TimH

Have you tried a test report with different/simple template ? i.e. is the report template causing the issue ? It could be a memory issue, I've just replaced our school logo bitmap with a vector emf version and cut printing time from 3hrs+ down to 20 minutes for a 2 page whole year group print. Also, are all of the tags really valid, you say the template was from a different school, were the tags copied or re-entered - I just discovered that someone in our school had used search/replace on an individual report template to switch Yr7 to Yr8, it doesn't work, it only changes the visible text not the tag behind it. Oh, that reminds me, take a look in the XML tamplate via a text editor/web browser or in Word use options to show hidden text to examine the tags. tim

Advanced Installer is great for creating clean MSIs. tim

Before you reopen the template to edit it, turn off the option "When editing user-defined templates, use Word with macro support field names", it will then open with size etc. settings as saved. If you need to add new fields (without the add-ins now available) just enter the field names in angle brackets. tim

I do this to populate a web based timetable viewer we have. I think (can't check ATM) the report needs to ask for the classes the teacher teaches, the the periods for the classes (or maybe classes, teachers, periods). tim

Look at using "Creator Owner" permissions on a shared folder combined with staff change permission. The student then creates the folder (using their real name, whatever), only they and staff will have access to the individual folder. (Any spurious folders that appear can obviously be traced by ownership/permissions.) Then run a schedule to do "net share" to share /unshare the parent folder at appropriate times. tim

We have mandatory profiles but redirect "Desktop" beside "My Documents" within their space on the network. i.e. \\ourschool\..\jsmith\My Documents \\ourschool\..\jsmith\Desktop Likewise favourites and for staff appdata. No issues with copying at logon etc. the only problem being that icon locations aren't maintained between logons. tim

We have "My Computer" and "My Documents" on the desktop and our logon script renames "My Computer" to the actual workstation name and "My Documents" to the username. e.g. "IT1-PC00", "SmithJ's Documents" tim

(Is posting code snippets frowned upon ?) strComputer = "." Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer) Set colItems = objWMIService.InstancesOf("Win32_NetworkAdapter") For Each objItem in colItems Wscript.Echo objItem.Description Wscript.Echo objItem.NetConnectionStatus Next NetConnectionStatus described here; Win32_NetworkAdapter Class (Windows) Workarounds needed for Windows older than XP. tim

Rather than using Ping, why not ipconfig and check connection status? Or whatever system calls (via WMI ?) are available for such checking. tim

Why copy to the workstations ? We just have a central wallpaper on one of the servers, it makes it trivial to change for a new one. Reg setting done by group policy rather than startup script (pointing to \\dfsdomain\etc\wallpaper.jpg), makes it more easily managed. tim

Out of interest how large does/can the SIMS database/backup become ? We only started using SIMS in September, our backups are about 1.2GB (1700 students 11-18 secondary) and are only taking a minute and a quarter to run (modified date compared creation date). tim

That's good, I think I did it by setting up the screensaver for myself then using the relevant values created. In fact we have a central screensaver which is normally the slideshow one but can be replaced by a themed/seasonal one simply by replacing screensaver.scr in the server share. (You may need to muck about with server settings to allow anonymous access.) tim

We've been running this for ages, simply tweak the registry settings for the default user on the workstations (using, script, reg file, whatever, preferable Policy Preferences) to set the slideshow saver, image location (unc path is OK) and timeout etc.. We simply add/remove notices as required in the single location. tim

It's just a shame that we have to work around the issue, being new to SIMS I'd hoped they'd not have such problems that need working around ! I'd seen mention of new reporting, any idea on a time scale, I was told nothing drastically new when I queried with Capita/SIMS - unless they misinterpreted my question. tim

Thanks, yep, I didn't think it was this but it was. I donned my Poirot hat, had a rummage in a backup of the database and found a newer report with a similar name to mine, it was private so I hadn't seen it in live SIMS. I made it public, had a look and the report title was exactly the wording of my original. Trouble is that we are trying to encourage people to create their own reports, SIMs allows us to break reports but provides no tool for managing them, pah ! I've tried reproducing the problem, as you say it occurs when doing "Save As" but have failed, I've tried to be oh so careful, save close, reopen etc. when creating clones and *have* had the problem, ho hum. tim

Have tried supportnet and they say they've never been able to produce what I'm about to describe there, actually, might as well paste what I asked... Has anyone else had the same problem ? TIA tim More a case of information than solution, I am aware of KB59311 which just says start again. I have a (fairly trivial) report which when revisiting now gives the unable to load reportform.rtf error, it worked fine when last used. Nobody has changed the report, I can find the linked template document on the document server, which still has a modified date of when I created the report, i.e. Windows file system says it's the same file. The only thing that has happened in between is that we have applied the latest update (Autumn 2009?). Is there any way that either the update could have damaged the file (no change in modified date though) or that the current version of SIMS.net is unable to decrypt whatever encryption was used on the document server file when created ? (This is an aside to frequently losing reports when using "Save As" to create a public copy of a privately created report, despite saving at each stage SIMS loses track of the template - there really does need to be a global report manager tool in SIMS, changing private to public should be a trivial tweak in the database.)

