Steven_Cleaver

We ran Mercury with pegasus clients for a few years which worked really well just wanted extra functionality with exchange.

I used Aruba at the last place and this seemed to work really never had any issues with this and worked really well performance wise we were all HP as well, also some cool stuff as regards sort of hotspoting it could sort of tell you roughly each Wireless Device was and also block devices from other sites interfering with your Wireless, I know they are still using this with great success even where they had a couple of classrooms added to the Sixthform and put in Wireless Desktops as no one had thought about cabling issues.

We are a medium sized secondary but kind of done what your head is looking at and just use used moodle as as central location for most of our webservices Remote access (Nick's off here) to Files, Secure Gateway (PC Access), we link surveys in their too and Forums (Students and Staff), Parental Portal (Insight), Youtube Channel and Social Networking, Resources kind of tried to make it look a bit different to standard website. Heres the link below if you would like a look for ideas etc. https://moodle.lodeheath.org.uk/

Hope this isn't off thread, took a slightly different approach created an App for this so created the Marksheets in SIM's with data being analysed as much as possible then export these to Excel onto the Network and tidied these up then these are linked to the App with a button for each departments data.So data doen't leave Network Staff use remote access if they wish to use access the data outside of school hours. So data stays in school.

Thanks for your response to this.

Hi Just thought I would update this and then call it a day with this post I emailed Gary Hill as Phil as suggested see below the response received, I checked that it was ok to post this first. "Hi Steven, I have looked into this case and I can see why you feel such frustration. Whilst the data did take a week to arrive with us, our communication throughout the process, especially through February, was poor. Due to the complexity of the issue, your incident was being worked on by a number of Product, Business Analyst and Developer team members, but you have not seen sight of this for which I apologise. That complexity is why the fix needs to go into a full blown release and unfortunately not able to be patched as a workaround. As these decisions or conclusions were being arrived at, our teams should have engaged you in conversation about the progress, then even if it were ‘bad’ news offered, you would have been able to make a decision about the situation. As the Spring Release code had been ‘locked’ at the time of the case, the only natural course of action was to assign it to the Summer Release, with a high priority. This Release is currently scheduled for the end of June, but will obviously be confirmed nearer the day . For future reference if you feel that you have been waiting too long or need an urgent update, then I would advise contacting our Team leaders, whose Direct Dial can be found in the Customer Charter, this can be located on Support Net within the Sticky Item section. Alternatively you can contact their line manager Lia Worthington Ellis, followed by me if you do not get an adequate answer. Kind Regards Gary" I then emailed back see below and CC'd Phil in. Hi Gary Many thanks as regards your prompt reply and take on the situation. As you say I think your companies response was poor and as you say I am bit frustrated with this, I had raised this issue with our LEA after having trying to resolve the issue here ourselves so both ourselves and then the LEA had looked at the issue and we had pretty quickly come to the conclusion that it was a software issue, that was caused by the Autumn Upgrade as prior to this there was no issue. “For future reference if you feel that you have been waiting too long or need an urgent update, then I would advise contacting our Team leaders, whose Direct Dial can be found in the Customer Charter, this can be located on Support Net within the Sticky Item section. Alternatively you can contact their line manager Lia Worthington Ellis, followed by me if you do not get an adequate answer.” Thanks as regards the information above but I go directly to the LEA for SIM’s support as this is excellent and they have great expertise on their team and always keep me informed but they can obviously only do so much and I just feel let down that the issue was not dealt with as efficiently when they get to Capita. I am sure the LEA will find this information useful though. The issue has also meant that the member of staff responsible for cover is wasting a lot of time editing cover information manually before uploading it to our VLE and also keeping a manual electronic copy of accurate statistics as the issue with Cover means that the statistics held on the system are not accurate. I just want to confirm it is ok to post your response on the forum where I raised this on “Edugeek” as a couple of people have asked me to keep them informed as regards the issue. Again many thanks in taking the time to respond. Many thanks Steven Phil also responded to this with the information below. "Steven just to reiterate Gary’s response to you. We strive to turn things around in hours not weeks and normally we succeed. In this particular case we clearly didn’t and I very much regret that. I have raised questions of the directors in charge of support and development to ensure that we learn from this; there will be times when something takes longer to resolve than is desirable but where something works and then doesn’t I want to know why. You can of course quote anything that we’ve written on EduGeek. Best wishes Phil" Obviously if this is an unusual case as Phil states I am happy to accept the explanation and I am sure Phil will look into this as he states as he seems to respond to a lot on the forum, I would just like to thank Gary and Phil for getting back to me so quickly once they responded to this post.

