woody

Has anybody come across this? For the last week or so, messenger has been signing in but not showing any of my contacts online. If I leave it for a while and come back to it, the contacts appear. But then I try typing a message to a contact, and it appears to be ok. But then a few seconds later, it comes back saying the message was unable to be sent. It just isn't working and I can't find anything on the help site to point me in the right direction. So I turn to edugeek.....

Or what about this (I know the design is a little boring but I can work on that) The first one is the front, and sedonf one is the back!

We have had many interctive whiteboards / projector systems put in by these people: http://www.tgmresource.com Very competative and professional installations IMHO

Ok here is my first go.

Well, if anyone comes across anything that can be used to pull of timetables etc in a browser, that would be really useful.

Norphy's situation sounds familiar. If the kids get out of lesson to come to you, more often than not forgetting their password is a convenience and an excuse to get out of some work. We used a password utility and gave ict teachers access to it - this at the command of the ict co-ordinator. After several members of staff found that their password had changed, and our securus system came up with access to porn on their user account, we where immediately told to remove access to the password changer. Oh how the tide turns! One suggestion could be that you set the passwords yourself and set the GP to stop them changing it. Then give each teacher who needs one a list of the passwords. That should save them coming to you, although it will increase user fraud.

@Matt How extensive is the wireless network you run Sims .net with lesson register over? We are having problems with ours. Windows is being a pain and not running the scripts which map the sims drive amongst others when the laptops log on to the domain over the wireless. I have tried a number of things in group policy to delay the scripts etc, but to no avail. Ta

@Stewart Why do you think My brother has re-written the front end? It would be interesting to see how The owners of facility feel about such a thing.

I have thought of this although I have no sql knowledge. My brother has written his own web front ends to their MIS which is Facility. But when it comes to SIMS, well that's a whole different story!

We recently had an IP camera system installed on top of our admin network. This consisted of 41 ip cameras, some axis and some sirrus. Plus two servers. The servers are running software called Discovere from DVnetworks. We have recently merged the admin network into the curriculum one leaving the cameras on their own cables. However, I have to say that I noticed no slow down in network performance when the admin was running. However we are only talking about 15 pcs and a server plus a few printers. So not like a large curriculum network. I think personally for peace of mind, if you are going to have to pull cables for the cameras anyway, then you should keep them on their own seperate network if this is possible. Also helps with security. All of this cost the school a whopping 30k but it was professionaly installed using POE and good servers but I recon if you did it yourself you could get it a lot cheaper. And especially for just 15 cameras.

Hi, I'm woody please to meet y'all. Oh ok, so I'm not really new. I was 'mark_wood' but I got fed up of that and asked Russ to change my username to something much more fun. 'woody'. Ye ha I'll just go and round me up some cattle. Thanks for that Russ!

Thanks, will try that! Maybe need to ring up the sims help desk and inform them too!

Well, I have had this happen after logging in as a user myself. I don't recall force quitting the application. Then added the user to another group. Took a day to reflect changes.

Yeah, I know where you are coming from. The whole user/group thing looks like it's going to change soon in v7 anyway. It is a bit patchy in v6. Incidentally has anyone come across the anomaly where you change a user's rights by adding them to a group, and it doesn't take effect until the next day? I've had this a few times now, and the sims helpdesk told me it is something to do with windows although they wheren't totally clear in their explanation. Just a passing thought.

There is a lot more to system manager than that. For instance creating your own groups with access rights. Also for backups, installing database upgrades etc etc. I found that at the carlisle course, they went beyond system manager and looked more into how sims works, and how you can keep it going.

I have been on all of the major sims courses. I found them to be very informative. But it all depends on your local sims support team who probably will run your local courses. We have a good one up here in carlisle. If you are looking at running sims from an administrator side, then I would definately sugguest going on the System Manager course. However, I would not go just yet, they are about to update system manager from v6 to v7 this year some time.

How long is the period between being invited yourself, and receiving invites to give out to others?

Thanks for my invite Darren! (via Stewart knight)

You need to get yourself a login for http://support.capitaes.co.uk Do this by ringing up Capita Sims helpline and ask to be put on. Also, if you look in c:\programs\sims\sims .net\ you will find lots of .pdf files for all the modules. But these don't help with daily maintenance.

For the benefit of those of us who are not in a position to test it yet, please relate interesting features / usefull parts of LNM so that we can build up a good picture of what it actually does. Thnx

For server hardware, we use Dell. We have not had one go down ever (apart from power cuts) after 3 years of use. I know what you're all saying. Never say Never!

I like the way the article asked for Apple's opinion. So many times, people say "Oh apple computers are soooo expensive compared to PCs" What they don't realise is that by the time you buy like for like (if there is such a thing) software on a pc comparable to what an apple comes with, PCs work out much more expensive. when you buy your mac, the os comes with it, including a good package of high quality software. Plus the build quality is to a lot higher standard than your average generic pc.

We have bought ALL our licenses at Ramesys. We did not go for the MS Schools License as we didn't want to tie ourselves in. But the licenses are so cheap at Ramesys that it was easier to buy seperate CALS. Ramesys always chuck in the media - other bits and bobs. I deal with GARY. He's very helpful. I wonder what the prices are like for non-specialist schools then?

Why do you not want to use exchange? Is it because of the cost? We bought exchange server 2003 from Ramesys. £99 for the server license and £1.75 for each CAL. If you want to share calendars amongst admin / senior management staff, then you prabably won't need too many CALS. Tell your Boss to cough up the dosh.

Has anybody installed it yet and had a play? I was speaking to an MS guy at BETT on Wed and he said it was a great tool. But he didn't think it did the share/control screens thing which it talked about in the pdf. Anybody shed any light on that?