pastymaster

I'd love that but the signal isn't anywhere near good enough where I am. I can't get 4G in most places around schools!

I do love the idea of pausing the contract. The ROAM kit is considerably cheaper but I can't imagine works half as well. I'm not sure how it would work for what I'm thinking though, I guess it would have to be outside the building, which probably isn't practical as a temporary solution.

How far did you get with this one please? I'm interested in purchasing the ROAM setup as a backup for 3 different buildings. My thinking is that we can move it between schools in the event of an outage. The fact that the subscription can be paused too is really quite appealing.

Hi everyone, We have two IT vacancies within The Learning Trust at the moment, both based in Chester, North West. Network Manager - £26,845 - £30,151 - Based at Queen's Park High School & Chester International School Senior IT Technician - £24,054 - £26,845 - Based at Christleton High School Both posts are permanent, full year roles and more information regarding each vacancy can be found by visiting The Learning Trust website or by messaging me through here. Both posts close on Monday 9th January at 9am and interviews will take place that week (all being well).

Hi everyone, We have two IT vacancies within The Learning Trust at the moment, both based in Chester, North West. Network Manager - £26,845 - £30,151 - Based at Queen's Park High School & Chester International School Senior IT Technician - £24,054 - £26,845 - Based at Christleton High School Both posts are permanent, full year roles and more information regarding each vacancy can be found by visiting The Learning Trust website or by messaging me through here. Both posts close on Monday 9th January at 9am and interviews will take place that week (all being well).

Did you find out if this is possible? I'd like to do a new document type of 'Internet Reports' so that we can publish everything to our online portal. I could do it with a current type, but that would mean having to go through hundreds of documents to make sure nothing goes public that we don't want.

Thank you kindly, I'll certainly have a look at that software and see what they say. Fingers crossed. I know creating the academic year is quite a process so I'm not sure if exporting from OWA would require the same kind of resources/setup. That would be impossible.

Just having a search for importing an Outlook OWA calendar into SIMS to see if it's possible. I guess not? It's a shame really as loads of apps sync off the SIMS calendar, Moodle, Edulink, possibly ParentMail and the likes but we just use SIMS for the academic year set up. I don't suppose anyone has figured out how to export an Exchange/365 calendar and import it into SIMS?

I'm interested as well, it'd be interesting to see what kind of tools are out there.

Thank you for this thread. It just saved me some hassle!

It's a shame they'll all be Saints photos! I'd have a look if they were shot of Tigers!

Well hopefully I'm sorted for Solus3 now. All installed on the SIMS Server and it appears to be working properly (from what I can tell!). All I've done in SOLUS3 > Settings > Updates is to set the updates to search every 120 minutes, left 'Auto Download' as unchecked (so that we can control when the updates are going to be available to staff), and finally checked 'Auto Extract' for SIMS and set it to extract to the UNC path of the old SIMS\SETUPS folder. Fingers crossed it'll work for us like good old Solus 2. Hopefully that might help someone out over the coming weeks if they don't want agents all over the place.

Ahh, fair enough. I hadn't realised that you'd pushed the agents out the the workstations already. Hopefully you won't have any issues come updates time. I've installed Solus3 on the SIMS server to download updates as necessary and will then configure it to unpack the files into the normal S > SIMS > SETUPS. I'll probably be one of the few doing it this way then, but the method seems to work well currently. I'm sure we'll get forced to roll out the agents at some point in the future anyway.

Those are my thoughts exactly Gibson. I don't think there is a problem with the way it runs at the moment where after an update, they double click the SIMS icon and it updates them then. My LA notes do seem to make out that this is possible though, so I'm contacting them again later this morning to ask. "After installing the SOLUS3 server components the guide takes you through installing agents on all of your workstations, these agents will automatically look for and pull across any updates downloaded to your server. If you do not want to use agents on the workstations for the updates there is a facility that can be set to automatically extract the files into the old Setups folder and the current simsload.exe can continue to be used for updating the workstations. Please be aware that if an agent is installed and is running on a workstation it disables the simsload facility for that workstation."

