coolhands

via intouch. Eg if I email the AM assessment (individual) reports, where can I see that I did so? I want to see what emails we've sent to a parent. I can't seem to do that. The comm log for student (from the panel on the right) does not show AM Individual reports that have been sent, only general messages etc.

We have a member of staff returning. While resetting the password in system manager I notice it says Ex-user under the SIMS Role(s) category. Can / should / how do I change that? As now she is no longer an Ex-user

I think you have a problem if you have all the pdfs but they were not generated in sims by Individual Reports. As you won't be able to generate them as Linked Documents (which as pointed out above is necessary in order to 'publish' them to sims Parent app) unless someone else knows different. How were they created if not in sims?

The site specific ones. So in this case it is a problem with System Manager - Unable to reset passwords of users; I found there is a KB0024182 which has 2 patches that need to be applied to fix this (suddenly occurred) problem. Our support is with Capita which just goes as far as sending me the patches to be applied. My internal IT dept don't install patches they leave for me to do; I'm a data manager not an IT / network support person! So in previous schools I've never had to do this type of thing.

hi ok thanks. Our IT guy has just come back and effectively said the same that can't (shouldn't) be scheduled for various reasons so we will have to do manually. Although Koldov above's import update thing is intriguing but maybe that to investigate another day..

ok thanks. Do you know if windows task scheduler can be sorted to run the dbupgrade programme to install the patches etc? seems daft to have to actually have to be here to do it manually once staff have left / off sims

Capita have emailed me some patches that need applying. I know I can use dbupgrade to do so once I have extracted them from zipped file etc. But if they were in solus I could schedule them for deployment after hours? But they are not in solus so how can I add them? Any help appreciated

In a sense you can't. All you can do is change who is able to access the marksheet depending on what role they have. Eg the teacher of 7a/Ma1 can access the marksheet automatically as they are the teacher of that class. The teacher of 7a/Re1 can't access the maths marksheet as they don't teach that class (7a/Ma1). Other people can gain access (eg head of dept or others) if you add via coursemanager: tools>Academic management>course manager, then find the subject (maths) then add the person eg Joe Bloggs as head of dept in the supervisor box. Then Joe Bloggs can also see the maths classes. etc

Well the overview box must have a Date? So was it done recently? no audit is available as far as I know

Getting some big bills for PAGEONE communications. They charge us for the SIMS intouch messages we send as far as I understand it. Questions: Do we have to use them? If yes, is there a cheaper package they can do? Is there someone cheaper? I don't know anything about it really. Just seems extortionate at £5150 for the 'package' a year? + monthly cost too of approx £30 - £100 it looks like for going over our allowance?!

ok well to sort-of close this, it is now working. But only because my IT person has got the scheduled task to run from the MISSync that is installed on my local machine. Currently polling every hour I will reduce frequency now. He cannot get it working from the MISSync installed on the sims server. So whether that is because it connects to the internet differently or what I don't know. proof!

hi well in answer to my own question above, where to find the xml, I will post my solution here for future searches: you have to click through the Design Report in sims until the output screen ('Define Presentations') and where it says 'Filename' I clicked the little box to say 'Allow these settings to be changed at run-time'. This allowed me to select the file path to save the report as an xml and find it, see pic when you click run. It also makes me think that previously it wasn't actually going anywhere. (Although as pointed out by others that shouldn't actually matter as they scheduled task doesn't run the report? I don't understand that) (edit - when you get the xml you upload to the Communications>Files area, not the manual upload area which wasn't clear. ps change an item eg give a student FSM as I think each upload it would have to sense a difference otherwise it fails automatically!). (edit 2 - after all that they came back to me and said I should have uploaded the template! Which is not what they asked for lol. So I outputted the report as csv and now uploaded that. Some of the headings are named differently from the csv example she sent me eg they have '*AdmissionNumber' as a heading whereas sims is 'Adno' so don't know if that is causing the problem? But the report is their own report imported to our MIS so silly if so) (edit 3 - it appears the problem may be they thought we were CMIS and we are in fact SIMS. Fingers crossed!) One question if anyone is reading: What should be the location that the report outputs to? Is it C:\Program Files (x86)\ParentPay

hi can anyone tell me where / how to run the report which is an xml and find it to upload manually? I have the report in sims so can go Reports>Design report, open it and run it. It says it created it but I can't find it / the xml version of it so I can upload to parentpay manually? I can find a 'File' named 'parentpay2020' which I guess is as a result of running the report, but it is not xml. I tried renaming it to file extension .xml and it seems to be ok, is that sufficient? Is that what I am meant to do if I want the xml version of it? any ideas? I've searched everywhere including my user profile here's how the report output is setup: edit I tried uploading the renamed by me xml file to parentpay but it says failed. I don't know if it's something I'm doing wrong (ie the xml is no good) or not

Hi I have one parent who has / is not receiving text messages we are sending. We have checked her phone number, I have spoken to her on it etc. Sending her test text messages she is not receiving them. She can use the sims parent app and see the messages that have been sent. I unregistered and reregistered her on it in vain hope if might reset something. Other parents appear to be receiving messages ok. She is mother, has parental responsibility priority 1 etc. Her husband does receive the messages. I sent myself test message to make sure messages are being sent and received ok. I have sent her my own test messages and she claims nothing. She has previous sms messages from 2019 so used to get them. Any ideas?

