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HughR

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  1. HughR
    Greetings All, I wasn't sure where to post this and 'Hardware' seemed the most appropriate, though 'Jobs' might also do... My Line Manager has tasked me with finding out about Certified Hardware Maintenance courses; not online, but actual 'hands-on'. I was wondering what sort of courses colleagues on this forum might have attended that might be appropriate? I'm looking at 'general maintenance and repair' non-proprietary e.g. any brand (though mainly Lenovo and HP), laptops, monitors etc. I've looked around but not really been able to find anything - I might even have to go bespoke, and this might also be more appropriate to an apprenticeship stlye of learning. In fact, I suspect the intention is to bring in an Apprentice with the intention of carrying out regular in-house repairs. For reference, I did the CompTIA A+, back in 2006/7 and a Computing HNC in 2010, neither of these were practical 'hands-on' courses. I suspect that most of us only attempt to repair items that are out of warrantee and you've got nothing to lose by trying out a repair, when the alternative is the scrap-heap. So if anyone knows of any practical, hands-on, general hardware repair/maintenance courses, I would be very much obliged if you could share your thoughts. Many thanks!
  2. HughR
    Hi there, My school will be moving over from SIMS to Arbor over the summer holidays. We have some fairly complex Assessment Management templates set up on SIMS and I was wondering how I would go about implementing these into Arbor. For our KS3 Cohort, we're not using 9-1 outcomes, but instead a Ranked Progress indicator comprising a percentage test score upon which the rest of the cohort is ranked and categorised as a percentile (and colour-coded accordingly) as well as being assigned a progress indicator (BEP, EP, AEP... Below Expected Progress, Expected Progress and Above Expected Progress). Most of this is managed within SIMS, though there are some calculations that are done in Excel, such as the Percentile score caps (which have to be calculated externally and entered into a Nested IF THEN ELSE which then calculates the five possible Percentile outcomes (as well as Colour-coding appropriately). So it's a question of how much of we're currently doing in SIMS Assessment Manager can be replicated in Arbor. There is an additional complication - being that I am currently 12 days into my 4 week notice period (moving onto pastures NHS) and I'm trying to get something set up before I go that my colleagues can roll with. The templates I have set up on SIMS are pretty complex from my perspective and I don't think this fact is fully appreciated by our SLT, so ideally I would like to know how much of what we're currently doing can be continued, some elements might even be easier... which would be great... but we just don't know. I can provide examples of the types of formulae we are using and the logical steps that are taken to achieve the data outcomes our SLT expect to see. Kind regards, Hugh
  3. HughR
    Perfect! Many thanks!!
  4. HughR
    Hi All, i haven't posted for a while. I've been asked how to remove pupils from SIMS (because of the forthcoming Census) who are in a pre-admission (Application) status... one of the Following: Rejected, Accepted, Applied, Offered, Withdrawal. I suppose some of these may potentially still turn up at some point, but for now, I think we want them off SIMS. The person who normally does this is off and uncontactable. Thanks in anticipation for your support on this!
  5. HughR
    Yeah, the comma would help! I think that SIMS itself converts the Surname to capitals for the 'benefit' of the marksheets. In the student record, it's fine. Like, I say Capita would probably call it a 'feature' (I'd call it something less polite!).
  6. HughR
    Perfectly summarised! Capita would probably say "It's a feature..."
  7. HughR
    It's the Default output on a SIMS marksheet. If there was a way to force two separate columns on a marksheet (i.e. Column 1: Surname, Column 2: Forename), that would make the whole thing unnecessary, but SIMS has been this way for at least the last 10 years, so it's likely a legacy thing.
  8. HughR
    Ha ha! For us it's the opposite. Thanks for the formula though - I'll have a go at adjusting it
  9. HughR
    @Seb1780 This is certainly a lot more elegant than mine... however when I tested it, it threw up a few issues e.g. If the Surname contained more than one name (hyphenated names were fine) the output was a little off: (names changed) JONES MALLOY Evan (output was: MALLOY Evan Jones) SMITH HERBERT DONNELLY Peter David (output was: Smith HERBERT DONNELLY Peter David) A lot of this has to do with the way that the student data has been put into SIMS, but a lot of our (mainly Arabic) names have multiple (and inconsistent) components. My formula above does what I want it to do, but yes, messing about with unicode, ASCII conversions back and forth, is messy. Could your formulas be adjusted to compensate do you think? ***Edit*** I suppose the issue is multiple spaces.
