chrisateen

@vikpaw @bossman I know this thread isn't about speed so I will just quickly touch on the topic. Coincidentally as I am typing this I am waiting for SIMS to download some reports from Routines that will show teachers comments and once I have set it up correctly will be saving it so that Heads of departments can check the reports in the future. Before the upgrade running reports was quite slow after the upgrade I have now been waiting for over 20mins now for the report to fully download. The school network here is run by RM and without trying to be negative towards them the network is quite slow but SIMS is awful (if we have issues with SIMS or need to apply patches it is done by NPW). I wished I had access to the network and have an idea of how the network is setup up and run as I would have made it my mission to sort the SIMS speed out as it's ridiculous. (I would have maybe tried to speak to RM and NPW about the issue if things at my current role was ok and I'm not actively looking for another job). (P.S after typing this I am still waiting for the report to download )

You just reminded me Vikpaw that you also need to be careful when playing with permissions as you want enough permissions for the person to do what they need to do but not too much that they can do a lot more other things as well @bossman I think we need proof as currently whilst typing this on my phone I've been waiting for SIMS to export a report from SIMS so I can check the teachers comments are not too long. Loging in takes forever where I am

Sometimes though the spreadsheet is not 100% clear on what permissions you need for certain tasks. For example I set up vba excel templates in sims so that immediatley teachers download the spreadsheet from sims it would calulate the data for them. One teacher came to me as there was a problem and I noticed that spreadsheet where coming up with 1 & 0 as the students result whereas when I downloaded it the student data was what was in assesment manager. I remembered that teachers need special permissions to run reports with assesment data. I checked the permissions spreadsheet which was not helpful and I called npw and the guy had no clue (makes me wonder as he seemed a bit cluless alltogether). So what I did was printed off what permissions I had, played around with the teachers permissions, once I added a permission logged into sims on another computer with a teachers username and password then checked if it works and it took me 20mins of doing this to finally figure out what specific permssion was needed to download assesment data from routines. Like others have said the best thing to do is trial and error as you may find a solution much quicker than ringing capita

My post is going to be much help but the above reason is why I decided to never use an apple product and stick to android due to the flexibility of anroid

I'm less experienced that everyone else is on here but you may be able to create a report in routines - design report then select the aspects and result set you want on your report which will the export into 1 excel file The idea of creating a template with all of the data you want then exporting it sounds like the best and simplest solution

Thanks for that. Wished I saw this a few days ago though as it would have saved me some work

@NormalDistribution love the article you did. Do you mind coming to my school and explaining to them what a Data Manager is as I do cover, exams, data, updating student details on SIMS, sixth form receptionist all by myself . Just to ask you guys is it a role that you will do forever or would you go into something else in the future?

Just to let you know that I bought that book by Keith Johnson which arrived to me this morning. Just starting to read the first few pages and already Nova T6 is starting to make more sense. Thanks for the advice and soon hoping to be able to construct my own timetable

What your deputy head said is true and hence why I have a problem where I am

Some of you may be aware of my issues at work and you can see the forum with the issues I have been having. I wanted to know how you do your timetable as my manager thinks the only way to do a decent timetable is to do it all by hand and then manually put it onto Nova. Nova is rubbish and cannot produce a decent timetable. However I spoke to Capita about this and they told me that it's due to lack of understanding of Nova T6 that people think this way and that you can do a decent timetable without using pen and paper. I just wanted to know your opinions on this and also any suggestions in how I can learn timetabling and Nova T6 that does not cost me money and that I don't have to go to a training course in working hours

This is why I am really upset about the new job as they are expecting me to do data, cover, exams, put students onto SIMS, take students off SIMS and update student information (and possibly do timetabling) all by myself. Schools don't really understand who time consuming it is just making small changes in Assessment Manager never mind having to clean up the whole off assessment manger because the SLT set it up completely wrong by using dates as results set and calling marksheets with dates and had to fight to change all of that as he insisted that he is right

I don't need Visual Studio on the network (in fact the RM consultant that currently works at our school said he could install it on my machine only). What I was trying to get at was that the school offers a computing course both at GCSE and A Level so the kids need something to practice their programming skills in lessons and in school at that may mean installing programming software on school computers. Sounds like I have to do a web based application using ASP.NEt/C# or worst to the worst use VBA in excel Thank you soo much for that. I have signed up for the course starting in January. Hopefully I will have the time to complete it

Our school in the next few weeks is becoming a Multi-Academy Trust which will take on a failing school. We have all been told that our job description will not change for now but that might change over time. Be also interested to know about data managers who work in a Multi Academy Trust and know if they have 1 Data Manager who manages data across the trust or just have data managers in each school within the trust or do Data Manager in each school work together and able to access each others MIS system

Thanks to your advice I sat down yesterday and learnt with videos from youanoinow to extract data from a database onto the programme that I am using. This will be so useful as all I need to do is extract data from SIMS import it into my system and do what I need to do with it I'm gonna try to learn how to do it with all sorts of files including csv, xlm, sql e.t.c Another question how to do roll out your system to staff members once you have created your system. The reason I am asking is because at our school our IT is outsourced to different companies the main people being RM. The guy from RM who works on our school site has mentioned possible issues with security when running an exe file. I was also hoping to have Visual Express installed on our server assuming that as the school teaches GCSE & A Level computing they will have something installed and maybe even pushing it I can get Visual Studio c# if the students learn another language. However apparntly installing it is a security issue due to people being able to code an execute thier own programme which I understand but then wonder that if they teach computing how on earth do they teach it then??????

