matt40k

Capita aren't the only one who offer the service you know! (@GREED kinda like saying only 1 company provides a MIS!) Number of LAs and other third parties provide the service. Lot cheaper too. And... if Capita or any of the other companies that do it, don't do it right, tell them. They aren't mind readers, they can't investigate faulty installs if people don't tell you it's fault. It's like a teacher complaining to the head because a few machines in the IT rooms doesn't work - can't fix it if they don't tell you! I think it's right we need to keep the discussion of permissions out of the public eye - you need to contact your support team, if you don't agree with what they've said, then poke Phil or someone until you get an answer your happy with. For me, this is the same as talking about the default user\pass - it needs to be discussed, but not where little kids are watching - point and case - http://www.edugeek.net/forums/mis-systems/146395-anyone-wana-help-me-scomis.html Just to be clear, this isn't me or anyone having a go, it's just highlighting an issue, the only people moaning are you guys at Capita. Clearly Phil is in the dark, so if you know this has happened, raise it with them. We can't progress if we can't tell your doing it wrong without everyone flying off the handle. SIMSPerm was right in the days of NT, when admin network security was physical. The S drive is as much as a relic as SIMSPerm. 90% of users don't need a S: drive and no-one needs local admin rights nowadays - thanks to SOLUS3 - as @synaesthesia has stated (see it isn't just me!). Edugeek is a really great place, but if we can't give feedback or point out when information is out of date, how can we keep this place epic? Anyway, I'll shut up now, I can't offer detail and I'm now out of date when it comes to SIMS and I've said my peace. I'll just laugh from twitter as we do the loopback round to Capita bashing.

The problem with just giving out information is it differs based on YOUR setup also the information gets out of date quickly, too often I've had schools using a 3 month old document to install SIMS which leads to problems as the information is already out of date. It isn't a question of following a document, its about learning a new process - do you have the time to learn something that'll you'd do once? Because the next time, you'll do it will be in 3+ years and what you learnt will be out of date. It generally takes a technician a week to move SIMS correctly, plus the time it takes the support teams\Capita to help work out the bugs - 1 week at minimum wage is £240.50 and I'd hope your on more money then that - you can pay a expert to move SIMS for that who keeps up-to-date and does hundreds of SIMS moves a year and will get the job done within a day with min fuss. If you're supporting a few schools like your feed primaries, by all means, go on the training and keep up to date. But for one school? Not sure the math adds up. RE: No SupportNet login - not sure I quite get why, if you have a SIMS license, you have a login, so... No. That's how problems occur. "I assumed he did a backup before I did the upgrade." is my current favorite.

You mean "Technicial Essentials - SIMS technology for Technicians" course (Resource ID 23616 for anyone with permissions to Capita training material) @Ecclesbury You'd hope things like non-standard permissions would be covered off in the handover! Like @PhilNeal, stick your hand up if it isn't else they won't know it ain't happening, they aren't mind readers!!

Just been to my son's first christmas play and I just want to say thank you to all the IT technicians who get roped in to provide "IT" support both in the run up to the play and during it. I know how you tend to ask yourself the same question, how did I end up here, sitting in front of a hall full of parents amongst a small army of small children watching their children perform on stage, holding a laptop waiting to click a button to go to the next slide, regardless of how you got there, thanks for helping out. Once again thank you Parent of Sheep No5 PS: Might want to ask Santa\Bursar\Boss for a wireless remote for next year

@GREED RE: DPA, we both know the answer as to why there is no feature to delete records, no one wants to be the person who specs it and they don't want to write it. Capita don't believe it makes business sense to do it. That's the honest truth. They'll hide behind the politics, but the true is no-one wants to stick the head over the trenches. It'll come down to the first court case for not following the right to be forgotten. Most likely when a student gets onto SIMS and finds one of the NQTs student records and exposes it school which causes the NQT to quit.

You can spend months waiting for someone to draft a post like that so it doesn't offend people, mean while the problem still exists. I accept it's kinda condescending, but it's like it an offense to be intoxicated (drunk) and in charge of a cow in Scotland - I'd thought that would have been a known, but you someone has got into trouble so they've have to make that law. You have to accept they have to cater for, the lowest and the highest. If it makes you feel any better, he said Engineer - he didn't say who those engineers are - far as we know he was refering to Capita Engineers haha!!

Don't really read that as blaming, more a word of warning. Kinda like, don't rebuild your domain controller based on a few forum topics.

Wonder where it is on the pile, hopefully not under Nova-T7 SHOULDN'T. Capita is a company made up of people. People make mistakes.

I wouldn't say it's random, it's based on feedback. And again, it's hard to judge the setup based on the limited information you've posted. Is this Bedford or Chelmsford? Was this yesterday, or 3 years ago - is the information out-of-date? Did they use FMS? Is the Census folder on a drive other then S:? Is it any number of questions about the setup? Has the person who set it up getting told off right now for not following procedure? The point is, you can't use "well they do it like that" as a reason to bypass security. Microsoft has spent millions of dollars and man hours creating a secure system and it seems ridicious for logical people to override those security measures because it perceived as easier. Why is this even a thread beyond the initial post (except @forkies point)? Surely people can understand why a topic about security specifics doesn't want to occur in a public arena where "hackers" are lucking - especially when we need to accept we have legacy requirements that may require additional permissions beyond what we should except nowadays. I could understand this topic occuring in SupportNet where members are at least vetted first, but EduGeek. Mind boggled to say the least.