Head-->Head of ICT-->ICT Admin Manager(Me)--> Assist Network Manager --> Web Development Manager I also as of recently (this week) Manage MIS (MIS Officer and Exams Officer)

Cheers should have noted location.

Cheers Vikpaw I have noticed that you haven't installed the SIM's updates when they sort of say they should be installed by , I was just wondering how you get round Census as I always get told by our LEA if I don't install the SIM's updates we won't be able to do Census or some other school critical thing we don't use FMS so is usually something to do with Census or Exams. Sorry if this is a bit off thread.

Just checked my Email got message below oops bit of bad timing, still trying to sort out issue from last upgrade. "SIMS Spring Main Release 7.144 We are pleased to inform you that the Spring Release of SIMS.net version 7.144 and SIMS FMS 6.144 is now available.. This is an essential upgrade in order to complete the Summer (May) School Census 2012 and your Summer 2012 Key Stage returns. However, before running this release, please ensure that your Spring School Census 2012 has been accepted by your Local Authority or, in the case of academies, your returning body." You have to laugh

It was possible up until Autumn Upgrade as we had been doing it exactly this way for at least 18 months the length of time I have been here. The thread has got a bit off track although I appreciatte eveyones help, but as well as the problem I have I feel that the time scales for support to resolve this issue was poor and this is really my take because Capita are so big things don't get dealt with or resolved quickly enough ( 6 weeks to tell me that they will probably fix it in the summer update) and just get added to a list somehwhere of fixes they need to apply and then they do some and not all, to be honest this isn't just Capita but other large companies within the education sector and I am not sayin all just some. I appreciatte Phil's response and offer of help and I have taken this up but just sorry that this has happened once I have posted on this Forum and not before, just this sort of response needs to be done at a lower level in the company. I'll keep you informed how I get on.

Cheers Phil I will email Gary with the issue and Case reference Number. Please see below the issue (Vikpaw\Witch) we are having that was investigated by us and then more at our LEA support team (Excellent by the way) who kindly provided me with the exact info they sent see below; "In Cover 7. 1. We have a class with a teacher(ST) and no room if we assign this teacher (ST) to cover another class we do not get the displace class option, this is a change from 7.140. 2. Cover is setup in half period mode if try and assign teacher(ST) to this group as well, we do not get the option to displace the room for this class and the class has !NCR, however if we do the same for the second half of the period we do get the option to displace the room and all is ok." Thanks

Cheers Phil I will email Gary with the issue and Case reference Number. Please see below the issue (Vikpaw\Witch) we are having that was investigated by us and then more at our LEA support team (Excellent by the way) who kindly provided me with the exact info they sent see below; "In Cover 7. 1. We have a class with a teacher(ST) and no room if we assign this teacher (ST) to cover another class we do not get the displace class option, this is a change from 7.140. 2. Cover is setup in half period mode if try and assign teacher(ST) to this group as well, we do not get the option to displace the room for this class and the class has !NCR, however if we do the same for the second half of the period we do get the option to displace the room and all is ok." Thanks

Thanks I'll take a look on Suport Net and thanks for reference number. Cheers I sort of feel though that the school pays a fair price for support, SIM's licencing and doesn't really want me to spend too much time fixing problems with software due to issues caused by Software Upgrades when the school pays a vast amount of money for these services. Don't get me wrong I like a challenge and myself and the MIS Manager, Cover Person and Deputy Head spent sometime looking at ways round this that would fit in with what we do, but couldn't come up with a reasonable solutiion that wouldn't cause us issues else where.

It may be the way we do the Time Tabling differently don't take this as gospel as I am only the lowly ICT Admin Manager:) as ours are sort of split sessions so they can select them to cover half the sessioon but not the other half and sometimes first half other times the second half.

I have sort of seen Phil's name a few times on the Forum on a few posts and sort of realised he was involved with Capita. I did look around SupportNet but couldn't find anything and also the LEA I think tried this as we have very good support from the LEA (mostly very good ex MIS staff from schools) but sort of thought if the LEA support or Capita support were looking into it, I would leave it with them.

