michael2k6

Hi all, Sorry I'm a little late to the thread. I just wanted to clear up the reason for the differences in responses to you all as users. Our schools who have support directly from us have access to Firstline, which is our support site. Documentation such as the attached above can be found on that site. In that case, each school, as part of their contract, has a support service from us. Schools who are part of a local authority contract get their support from their local authority, who in turn get their support from us. It will be down to the local authority and the support agreements schools have in place to determine which services are documented, supported, or chargeable. As an example, we may provide installation and configuration instructions, but if we were asked to assist with a server migration it would be considered consultancy work. In terms of the external access to ePortal, there are a fair few things to take into consideration before going ahead and doing it, but those schools with Local Authority support usually all follow the same process and so the local authority would normally take control of that; it keeps things very simple. Schools who would approach that on their own have a number of different ways to achieve it depending on their network, ISP, firewalls, etc, and do it on an individual basis. The important thing to take from this is that the security principals are always the same but the methods may differ quite dramatically. I'd always recommend that if you are supported by your local authority, follow their guidance (where present) and utilise their services wherever possible; at least check that by doing it on your own or differently you're not breaching contract otherwise you may end up unsupported or with a configuration unknown to them. On a technical note, you can use Tomcat over a secure connection, but it's not quite as easy as using IIS, so most would use IIS an an extra layer. Our documentation all recommends using IIS. And finally, to clear up any confusion, the OP would not have access to Firstline, as by the looks of things there is no support contract between the OP and Advanced, they would need to seek the documentation from the LA which is why the thread was started initially. I'd always encourage users who get support directly from Advanced to go to Firstline for the manual every time, in case there has been an update to it (such as a change of O/S leading to IIS version, etc). Kindest Regards Mic Sanderson Advanced Learning

If you've got pets then, it's going to take twice as long with half the power. So the KwH is the same?

I haven't done it myself yet but I have friends who are contractors and regularly buy and rebuild. They run cat6 to every room now as a matter of course, which is refreshing. They tend to put it next to an aerial point / coax point if there is one and if not, wherever seems most sensible but usually near a power point to cut down on the work. They always terminate back to a patch panel somewhere quiet such as a closet or the cupboard under the stairs. They tend to put the (or atleast a secondary) phone point in there too and plenty of power. The last one that they did was a beauty, they had the brief on rebuild right up to furnishing. It ended up with 3 sky boxes in the same cupboard with the eye jobby in each room so that they could be controlled from wherever the TV was. I've never seen it before and I'm not sure how it was done, but it was some sort of multiroom setup whereby the sky boxes are acting in tandem as a big bank of tuners, so essentially each of the two living rooms, the kitchen, and up to 3 of the 5 bedrooms could all be using a different tuner to get a channel, and some of them when not in use could be recording. That bits fairly straight forward, the bit I didn't quite get is that you could pull any recording to any room, and there didn't seem to be any external storage for recording, so it must be pulling from a specific box. However they did it, it was genius, anyway, and the owner is now using cat6 in the office with a little switch, but has also put a couple of access points in too so that he has good coverage all over the house - which he's used the cat6 points for in those rooms.

I had the original one and got 100mb wired no problem. The wireless on it was beyond poor. The other problem I had was that if you don't access the config page for upwards of 10 days, it becomes onavailable (the router just won't serve the page). Not a problem unless like me it's all in the loft and you need to power cycle it for some reason... up in the loft I go! I've had superhub 2 for a week and it's great. I've done away with the extra access point I had and everything's all lovely. Virgin refused to accept an issue with the page serve (despite many people complaining about it online, google it), and said that a superhub2 may not improve my wireless it may be other devices in the area etc; despite the fact that when using my own access point with the same configuration it's fine. They charged me £20 as a one off and I just did it for an easy life, though I'll now take it up with them- the new kit has resolved every issue I had. You never know.

Progresso has a full API and if you need access to it, there isn't a cost but there is an NDA to sign among a couple of other bits. You'd need to develop against it to make moodle work with it. Some third party providers develop against it so that their software works out of the box and they're part of our partnership program. Because moodle isn't owned and is open in the community, there's no one to develop and deploy it as a partner.

