cn198

Thanks for your reply. I've found that this happens regardless of report run time. So we have some reports that can take a couple of minutes, some can take just a few seconds. It happens in all of them, but only very occasionally, and as I say, if it fails to export I just run it again (exactly the same parameters), it runs fine. I run my reports automatically through Excel VBA. So there is a button in my spreadsheet to run the code, and then I use the Shell() command which uses the command prompt to run commandreporter.exe. When the report has finished running the command prompt closes immediately so it's often hard to see what's written. When this problem occurs it looks like nothing gets printed after it says "Running Report...", but I can't be 100% sure. You mention about logging the output from this window. Do you know how to do this, because that sounds like it could be very useful.

Hi there, just recently I'm having problems running reports with the SIMS Command Line Report utility. I've been using it for the last 8 years or so without too much bother, but all of a sudden when I run the report, the export file doesn't always get exported. The Windows Command window pops up fine, shows I'm logged in and finds and runs the report. But the window closes without showing the Exporting file... line. If I try and run the report again, with everything being the same, it will work fine and I get the export file back. I have about 10 different types of reports that I run, and it can happen to any of them, and it doesn't happen all the time, just every now and then. Has anyone noticed this type of behaviour? No error message is ever displayed either. The utility version is 7.188.41.0. Chris

I'll answer my own question, yes, yes you can. But it's slightly confusing. You have to go via your own classes, and then use the search facility, if you do that you can search for all pupils rather than just selecting your own pupils. Only downside is that you cannot ammend records, only add them. But this in itself should help our staff greatly!

Yes, you can just search for a pupil and then add a new incident in their behaviour management section. I suspect the app has parallels with Office 365 vs the desktop version, i.e. you're fine if you just want to do the very basics. Hopefully someone might be able to shed some light. Do you know if you can edit the subject of the thread? Just worried if the current subject is actually a bit misleading now.

Ok having dug deeper with my new found info, the problem seems to be that teachers can't log behaviour incidents for pupils who aren't in their classes. So for instance, if the teacher is on duty and see an incident, unless the child is in one of their classes, they cannot log the incident. Is this a limitation of the app or is it a configuration issue or just user error?

Hmmm, yes that does show it, and shows it's quite easy! Wouldn't be the first time stuff has been badly setup but could also be poor training on the staff front. I don't personally use it as I'm a non teaching staff member, I just get people moaning to me about it and someone else just said it only does registers. I guess don't rely on hearsay! Thanks for digging that out, that gives me some ammunition to go back to the staff/IT team to sort it out!

Hi all, The school I work with has shifted away from using laptops over to iPads, although departmental offices still have desktops for staff to use for things that they can't do on the iPads. So registers are now taken via the SIMS app on the iPads. This is all fine but a problem has arisen with entering behaviour incidents on SIMS. It seems you cannot do this on the SIMS app, and thus it's taking a considerable amount of time to note down stuff that happens to then enter it later on, or inevitably it's just not being logged at all. I presume I'm not missing something and you cannot enter behaviour stuff on the SIMS app? But my main question is, is there a way you can upload behaviour incidents all in one go, in a similar manner to how you can with assessment data? I feel like I'm clutching at straws, but you never know! Thanks, Chris

Hi there, I'm having trouble with special characters when trying to load in xml commandreporter reports into Excel. I've traced the problem down to the fact that SIMS creates the xml report as UTF-8, but Excel wants ASCII, and if you use ASCII encoding when loading in the XML file, some characters don't come out right, so for instance, Siôn ends up being SiA'n. Now the obvious solution is just to load in the XML file as UTF-8, but the methods that do this are proving extremely slow, especially as I'm using quite large files with some 400,000 lines of text. I'm trying to investigate various options to get around this, but is it possible to get commandreporter to produce an ASCII encoded file, instead of UTF-8? Can I define that in the param file for instance? Many thanks, Chris

That's annoying that they tease that kind of functionality but then it doesn't flow through to all aspects. Thanks for your help though.

Thanks for your reply. Do you know if you can run any of those Lesson Monitor reports via the CommandReporter tool? And does anyone know what the effective date actually does?

