msi

Hi Bit of an old thread but as far as I can recall, I didn’t Sorry - maybe someone else can pitch-in?

For a particular school, all class teachers need to be able to input EAL levels, currently not possible for users who have Class Teacher assigned. This requires ability to edit Students' ethnic / cultural info. When I load the Class Teacher group to update its permissions, it doesn't allow that: https://imgsh.net/a/J006QD7.png !! I am aware that I can create a new permission group and add users to that, but it's not sustainable as the person in this school who sets up new staff has been doing that job for a long time and will unlikely remember to add the new user to both Class Teacher and my custom group. Any other way of achieving the above, if Class Teacher group cannot actually be edited? I'm running as System Administrator so I don't think it's a problem with the permissions required to edit the group, although may be wrong?

Perhaps wise at least here... I have tweeted and blogged on our website about it though (am I permitted to link here?) and have contacted the person in question to let him know of this.

Nasty tactics in my view

*combined comment with above*

Definitely didn't say I spoke to the Senior Director, see my screenshot above You are more than welcome to take anything you read online with a pinch of salt - I do the same. All I can say is that I contacted the person from whom the email originated and spoke in detail about the preliminary investigation. If you don't want to take it from me then hopefully they will provide an official release in the coming days. It was me who pixelated the screenshot above out, and I didn't do this to hide the fact it came from a dodgy source, because I personally confirmed it didn't! I am sure those reading this can understand I don't wish to publish a civil servant's work email address and phone number on a forum post...

Valid concern - although it should be no surprise that the CMA may wish to get involved. I have just updated the original post with more info. Will report back here. For now, will say that I just called and spoke personally to the director within the CMA who sent the email (official email contact form and can google his name), quizzed him on the process of deciding the outcome of cases like this and was extremely knowledgeable about the process. See above. Will report back once I have asked for permission to publish the contact details of someone at CMA who can confirm this. For now, see redacted email:

Okay - own up - which one of you reported ESS to the Government Competition and Markets Authority? It wasn't me This is big news and I for one would be absolutely delighted if ESS were; a) to be investigated as a "Dominant Firm" in the market (to qualify, market share must be over 40% which it is however you look at it) b) found to have abused that dominance All of us here know that Capita and now ESS have been rubbing their hands together for a long time; - providing little to no genuine innovation or development in the "platform" that is SIMS - refusing to answer directly to schools and preferring to provide support through a network of Local Authority employees, whose jobs depend on schools continuing to use SIMS - more recently, pushing schools directly into signing up for 3 years - offering a 6 month break clause out of the goodness of their hearts (their words "if you'd like to take us up on this offer") when they know full well that most schools purchase SIMS through the Local Authority or at the least purchase support through the LA, the contracts for which almost ALL run by financial year, i.e. LAs are looking to sign schools up well before the end of March. Which means schools actually have - oooh - 1 month to make a fast and major decision. How many schools have the capacity for that?! Of course, schools have been able to switch to another provider for years. But how many of us here have worked for schools who don't want to stick their neck out, who are given scare stories by their local authority about what could happen if they switch, etc... and have - understandably - not wanted to rock the boat? If you feel as strongly that schools have been under the cosh for long enough then please fill in this official survey from the CMA: link here Now is the time to come out of the woodwork, people! EDIT: Sorry I should have provided some kind of reference for this. An email came through from the Director of Antitrust at the CMA to the school I am currently working with. I don't want to post his name here as it was a direct email to the school. I will contact him and ask if it's okay to make his details - or those of a colleague - available here. Mat School Computer Geek - Supporting the UK Education Sector

Hello I'm able to generate a report of today's attendance within SIMS, like so: Reports > Attendance > Whole Group Student Reports > Today's Register Report. This creates an XML file that I'm then able to parse in e.g. Powershell to do things with this data (email parents, list absent students on a digital noticeboard in staffroom, etc. etc.) But what I really want to do, is to generate this report periodically, e.g. every 15 minutes. I have dabbled with CommandReporter.exe and can manually export reports that have been created in the Report Designer. However when I specify the name of the report as "Today's Register Report", CommandReporter.exe responds with "this report is not found". So I'm guessing this is a special kind of report, which, whilst it can be run manually to create an output file in SIMS, is somehow not compatible with CommandReporter, because the report is not shown in Report Designer. A) Is that correct? B) How do I achieve the goal of exporting today's attendance (for the whole school)*? * I don't care really care whether this report has too much data, I can filter it later in Powershell. I just need an XML file that includes register information for today's date, however much else there is in there as well.