Well I can't comment on Capita Engineers - I think LA provide far superior support, of course I'm gonna say that. Few comments however, there is "Capita" as in Bedford who create and support the software, and then "Capita" who are basically just a helpdesk - like any other LA - which can be good or bad. Also you said you're basing it on a primary school - ie a morning work, maybe 2 or so workstations vs a secondary school which is a lot more of a complex beast. Also, define all staff have access? Does all staff just mean office staff or include teachers?

I think people are missing Phil's point. Saying whats the S Drive permissions is like saying, what do I set my page file\swap to. It isn't a set number, it's based on a number of factors. Each setup will be different, phone that damm support team you pay all that money you moan about and get them to help you figure it out. Don't assume because its what someone else has is correct, even if it works - like Phil has send, it's just caused someone to leak BACS files, you know, those things that get you paid - ps: feel free to add a few rows to pay me a xmas bonus @forkies - Yup, with you on this one.

From SupportNet

Well I never, I've had people buy Server license and forget the CALs, but I've never seen someone buy the CALs but not the Server license. Thought it was pretty clear Buy SQL Server 2012-2014 | Microsoft

I think perhaps using SOLUS3 for what it was designed for would be a good idea going forward. The whole idea was rolling out patches is much easily rather then having to full (re-)release, so don't withdraw it on SOLUS3.

Well I think we've scared the poor lad off. If you are still hanging around, try this job application form - Job Application Password security isn't a IT problem. It's a life skill. Its like reading and writing. If you have staff who don't can't set a secure password, I'd be questioning why you've hired them and how your going to support them (ie hire a PA). And remember, SIMS isn't IT system like Active Directory or Spiceworks. It's IT application, just like online banking. You're gonna get involve when the internet goes down, but you'd be dammed if your getting access.

I think you'll find the SalamanderSoft product far superior. Have you download the manual off supportnet? Id is 21441

No, get them involved them as early on as possible. The long you leave it and the more fudging you do, the more they have to unpick. If they have to involve Capita and they wave their charging stick, its about £400 a day. If your setups directory is corrupt and your not using SOLUS3, they'll need to send you a fresh copy if its become corrupt, no getting away from that.

I have a sneaky suspicion your using @Ghostgame instructions. Might be worth giving him a call. FYI: The updaterepository is used to deploy the connection files (sims.ini, connect.ini, fmsconnect.ini), you need the S3 agents to be able access to download it - stupidly it goes to a windows share rather then transmitting it over the tcp port and the s3 agent runs as the local system account. The switch off offline files is to stop your computers caching the share - cause it really doesn't need to waste the disc space.

Did you publish SIMSLOAD? Or Pulsar? The startmenu shortcut includes both and you need to remove the simsload.

No idea, I've yet to throw some of my own my at one, but the Chromebook revolution sounds alot like the thin client revolution. It's all good, if you fully commit. I'll give you its alot better then the netbook revolution!

Ouch! You can get a Windows 8.1 laptop for less then that and its got a touch screen!! - Linx 10.1" Tablet Bundle with... | LINX10B/BUN@BUN | £141.66 | Insight UK

They created after a bit of stick from some schools who forked out £££ InTouch and didn't want to manually re-enter the details. Quite rightly so too, that's the point of computers, enter once, re-use over and over again, not enter, use, then re-enter every time you want to use it. It was a fudge to solve a problem for someone, first version you had to have the csv file in a folder in the D: drive. Kinda sums it up for me. Plus side, you're forced to created a backup pre-import, still that's only helpful if you're going to notice that your data is duff before people start entering new data onto the system which prob won't happen as you didn't notice before you imported it when it was on a nice spreadsheet

You mean the db patch that imports from CSV files?

Can't comment of the new UI, haven't used it. The old one, yer, took a bit of understanding, but the idea was sound and once you got your head round it was fine, assuming you've not got DNS issues or rebuilding\renaming workstations every 5 mins. There are lot of benefits of S3 over S2 - central deployment, reporting, automation means you have accurate list of what machines have SIMS installed, that they are all installed the same, on the same version. You'll be suprised how often random machines will pop up when you move the SIMS server and it didn't get it's local connect.ini updated. Least with S3 that gets resolved once and for all. Ain't on S3, you don't get SIMS\FMS\Discover\whatever. Regarding a network of 2 (or even 1), yer, utter pointless-ness, complete overkill. That said, really you shouldn't have only 1 or 2 workstations accessing your MIS. You want more access so data can be entered closer to the source, that said, nursery level that might be an exception to the rule

Contact Capita\LA. If they're kind they'll give you a zip with just the files SOLUS2 doesn't update, if they're not, you'll get sent a ISO and you'll have to extract and copy over the files. Cheats way would be to run simsapplicationsetup.exe, that'll get SIMS installed and when you run SIMS, SIMSload will install the remainder (ie sims manual setup etc). For the win, setup SOLUS3.