It may be that the main contract (which includes support) has now expired and the school are running on a RTU (right to use) contract, in which case, they will have the version of the software which was 'latest' when their main contract ended, and will not have a support contract. If the school do not have the knowledge to export the data in the format required, then it may be consultancy can be purchased. The database will still be there on site in SQL and the software is completely usable, but you'd have to have the knowledge in order to use it. If this is the case then no support contract exists which would be why they don't have support. I think we ought to just stop speculating; ComputingData, if you have agreed to supply them with a software and included data transfer and not specified prior to that the data format you need, it probably is your problem. If they have agreed to supply it in a particular format then surely it is their problem.

Sorry, understood, you'd have to use the API to achieve that.

Progresso allows for subscription reports ussing SSRS so once you have a report built you can schedule it to go by email in various different formats to whoever you like at specified times and include relative (such as date) or fixed parameter.

I have: Pretty Fly for a WiFi Guest Wi not Fi

Hi guys, Just to clarify; it's a slightly different process for partners than it is to schools. Previously, we would give schools access to the API upon signing some documentation (quite rightly said, including an NDA), and we have a partnership program which had some commercials involved around it. We have now changed our partnership program which makes it much easier for 3rd parties to use the API for the benefit of our users. If anyone would like any further information please just get in touch with your account manager. If anyone has any problems with contact their account manager, please contact me. I'm not sure I can really post my contact details here on the forum as it may be frowned upon, but feel free to PM me. Mic Sanderson Customer Success Manager Advanced Learning

Why wasn't the stool the width of the ship?!

May I add that this is a brilliant team to be a part of, including the wider business team in which you'll work. You can expect several trays of biscuits / curry per week most of the time, and some good inter-team banter.

I'm lucky enough that during my time self employed I had that issue only once and as I was registered as a sole trader I think it was eventually offset against tax as unrecoverable debt. That or I lost the £80, but as it was only £80 I didn't worry about it too much. Other than that, I've been lucky that business always came from word of mouth and the larger jobs were part paid up front or for people who came with a good reputation. I also had a clause on my quotes which said something along the lines of no materials provided would be owned by the buyer until the invoice had been paid in full, which protected me against anyone ordering expensive hardware (or services such as websites) and then not paying. As you'd just take the hardware back or the website down (as a last resort obviously). I never had to use it though.

That, sir, I cannot yet comment on, as I've only seen an introduction to it in terms of the key facts, and a brief demo. I'm not sure what the API access to that part of the software is like at the moment. But we're all about interoperability which is reflected in the partnership programme we have now being open. We want to help schools get the best out of the systems they choose to use and accept that there is no one size fits all. I'm going to stop now before I get too sales-y, but I only sound like that because I've got a genuine passion for it. I would just say watch this space

Here's one for among the pigeons, Advanced have a finance product which existed very successfully before the acquisition of Learning. It's in place in the public health sector, quite a few key player commercial companies, and quite a few LA's and universities. It's just going to market for schools, and it stands to reason it will work with the MIS provided by learning. At the moment looking at the sector, it's the third biggest player. So i do think the future for accounting and MIS may be bright, but can see how it does remove the flexibility to choose best of breed; unless you happened to have the best MIS and best finance product!

I got in a few touch LED and they came in cheaper than interactive smarts due to the ease of fitting etc. iBoard touch.

28/36 and 11/20

Progresso has a single sign on option which will integrate fully with AD to allow a user to login to their machine onto the domain, and then use Progresso without further login. I believe that's what you're asking? Mic Sanderson Advanced Learning

Sorry guys; again, to clear this up: It's not to do with the server settings, or the eportal login permissions. The full file name and path is stored in the database, and the file is no longer in that location. You'll need to run TSQL against the table containing the fileref (Skyworca has alluded to), with an update statement. If you use a like statement correctly, you can replace just the start of the row so that the file name etc remains in place. Obviously this is at your own risk, as Skyworca suggested. This is something which is done as part of the migration consultancy offering where by an establishment would purchase a consultancy service for us to move all of the software, documents and database. I'm not an amateur on this one folks; I'm in year 9 of Facility / ePortal experience now having been through the service desk, consultancy, training, etc. A good couple of years of that was spent responsible for installations, migrations and hardware specifications. You won't find a way to make it work without updating the fileref in that table, or moving the documents back. Or just as a wildcard, if you set up a DFS path to point to the old path and redirect to the new one? I've not used DFS in years so I'm not sure if that's even possible, but it's a thought. I hope this helps. Mic

