chriscubed

Closing date extended to 15/07

We're looking for an IT Technician at Valley Park School in Maidstone, Kent. All details at the website below: https://www.valleypark.viat.org.uk/2212/vacancies/careers/60/it-technician

Thank you everyone, it's good to get a consensus on these things. I'm sure it's not unusual for a lot of schools, however we've not been around for long enough for it to have been a regular occurence in the past!

Hello all, I have the unusual situation of an ex student now being added on SIMS as the parent of a new student. In this case would you link the existing contact from their student days, as the parent record for the new student? Or would you create a new contact for the parent?

Thanks guys, I thought this would be the case. HR seem OK with putting the employment dates in now, so hopefully they can make it part of their procedure for adding new staff in SIMS.

We have numerous staff who have joined us through Schools Direct, or on a long term agency cover basis who don't appear as "Current Staff" in SIMS. HR have added them with a Service Agreement only, but no employment start date. Is this a normal way to handle staff in these situations? It's frustrating that they don't appear in searches for current staff. Would there be anything stopping them from having employment dates as well as service agreements? Or would this make the workforce census records incorrect, as we'd have more employees listed than we really have?

Hello We're looking for an ICT technician. You must complete an application form to apply. Full details are here: Vacancies - Valley Park School Chris

Valley Park School is looking for an ICT Technician Details here: Vacancies - Valley Park School Pay scale: £17,714 to £19,742 per annum, full time.

I'm just wondering whether other schools use SIMS in the same way as us... Staff leavers kept in SIMS as current staff to keep their timetable in SIMS, so that it can be assigned to cover. Until they have permanent replacements then we can't delete the old teachers apparently. Given that we have a seemingly constant stream of staff leaving and a slightly less constant stream of new staff joining, our SIMS staff database will never actually be up to date! Is there a better way to do this?

Thanks guys. In the end our LA support company advised to select 3 updates (SIMS Autumn, SIMS database 114 and SIMS database 118) to install together. In the end the SIMS server agent was the problem, the GUID didn't match between the agent installed and that in the database. Once that was fixed the updates started going through no problem.

Yes, it's another SOLUS 3/Autumn update thread! We're still on Summer 2, do we need to install SIMS Database 2013 Autumn (3.62.114) first or can we skip straight to SIMS Database 2013 Autumn (3.62.118)? I tried installing .114 and got the "Tolerance not met for target SIMS Database" error after half an hour. I just noticed in the "SOLUS3 Agents" section that our SIMS server is showing a message "Warning - an unknown agent on this machine has attempted contact", it says Offline and that it has Agent version 3.4.118, even though the agent on the machine says it's on 3.6.94. I can't uninstall SOLUS3 agent on the SIMS server, so how do I fix this? Is this what's causing my problems with the database upgrade?

Hello all, We are currently advertising for an ICT Technician to join us. The vacancy details are here: Valley Park School - ICT Technician Vacancy Closing date is Friday 25 May 2012. Any questions feel free to ask via PM or this thread. If you know of anyone else that would be interested in applying, please inform them of the vacancy. Chris

Good to know! I've been looking at prices online for a rough guide, but I'll definitely talk to you (Millgate) amongst others closer to the time.

Ok that's probably a good thing anyway, likely it's not about to be discontinued or anything like that. Currently we have an 8 module switch but realistically I think we'd only need to fill 4 of the modules at least initially so we'd have consider whether the larger chassis was worth the extra cost. 36 fibre modules? Can I ask why you need so many? We only have 6 currently to travel between buildings. While I'm on the topic, does anyone use the 10gigabit modules at all? Is it worth it or overkill for a pretty standard secondary school?

Thanks for the replies so far. Given that we use our switch for routing, I think I can rule out the 4xxx series in our case. @Millgate thanks for the offer but I'm not quite at that stage yet - our next budget will start in September. I will however keep you in mind for closer to the time if I can convince SLT of the need for it. Seems to be a lot of love specifically for the E5406zl, are there any viable alternative models without going through the roof on price?

Hello all, We have an aging 5308xl core switch with only 8GbE ports and 4 SFP sockets (plus 120 10/100 ports), which is severely limiting our options for connectivity to other switches. The XL modules for it are quite expensive in comparison to newer models, so I'm looking at replacing the whole thing, and may be able to claw back some money by selling the old one on. I've had a look costings for what we could replace it with, and the cost effective options that I've seen come down to a choice between: 4160GL E4208 (VL) E5406 (ZL) What I could really do with, is someone to explain what the difference is between the models, especially between 4xxx and 5xxx models, and whether any of it is important to us. I'm open to suggestions, budget is undecided but around £5-6k to provide around 70GbE and 6 SFP ports. Lastly, I ought to mention our core switch is used for routing, in case that makes any odds.

