rpwillis

By "a link to the assignment diary filtered for that particular site" I think mleighton is referring to a link to the SLK data by putting the Assignment List Web Part on the page showing only that site's assignments. The web part has a option in its properties whether to show assignments for all sites or just that particular site. It's typically used in 2 places: A top level staff/pupils entry point On the individual class sites Richard SLK Co-ordinator SalamanderSoft Limited

In my career as a developer I've used far worse object models. Once you get used to it's quirks it's actually reasonably internally consistent. To produce a product which they will have to support long-term, there's a lot costs. It's not just x developers for y days. There's also a lot of work and pain involved making it work for multiple schools as every site is slightly different.

There's mine of course The other's I know exist are Tools 4 Ever and IT Worx's Catalyst. Richard

Great work Alex. Hopefully we can get some traction going with this and now I've taken over the project co-ordinator role for SLK & the CodePlex MLG. Grumbledook sums it up nicely, except I don't believe that you need to use the standard templates to have a Learning Gateway. In fact I would go so far as to say don't use the CodePlex MLG site definitions, there's various issues with them, the potential upgrade path to the next version of SharePoint being most on my mind. Richard

Hi Jason, I'm the co-ordinator for the MLG and SLK projects on codeplex. You've got a few options for the class sites. 1. Create them manually as an admin function. Short term this can work if you've only got a limited number of people using SLK as a test, longer term doesn't really work. 2. Give the teachers permissions to create the sites themselves. This won't help with user adoption though as it just places obstacles in the way of getting it used. 3. Within the SLK source code there is a sample for provisioning from an Excel spreadsheet. It's very basic, but hopefully should still work. It would be a one off process so wouldn't maintain the sites. I must admit I haven't looked at this bit for a long time, so can't guarantee it still works. 4. Buy a provisioning tool. 5. Write your own tool. The SharePoint SDK is freely available. For web parts there's 2 options that I know about: 1. The Serco ones. However, I don't think that they are moving forward with them. 2. The Twynham/SalamanderSoft ones. Regards, Richard SLK/MLG Co-ordinator & SalamanderSoft Limited (AD/SharePoint/Moodle provisioning, SharePoint web parts)

Have you compiled your audience? Richard http://blog.salamandersoft.co.uk

Hi IT_Man_Dan, It sounds like an encoding issue. Did you use something like WordPad to save the script file. Try deleting it and recreating it with Notepad. Richard SalamanderSoft Limited http://blog.salamandersoft.co.uk

Alternative SharePint If you can't make the official SharePint on Wednesday, then we're having an unofficial one on Tuesday. Same time, 7 pm ish, same place The Old Star (66, Broadway, Westminster, London, SW1H 0DB). I'll be there and so should the guys from Twynham school. Feel free to come along even if you're not at the conference. Just turn up or you can get me on twitter (RPWillis). Richard

SharePint is on Wednesday - not the most convenient. I should still be able to make it, but might be lugging a suitcase around! SharePoint by Day, SharePint by Night – UK Best Practices Edition

It certainly is expensive, but the ones in the States are supposed to have been excellent. According to Mike's blog Events over Easter…. on holiday? If not check these out. : SharePoint in Education, it's £545 for education and they can send an invoice to be paid.

Hi Azadsani, Good to hear from you, and congratulations on your new job. That will be why I hadn't heard from your predecessor! I've sent you my contact details and will phone after lunch. You might want to remove your email address now before spam bots harvest it. Richard

European SharePoint Best Practices Conference Is anyone going? Does anyone fancy an Edugeek or SLK meet-up there. Happy to co-ordinate one if people are interested. Richard SLK Co-ordinator

Hi Azadsani, Not sure who you are even though you are a customer - I assume that your from the school we haven't installed at yet. SharePoint Learning Kit (SLK) is an open source assignment tool/Scorm player originally written by Microsoft, then released to CodePlex. Since January I have been the project co-ordinator for it. Salamander SLK (or Salamander SharePoint) is a tool originally written to create class sites to support SLK and has evolved into a general purpose bulk action tool for SharePoint. Most useful if you have large collections of sites along the lines of a site per class, or per pupil. Give me a call or drop me an email for more explanation. Richard SalamanderSoft SLK Co-ordinator