Just to clear this up; the location of the documents is stored in the table, so if you move the document, they will no longer be found; if you update the settings any new documents will be stored in the new location. In a live environment, it would be normal for the support team to assist you in running a script to update the old location to the new location. Whilst this may not be the easiest and immediate solution you're looking for, hopefully i've pointed you in the right direction. Do check your license key; if you can see the document settings in facility, you've got it licensed. Check the key in eportal too if it's only an issue with eportal. Mic

This is generally true. As I said though, I have no idea about the database, having never used it let alone written it, I shan't cast aspersions. It's also quite difficult to build a database for this kind of use in a generic performance tuned manner as they perform such a vast array of tasks and each school will use each bit of it to a different extent. So it's about finding the best balance across the board. But hopefully regardless of the db design and structure, the best practice principles in my post will apply to anything; if you buy a 400bhp car and put £50 a corner rubber on it, you're coming off at the next roundabout. At least you are as soon as you start to push it

Thanks Graham, absolutely agree; if someone from Capita wants to pop along and comment on things which they would disagree with, I'll Subtitle that section of the post with a note which says "don't apply on an instance of SIMS as capita do not recommend this"; that way it remains relevant for anyone with a SQL instance of something else running, but doesn't hinder anyone with a SIMS install. I've already had a PM thanking me which is nice, as I said to him if it helps one school to get information out to those who need it faster than previously, and kills some earache for our colleagues in the server rooms, it was worth the post - - - Updated - - - On another note, I have no EduLime, so I won't waste a Corona.