I've got this paragraph in the email that I've received from the LA and was wondering if any of you have carried on using the SIMSLOAD.EXE method? "After installing the SOLUS3 server components the guide takes you through installing agents on all of your workstations, these agents will automatically look for and pull across any updates downloaded to your server. If you do not want to use agents on the workstations for the updates there is a facility that can be set to automatically extract the files into the old Setups folder and the current simsload.exe can continue to be used for updating the workstations. Please be aware that if an agent is installed and is running on a workstation it disables the simsload facility for that workstation." To be honest I'd quite like to stick with using SIMSLOAD as it's always worked well for us. Does anyone still do it this way?

I'll be watching this thread with interest! I've got to do mine over the coming days!

Thanks for the help everyone, that's spot on. At least I know where we standing in 'having' to offer something, or not as the case is. Hopefully it'll be a good way of saving money and kick starting a new method of teachers setting students work (and any additional for students that want it). They might even 'buy in' with a bit of encouragement from above. Thanks again.

Hi all, (Apologies if this has been covered before, I'm sure it has but can't find the same thread I found before ) Our VLE 3rd party support with SIMS integration is up for renewal at the end of the month and I've been thinking for a while about doing away with our Moodle VLE installation entirely. Are there any actual statutory requirements that state that a school needs to provide a VLE? Or even provide any kind of remote access and storage for students to use while off site? I can't find anything specific at all. I'm sure there were requirements to have a VLE some years ago (certainly before I started doing IT support in school) from what I've seen on here, but I don't think there is an actual requirement any longer? Our Moodle installation is NEVER used. Essentially the school's been paying £4k a year for nothing other than saying that we have a VLE. I'd much rather put that money into something more useful for the students. What I would like to do is purchase additional CALS to allow the students to remote into the network from off site and give them access to a mapped area where teachers can set home work and other activities for them to complete. I think it'd be easier for teachers to build up a decent resource area on a mapped area than having to navigate and learn a new VLE platform. It's also be easy for students as they authenticate against AD. Parents can view progress, behaviour, school dinner and parents evenings etc through Insight. So I don't have any concerns regarding parent access. Ultimately after all of that waffle , do we actually have to supply any sort of solution at all (even though we're still going to)?

Thanks for the reply Nick. The toggle on the register doesn't give us what we're after as the tutors need the view from all lessons and not just their own tutor periods. The quick link method could work perfectly though, and it would be even better if we can get it so that it defaults for each tutor. I'll send you a quick email now. Thank you kindly for your time. Cheers Dave

You could always stick a PC in running Untangle to filter everything. That's what we've done on a separate line that comes into school for our 6th Formers to run BYOD. It works perfectly, and you can set up user accounts, blocklists and so on. It'll only cost you a basic PC and two NICs.

I've been asked by one of our staff members to look if there is a quick way of looking at a whole tutor groups previous attendance, while taking a register in Lesson Monitor. The attendance only needs to go as far back as 2 weeks for this purpose. We implemented Lesson Monitor over the Summer and all appears to be going well so far. We had previously used PARS which had a quick feature to allow a tutor to be able to quickly see the attendance of his/her form and address any issues with student attendance quickly. Is there anything similar in SIMS Reports/Lesson Monitor? I've had a quick look but can't find anything specific. The only way that I've found is to use Focus > Lesson Monitor > Edit Marks. That seems a bit faffy though, and is a few clicks plus searching for your tutor group (not that big of an ask, I know). Does anyone have any ideas before I say that Edit Marks is the only way? Thanks in advance.

Tasc's Insight is actually really quite good and would cover everything that you need. We've used it for a number of years and it's proved very stable and the uptake from parents is good. We've also purchased the 'Parents' Evening' Add-on which works really well. It doesn't look that modern as you say, but it depends if you're after style over substance. Maybe you could create your own skin for it? That's something that I haven't looked into though.

Thank you Seb1780! That is a massive help and has just helped me resolve my Monday morning headache!

Very nice indeed. Nice toilet tent too!

I had to do the same as Cache suggested for NovaT6 today. It can be a real PITA with printing sometimes.