matt40k

OMG... Seriously, have they FINALLY gotten rid of it?! I had this discussion with a high school 4 years ago!! Basically they moved to Win7 x64 and it stopped working and I was like, umm, why are you using the OLD Nova-T4 reports, why aren't you using the NEW reports which is one menu option down with more options? It's been in SIMS .net for ages. Finally Capita have killed it, YAY!!! I feel we need some cake to celebrate the fill nail in the Nova-T4 coffine - help a guy out @creese, it is Friday after all

To even it out a bit, they're playing catch up... 4 other MIS players have been on it for a while... and it's the whole package not just hosting... Arbor: Arbor Education Adaptive Management Platform | CloudStore | Gov.UK RM Integris G2: Integris G2 | CloudStore | Gov.UK Progresso: Progresso Bromcom: Bromcom Cloud MIS for Primary Schools | CloudStore | Gov.UK

Yer, its like my dad and tea. If I put the kettle on he appears.

HAHA!!! My mistake wasn't moving far enough anyway, my new team is on the other side of the room - I can still hear them moaning!!

You mind editing out his email address. Poor guy dealing with a SIMS release, he doesn't need a mailbox full of spam to top it off

What, do you HDD fail that often? Pretty sure if I had to replace\rebuilt\deploy that frequently I'd scripted it.

Eh? You know you can deploy to batches right? Also you could script the agent install then you just need to add them to channels to get SIMS so you don't need to enter a user\pass (I believe)

Yup. Mate installed it on a old AMD machine and it made the world of difference. I would still look at replacing them however, two options are the - ask if this goes wrong, are they ok if it doesn't get repaired\replaced as its out of warranty? If they say they are ok to buy a new one if it breaks. Then replace it, cause clearly they have the money. Other route is to look at the power usage - the new PSU have 80% High Efficiency, so you should see a drop in the old electric bill - I know one school covered the cost of a new server with one years worth of savings. OK a desktop won't be on as long as a server, but your have more desktops running so the costs do add up.

Depends where the list is coming from. Person ID would be better on a SIMS reports then DOB, both from a matching and from a data protection aspect.

Another one is zpanelcp.com. Can be installed locally as well so at least you won't be worrying about Joe Public seeing what they're producing.

That's not always possible. Think about it in terms of third parties the school works with. You don't want to give them access to your data, so you need a way to funnel the information back in to SIMS to then send it out (via InTouch \ SLG \ SchoolComms) and it needs to be quick, easy and accurate.

Excel is amazing tool, it really is. I've been designing cubes this week and using excel to interrogate the data and it's so much better then other tools, even expensive enterprise grade tools! My current saying is "everything goes via Excel, so it's a nature starting point for any type of data analysis. Why bother using a third party presentation layer to get at the data when you just going to slap it in Excel THEN start working on it. Get Excel pointed at the data". Really is a shame Capita hasn't embraced analysis services. With that said, I do feel you missing the crucial step of passing back to the source system. The problem with Excel, or any other application for that matter, is the second you don't pass the data back you create silos of data. Silo data will fast become out of date and inaccurate. Detentions should be in SIMS, helping out at events should be in SIMS (you really need to record the good things children do otherwise you end up with a database full of failings and a bleak outlook on an actually really positive school environment). Pulling a group together by geographical SHOULDN'T be hard - I bet it is however which is a real shame. I agree with the fact you'll get some random list come from a somewhere external, and you should be able to import it - but that should be Capita doing it. Not a third party. Anyway, just my 2p.

It's too hot to work and it's Friday. Go get a pint.

You know it doesn't need to run on the server right? Runs on any SIMS .net client

Lack of knowledge here, but wouldn't you want to in SIMS create a "group", call it Prize Winners, add it as a positive behaviour to each pupils record then somehow SchoolComms to pick-up on that behaviour action and give a list of students? Just thinking the whole export to Excel seems a wasted step.

You got SIMS .net installed ok on the machine? Is the SIMS.INI - got the right path to the application?

You could bulk import, still won't save you from incorrect spellings.

Though that was what work experience was for? Failing that, one of the tasks of a apprentice Still could just be me though, I don't drink tea\coffee, so they need to do something

Exams uses the simsdirectory= in the sims.ini, is the drive mapped to the correct instance?

If Capita are doing it, then brill. You don't have to worry about merging the data the right way for starters. They are very good a detailing what they will and will not do. Like @creese has said, be very, very clear what data you want migrated. Very clear.

Good luck. I would have thought you'd just CTF import the students and do everything else from scratch and just not bothered with the merge tool.

I thought it used your local email client - I use Windows 8 Mail client which uses the ActiveSync ie HTTPS at home and that works ok. Also, I think you can set up a SMTP relay with Windows Server, lot less of a headache then exchange - thought that was the idea of o365, to take away the hassle! Also if your on LA broadband they normally have a SMTP relay you can use.

Ohh... and if you had staff email addresses in SIMS, you could email them the temp password (insert security disclaimer) - if only there was a tool to bulk import staff email addreses into SIMS .net - https://simsbulkimport.codeplex.com/

I wonder if the running the sims transfer login would have kicked it into work, or doing a backup, restoring the backup from a few nights ago then restoring the backup you just did would have resolve it. Still that would take rather a long while and only might fix it. Does re-enforce what I said about using Windows Auth over SIMS SQL Auth!!

Checking SQL server is running on the server would be the first thing to check.