  10. HughR
    Ok, testing this...
  11. HughR
    I've tried to do this before and there are various ways of doing it. I usually: 1) Export to Excel, 2) 'Text to Columns', 3) Copy/Paste the SURNAME into Word, 4) Ctrl-A (Select All), 5) Shift-F3 toggle until correct format achieved, 6) Cut-Paste back into Excel 7) Tidy up and CONCATENATE as appropriate. I've tried doing this with Formulae before, and struggled. I have now managed to put together a few formulae that work EXACTLY as they should do, so I thought I would share, as I expect others have the same issue (N.B. I know you can do this using a SIMS Report, but sometimes you will want to work directly with the output from a marksheet, and this just makes it easier if you want the Surname and Forename columns reformatting). Column A [starting A1], contains: 'SURNAME Forname' e.g. MOUSE Mickey, DUCK Donald. Don't bother with Headers. In Column B (B1), Paste in the following Formula: (N.B. This is an ARRAY formula, so you will probably need to enter it using Shift-Ctrl-Enter, it will end up parenthesised within {curly brackets}. =MID(A1,MATCH(1,(CODE(MID(A1,ROW($1:$255),1))>=97) *(CODE(MID(A1,ROW($2:$255),1))<122),)-1,255) In Column C,(C1) Paste in the following Formula: =PROPER(LEFT(A1,D1)) In Column D, (D1) Paste in the following Formula: You can hide this column afterwards. (N.B. This is an ARRAY formula, so you will probably need to enter it using Shift-Ctrl-Enter, it will end up parenthesised within {curly brackets}.) =MATCH(1,(CODE(MID(A1,ROW(A$1:A$255),1))>96)*(CODE(MID(A1,ROW(A$1:A$255),1))<123),0)-3 Copy DOWN, B1, C1 and D1 to the bottom of your Name list. Save and store for future use. I hope this is useful to you! If you have an easier way of doing this, perhaps you could post below! I would like to claim that this is all my own work, but I have put this together from a number of different sources and adjusted to suit. Cheers, Hugh Sources: https://excel.tips.net/T009089_Splitting_Cells_by_Case.html https://www.excelbanter.com/excel-discussion-misc-queries/247561-split-cell-based-uppercase-text.html Find Position of First Capital Letter in a String – Daily Dose of Excel https://satyadipan.blogspot.com/2016/10/c-program-to-convert-uppercase-letter.html https://superuser.com/questions/1302988/split-cells-by-uppercase-and-lowercase-words-in-excel
  12. HughR
    I am looking to do something very similar. Currently I am using the 'POSITION' formula to calculate the rank of each pupil's test score compared to the rest of the cohort. It works fine: pupils with the same test score are given the same rank, and the next lowest score is assigned the next rank depending upon how many pupils achieved the same score i.e. 7 pupils score 39 at a rank position of 44, the next pupil with a slightly higher score of 40 will have a rank score 7 places lower i.e. rank 37. My difficulty is that I'm trying to work out a dynamic quintile (increments of 20%) percentage score based on the test cohort (let's say 176 for the sake of argument, in which case the boundary for 20% would be 35.2 etc) rather than 100, so I need some way for SIMS to extract the 176 test cohort number to use in the quintile calculation. I can't see any way to automate this, so I'm having to work this out manually then set the quintile thresholds manually in the NESTED IF THEN ELSE formula. This is fine up to a point - till late test scores come in and change the ranking scores, hence the need for dynamic quintile calculations. I can't see any way of pulling out this cohort number in an assessment marksheet (though it will show it in the SUMMARY). Does anyone know how to extract a representative Cohort number for use in formula calculations? The lowest rank (lowest test score) should reflect the cohort count.
