data checking is much more thorough though - the more times data is intered, the more room for human error exists. If you miss a student, or get the wrong student, and you have entered them individually it tends to be easier to spot that something is wrong and pinpoint where it happenned than if you're bulk entering them. This way is still much quicker than entering them manually. Hope this helps!

Hi, You can import into CMIS providing you have the rights, using Data Transfer. The manual is available from support, but should not be attempted unless you are confident. Make sure a backup is taken of the data before you attempt it and don't attempt to do it whilst people are using it - if you take a backup, import your data whilst people are using it and then restore the table, of course the changes made in between are lost. I would strognly recommend you call support in the first instance to seek further advice. Support will advise you, but to actually carry out this for you would be considered consultancy. Michael Sanderson Technical Support Serco Learning

I had a very similar problem. I'm affraid i no longer work at the school, so i can't tell you for definate, but i'm sure i found a registry key with the license in, and added the key to the login script for students.

I've had about 7 random tv cards now, all came with composite and SVIDEO in and all came with their own software for viewing it live. There are open sourced media centers available for broadcasting the image around the classroom if that's necessary, but they tend to be fairly memory hungry and you've got to be open to persevearance. If it's just one microscope per pc then it should be easy. I'd go with PCI and run a composite extention to the desk - the composite inputs on the pci cards can be a bit brittle, i've had to resolder a few, they aren't built for constant in and out pluggage. Also, USB ones are more likely to go missing and can be quite chunky and heavy so if you get the stick type (similar size to a pen drive, witha breakout cable) anddont use them with a usb extention, the weight of the breakout cable and coposite cable will end up snapping with USB sockets off the chip and those are a lot harder to resolder as it will be a multilayer circuit board.

Yeh, absolutely. If it were 28 - 32, I'd be there! Too right it would be a nice ride! Although very gloomy in the winter i expect.

AV and IT Tech is a decent role, trouble is you end up with too many workflows, you'll have the network manager dealing with you regarding ICT and perhaps the Bursar or SMT making last minute AV demands, and both will need doing NOW! *Speaks from experience* Still, 15 - 16k full time isn't going to cut it is it? I agree with mattx, peanuts and monkeys...

Hi All, It is best practice to backup from within CMIS. The reason being, whatever happens to your servers or your database, if you can provide us (Serco) with 2 bdb files (one for templates and one for data) we can get you your data back very quickly. If you were to give us a SQL backup, it may take longer and would require much more specialist support, and might end up someone in the technical team restoring it to a new database, to create the bdb's we'd ask for in the first place. If this is the case, there might be a consultancy charge. In terms of disaster recovery, the quickest, safest and easiest way is to use the dbd files from within CMIS. This is because it backs up the raw data and so can be restored to a new database. If the database is backed up from the SQL server itself and you are confident that should the server die (worst case scenario) you would be able to recover that to a new server, then there is no need to backup from within Admin every day. Top and bottom of it is, if you can give us two bdb files, we can give you your data back. If you give us a disk with a SQL backup on, we cannot garuntee anything and might charge for the recovery and it will certainly take longer. If you know you can backup other than using bdb's and restore it yourself, that's fine, but it's your risk. In terms of the automated backup situaion, i believe the product manager is currently looking at automated backups and maintenance processes such as the audittrail. I'm affraid to confirm this, you'd have to contact the support desk directly. Michael Sanderson Technical Team Serco Learning

Hi all, Mic here from Serco. I'm biased because i've only ever used Facility and ePortal in a school environment and now i work for Serco! But i can testify that i didn't come across anything i needed that wasn't available. I now work in the technical team at Serco, doing installations, server management and consultancies, etc. I also know the software well from working as Data Manager at a large secondary school and working in second line support at Serco. You shouldn't need to write any sql to access any data, in fact, we greatly discourage it. There is a report module, as you'd expect. The system comes with a set of default reports, we share reports on out forums and you can also build your own. If you're looking for the really complicated stuff we offer training courses on this. I'd also like to mention we have a Learning Platform called Skillspace. This integrates with ePortal for things like login, timetables, etc. It is hosted away from your school site by us. I'm sure the person delivering your demo will be able to tell you more but if you have any questions, especially technical ones, feel free to fire away. Hope that wasn't too much of a sales pitch for you! I'm just genuinly personally confident in the software and would of recommended it before i worked for Serco, speaking as a Data Manager.

I could only work evenings, and not every but if you're struggling to find someone, i live in Wakefield and can be available. [email protected].

@ jammers 8080 is the default internal tomcat port, 8443 the default secure. If you point eportal.myschool.mycounty.sch.uk at 192.xx.xx.xx:8080 or 192.xx.xx.xx:8443 you will be using tomcat to host your external pages. There is nothing wrong with doing that, but most people do use IIS which would save the need for the ports adding. Michael Sanderson Technical Engineer Serco Learning

Sounds like it could be that when you have attached the database the login for SQL isn't mapped to the database. If you're using SQL login then it needs to be mapped to a user which has permissions within the database. Also check on the properties of the SQL box that you are using Windows and SQL authentication (but if as you say you attached it using the SA password, you must already be). Forgive my ignorance, i've no idea what i'm talking about where SIMS is concerned but that's how i fix that problem when i face that error with SQL. Michael Sanderson Technical Engineer Serco Learning

On XP atleast you can also do this in program compatibility on the properties of the exe or the shortcut.