I see - the problem was I was choosing the top option, which includes the text Callback (schedule by using Web) rather than Callback (schedule by using phone). Turns out the phone number was generic anyway, so had to go through the menu options, but I spoke to a guy, quoted the reference number and he emailed it to me straight away. Still a right pain just to get hold of a file though!

Ok, I've seen that page, but once I've chosen Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2006 Standard Edition, it asks me which Support Option I'd like to use: Professional (5-pack) and other contracts (Access ID required) Software Assurance License: for servers only (Software Assurance Access ID required) Don’t use a professional support license/contract (charges may apply) If you meant for me to use the bottom option, I'm a little worried about the £199 charge they want for it, but would they charge for something so simple?

Hello all, I've got an issue with our ISA server where it doesn't allow users to logon if they've got the "User must change password at next logon" box ticked. Didn't take long to find the fix: The change password feature does not work as expected after you install ISA Server 2006 Service Pack 1 which says that the patch can be found on: Description of the ISA Server 2006 hotfix package October 29, 2008 But in MS's infinite wisdom, it's not a "public patch" which means you have to contact them for it! I don't know how I'd even start going about contacting them to get them to release the hotfix to me - could anyone point me to where I would be able to get a copy (or send a copy to me) - or failing that give me an idea of how I'm meant to contact MS? We do have a school's agreement and software assurance, but aside from the manage Technet link on it (which doesn't work...) I can't see anything useful through it. Thanks in advance

Hello all, We're looking for an IT technician to be the 4th member in our team. It's quite a junior post, but there will be plenty of opportunity to gain experience and learn from other members in the team. Salary is on Kent Scheme 3 (£14,099 - £15,984). Further details including job description and application form available on the website: Valley Park Community School

Well that's good to know - there's so much conflicting and confusing information out there. Unfortunately though, it still leaves us with a large bill of ~£17k a year currently under SA, and now no prospect of a decent system which would bring this down to a more reasonable level, all because of how we choose to provide laptops to our students.

I see. Of course, we currently pay for the student packs under Schools Agreement - and it's a large sum of money every year. When I heard the news of the EES agreements, where it was based on FTE staff rather than devices, it sounded great - but for us EES will work out around £4k more than Schools Agreement, to the tune of £21,000 per year. From what I've read, SA will eventually be replaced by EES, which is even more worrying for us. I can't tell you how disappointed I am by this "brilliant new scheme".

Thanks for the reply, localzuk This would probably explain the confusion and why they have quoted for it. However, it is difficult to know whether that is right or not, with the various documents I've been reading. Obviously whether this is a huge question to us, if they dont have to be licensed we stand to save £12-15k per year. From the RM document mentioned in this thread Enrolment for Education Solutions (EES) From this quote, I can see where they are coming from. However, how do you define whether the computer is "checked out to them for their use" - what if other students use and share those laptops in school - do they then not have to be licensed additonally?

I've been reading a bit and the EES (or OVS-ES) looks interesting, especially as we have in the region of 1000 PCs and probably about 120 FTE staff. I passed this on to my manager who obtained a quote (from a company I won't name) for both OVS-ES and SA, but they're saying SA will work out cheaper for us! I've seen the quote and it doesn't look right to me - they've quoted for Desktop packs * FTE, which sounds fine, but also included costs for 900 student desktop packs. Without going into too much detail, we have an e-learning laptop scheme for students where the students contribute to paying for laptops owned (or leased) by the school, so I don't know if there are any exceptions here.. I thought the whole point was you didn't have to cover each individual machine in this fashion because you just pay for FTE staff * desktop pack cost, plus any server software such as SQL and Windows Server - can anyone enlighten me on this or confirm my suspicions that the quote is wrong? EDIT: Just thought I'd highlight, the 900 student desktop packs account for £15,000 out of the £21,000 quote, so it's pretty significant to us!

Hello all, We rolled out a year group of student laptops with Windows 7 x64 just before summer, and have come back in September to find that Flash player isn't working on them. I ought to note here that the policies are almost the same as what we were happily using for Windows XP. Under our standard setup, when a flash based web page is opened, the user gets a User Account Control box pop up asking "Do you want to allow the following program to make changes to this computer?" - asking for administrator credentials before it will install it. Even if you type in the credentials, the page loads with a red X where the flash control should be. I've updated flash to the latest version but it makes no difference. So I decided to narrow down which of our group policies is causing the issue, and it turns out it depends entirely on whether the start menu folder is redirected - I was a little suprised! Originally we had a custom adm file to enable redirection to a mapped network drive, but since then I've tried the UNC path in the standard method and even redirecting to a local folder, but whatever I choose this breaks flash player. As soon as you turn off start menu redirection, flash objects load with no interruption. Has anyone else had this or a similar experience? I'm not sure what I'm going to do as different computers need different start menus so I can't really put it in the mandatory profile we use.