Schools are not exempt. I called the ICO's office just now and asked about this very question. I explained that I have looked at the ICO's "Guide to Data Protection", specifically the "Exemptions" section, which says; the Act provides exemptions from notification for: • organisations that process personal data only for: staff administration (including payroll); advertising, marketing and public relations (in connection with their own business activity); and accounts and records; • some not-for-profit organisations; • organisations that process personal data only for maintaining a public register; • organisations that do not process personal information on computer. The lady I spoke with said "there are some exemptions but they only really apply for small, non-profit organisations". I said "what, you mean like a school". She said "no no no". I said "But why, because a school is technically a small, non profit organisation.". She said "no no no". I said "well, without a doubt, the state school I'm currently in is a non-profit organisation, as for it being small, your documents don't define this, at least not the one I'm looking at, can you please provide more information". She was in a hurry to get me off the phone, and provided no additional justification for her point. I pushed further, and she passed me onto the notifications team. The notifications team confirmed the school I'm currently working in IS on the register (this is also publicly searchable) and that they should be. I brought up the same points with the second person I spoke with, and she was a little more detailed. She said for an organisation to be "not for profit" it would need to be constituted as a "not for profit", e.g. a charity. A normal "run of the mill" school would NOT normally be exempt. As always, when you delve a little under the surface, the government department in question haven't really got a clue when it comes to providing solid advice which can be referenced in writing, nor do they particularly address points that you or I would consider logical. Nevertheless, they are the ICO, and they said so - schools are not exempt. Secondly I asked "well, who registered this school, as I've spoken to a few people here and nobody has a record of this". I asked "is it possible the DfE have registered the school" - no, this would not have happened. I asked "is it possible the Local Authority have registered the school" - yes this is possible, but not probable. Suggested course of action for all schools, given the above: - check with your LA to see whether they have or haven't registered your school - unlikely - register your school and pay the annual fee - spread the word - schools need to know about this very basic fact - they must be on the register! Finally, I joked with the second lady that "I'm sure that the ICO has hired another 500 people to answer phones and undertake the necessary admin of re-sending every school's certificate of registration OR re-sending their security number as they will be probing these things in the coming months". She laughed, and said "in a word - no".

Starting: September 2017 Hours: Full-time (Monday - Thursday8.30-4.30pm Fridays 8.30-4pm. Term time only plus two weeks to be worked during school holidays.) Salary: £21,167 - 24,949 pro rata Closing date for applications: Thursday 8th June 2017 We are looking for an enthusiastic, versatile and motivated IT Technician to contribute to the development of the school’s use of ICT to support pupils’ learning and increase the effectiveness with which all staff are able to carry out their work. The IT Technician will be responsible for maintenance of all ICT systems with guidance from the school’s network manager/2nd line support. They will work with the school’s ICT strategy manager in implementing the school’s ICT development plan and will provide support to both staff and pupils. Here's an informal flavour of the job. It's an outstanding school (OFSTED). We have excellent IT Systems, 3 year computer replacement policy, every staff member has a high end laptop, savvy purchasing, reliable wireless, systems are running extremely well. We run our own Office365 tenancy, and have started to use the increasing number of O365 apps such as Classroom OneNote. We operate an internal helpdesk system. It's a lovely school with spacious grounds and an award-winning new swimming pool, fitness studio, and the staff are excellent. The role is primarily one of supporting and up-skilling staff, developing new systems, grappling with iPads, installing software and keeping everything running smoothly. You don't need to be a server or network manager. In fact we are more interested in finding a candidate with the determination to resolve support issues properly and with the right attitude to learning and self-improvement than finding someone with a great deal of experience, although the latter is of course desirable. Please contact [email protected]