Savilles Audio Visual are the guys to speak to. They did two conference theatres for my school about a couple of years back. They will quote, supply and fit. If you want to do it yourself, a plasma or LCD with a VGA input would take from DVD (scart) freeview (second scart) and laptop (VGA). I would then have the audio from the TV into an amp and some decent speakers. Richer Sounds is a good place to be looking for all of the above. They will also be able to send you everything you need minus the laptop, with all the cabling so if you decide to do it yourself, that's a good place to be calling.

Hi, Jammers is right. If you are getting everything in but still being presented with the normal login screen it sounds to me like it isn't in your license key which is in controller. This is either because you haven't bought it or because you have in the wrong / default license key. To check, go to Server | License in the controller. It should be listed in there. If it isn't and you think you've bought it, support will be able to give you the correct license key (they will also be able to tell you what you have and haven't purchased). Hanel, i recommend you give support a call about your issue, as i think it is either something populated incorrectly or something else on your network stopping it from working. Have you raised the forrest function level to 2003 and set the schema master? Hope this helps, Michael Sanderson Technical Engineer Serco Learning

You should try and get a higher spec machine and run it all on one than have two lower spec machine and split it. Make sure you don't forget about disks. As long as you have SCSI 320 or equiviliant in RAID (5 preferably) you'll be fine. If you want our minimum spec, it can be aqcuired through support, they'll happily email you it. It is also available on the website. If you can't afford something which meets the spec, split them down the middle as monkeyx suggested and put ePortal on one on it's own. For the size of your school i'm sure you'll be ok with 1200 to spend and them both on the same box. Michael Sanderson Technical Engineer Serco Learning

Hi guys, Off the top of my head, i think that the alerts are stored in MLSINBOX. Like i said, that is off the top of my head, and i don't have a database on the machine i'm currently on. Have a look, if they're there, it should be obvious. Although i'm affraid i can't say why it causes inaccurate data in reports (as i don't know) i would agree with Nick. Calling the cdb from the shortcut has been known to cause issues. It may of been an issue only with certain schools due to something specific about, for example, their network configuration. However, as the answer seemed to be not calling the cdb file from the shortcut (has been perfect since) this is something we advise against. It is not part of a routine installation and so anything which differs from this can always be suspect when a problem arises. If you're confident it has worked at your site and always will, it is of course your choice as to whether you leave it like that. Should you have any issues which we believe may be linked to this, however, we'll ask you to change that. If you have by this time setup 30 pc's to run like this it's quite a job to change it. My point is, wandering from the standard install might cause you extra work in the future. Furthermore, as when there is an issue the reports do still work, but are inaccurate, how can you be sure you've never had a problem? Michael Sanderson Technical Engineer Serco Learning The content of the above post are written soley by myself and do not in any way represent the views or opinion of my employer or those associated with.

Hi folks, Just make sure that when you create a new shortcut you also set the 'startin' to point at the userss client files. The client files folder would usually contain the CDB and the DSN. You can get away with sharing the DSN and pointing the CDB at the DSN on the server if you wish. Every user need their own CDB file as the CDB file also stores the previous dataset the user logged into. If you're not careful you'll find the timetabler will log into next years dataset and the admin team will do a load of work in it before they realise, then it will have to be done again! Also, when you give it a start in folder, into that folder CMIS will create an ini file (upon closing or clicking Options | Configuration | Save configuration). These need to be user specific otherwise you'll find staff changing settings and column setups and loosing them. The most common way of doing this is to set up from scratch on one machine, pointing it at a folder called client files. Then copy that folder onto your server. You now have a starting point for every new machine. The client files can then be copied out to each new users home drive, and assuming the home drive is mapped as h:\, for example, the shortcut will always point to \\sercoserver\admin$\admin.exe and the startin will always point to h:\clientfiles. When you've done this once, it just becomes a copy and paste job for every new user. And, as Diello said, one upgrade then Hope this helps! Michael Sanderson Technical Engineer Serco Learning

Hi, I was the technical engineer at Serco who responded to your query through your implementation manager. Something else to bare in mind is the bulk of our testing, to know knowledge is performed on SQL 2005 SP2. If you had express and ran into an issue which appeared to be SQL related, and we couldn't replicate it, it's another difference at your site which could only be tested by purchasing the full version. So to avoid this scenario, it would be worth buying the standard edition. SQL will also use more than 1gb of RAM if your server is high enough spec'd (especially during times of high throughput such as assessment periods). Michael Sanderson Technical Engineer Serco Learning N.B: The content in the above post contains views which belong to myself and do not reflect those of my employer.

The only way i can think of you achieving that, would be to have a seperate subject / teaching group for that one student, and then booking it all into the same room with the same teacher at the same event time. I think it would cause more problems than it would solve. You might want to try calling support to make sure there isn't another way of doing it though, timetabling isn't my strongest point! Sorry i can't help more. Mic Sanderson Technical Specialist Serco Learning

If it's a case of a member of support staff going into a pre existing lesson, so for example you might have a teaching assistant going into a students regular maths class, the best way to do this is use the link field in the teaching group in question. So if you go to Data | Teaching groups | Edit teaching groups and select the relevant group, enter the id of the TA in the link field. When you go onto the timetable of the TA, create a new event and when going to assign a teaching group, due to the ID of the TA in the link field the teaching group will be available for adding. I believe this is the best way; if that doesn't do the trick in the way you want it to i'm sure support will have an answer. Mic Sanderson Technical Engineer Serco Learning