jamesb

From the SIMS point of view I wouldn't think there should be any impact, unless you're using Windows Integrated login to SIMS .net, in which case you'd need to update the accounts being used through System Manager.

What does your SIMS connect.ini say?

Most Linux installations have some sort of repair option. I'd be surprised if Apple don't provide some as well. Windows XP has a repair console, all server editions do. Disks can corrupt over time, it happens. You also don't bolt various bits of random machinery into your car, and replace the tyres with ones of different sizes, then still expect it to work.

Simply put, they don't by default. The web parts can be dropped into any Sharepoint site and the ADP service can be used to create users, similarly for any sharepoint site. These can be given group membership depending on the type of user (year group, registration group, etc for students, year group of child/ren for parents and so on) so that this can then be tied into an existing Sharepoint VLE setup, or site, for audiencing of discussion lists, web parts, and so on. The SIMS web parts themselves provide the same functionality as SLG2, but are easier to integrate into an existing Sharepoint setup. If your current VLE is based in Sharepoint then you could continue to use this, drop the web parts into your own structure, and provision accounts for the VLE. Alternatively if you wanted to use your existing AD structure for the Sharepoint install then there is the option of custom AD provisioning scripts, or of consolidating the default provisioned accounts with your existing ones so that users can continue using their normal accounts. You can check out the actual functionality that the web parts provide by looking at the online demo - SIMS Learning Gateway Demo - Capita Children's Services. While designed to demonstrate SLG itself, these are the same parts as available separately. Since you mention Uniservity, I do know that there's some sort of partnership going on between Capita and UniServity, but I'm unsure of the details.

Any heavy machinery or similar installed recently? Are the computers plugged into surge protectors? Anywhere near a train line, or something else which might cause surges? I ask because this is something which used to come up at a school I worked at, we eventually figured out it was due to a train line nearby causing surges on the line which in turn would cause computers to start up at apparently random times, and occasionally just to burn out entirely.

Freudian slip?

Apparently if a spreadsheet is damaged Excel automatically trims the data, that's the only reason I can think of that it might end up with a 0 sized file. The damage isn't necessarily due to user error, but could have been corruption during saving. Unless someone confirmed that the file did have a size after saving I can't think of any way to check whether this was the case or not.

If its branding you're after, this might help you out. Its a Sharepoint Branding tool from Codeplex and could be worth a look. For general Sharepoint utility its also worth looking at Sharepoint SUSHI.

SLG makes no attempt to be a VLE, simply a method of publishing, and interacting with, SIMS data online. It is possible to acquire just the web parts and ADPS and drop them into an existing Sharepoint installation. SLG does make available the data you described to parents, and students. It also allows teachers to enter data online, whether from home or in school. I do know that there are other solutions out there, but don't know enough about them to comment.

A selection of external hard drives maybe, so that you can still keep a backup schedule running and remove the drive for storage once a backup's completed. Also means that if one drive fails, you have redundancy.

If its not already defined by group policy, which I'm guessing it isn't, then this should help: Configuration of the My Documents Folder

Top 0.08% I think.

If you're using Sharepoint then why not use the Announcements list?

...in DOS days I just used to pipe files straight onto a line printer. That's about as simple as you can get, so I'm not surprised that nowadays, when you've got graphics, fonts, colours and so on to deal with that printers are harder to install. You must've seen different marketing to me. As far as I was aware they were marketed as small laptops for little more than internet access and maybe some basic office work, with the work then to be uploaded to a desktop machine. Depending on your purposes anyway. Personally I use my EEE PC as a mixture of things, by having different operating systems loaded on the SD cards, making it a very fast-loading, multi-specialised system. And this pretty much says it all I guess. Computers are about a lot more than just interfacing to devices, I can't even remember the last time I had to resort to a printer. Probably over a year ago. Most of my file transfers, for anything, are either USB key or SD card. Both of which work fine with every modern version of Linux, and Windows, I've encountered.

Unfortunately I can also see the credit crunch killing the opensource community. Less investment in new ideas, less money for the hobbyist developer community, and possibly even a lot less free time for people to develop in. Hopefully this won't be the case, but I can certainly see it as a possibility.

Yep, if you want support with anything Microsoft Technet is your best place to go. I'm willing to bet that they do little more than search the technet library, and occasionally send out bulletins which are recycles of the normal Microsoft ones.

Well no, not really. An EEE PC isn't designed as a desktop replacement so printer support most likely wasn't a major concern for the developers. Open source offers a huge range and variety, which is part of the reason that people do stick with Windows - compatibility and consistency. Well...yes...I'd be amazed if an incompatible printer could be forced to work with a system, although if that is going to happen it'll happen on open source, where you've got the benefit of a developer network who write drivers for amusement.

I'm afraid I don't know a developer, and having checked this isn't currently on the SLG roadmap. Might be worth raising a change request on the Capita forums, as I suspect a lot of people would like to see this.

As far as I'm aware there's no SLG parts to do this at the moment (I'll double-check), but I think there may be a way to get it to work. Lists with audiencing of items, or even the document library with permissions set carefully might be one way. I'll look into it and see if I can figure something out. It might also be worth looking at CodePlex - Open Source Project Hosting and seeing if someone's written something which would do what you want. The drawback of this approach would be that the documents would not be integrated into the SIMS Document Server by default.

I take it what you're after is something which provides more detail than the Student Assessment Summary and Student Conduct Summary part? Do you have the Profiles parts?

SLG accounts can be consolidated against different AD domains, so technically there's no reason that the LA shouldn't be able to provision to a domain of their own, then consolidate those accounts against your own internal domain for single sign-on. This does require trusts to be set up correctly.

From what I can gather, basically a MIS system which includes assessment, behavioural and similar data. I could be wrong though. Having a bit of trouble getting a clear and simple definition.

Never actually had that problem, though I have had faulty batches of purchased cables. And you're forgetting the benefits of wiring cables yourself, such as being able to wire up a RJ45 jack at one end, and a three-pin mains plug with the fuse wired in with a lump of copper at the other. Incidentally, I do not recommend actually doing the above to anyone who has not completed the full BOFH certification course, or at a minimum the PFY prereqs.

If you have SQL Management Studio installed, have a look in there and make sure that the database exists. If it does then look for the user who is trying to log in, and check that their default database is set to the Sharepoint database rather than master.