minimoo

@matt40k @Max_Power - btw, i'm surprised neither of you mentioned the command line ui (re 1)?

is sims showing a dialog to say why it crashed? if so, what's in the strack trace of that - or similarly, what is event log showing when it crashes?

Isn't that a performance issue though? For instance, we have an Antivirus product with an admin console. If I hit deploy on the Antivirus admin console to send out an update immediately (as opposed to waiting up to waiting for it's hourly/daily/configurable check), it takes about 2 minutes to deploy to all 500 workstations. In contrast, I'm pretty sure that Solus takes over 30 minutes to achieve the same result. And I think this is where i'm coming from a different angle -> solus has a heartbeat check which runs over X minutes, you can force an update from a local computer. Therefore the (imo) maximum amount of time to install an update to a local workstation should be: X minute delay for heartbeat + 2 minute "warning delay" + Installation time of update + Download time of update The delay for the heartbeat should be able to be reduced by using the 'check for update' functionality on the workstation. The 2 minute delay can be reduced by hitting 'deploy now'. The download time can be reduced by waiting 24 hours before deploying the update so workstations can download and stage them ready. The installation time is kinda fixed - only difference there will be if pc's have HDD's or SSD's etc. In that concept - I don't really see the point of being able to micro manage the priorities on a workstation. Equally if 400 workstations have already downloaded (staged) the update, it should be possible for the deployment to be pretty instant. Re: number 3 - are you guys just talking about the concurrent settings? (i.e. settings -> solus3 -> deployments -> Agents -> Concurrent downloads ) and maybe a change to the deploymentserver config of buffsizepoolsize/messagesize of objects size) or something else?

You can increase the concurrency however I don't think it deploys agents that have downloaded first for users that need a lower concurrency. I'm assuming that the reason that Capita set a low threshold for currency is that they don't feel the service can cope with high values. So either you have a low concurrency and optimise it - or have a high concurrency. I'll raise a support case with Capita to find out what the maximum concurrent value they recommend is - in our case, where we have 500 workstations, and server has GB link to network - a value of 500 would make sense if the service can cope and is optimised for multiple client connections.

If it's a loop, you might be able to spot it by disconnecting each switch one at a time and watching the lights. In terms of primary school - I've found the staff have introduced loops more in the last 10 years than students

Hi Guys, Capita announced on their website about voting for solus 3 CR's until the end of February. I've just got around to finishing going through all the CR's on solus3 and also logging 7 new change requests. 3 of which I care about a lot - and one which covers functionality I've been asking about since 2012 (when they BA said the product team thought it was a good idea and they'd put it on the backlog). I don't know about anyone else but of all the things i manage - windows deployment, mac deployment, antivirus updates, windows updates etc - I'd say Solus is the one that I currently find most time consuming and most frustrating. Of the 7 CR's I've added this evening, there's 3 that I think would save me (And probably some others a bunch of time and hassle), so would really appreciate some comments on here whether i'm unique or spot on - and votes either way accordingly As the Capita website doesn't like formatting text with line breaks, I'll summarise here: Provide ability to automate solus 3 via API/Powershell/SQL - https://myaccount.capita-cs.co.uk/ChangeRequests/ChangeRequestByReference/1702-3601854 I drafted this idea out on github @ https://gist.github.com/grangeway/270955419c26ccb729d5333c49b34bbe . We've pretty much automated everything around MDT/APPV - apart from SOLUS/SIMS. Our workflow uses MDT to deploy a SOLUS agent, which then never picks up sims as a target (for various reasons) until we manually go into the solus UI. Given Microsoft's love of powershell, and capita of dotnet - having some command line functionality that we could use to try and automate this process would really help in our environment - i.e. I'd write a script to remove an agent from solus once it's scrapped and deleted from AD for example. Solus 3 – Cumulative Patch functionality - https://myaccount.capita-cs.co.uk/ChangeRequests/ChangeRequestByReference/1702-3601859 Solus 3 has downloaded 26 Database patches (since 1st January) - and 2 workstation updates (which are cumulative). That's basically one patch every 2 days if you deploy. Given microsoft's recent change to just doing cumulative for windows updates - it would be good if capita were to do similar - we don't get detailed information on whether a patch is important or not(seperate CR) so having a rollup would actually make life easier - as well as reducing the number of possible database versions capita need to support ( presumably at the moment that would be "1 + 26 factorial" if I remember maths correctly) Solus 3 – Deployment speed - https://myaccount.capita-cs.co.uk/ChangeRequests/ChangeRequestByReference/1702-3601860 A "minor" tweak to deploy workstations that have downloaded the update first to try and reduce the time it takes to perform a sims update - which I've known a sims update to take several hours to "partially succeed" in the past

Would be nice if they were uploaded as a PDF - given functionality is already there when exporting.. for us XML sometimes opens in dreamweaver

Am i the only person using appv? ;/

MDT + APPV for most apps

I'm actually somewhat surprised by your comments cullingsh - I've noticed that I seem to be getting more notifications about patches from solus 3 recently, and i'd assumed that was partly because capita were patching their hosted environment(s)

It seems 22599 is now the latest patch number for this

@Paul_Featherstone Whats the current status of 22587 ? I've had the patch emailed to me by support, received an email from solus that it's available - and as I thought i'd use solus to deploy - it is currently showing up as having been withdrawn from solus. No email from support as to whether the patch they sent should not be applied, and nothing on sims my account. Would it be feasible to get a hot topic going on "my account" that lists patches and any issues/urgency as to whether to apply them?