Hi Phil Thanks for responding to this. I'll get the Case Number tomorrow as we use the LEA for support so raised the issue there first so to be honest it was a week or so with them before it went to Capita and then 6 weeks there. I'll also post a proper outline of the issue tomorrow if that is ok as it was sometime back now and I will need to check everyting out to be completely clear but it is an issue with Cover 7 and the way we were able to allocate staff and move rooms to cover more than one class if they are already shown as teaching a specific class for a session before the Autumn Upgrade, as Senior Management (Head and Deputy Head) here take more than one class in the Main Hall. This has also caused a number of issues including having to edit the Cover list Manually every day to dispaly on our VLE with the correct information and also inaccurate Cover statistics since the beginning of January. Sorry this a bit vague but will add a more acccurate explanation Tomorrow.

After reporting an issue with Cover 7 which was caused by the Autumn Upgrade I have had to wait 6 weeks after it was escualed to various teams within SIM's for them to tell me they can't do anything about it as yet and that hopefully it will be fixed in the Summer 12 release. I am so glad I only rely on the minimal SIM's modules and use other products linked into SIM's to deal with Attendance, Behaviour and Parental Portal etc. and that these companies provide a much higher quality of support and turn around to fix issues even software issues, maximum of usually a week but usually much less.

Completely agree with PhilNeal and Vikpaw as regards making it interesting, updating other information etc have linked ours into the VLE so they go to VLE\Website see various information and then click link to login to access the Insight portal. We have also started uploading all student Reports to here from SIM's as well as working on a complete overview of students information in report style a complete information KS2 to KS3, we haven't got a sixth form yet. Senior staff have also found this a useful tool when issues have arisen and the parent\carer comes in as they can quickly and easily access a simple system that gives them a great overview of how the student is doing and demonstrate any issues to the parent. To be honest we still have a long way to go with this but we really feel it helps with Parental Engagement and can see the possibilities.

I had a look at the SLG but to be honest wasn't overly impressed and thought it was way overpriced and went for a product from TASC software called Insight as a couple of people have mentioned which we feel is much easier to use for Parents and Staff (Attendance,Assessment, Behaviour, Reports and much more) and has a better feel and look, it doesn't allow staff to write reports but costs a fraction of the cost going by the price above around £1,200 a year. As regards staff writing reports we have developed a remote solution for this using an encrypted App for Security, SSL etc.

What about Dothill in essence what HP kit is I think and can sometimes be cheaper.

Please see below MIS Management Information Officer for Lode Heath School in Solihull Lode Heath School please feel free to contact us if you require any further information. Management Information Officer BAND D (£19,126-£27,052 p.a.) 37 hours per week, full year. Will consider flexible hours/term time only for suitable candidates if required. We require a Management Information Officer to be responsible for managing the organisational and process aspects of data handling, reporting and analysis, timetable construction. Completed applications forms must be returned to Mr J Burton, Headteacher, by 12 noon on Monday 30 January 2012, with interviews during week commencing 6 February 2012.

Looking at your requirements I feel it may be difficult to get all of this without a lot of development and up keep I have used and been involved in the setup 4 VLE's at different establishments (Learnwise,Uniservity, Frog and Moodle) all of which have their pro's and con's but all of which need development and upkeep to differing degrees and depending how much you wish to do with them. I feel you will find it very difficult to find a VLE solution that meets your criteria without developing the VLE and up keep. An alternative to this might be to find a solution that you think fits you best and get some organisation to host and develop this for you or to have the VLE as a central source as it were with other solutuions linked in. As regards the VLE's I have had experience with I found Frog and Moodle the best with FROG being excellent for developing resources with Moodle being free and being a bit more flexible but more work to setup but once setup not to bad to maintain.

Hi We Shutdown the Servers and export the VM's in order this is all done via a script then the servers are set to restart, the exports are stored on a Terrastation then over the Weekend they are copied over to a USB Hard Drive again by script. We also use shadow copy to easily restore users data.

MANAGEMENT INFORMATION OFFICER BAND D (£19,126-£27,052 p.a.) pro rata 30 hours per week (flexible)/40 weeks per year Required for February 2012 Lode Heath School (Academy) Birmingham - Solihull Please see website for deatails Lode Heath School Please feel free to contact us if you require any more information. The Current post holder is still in post but semi retired and will be their initially to provide some support and training, on the various MIS systems as well as constucting next years Timetable with myself offering support where possible.