Steven_Cleaver

Another vote for Insight has been Excellent here and have had a couple of schools in our borough take a look and move from their previous systems to Insight, you can also allow kids access to this and link this to their AD accounts as you can display, Time tables, Exam info including seating numbers, results etc set embargo's so data is only released when you want even though it may have been uploaded to SIM's earlier you can also display reports etc on their although is just linked through SIM's. The system is very configurable and is very easy to use to Tech, Students, Staff and Parents. Probably the only thing I am also not keen on as someone has mentioned is their Wiki but their support is second to none by phone or support ticket most things are answered or fixed in a few of minutes. Even sorted some of my SIM's related issues out.

Completely agree with your comments as regards two Factor Authentication so have built this into our Gateway solution for access for Staff to MIS systems using an Encrypted App. I like the idea of staff and students accessing all resources remotely but it always worried me if a student got hold of staff logins and issues with MIS systems. As you say have seen a few systems where no Dual factor access to access to MIS systems and this always worried me.

Real light dusting here Birmingham\Solihull no Snow day:(. Just can't wait for all the kids throughing hand fulls of slush at each other when I am on duty. Same here though roads didn't seem treated although it wasn't that bad but another hour or so could of been so bit of a gamble.

Just voted.

Cheers Vikpaw thought exactly the same who would strongly disagree, went and told our Cover Supervisor when I saw the Strongly disagree and we could only think of Capita trying to reduce their work load on change requests only joking Phil Neal if you spot this Sorry the post wasn't clear my feable attempt, what happened in essence I think member of Staff returned but was Marked in Cover as extended Absence so Cover Supervisor went in and deleted this but it deleted all the previous absences I think and removed who had Covered those without warning, luckily she has paper copies of this so can go back in and update this just thought it wasn't a good idea for it to remove these without warning. Raised it with the LEA to see if we could get this back but they said we couldn't so they were going to raise a change request but saw one had already been done. Thanks again.

Excellent idea about putting this in five year plan, will add this to my list. Agree with what has already been said. Also things you could include if relevant other systems that are now in place that weren't there a few years ago were applicable VLE, Parental Portal, Remote access etc. Other things you could look at developing if you had extra staffing. Perhaps more support to other areas MIS etc. Issues caused if a member of IT staff was off long term sick because you are already short staffed and impact this would have on the school and lessons (Teaching and Learning) problems not resolved quickly so staff couldn't use equipment due to this. Could provide more staff training in the use of ICT equipment and possibly produce extra staff userguides. Help staff more to develop Curriculum resources Video, pod casting, VLE resources etc. I would try to look at it as well as I need help what extra you could provide so positives where possible.

Hi not sure but would depend on experience as in the add but would deffinately think this would be reasonable and I think they are looking for someone with reasonable experience where the salary would be higher or someone with less experience who they could develop where perhaps the salary wouldn't be quite so high to accomodate training etc. but obviously only my opinion.

If you login and go to Support --> Change Request --> and just enter the CR number in the box provided (1210-1142704). http://support.capitaes.co.uk/ChangeRequest/DetailChangeRequest.aspx?id=%c3%97%c3%a0%c3%91%c3%9f%c3%a8%c3%a8%c3%94%c3%a0%c3%a6%c3%9d%c3%99%c3%a1 Hope this helps and thanks

Would it be possible for users on here who have access to Support Net on Capita to do us a favour and vote this up as we have had an issue with the below and seems common sense to have a warning before you delete one arrangement in Cover in SIM's and if this is linked it deletes all linked arrangements. Currently there is no warning when deleting a cover arrangement, this means that if the absence is for a long period and you want to delete 1 day the software removes the entire absence period and all cover records associated with it without warning. Really appreciatted .

Spotted this not sure if it is of interest to anyone. Just copied the below from their website. Burconix Ltd is a small company located in Central Nottingham. We provide nationwide support to small business and educational establishments. Built on reputation, we are looking to expand our on-site engineering operations to meet an increased demand and enable us to continue to provide the high quality support our customers expect. We are currently seeking an enthusiastic, self-motivated individual with technical experience of Microsoft Windows Networks. An ideal candidate would have previous experience working in an IT support role within a school or college. The role will involve regularly visiting customer sites located throughout the UK, as well as time spent in the office learning new skills and providing customer support. As part of a developing business, this position offers the opportunity to become an integral part of the company's operations and help build on our growing reputation. Job Opportunities - Burconix"]Job Opportunities - Burconix[/url]

We are also looking at a Sixth Form for 2014 in my last post we had a Sixth Form. Managed Wireless with Guest Access so BYOD Sixth Form only not main School. Laptop loan trolley where students could book out a laptop. Computer Suite with about 20 PC's Sixth Form Library with about 12 PC's Interactive Whiteboard all classrooms Small Lecture Theatre with Interactive Whiteboard. Digital Signage. This was for around 220 students. Think I will look at same for the new Sixth Form here but possibly introduce some Ipads or Tablets as well, also if I can get them to give me some space set up a test computer lab for students and set up some old PC's. There are currently three of us managing the network myself (ICT Admin Manager), Assistant Network Manager and Web Development Manager 1050 Students, 104 staff 6 Physical Servers, 20 virtual Servers, 400 PC's, 30 Laptops, Interactive Witeboards, Printers, Photocopiers, AV, some MIS support etc. Probably stay with the same staffing as everything runs fairly smoothly and as much as possible internally hosted, although SLT have mentioned another member of staff.