Unfortunately I think the only way is to manually change the column headings. Changing the aspect name does not change the column name

C# it is then. Thanks for the advice you've been so helpful. In terms of Data Managers having SQL skills I'm not really surprised especially when you come to a forum like this and find out many of us data managers are developing all sorts of inhouse systems. When a data manager has such a skill and decide to leave schools then think they should ask for that skill from their replacement. However the jobs I have seen them is for are paying £40k in London which is not bad at all in this economy

This forum and the photo program has given me an idea to design a program for teachers to view exam timetable eventually I want to use it to search and produce Student Timetable using exam entries data from SIMS. I know it sounds quite simple and I could do one up for the whole school on word/SIMS but i want something interactive and also a chance of developing something. I am hoping that by doing this my job can develop further and something I can put on my CV in the future. I intially wanted to develop it using vba in excel but thought that over time I want to be able to develop it further and further into something more complex and not sure vba in excel is the best way to approach this. Any ideas of what programming language I should use. Ideally a language that is not difficult to learn as a beginner with online/youtube tutorials and something in which I can develop the program further as I am more able to program. Any ideas will be appreciated

They are asking for it when looking at Data Manager/MIS Roles in London and they tend to pay the top wage as well and if i want to get the best data manager jobs in London its something I have to learn. Plus SQL is a basic requirement for a Data Manger in the corporate world. I agree with Capita being wary of people writing to the database but I don't see the problem in people being able to have read only access as one cannot edit the database.

I would never ever write to the SIMS Database even if I had tons of programming experience due to the high chances of bugs and errors. All I really want to do is run scripts that enables me to get data out of SIMS (which getting data out of SIMS is mainly what we do in our jobs anyway) Thanks for the help everyone

Thanks. I don't have access to the server at the school (only have access to the client machine) and it's going to be impossible for me to do without server access so I think I'm going to leave it for now

I already know how to do complex reports in SIMS.net and have set up a whole load of reports for teachers to use. Thanks for the advice and I think I'm going to give up on learning how to run queries using the sims database. (I already know/learnt how to run some queries using SQL). Just wanted to do it as if I want to get a higher paid data manager role one of the requirements is to have experience using SQL

I have made a copy of the SIMS database and because it is a db file I'm unable to open in SQL studio express. How do I go about opening the SIMS database file

Edited my last post dumb me did not see the SQL folder in the SIMS drive and spent ages trying to look for it:doh:. Made a copy of it and will have a look at it tonight at home

I tried that but every time I tried running the command line it opens for a few seconds then closes again not giving me a chance to write the command to run the programme If you could share it with me that would be great . As I have done a few small stuff in C# I could sit down learn a bit more and then could try and understand what you wrote as well.

Yeah I read online that to be able to have read/write permissions you need to purchase a very expensive license from Capita. I'm sure they do this to limit the competition as being able to modify the database opens up a lot of opportunities to develop programs and have less of a need to purchase packages from SIMS. But still I won't mind learning how use command reporter to run certain queries. (For example I would like to create a program that exports student photographs in JPEG file and naming each photo file by the student name or admission number) What I would have done if I had access to the server is make a copy of the database and run SIMS on a standalone computer and do what i want to do with it without it affecting the live database. then if everything goes wrong I can delete it make another copy of the live database e.t.c Is there a way I can access the SQL database on a Client Machine? (I'm guessing the answer to this is no) Sound like a good course which i would love to do but i don't think I'm in a school where they will be willing to pay for it after what happened when I started here 2 months ago. Thanks for the advice. I did learn VB at college and now I totally forgot how to write in VB. Recently I have started to learn VBA and SQL (I like how logical the sql language is and its so easy to read and understand) but i have heard that coding in VBA leads to bad habits. I even wanted to apply for an MSc in Computer Science for people with a degree in a completely different subject and was hoping that my new job will sponsor it but with what happened when I first started and with me not being happy in my new job I'm now reluctant to ask. I'm starting to think that schools are not open to change and well behind on modern technology plus most managers I work with have no clue and too stuck in their own ways and hate ideas that make sense. I'm starting to doubt whether I should continue as a data manager but the fact I had a 2.2 degree, will have to do a Masters (which costs £9k) plus I will have to take a salary cut to break into the industry is making me question if i should change careers. Plus if I can find right school that allows Data Managers to do more technical stuff then I will be happy (hoping to do this in my new role but i don't think it's happening anymore)