@Paul_Featherstone I've applied 22479 tonight after being sent it on Thursday last week - first opportunity i've had when school has been quiet. I've just gone back to the helpdesk that i'm getting same (1612-3575119) after applying the patch. So I guess the obvious question is are others finding the patch works?

I must be missing something here - extracted solus3 has 2 MSI's and a .bat and a .vbs - the .vbs will do an agent install - surely just add the .vbs/msi's to the MDT/SCCM deployment? (Of course, if you do that, that you hit the issue that solus 3 now tries to find match up existing agents in the database and gets in a mess and does't do the initial deployment of sims anyway until manually kicked in some way)

in terms of: "I've tried to apply patch 21751 and it just sits in Solus with a status of in progress." - I had an issue where 5 patches (22432/22407/22396/22431/22404) got stuck in the inprogress state which I logged as 1611-3561668, and I cleared them to a failed state myself. Sims support asked if I needed their generic patch to make them failed, and then to redownload the patches and redeploy. I wasn't able to do that as we'd updated to the autumn release by the time they asked us to do that so the patches didn't need deploying anymore. So please log the issue... I suspect there's a chance in this case however that it may be because 21751 does not apply to the latest release. In terms of the macro's - I'll need to check properly tomorrow, but it looks like the files aren't digitally signed anymore to me. If that is the case, i'll log a case tomorrow unless @PhilNeal knows if it's a known regression? @AngryITGuy do you have a case number I can reference if I do log a case, to make the helpdesk's life easier?

@Dos_Box Microsoft's ISA server and Exchange were good candidates for leaving legacy stuff in the AD Equally, for some reason i think the old sysvol replication left behind some ad objects (Can't think why i think that atm)

I've been a user of netsupport school (NOT the DNA product) for years... We originally made use of viglen classlink with NT4 for those that remember that - that tried to do everything for a school, but when it came to moving to XP , we looked what windows XP + server 2003 could do out of the box - and realized that our main aims were printing control + screen sharing for lessons. Netsupport was what classlink used so we moved to just buying netsupport school. And over the years where we've had the occassional issues - the support guys have always been really good (had a few things where we've had to loop their developers in too with graphics driver issues etc). We did have a demo of impero a year or so back, and equally netsupport have tried to sell me DNA - but our main need was for screen sharing in lessons, so never wanted to the additional cost of the all-in-one-box products. It's definitely worth looking at netsupport's offerings - equally, if you've got impero and staff are used to it - probably also worth giving them a chance to fix things - as at some point most companies introduce bugs and sillyness into their products

Hi Guys, Whats the purpose of this ? As i've got an app i've been using for a few years that might be useful here When we moved from Windows XP to windows 7 - we hit the need to allow users to add fonts (in media) for their design wrok. That needs admin rights, and we didn't want to start installing random custom fonts everywhere. Whilst it's arguably could be a security risk (if there's a bug in the ttf handling) I wrote a simple dotnet application that a user could drag a TTF font onto - it would then register it for the current windows session - allowing a student to load publisher/photoshop and access the font their design work. So student has to "load" the fonts each time, and I don't have to deploy random fonts. It might be this is irrelevant for your use case, but thought i'd mention it in case people were interested

Having used solus3 since early releases - i'm finding the upgrade process to 3.11.56 to be fairly unreliable so far. Have logged 2 cases on issues with pc's updating solus, and a seperate case as Solus 3 seems to have stopped pushing out DB patches for me since upgrading. Given capita have been pushing out db patches on a fairly regular basis recently, and we've not had any issues, I wonder whats been changed in 3.11.56

If you get no one where, I can probably see if i included papercut instructions into docs i wrote for our mac/munki deployment setup. IIRC, In my case I created 2 scripts/apps/packages - 1 to deploy the papercut client (And tell it to run), and one to deploy a default printer itself - then deployed them via our munki setup. howver, it does sound like it might be the the PCClient isn't running in your case - how do you deploy apps out to your mac's?

time to log a case and ask for the patch to be emailed out i guess :/

The only change for the patch seemed to be if someone gets a U in an AS/A2 and has a higher grade with a similar qualification - I'm not even sure thats a scenario we could hit (as we only do AS/A2 levels and no btec's etc) - so I'm not sure if that means that we'd basically need to enter a student for A2 Biology and A2 Science, and have them get a U in one, and a grade in the other. In any case, given that hopefully very few students have got a U - if results go well, it would be 0! It might be worth checking if you are unlucky enough to need it for analysis to be correct first... Also, given it's a reporting issue not a calculation issue, it also feels like something minor and easily worked around.

At the risk of upsetting @PhilNeal (although i'm sure he'll take it on the chin ) As an answer to "What do Capita mean when they 'release' a patch?", I'd like to offer "The 24 hour countdown period to the withdrawl for re-release has started" - although I must say - and Phil touches on it in his sensible response - Capita generally release a lot fewer releases then they were doing 5-10 years ago, which is probably a good thing. And just so you guys are aware - capita have withdrawn the patch, and released a new version to fix an edge case with U grades in some circumstances:

@garethedmondson @LukeC - do you find that it picks up group owners in google groups? or all users as members?

For an initial start: Create a report of contacts - name + housenumber + postcode + gender Then in excel add a column that combines house number + postcode + gender into a single cell. Then use the group/subtotal functionality under data to get a count of the number of times house+postcode+gender appear. There's a reasonable chance that 80% of anything with a value of 2 or more would be a duplicate and needs investigating. P.S. I'd probably be inclined to get addresses tidied + verified first, so you know the house number + postcode links are correct.