I have no idea. l I assumed the scheduler runs the sims report and then uploads it. But I have no idea I'm totally out my depth; but why would parentpay suggest uploading the xml manually to their site I have no idea, I though it provided them with some way of checking something. But the problem is not fixed anyway, so I have to go back to my IT helpdesk. It's very frustrating cos I feel like the man in the middle and I have no idea about how scheduled tasks are set up or operated. thanks all anyway

Can anyone offer any further help? Our IT have installed the scheduler on the sims server (I think!) but it is not working yet. Parentpay have said the following: 1) How would I "pull the xml direct from SIMS"? - I ran the report (via Reports>Design Reports> etc) and although it operated, I don't know where it went? It didn't download / open anything as when I run normal reports? 2) If I look in sims in reports>design reports I see the following, which does not include Parentpay2020 but I don't reckon it'll make any difference: On behalf of our IT I asked for further guidance but they won't give anything else as that is in our MIS: "This is done on your SIMS system directly unfortunately, this isnt done on the ParentPay website so we would not have any guidance on this." However I am waiting to see if they will at least send me ParentPay2020 report as I have requested it. For anyone else searching in the future there is a page on their awful website which references all this stuff: https://www.parentpay.com/DOCH/school-support/index.html@page_id=9555.html So I don't have it working and I need it working! I seriously feel so depressed with things like this. I am copy and pasting the info from their page as it will probably disappear at some point. But the pics might go from the below too then.

ok to report back, I applied that patch and it works. It now shows the right number of students when running the lesson monitor report. What I find scary, is how on earth would a) anyone come across / notice this? (it was just chance that I was looking for a suitable LM report for another member of staff and realised the number was too low) b) know there is a KB and patch etc that deals with this? Madness

ok to answer my own question as it might help others - it is not edulink it is in https://admin.sims.co.uk/ and there on the left menu you go to Sims Parent> Settings> and there is list of school staff who are getting emails. However further point - I don't actually know how these parents are sending these changes, how do I know if it is from edulink, or sims parent lite? Any way to know? Seems crazy I don't even know how they're doing it.

SOme of our administrator get an email about/called SLG Alert when a parent makes a change eg diettry is Halal or email changed or whatever. I don't know where they are coming from and can't find out. We do use Edulink so I think the parents are making a change on there, I guess that is emailing? but on the Data colelction tab (in edulink administrator panel) there are no staff in that section (see pic). So I don't know how / what / who is generating the emails that some admin staff are getting? Or is sims generating it but then what is the menu in sims? Any ideas? I know this post doesn't appear to make much sense but hopefully somone knows what I'm on about

thankyou I will look into that. I was ignoring it!

hi can anyone who has done this successfully help - our IT dept say they have done it (I believe on the sims server ie not my local machine). At the moment to poll each hour. But if I log onto PP and look at upload history it only has the last time I did it on MISSync. Should / will the upload history record here if it has refreshed from sims? see my pic. ie how do I know for sure it is working.

I know normally attendance stuff is a nightmare because of dates / students on-offroll etc but bear with me - if I only use yesterday as the singular date (to keep it simple) in lesson monitor reports as shown, it outputs 7 students from the In Care category. But we have 10 students in care. If I run reports>student list>general student list and add In Care as filter etc it shows 10 students; so does Reports>School Report. So why is it different? I can't see in the LM attendance reports to see who these 7 students are! (ie the names) to cross reference. But anyway surely In Care is In Care is In Care?

once you exported the original report from sims (right-click, export) it will have the file extension RptDef - you must change that part (rename it) to be.zip it warns you, say yes, then it makes it look like a folder. Double click this new folder and inside it you can see the excel file.

thankyou; OK so from that doc above I (data manager) can do the settings in MISsync, but I need my IT helpdesk to do the Setting up a scheduled task for "MIS:Sync Windows Server 2003" stuff yes? I will see if I can get some cooperation out of them!

I am fed up using MISSync programme to manually update parentpay every few days. We use WONDE for mathswatch etc. Can WONDE do anything to sync parentpay each day so it refreshes pupils automatically?