Hi gpjt, I put a version of SLK which supports Firefox up at http://www.salamandersoft.co.uk/slkfirefox.html. This is based on version 1.3.1 so you would need to upgrade to that to use it. There was quite a few issues with Firefox, but the main one was that the Scorm player was completely broken. This was before I was project co-ordinator which is why it's not on CodePlex. ITWorx have been commissioned by Microsoft to do some fixed to SLK, one of which is Firefox support, so I'm probably going to wait to see that before integrating into the trunk. Regards, Richard SLK Co-ordinator & SalamanderSoft http://blog.salamandersoft.co.uk

Hi Penfold, It's just on my home page in SupportNet under files. It will be the default set up of SupportNet for partners. Richard

@gdn Sorry, I misunderstood you then. That's for the comments on what I've been working on with Twynham. I'll have to get round to blogging about it soon. @penfold_99 localzuk is correct in that our NDA prohibits that sort of discussion. The document "Technical Guide - Interfacing With SIMS.net.doc" which comes with the API indexes gives an example though. I can download them through Support Net e.g. Resource: 14928 - 13th Jan 2009, but I don't know if they are available to schools. Richard

Hi Gdn, It's Richard from SalamanderSoft. Thanks for thinking of us, but I'm afraid that I can't help you here. All our access to Sims is through the business objects and API. In fact I think we'd be in breach of our partnership contract otherwise. Regards, Richard SalamanderSoft http://blog.salamandersoft.co.uk

I think that Alex and Plexer have said everything to answer the original question, but for those who don't yet know, I am now the co-ordinator for the SLK and LG projects on Codeplex. Blog entry here. The build which supports Firefox on the SalamanderSoft site was created before I was co-ordinator. When I get time I'll add it as a release on the CodePlex site, but am having problems with Safari at the moment Richard SLK & LG Co-ordinator http://www.salamandersoft.co.uk

I've just blogged about the alternatives I know about for integrating Moodle with Sims and Facility CMIS. http://blog.salamandersoft.co.uk/2009/02/03/AutomaticallyLinkingMoodleToSimsNetAndFacilityCMIS.aspx Please let me know if I've missed any or if the summaries could be better. Regards, Richard

You shouldn't really be using UPNs to identify pupils to other systems. You should really be using the admission number. The UPN's purpose is purely tracking of pupils’ movement and progress within the maintained school system in England, not as a general purpose identifier. From the guidance notes on UPNs at http://www.teachernet.gov.uk/_doc/11933/UPN%20Guidance%20Update%202007.rtf • the UPN to be as far as possible a ‘blind number’, held by schools on the pupil's electronic record, and only output when required to provide information to the LA, to the Department or other central agencies (e.g. QCA/NAA), or to another school to which the pupil is transferring. The UPN should not be regarded as an automatic adjunct to the pupil's name, routinely appearing on any record or document relating to them; • schools should not enter UPNs on pupils' paper files or on any other physical documents, including admission and attendance registers, and should continue to use the admission number, not the UPN, as a general pupil reference number within the school. Richard

To fix RegCreateKeyEx() returned error 5, 'Access is denied' Part of the database installation writes registry keys. This is done in the context of the database server, not the user running dbattach. To resolve give the Sql Server service account permissions to write to the registry. You should be able to remove these once the database is attached. Richard http://www.salamandersoft.co.uk http://blog.salamandersoft.co.uk

What do you see once it has finished (or you hit CTRL-C). Richard

OK, now updated it for staff, just add another argument staff e.g. PhotoExport.exe blacka abcd myFolder staff You'll need to re-run GenerateConfigFile.bat first. http://www.salamandersoft.co.uk/utilities.html Richard http://www.salamandersoft.co.uk Active Directory & SharePoint provisioning SharePoint web parts

I've just knocked up a quick utility to do this. Have a look at http://www.salamandersoft.co.uk/utilities.html. One thing to beware of is that there may be copyright restrictions on what you are allowed to do with the photos. Richard http://www.salamandersoft.co.uk Active Directory & SharePoint provisioning SharePoint web parts

I've come across a helpful blog post WSS Extranet Licensing - wsspectacular. It's specifically about WSS licensing, but a lot of what it covers is relevant to MOSS as well. Richard SalamanderSoft Limited