Is it because you are getting results for multiple contacts? Can you put the contact name in the result to see, if so then you are either probably not filtering via contact priority or the priorities are not set appropriately in SIMS. As an alternative you might try "return first result only" on the sub report filter. tim

Yes, have pondered doing that but we have over 1000 teaching classes, never mind other groups, so a lot of stuff to add to AD and never quite up to date. Also, I'm just tweaking a version which a member of staff can use to email a chosen group some assessment results, e.g. for "here's your predicted grade" etc. We do have some student voice groups which are supposedly synced (but I haven't finished it yet) from SIMS to network as students (not just staff) need to bulk email the groups. One thing that annoys me though is the really awkward mechanism for choosing options at run time in SIMS reporting. Either long scrolly, unresposive checkbox lists or text entry for names of things. tim

Technically possible once you've worked out the table structure but the man from SIMS, he say no ! I had an issue that I couldn't solve via reports/commandreporter/scripting but could have solved from direct database access, checked with SIMS and it is not "allowed". I can understand them worrying about people writing data back to the database but allowing a read only user would be so handy - maybe even include a special database user in the standard install for such purposes (most people would never be aware of it but it would be there for those who need it). As far as programmatic input, as they certainly don't want you/us trying that, what about an extended command reporter with import features ? (We only started with SIMS this year and had to do a crazy amount of manual data entry for stuff that wasn't/couldn't be in a ctf.)

Because SIMS is the centre of all things ! (We store admission number in AD "ExtensionAttribute1"/"Custom Attribute1" and as a double link, network logon name in SIMS udf.) Hmmm, well... we did this so that staff can email groups of students using SIMS reporting, it's messy because they have to type/paste the group name but can be made to work. e.g. choose 7Ma1, Your homework is... Year8Choir, Remember be here on Friday at 3:30 for practise etc. Bit of a crossover with what you might do with a VLE. (VBA in Excel report output creates pre-addressed email in Outlook.) This can be expanded; email the teachers of "John Smith", parents of, supervisors of group etc., oh and with appropriate SMS service, text students in group, parent/carers, supervisors etc..

I did this in stages using autoit, extract list of students from SIMS, extract list of emails address from network in the same order. Get autoit to enter address and keep hitting next on the student entry page. It wasn't completely reliable and SIMS does go bang when you enter too much data, i.e. after about 70 students the client crashes (same thing happened when entering by hand).

I think it's basically impossible using standard SIMS/reports, I spent ages trying and ended up raising a Supportnet ticket which agreed ! We were running progress checks and wanted to know who had incomplete sets but you can't do this, if Johnny is doing French he should have French grades, if not doing Spanish he would show as having Spanish grades missing (which is useless). It needs some way of know what is missing from what the individual student should have, I'm waiting for response to an escalation of the ticket. tim

Hopefully attached is a bare version of this. The report will export email addresses of teachers who have lessons with a given student into Excel, which then creates a blank email in Outlook with the To: field appropriately populated. Note this has no error checking so may well not work in a situation different from ours, also staff need to be able to see other staff email addresses (ours can't so I had to create a Mk11 version and email forename.surname@ourschool). (We have several variants on this (e.g. email students in class xyz etc.) but the sending mechanism is the same.) tim (PS it looks as if there might be a problem downloading the attachment with IE - seems OK with Chrome/Firefox.) Email Teachers of.zip

I was surprised that SIMS can't do email, so when we started using it in September I put together some reports which throw out email addresses of people, with output set to Excel containing macros which create a pre-addressed email in Outlook. E.g. we have email "teachers of given student", run report from student details page or enter name when run from reports, Excel appears with list of addresses, starts Outlook with "To" box filled in Excel then disappears and "email students in given" class etc. A bit cumbersome as it involves the Excel stage between SIMS and Outlook, wouldn't it be nice if SIMS could run the output of a report into an arbitrary application/script? Obviously no good without Excel/Outlook/email addresses/(Exchange) server etc. tim

I decided that redirecting the start menu can cause too much slow down (I counted the other day and we have over 400 shortcuts on the start menu) so our machines do a robocopy of a centrally managed start menu at start up. We have XP with classic start menu and shortcuts are organized by subject directly in the start menu folder - so they appear on the top of the start menu when opened (we used to have them in Programs-Subjects-Science-Biology etc. but that got unwieldy to navigate). We have a single (for staff and students) mandatory profile and any staff specific shortcuts go in there with permissions set so that students don't get them. tim