  13. HughR
    Thanks for your suggestions peeps. Ok, I have actually taken a much simpler approach nad used a single cell table and used Tab Stops to tabulate the data in a suitable position - the problem with nested Tables (which was a solution I'd already thought of) is that it printed the table regardless of whether there was 'no data' (i.e. the 'Suppress Rows without and results' option). This approach is not attractive, but it works which at this point is preferable to frantic attempts to fix a broken thing when the deadline is TOOOOO close. I'll have a play around - perhaps with two tables when there's not such a looming deadline.
  14. HughR
    I am setting up a SIMS Individual Report table using Word 2010 for the template. The Table displays a Teacher Report Comment in a large box on the left of the table. To the right of this table are a further two columns split into 4 rows (Target, Grade, Behaviour, Mock Grade). When the large box expands with some of the rather lengthy teacher reports, only the bottom-most of the 4 rows expands; making the whole thing unsightly and unprofessional-looking. Now, on a single document, fixing this is a simple matter of highlighting the four rows and selecting 'Distribute Rows Evenly' and it will fit them nicely to the height of the Comment box. Unfortunately, I have to produce a few hundred of these to a short deadline - is there any way to dynamically resize these rows as the reports are generated by SIMS? Example below... I would be most grateful for any assistance!
  15. HughR
    Ok, if this is the issue where instead of the Student Data appearing, it shows the mailmerge tag instead. There's a really simple way of correcting it: First, edit your report, Save it in the word document (the quick save icon is fine). Close the document. Next, Save in the SIMS Individual Report page. Then, reopen the document (don't make any changes) save again (quicksave) close document. Finally save in SIMS Individual Report page. Basically if you do a double save every time you make a change to the document, this appears to fix the problem - certainly works for me.
  16. HughR
    I'm looking for a reliable way of proofreading en masse a set of comments for Individual Reports, Specifically for 'Name' errors. I am already doing largely successful checks for gender errors and capitalisation checks on subject names. Incidentally if this helps anyone, my method for doing this is as follows: Gender Error Checks: Ensure the 'Gender' field is visible on the marksheet, export academic yeargroup to Excel, filter on gender, copy/paste to Word then do 'whole word' (case sensitive) for female pupils: he, him, his, himself, for male pupils: she, her, herself. I then also do spell checks and grammar checks. Copy/paste back into Excel and Import to SIMS. This is fine for obvious stuff, but context errors and name errors are another matter and these have to be done manually (which is important anyway) - this method is just a way of filtering out a lot of the really simple obvious stuff. N.B. Please don't suggest that we switch to 'Profiles' - that's not goping to happen unless Capita make massive improvements to it. Thanks!
  17. HughR
    We have had this information in our SIMS before. Learning Style - which contains information such as 'Kinaesthetic', 'Visual', 'Auditory' - A previous Data Manager input the information - I've never managed to locate where the information comes from, but it appears to have been loaded in from a spreadsheet. 'Reading Age' is one I need to Add (which is how I found this thread, as I'm not sure where that information comes from either. I don't think it's possible to put this into Lesson Monitor (not sure why you would to be honest) but this normally appears in Assessment Marksheets (and/or Pupil Trackers). If I find out, I'll post it here (In the meanwhile, if you have found out yet please would you let me know!!)
  18. HughR
    Welcome to the wonderful world of SIMS! You're welcome, glad I could help!
  19. HughR
    Hi bastonc, This is very odd, I have just tested the Marksheet I referred to previously, (temporarily deleted pupil data to test a blank field) and the output for a blank field was a zero. I’m going to ask some questions, some of which may sound daft, but I think there may be something happening in the background that is preventing a value from being returned. So please excuse me if these seem really obvious: In the Aspect Details for the KS2 Grades does the Grade Set have a background numerical value? E.g. 2B = 17.00 In your Grade Tally formula, are you using the full available grade set: 1C,1B,1A, 2C,2B,2A, 3C,3B,3A, 4C,4B,4A, 5C,5B,5A,6C,6B,6A,7C,7B,7A,8C,8B,8A In the formula for “ZERO COLUMN + MA KS2 GRADE” are you using: ‘Data Review using Formula’ and if so, are you using Formula type ‘SUM’ and summing the Zero Column and the Grade Tally Column? This should take the Zero column figure regardless of whether there’s a blank anywhere else. Are you definitely including the Zero Column in the SUM?