That would be my guess too seen a couple of these lately, where a whole team seems to be required.

Could try Wix now using HTML 5 easy to configure and maintain.

Gives info on how to do some interesting Science experiments as well as some interesting tricks for fun. brusspup - YouTube

Oh no I have been off since Wednesday and have now used all my holidays up till the end of March because I thought the world was ending today.

Hi Have run the SIM's Server on Virtualised Server for around four years as above on citrix xen and same 4 vcpus and 4gb ram same as pablo007 I have only ever seen it been touched if I try to run some really heavy Reports I have designed and trying to extract masses amount of data during the day when everyone is using it, but to be honest no one really noticed and to be honest think this would be the same Virtualised or not knowing SIM's Reports but was easy to spot because of the Virtualisation Console. Pro's Easy to Monitor Performance. Easy to Snapshot before Sims upgrades.(makes me slightly less nervious with SIM's upgrades just roll back) Better fault tolerance and redundancy. Easier to ugrade more RAM or CPU's. CON's To be honest can't really think of any.

Have a great Crimbo and thanks everyone for their advice this year much appreciatted.

Could save schools a fortune 1 Teacher per department and some of these to replace the rest of the department

Stone here as well next day onsite warranty with 5 year cover so usually replaced before out of warranty on rolling scale but to be honest get at least about 5 quotes every year just to make sure Stone are the best deal all in. So as someone as said get a few quotes and weigh up the options and what your getting for your money. We have used various in the past so Dell, Lenovo and HP all been ok but prefer Stone as usually price is competitive and give excellent support\warrenty. I have a good sales contact here who has been execellent over the last few years who doesn't hastle me but just deals with any queries I have and provides quotes for requirements etc.

I sort of agree with PhilNeal and Greed but it depends on the school and what they expect I have seen someone in another school just do the Data Analysis and reporting a few days a week, but then a Deputy Head at another establishment responsible for and involved in Assesment, Exams and Timetabling as well as intervention and Manage a whole department and set strategies so it really tends to vary and in most cases start as one job but develop over time into other areas. ISM or MIS Manager can be a completely different role in different schools as has been said by a few people anything from some or all of the below; Management of or actually do Managing assessment and progress data and Analysis of this data so exams and internal progress data and providing analysis of this to SLT and Staff. Management of user permissions etc on the schools MIS permissions. Census returns. Management of Attendance and Behaviour Data and Analysis of this data and provide this to SLT and Staff. CTF’s new students and students leaving. Time tabling. Running and maintaining the Exams system. Target setting so setting student and Departmental targets as regards expected progress (although may qualify as strategic. Maintaining data in other systems VLE or Parental Portal or making sure this data is automatically linked into these systems. Training of Staff to use the Analysis Data or the MIS and other systems. Strategic Advise SLT of specific school, year or department issues based on data Analysis. Use Assessment, Attendance and Behaviour data to advise intervention strategies and analyse the success of these intervention strategies. Advise SLT on Target setting strategies. Key Skills Communication, Communication and Communication. Good Excel Skills as I haven’t seen an MIS or data Analysis system yet where you could get everything analysed the way you want in the right format, so you need to be able to extract and manipulate this. Good Maths and Analysis skills help hopefully the system does the majority of these for you but to quickly look at some analysis see that something isn’t quite right and then dig a little deeper helps. Common sense if you can’t achieve something in a certain way don’t keep using the same method try to get what you. To be honest this is only a start but you get the drift.

Sort of where both hats both Network Management and also involved in and line manage MIS or ISM department.

If you PM me with some details I can send you a rough guide for SSL as set all our external web services using SSL so have roughly documented this but have just removed some direct references. I had to write up how we were securing the solutions for the LEA but don't know if you would need to do this as well.

I used N-Stalker and Metasploit just to do a bit of testing but as I said our LEA also do tests on our external facing web services as well.

I have had a go with Discover but it doesn't give me quite what we want although as it develops this may change, I am also sort of looking as you say at shipping over to another SQL instance or using Access and connecting creating ODBC data source instance to extract data only and might to be honest use multiple methods as different methods may suite what we want to extract and how we want to use it.

I have 5 Girls so as you can can't get in the bathroom, luckily have a seperate Toilet, can't get a word in and can't watch the TV in piece, luckily they all like the footy so get away with watching that. I also don't have a very good memory for names and often go through about three names before I get the right name when I have had a beer or two which you can imagine sort of goes down well .