This has been covered elsewhere no doubt, but thought I'd share the following. I've spent many weeks reading about the Windows 10 Start Menu. I was a big fan of customising the Start Tiles on Win8.1 and was looking forward to the possibility of GPO configuration of Start Menu and Tiles in Win10, alas this isn't possible in the way that I'd like. Quite a lot more is possible with Education and Enterprise editions, sadly most of the schools I work with didn't purchase these editions. 1/ I've played a lot with customising the Win10 Start Menu, tiles, redirection, GPO lockdown, etc. In a few schools everything I've done has worked, it's stable, and everything is good. In a few other schools I've seen a lot of issues which, to be honest, have been very difficult to pin-down. They include; a) "File Explorer" not showing on the Start Menu. Some reports that this was due to an Anniversary Edition update. However I've seen evidence to the contrary myself b) Start menu not showing the contents of registry key UserShellFolders AND / OR not showing contents of C:\ProgramData\...\Start Menu. (Note I say "AND / OR". I mean this in the most accurate sense of the phrase. In some cases I've seen both, in others I've seen one, in others I've seen the other.) - yes, in the worst case scenario which I banged my head against a desk throughout most of yesterday, Start Menu was not even showing things like Microsoft Office. This was for any user, admin or not, before joining to domain and after. c) Start menu corruptions, i.e. works fine for a given user for a number of weeks, no GPO or other configuration changes made, one day randomly user clicks the start menu and it does not appear, requiring blatting the user account. I've seen / tested this on both pre-anniversary and post-anniversary update machines. There's a whole load of "evidence" online in the form of articles on websites like howtogeek, reddit, etc., that purport to help you "solve all your Windows 10 start menu problems". Two things to note here: (1) none of them actually identify the problem properly, they just give "catch all" solutions like "turn off Cortana", "repair corrupt windows files", "sfc \scannow", etc., therefore none of them actually resolve most of the issues I've seen, (2) surely the very fact of these numerous articles indicates that "lots of people are having lots of problems" (not a technical point, but an interesting one). 2) I absolutely abhor using 3rd party modifications to the core user experience set out by a given OS. When I first read about Classic Shell, I avoided it like the plague. I'm a sysadmin, there's no way I'm going to let these numerous issues past me, I'm going to do the investigation and the deeper problem solving myself. I'm not going to introduce a workaround in the form of 3rd party software. 3) Despite the above, I've had days where my frustration has been so great - not a technical frustration, not the kind where you wrangle with Microsoft Exchange 2007 database files for 24 hours on the trot, no - the kind of frustrations best summarised as follows: IT'S. SIMPLY. BROKEN. - my frustrations have been so great that I've sworn blind I'm going to push to convert all my schools to Google and completely rid them of any Windows machines. Ok, enough hyperbole. I swallowed the damned pill, deployed Classic Shell by GPO, including GPO customisations, and haven't looked back. Yes, I feel dirty. Sometimes I can't sleep at night*. But as a sysadmin my life is about 100 times more simple. (* ok I'm joking a bit)

I thought this may be the case. Contrary to what I said before, I obviously hadn't set this up properly. Just spent the last hour with Process Monitor, and yes I'm getting access denied messages when trying to write to the domain file share. The requesting user is NTAUTHORITY\system Interestingly, the UI which runs under the user context is responsible for downloading files to the location stored in Settings > SOLUS3 > SOLUS (i.e. the "update repository"). That's why it wasn't failing to actually run upgrades on remote machines... For the benefit of anyone else reading this in the future, here's what I did. Apply the following permission on the file share itself EITHER: "Authenticated Users":FULL (a server counts as an authenticated user) OR: "SERVERNAME$":FULL Now when I re-run the download, the extraction process actually works... Cheers

Thanks Steve 1/ I previously had it set to extract after download, the sims team advised that they always have it set to extract after deployment and insisted I do this. I'll test further here. 2/ Re permissions, I had assumed SOLUS3 ran under the user account it was launched on, OR at the very least it wouldn't be a problem if running under a system account on a member server and "domain computers" was set with write permissions. Perhaps I assumed wrongly! Thanks