  20. HughR
    OK, can I just ask what exactly you're trying to achieve? I'm guessing that you want SIMS to return a Zero Value when a blank cell is checked, and when an occupied cell is checked, it returns the value? If that's what you want to do, then you just need to use the Zero Column, followed by a "Grade Tally Column" [you'd need to put in all available grades as the criteria], then a Plus Formula ("Zero Column" + "Grade Tally Column"), then check for 1s and 0s. So: [table=width: 750, class: grid, align: center] [tr] [td]Zero Column[/td] [td]KS2 Score[/td] [td]Grade Tally Column[/td] [td]Zero Column+Grade Tally Column[/td] [td]If Then Else[/td] [td]Output[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]0[/td] [td]3[/td] [td](tally value of 1)[/td] [td]1[/td] [td]If >0 Then "KS2 Score" Else 0[/td] [td]3[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]0[/td] [td]BLANK[/td] [td]BLANK[/td] [td]0[/td] [td]DITTO[/td] [td]0[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]0[/td] [td]4[/td] [td](tally value of 1)[/td] [td]1[/td] [td]DITTO[/td] [td]4[/td] [/tr] [/table] Obviously, this depends on what you're doing but if it's something like this, then this should work. Or a variation thereof. {EDIT} Sorry, this is really hard to read - I tabulated it, but it didn't come out in the post. Trying again with an HTML Table.
  21. HughR
    I know that you've now cracked it, but I just read this thread while looking for something else and I think I might be able to answer an issue from your original question regarding a 'Blank' value and a 'Zero' value. On one of the Capita Stock Templates that I used recently for End of Key Stage 3 (KS3 C. Subject TA 2013), there was a Validation Formula used for carrying out a data presence check. The first column on the template was called 'Zero Column' which was a 'Formula Review' with no result set. The Formula Type is 'Equals' with a Constant Value of 0 (Column/Constant). So this is basically an Initialiser that can then be used in Grade Tallys and IF Then Else formulas if need be. I know you've resolved the problem already, I just thought I'd point out this method of setting a default 'Zero' value.
  22. HughR
    Thanks for that, I was hoping to avoid Access having had my fill of it in an HND. I suppose it makes sense though - I'll have to bite the bullet, it'll pay off in terms of time-saving in the long-run I suppose.
  23. HughR
    Hi, I want to insert a pagebreak in a mailmerge. I am trying to print out class lists, and can do it if I manually filter the classes one at a time, but it's very slow. I'd just like to be able to fire-and-forget. You can see from the embedded image, that the class name changes. At the point where it changes, I want to be able to insert, or force, an automatic pagebreak. For the life of me, I have not been able to find a way of doing this. Any suggestions?
  24. HughR
    Thank you all for your responses - sorry I searched for a thread like this but was unable to find one. I thought it sounded too good to be true (at least for the school anyway), so back to the drawing board.
  25. HughR
    Our school has a number of printers that have failed outside the 1 year manufacturers guarantee (Mainly HP's). Repairing the printers is financially non-viable, so they usually end up sitting gathering dust for several years then being thrown out. It is unlikely that the technicians here will receive training or facilities in printer repair, so we usually end up just buying a new printer to replace the failed printer. Recently I heard that all electrical (and virtually anything manufactured) equipment sold in the UK is subject to a statutory 6-year warranty (5 in Scotland) under the 'Sale of Goods Act 1979' where the onus is on the vendor to supply goods fit for sale. I was wondering if anyone has made such a claim, if not, why not and if so, what was the outcome. There is a standard letter template provided on one of the BBC consumer rights sites for buyers to make a claim from the supplier. The rules for 'distance buying' are the same as 'high-street' purchases, although if the goods were supplied from offshore, I'm not sure what the outcome would be. Help and consumer advice would be appreciated. Thanks!
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