Hi all, I've not used SIMS, nor am I familiar with implementation, recommended specs / configuration etc, and I currently (recently) work for an alternative MIS, so I can't comment on SIMS technically, but I've got a bucket of SQL experience, so I've popped up to help out if it's possible. Obviously, the usual caveats, it's at your own risk, don't do anything that Capita do not approve of, back it all up, twice, etc. This is none MIS related general SQL advice. If anyone has an issue with anything in the post please let me know and I'll change / remove it. I've seen performance issues before with SQL databases and the replies here don't surprise me. What I have noticed previously though is that rebuilding or reorganising indexes will help to a point but when you've used the same software with a slowly growing db over so many years, and not done that previously, it can't hurt to do it, but a solution like that sometimes masks an issue rather than solves it. SQL will cache as much data as it can (including whole DB's) to RAM, where the RAM is available and the O/S isn't sending out pressure warnings for memory to be released. Have a look at performance monitor and look at the page life expectancy counter. The higher the number the better, essentially, the higher the number, the longer a piece of data can be cached in RAM. I'm keeping this fairly basic as I have no idea how big these databases are or can grow to. Something that might be common across these issues is that I've spotted a few virtual machines running on various types of host. In these cases, where data is stored on a SAN, look at disk contention. Where are you storing the db's? Ideally, you should be storing them away from anything with high disk contention - don't bang em on the same RAID 5 as your file storage on a different partition, for example. Ideally, store them on their own disks, and on a different LUN. Even more ideally, store tempdb on a different LUN to your user databases, but I think that's probably overkill for this use. The fastest cheapest way people tend to achieve that is to add a set of local disks in a RAID 5 to the host machine and move all databases to that (including system DB's). Obviously in the greater realms of database tuning, you ideally need to keep tempdb away from the user databases, and look at keeping log files (if you're using full recovery model) on a different drive to the database files - more on log files in a moment. You can then look at storing tables and views in different mdf's and storing them separately, usually based on their usage (amount, and read / write). Again, all of this is probably overkill for this kind of purpose. But I can fully recommend putting them on their own set of disks, if you have that luxury, and seeing if it drastically improves performance. Pay particular attention to your log files. Again, not knowing the SIMS architecture, I don't know whether the database is setup in full or simple recovery model. A log file isn't a never ending log of what's happened in the database. The log file processes all queries to the database, and if they are successful, they remain and are shifted to the mdf. If they are unsuccessful they are rolled back and never make it to the mdf. By default a database commit is made at each checkpoint or where a specific query is written ending COMMIT TRANSACTION. So a hell of a lot depends on the ldf file. Many people think it's some sort of audit trail in case someone deletes a student, for example, which is not the case. A database has a few different options for recovery model. Full and Simple are the most common. When set to full, the LDF file grows until it you backup and shrink it. You cannot shrink without a backup. Usually where that's the case it's built into a maintenance plan. The other option is simple. Simple looks empty data from the LDF at each check point. It does not release that free space back to the filesystem unless 'auto shrink' is checked. So that means that if may be 2gb in size, for example, but only 1gb is in use, so the next 50% of the log file already has space allocated on disk, it's just not using it yet. If we begin simple and consider the impact that it will have on a single disk, it becomes obvious quickly that if you have the mdf and ldf (or multiples) of your user database on the same disk, and you also have your tempdb on there, and potentially other databases too (which are all using the same tempdb), that disk is going to be crazy busy. Then consider that when it needs to grab some space for db1 it does so at whatever rate it sets. Then the same for db2. Etc. Data very quickly becomes fragmented across a disk. Not only does it become fragmented across a disk but it becomes fragmented within its own pages. More on that in a moment, lets stick to disks for now. A log file writes serially. So if a log file is on it's own disk, the read/write heads stay in the same place, if it's on a disk contended with the other files, the heads are all over the place. So if you have your db set to full, and the log file is forever growing, you have the data getting further apart and becoming more fragmented. If you set it to simple it will use quite a bit of resources constantly clearing it, but then at least it is using the same free space over and over (unless you've got it set to shrink, or it needs to grow beyond its currently allocated space). So now we've been over disks and fragmentation of db files over the disks and disk contention, the other thing to consider if the fragmentation of the indexes themselves. Within Consider a dictionary. The dictionary is index, the bookshelf is the hard drive or array. It's in alphabetical order, if you're looking for N, it's between M and O, regardless of what page that's on you find it quickly. If we suddenly think of some new N words, we cant bang in a new word onto a full page. So it creates a new page for it on the end. That's where the index fragmentation comes from. So you end up with free space then on that new page too. When you rebuild an index, it will do what it says on the tin. Which is why it's important. The pages then all end up in order. What you have to consider at the point of rebuild is the fill factor. It's 1 - 100 (warning - 0 is unlimited and same as 100) and used as a percentage. If you set it to 0 it will fill every page to its capacity. If you set it to 50, it will half fill each page. Which means when it needs to add something, it's got room to add it. The downside of that is you end up with a load of free space. So... most issues here are with running reports, which is a read activity. The fastest read activity is going to be where those pages are full, so i'd say use 0 and fill every page. If you set it to 50, for example, the read performance may degrade by two times as it's looking through all the free space. But the writes will be improved. So that's why rebuilding / recreating your indexes is helping. A tip for those creating new databases (away from SANs) is to defrag the disks first, then have the initial size of the database around 150% of the necessary size do that for the log file too. As it will grab the free space at that time, it will be contiguous on the disk. Another tip is ensure that the log file is set to grow by the necessary rate. If it's set to grow 1mb at a time for example, in heavy use, it may be growing, waiting, growing, waiting, etc. Use a % instead, usually about 10. Also check that there isn't a size limit on the log file. If it reaches a limit in full recovery model, it will simply stop working. If it reaches a limit in simple recovery model it will usually perform a commit and gain enough free space in time for the query to be successful, but it will slow things down considerably. Limits to log files were necessary in the days of smaller disks but these days and on databases of these sizes its a bit mad to apply one. Monitor it by all means, but don't limit it. As I said at the start of the thread I hope I'm not treading on anyone's toes or going against anything Capita would advise, in which case, definitely take their instruction over mine! My knowledge is indeed limited and more from the times of SQL 2005 into 2008 than 2012. But if any bit of it helps one school, it was worth writing. But that did take quite a bit of writing and I do feel like I deserve a corona, so that's where I'll be if anyone wants me! There are more things springing to mind, but I think that will do for tonight. Especially for this size of implementation, it's probably overkill as it is. As usual, if anyone has any questions or wants to chat further you're welcome to PM me. Mic

I have done it using MIS other than SIMS using that method, and then it became a standard feature 'medical events'. As as aside, please tell me your sick bay is star trek themed?

Good stuff, as I couldn't break it.