I recently migrated the school's simsroot folder off the SIMS server and onto a SAN, with another server hosting the DFS point. S:\ drive is now mapped to \\domain.local\root\sims ... I've triple-checked users' S: drives are pointing here. SOLUS3 update works*, as I understand it doesn't use S:\SIMS\Setups files but rather a series of .pkg files deployed directly to the server. However, SOLUS3 doesn't appear to be extracting the setup files (i.e. for manual install) to the correct new location. a) I've changed the "extract to" location as necessary Under Settings > SOLUS3 > Updates > Extract to folder, I have: \\domain.local\root\sims\sims\setups (yes, I should change that to something more sensible, e.g. \\domain.local\root\simsroot\sims\setups...) and the "After Deployment" boxes are ticked like so: b) I've not moved anything else. Irrelevant... but Document Server and SIMS SQL instance is on the same server as before (I only say this because the school's SIMS support team had kittens and couldn't get their heads around this basic fact) c) Irrelevant, but... Under Settings > SOLUS3 > SOLUS > Update repository, I have: \\domain.local\root\sims\SOLUSUpdates So in summary, I'm seeing recent .pkg files in the new location for S:\SOLUSUpdates, but no recently extracted executables in S:\SIMS\Setups Additional info After I moved the simsroot folder and after the SIMS support team ran the Autumn upgrade, the folder D:\data\simsroot\Sims\Setups automagically re-appeared. Support team swear blind they've no idea why given the above. I certainly didn't recreate it. I'm assuming SOLUS3 did. Timestamp suggests it happened when the support team ran SOLUS3 upgrade. Frustratingly, the only files in this folder are these: Any ideas? *I'm lying, SOLUS3 currently doesn't work but that's a different issue which I'm 99% sure is unrelated, see my other post shortly... either way, I need to see the most recent setup files and I'm not seeing them!

@bossman I'm not sure I follow. What exactly do you mean "everything is set to work as is"? Also, what exactly do you mean by "user account which has the rights to access just the Solus 3 and Sims"? A windows user account? Are you referring to Windows ACLs when you say "a user account which has the rights [...]"? Also what do you mean by "best user controls that will allow the LA to do what is necessary"? Do you mean SIMS permissions? What's a "user control"? Sorry if I sound a bit confused but I'm not sure I follow your terminology. EDIT to my last post: I did log a call with Capita on this subject. But by the time I was actually put on to the "relevant department", it became apparent that the person didn't even know the difference between Windows "permissions" and "rights", so I gave up straight away with that... grr! Why can't you find technical people on technical support desks I ask?!

Dear all I'm sure this is an utterly ridiculous thing to ask. I'm sure as soon as I start discussing file and registry permissions required by SIMS SOLUS, most people will respond with "hahahaha, no you can't do that". But here it is. I support a school which has a virtual machine running two SQL database applications: SIMS and PSFinancials. I'm currently in the process of handing over support for these two applications to their respective support providers (having been the one that installed and supported them for a few years myself). I'm not employed by the school - I'm a freelance engineer. SIMS will be managed by the local authority's IT Support Unit, who have a fabulous record for ensuring they don't accidentally shut down servers, change the IP address of domain controllers, and all the other things that you can do to wreck a network. Given the above, you can imagine I'm thrilled about the prospect of giving them administrator access to the server. (In case your sarcasm detector is not working today - the above is of course... a joke.) Actually, I'm not simply "unhappy" to give them local admin to the server - it's not going to happen. No way. If they foobar the server which is not unlikely, it will prevent the finance ladies from doing their jobs properly. Of course, PSFinancials is technically supported by PSFinancials Support ... but I know how it works. It will all come back to me eventually, regardless of whatever form I get anyone to sign. (I plan to continue to provide support to the school - just not for SIMS and PSF.) Sadly for SQL licensing reasons, I can't split the VM into two VMs, and give each support provider local admin. That would be great. So I'm in the unenviable position of wanting to set up delegated permissions so that each support provider can *properly* do their job. That is, log on to the server, troubleshoot SIMS problems, upgrade SIMS database, etc. - WITHOUT giving them full admin. I'm sure this will end up being some hack involving: - Group Policy User Rights Assignment - A healthy dose of Sysinternals Process Monitor to figure out what permissions SIMS SOLUS3 actually needs - A healthy dose of ... long-term ... patience when I realise 6 months down the line there is one more permission that I didn't realise it would require to do something Before I get my hands dirty, can anyone tell me whether they have done something similar? Whether SIMS SOLUS has a vaguely sensible implementation of NTFS / reg permission requirements? i.e. By Group Policy I could set up a domain security group, assign full control to the obvious program files directories required as part of SOLUS upgrades, and it will just work? Yours in vain hope, MSI