Hi there, I'm building a custom report in SIMS that gives information about attendance and absences. I have built the report, and all runs ok but I want to explore using the "effective date" of the report to see what the data would have looked like a few weeks back, mainly to see if there are any trends in the data, and flag up concerns or show that things are getting better. In my naive view, changing this effective date should give me the data as it would have been on that date. But whenever I run the reports at two different dates, the data always seems to be the same, with the same attendance and the same number of absences. Am I misunderstanding how the effective date works, or is what I want even possible? Many thanks!

Sorted! I dug around SIMS and found the pastoral structure of the school, and sure enough after digging around, I found the short and long name of the years. Short is "Yr 7", long is "Yr 7", a double space instead of a single space! Oh my god that little space has wasted me so much time! I guess I've learn't a bit more about SIMS though so that's no bad thing. But thanks vikpaw, you've helped me solve the problem!

Hi vikpaw, Thanks so much for persisting with help, it's much appreciated! I ran the report in the "run report" bit and it runs fine. However, I just managed to replicate the problem on my previous school system (the one where I'm having no problem with command reporter). So, on that previous system, if I run it as normal I get all the data that I expect. But if I alter the def file first before I run commandreporter and change the year group to gibberish (i.e. change "Year 07" to "Year XX") it does exactly the same as what's happening in the new school and returns an output xml file with no pupil data. This leads me to think then I'm purely just getting the year string wrong. When I look at the year options on the report filer they are all in the format of "Yr 7", on the paramdef output it also gives the same format of "Yr 7", and when I look on the student details it also gives the same. However, on the student details there is a "Year taught in" option and that shows "Curriculum Year 7", but that doesn't work either. I can't see anywhere else that shows a year group listing. Where can I see the pastoral setup you're talking about, not sure I know about that, I also don't think I have access to Nova, certainly haven't come across it.

I should clarify here, it's my account we're running on SIMS here, not someone elses. The system in my previous school ran with the /trusted command, so any teacher with a valid account could run the excel VBA program. At this school I need to use the /user and /password commands to run the report as you need to log into SIMS. But that's the only difference. And as I say, it is my account I'm using. When you go to "design report", and open the report in there, I can run the report using "Preview Report", and a window pops up asking to select the year, I select the year and sure enough all runs fine. But running it remotely, if I don't specify a year the report runs fine (using the default year set up in SIMS), but if I specify a year in the def file, the output XML has no pupil data in it. It's all just very very odd. All my other filters work fine, i.e. pulling down data from SIMS. It's purely the year filter that stuffs things up.

Hi vikpaw, I've created a new report in SIMS and it still does the same thing. So it's not an export/import issue. And the paramdef output gives me the filter ID so I know I'm using the correct one. Interestingly enough if I do fiddle with the ID, i.e. change 1 letter, it runs the report fine. So it's obviously trying to do something with the year filter and failing. As far as I can see I am matching the paramdef output, it wants it in the format of "Yr 7", I have tried various forms of it (the previous school used "Year 07"). You mention about permissions, how can I check the permissions in SIMS?

Yes the Id is correct, the Id doesn't seem to change from system to system, it just changes if you change the conditions or set up of the filter. Besides, the paramdef output gives the correct ID and it does match what I'm inputting. The report does also run correctly from within SIMS.

Hi All, I am having some problems running a SIMS custom made report using CommandReporter and I was wondering if you could help me diagnose the problem. Basically I have created a custom made report in SIMS which returns basic pupil info, but it has a series of filters included to also return pupil results. I've also created a program in Excel (using VBA), which you set up and tell it what data you want from SIMS. The VBA program then creates an XML definition file to run CommandReporter with, which tells SIMS what year group I want data for, which subject and what aspects of data. The report returns an XML file with the pupil data in, which my VBA code reads and it adds the data to the excel spreadsheet for a HOD to analyse. I have been running this for a couple of years now and all works really well. However, I'm now trying to set this system up in a different school, and it's not working. I've exported the custom report from the previous school to the new one, and it loaded in fine. The VBA code can run the report, but all that gets returned is an XML file with no data. I can run the report from within SIMS fine, but it's when I run it remotely and feed it my def file that it doesn't seem to like it. I think I've narrowed down where the issue is, and it seems to be when I try to change the year group. If I remove that from the def file the report runs, and returns the data, but if I try and feed it the year group, it just returns no data at all. For the life of me I can't see what's wrong, or what I'm doing wrong. Can anyone suggest anything, or give some tips on how I can diagnose the issue? My def xml file uses this code... Year Integer Year group Yr 7 1 Yr 7 When I run paramdef the output I get looks like this... so I'm using the correct filter code. I've tried changing the from List to Integer (and String) but the same thing happens. Year List Year group Yr 8 1 Yr 8 Any help will be much appreciated! Chris