Hi I know SIMS.net supports "user defined fields", which are a pretty quick-and-dirty way of storing *current* data about e.g. a student. For example, if you wanted to store a student's NI number, you could do. Also I had a brief play with "history", is that a view mode which gives access to historic data stored about a student? If so, do user defined fields support history? Basically I want to be able to store other data about students, ideally with some kind of support for finding out who recorded that data, when it was recorded, and a way of viewing historic data. Anyone know of any extensions / modules that can help? Or even a system that might sync various data to a separate database which I could then give certain well-trained staff members access to through Access or somesuch? Thanks

Hey thanks. I'll do that. Before I go ahead though, it does seem to affect more than one PC. Is this a client problem, or a server one? Should I do that on the client(s) in question, or the server? Regards

Has anyone seen this issue before? Tools > Statutory Returns Tools > School Workforce Census Settings in the status bar, there's a red cross and message "Workforce Return Settings File corrupt on incorrect format. Please contact your support unit" I have applied the latest patches and filesets.

@vikpaw Well changing my username would be a right hassle (it's my domain admin account, really rather not), but I could map the SIMS account to another username. I'll try that. And that would help *me* but not so much future readers. As I said I think there are a whole load of possible causes. And that's what I'm interested in. @Mark_Atkins1 Should have mentioned in my original post, I can log in to SIMS from the server when presented with a username/password box. So it's not a question of the database and app versions being different. ... but that does rather point to the reason for my original post. The fact is, that error message can come up for a whole load of possible reasons, and wouldn't it be helpful if we collated them into a helpful post for future ref?

Hello A quick search of previous threads shows that people need a solution (and quickly) rather than needing the reason for this error. I'm not one of them. I don't have users who are panicked. We are using trusted authentication (local connect.ini which points to a connect.ini on the S: drive, which itself has the TrustedAuto property set). All users can log on... except me on the server. Obvs I have checked the connect.ini file on the C: drive of the server to ensure it points to the shared one on the mapped drive, and of course checked the drive is indeed mapped and accessible. So with a view to being useful to others (and to solving my little issue), I'm interested in getting together a list of possible causes of this particular error: "Unable to set application role" (error at SIMS logon) For example, could this be the cause: my AD username is three chars. I noticed you can't set a *non* AD username of 3 chars or shorter. I'm sure this wouldn't be it. But maybe there is some validation that takes place when mapping the AD account to the application role? Or what about the fact my account is, in SIMS, not an 'employee' or 'teacher' but merely a 'user'? Any other possible reasons?

I think the tweet implies they are looking for someone with experience in Operations (e.g. a medium-business COO at that salary), OR an experienced developer, OR a highly experienced Sys Admin. As to what kind of dev work, ops work, or what systems are used, perhaps it would be pretty easy to engage them in that conversation over twitter? Maybe as a freelancer I'm biased, but I see the ability to define your own job as a bonus, not a turn-off. I think an enthusiasm to engage via social media would be a really good start for a job like this one. School is definitely looking for a creative type to fit into an existing team of developers... Sorry if the above sounds a bit nebulous / artsy, as I said I'm not employed by the school at the moment, but I do know the people who work there and they have a great reputation for innovation in school ICT so the role does sound good.

So - a school I used to work at is recruiting for the following (and I quote, from Twitter!) "Ops||Dev||SysAdmin||Barista £40k Replies-> @dcgsTechJob" (Pretty sure that last list item is a wildcard ) So yeh - go wild, please RT to all your contacts. Twitter handle as above. I gather they are looking to recruit from outside of education as well as top-tier candidates from within education, either way I'm pretty sure candidates will need to be creative / talented / guru types!

Brilliant. It now loads in 3.5 seconds. Thanks a million.