Thanks for your reply LosOjos, kinda what I was expecting someone to say. But your workaround is interesting and sounds like a good idea. Will the duplicates be ignored when the report is run? My only concern is over run time, if it has to run that many filters when at times I might just want a couple of results it's not ideal. But if that's my only option I guess I'll have to accept it! :-)

Hi all, I'm just beginning to use the CommandReporter tool in SIMS and am finding it very useful, but need a bit of help in figuring out if it can do what I want. At the moment I have created a report in SIMS that outputs students names, registration group and admin number. As part of that report, I have also added in an "Assessment results" field, which I filter for a particular result that I need (where the filter is set to equal the aspect name of the result). I can run this report via the command reporter, and everything is in the report that I need. Now at the moment, if I want several sets of results for each child, I just add more filters (using OR), and again filter on the different aspect names I need. However, I have written some VBA code to run this report via command reporter, and I want the code to be able to determine how many filters are applied (depending on how many results I need). In some cases this could be as many as 15 filters. Is it possible to specify this purely via /paramsfile. My problem is that sometimes I may only want 1 filter, and I don't want to have to run 15 of them as that will take a long time, but I need my code to determine this. Is this possible? Many thanks, Chris

Only if they reduce my teaching hours!! I've had time for a proper play with the reports now. And I def want to iterate your comments about it being messy at this level! Listing results for pupils in rows rather than columns is a bit of a pain, but I've written a VBA macro to convert it to columns so it's all good now.

Hi vikpaw, just been having a play, and yes, my god I can see what you mean by the fact it gets messy! But actually that gives me exactly what I want. As long as I put the name of the results I'm looking for as filters, and filter the specific year group on the student focus, it brings out the data I'm looking for. Thanks so much, would never have got there on my own. And in slower time I will look to get a meeting with the data manager to outline what I would like and hopefully get the group templates up and running. So thanks for everyone's advice! :-)

The data manager is assistant head and I'm new to the job, I don't really want to push the issue. Is there anyone that can help?

Hi vikpaw, many thanks for your reply. I'm too new to SIMS to understand a lot of what you're recommending. I'm the Head of Department for English, and we have a "Data Manager" at my school who sets up everything on SIMS for us. At the moment, my interaction with SIMS is pretty much just going into Marksheets and entering results. I don't really know how to use resultsets and certainly wouldn't be able to set up new Marksheets. And the issue I have is that I go to the Data Manager to ask for help and get told promptly he has no time to help and I need to cope! So basically I have to manage with what I have. So basically my year 10 English are split into 10 sets, and each teacher is filling in assessment results and predicted grades in these set marksheets. At the moment I'm finding it a pain to extract this data from the marksheets for the whole year group, I have to go into each set marksheet and click "export". Is there any guide you could provide to help me achieve this goal, or walk me through what you're outlining? Sorry for being a pain! Alternatively, I know how to design and generate reports, you say it's fiddly, but I don't mind that as long as it's possible?

Hi All, I'm just learning to use SIMS so please go easy on me! Presently I am viewing data in Marksheets, and it's all categorised into year groups and classes. So for example, each class in each year has it's marksheet entry. Within these marksheets is a number of grades I'm using to monitor the pupils performance. At the moment I'm opening each marksheet for a class, exporting it to Excel, and copying the data into a master spreadsheet to analyse the year group data in one go. So my question is, this is very fiddly having to export and copy data for every class. Is there some easier way to do this in one go? I was hoping that I could somehow create a year group Report, allowing me to select columns like "Pupil Name", "Gender", "Reg group" but then also columns relating to the grades from the marksheets I'm interested in? At the moment I can't find any way of doing that. I hope that makes sense. Chris