David44

Does anyone use Cunninghams IDStore for systems other than Cunninghams Catering? For example, printing/photocopying or password reset system etc? Has anyone successfully migrated away from IDStore after they have started using it?

How are people blocking spell check on Chromebooks?

Open Powershell and type it in. If that doesn't work, try... Import-Module netldpagent and then try typing the command in again. If that doesn't work, ask again.

Check your contract with Capita, I'm not sure you are allowed to say that. Right, that's it! See you in court, pal.

Hashtables are a thing in Powershell though. Something like this could work. $items = @{} $items.bananas = 36 $items.apples = 53 $items.carrots = 24

Just a quick one, has anyone sent any SIMS Parent invitations out today? Do they show as being sent in SIMS Product Admin or do they just show a status of 'processing' as ours do? Thanks all.

Is there anyone who has already done this and is also willing to share the line from their XML file that does the magic?

That's interesting. I hadn't quite twigged that's what the instructions were describing. You seem to have written in one sentence what their official documentation couldn't convey in pages and pages of waffle. To be clear then, you activate the software on one machine, that puts something in the Unlock.cfg file, you copy that to a share somewhere, copy it to the next machine, activate the software again on that machine and then copy the file back to the network share and repeat 50 times? I have some bad news for you.

Has anyone deployed this software on to multiple machines? It seems the Ableton Live Suite is very much aimed at a single user on a single machine. They have some documentation about installing it on a suite of computers but it involves manually opening the software and changing settings on each of the PCs that the software is installed on. We have around 50 machines to do this on, which is annoying and is going to waste a lot of time over the summer but I am actually more worried about doing it all again on a single PC that has been rebuilt in six months time than the 50 now. How have other schools handled this? Did you manage to package the software in any sensible way to get it to deploy without having to open and configure it? Thanks. David.

Can't you just run the Salamander script manually?

I'm sure the programs suggested so far are great but sometimes you just need to use the wrong tool for the job to get the job done. Therefore, use Excel or Google Sheets for this. Create a new sheet, in column A paste the list of filenames that need to be changed. In Column B, paste the list of what they need to be changed to. In column C paste this formula ="ren """&A1&""&""" """&""&B1&"""" Copy the formula so it repeats. Now copy and paste the whole of column C in to a command prompt and your images will be renamed. Or, just see the file I have attached and modify it as you see fit. rename_files.xlsx Sometimes the right tool is the wrong tool.

If you are thinking about hosted SIMS, have a look at the service status page... https://myaccount.capita-cs.co.uk/Notifications/capita-hosted-services-status-page/ See how often it isn't working. It seems to be quite often.

We are currently looking for the above as we are moving to Chromebooks from September. This is for a secondary school so the DTP software ideally needs to have the equivalent functionality of MS Publisher. The video editor should have the same functionality as a very old version of Adobe Premiere as that is what it is replacing. I know the second one is a big ask. Anyone using Chromebooks for Media Studies already? If so, what software do you use? Thanks David.

Just sent INFO to 85075 and three wanted a follow up text with 'the account holder's date of birth'. This is a PAYG SIM!

Programmers make mistakes. It happens. It's the testers or the test process I would be questioning. If they didn't have a test for this problem as part of their automated test suite last year, then they certainly should now. Seems they haven't learnt much from the last time when it comes to their communication process either. Once again we are hearing about this on Edugeek before Capita publish anything on their site.

Only time I have seen this is when we have wanted to delete a user, and have used the RMMC to do so (which you should always do on a CC4 network as it adds/removes the user in it's own Postgres SQL database as well as AD) and then wanted to create the user again for some reason and it won't let us because it turns out it didn't remove it from the RM database properly. Not that it ever truly removes users from the CC4 database anyway. Get RM to dial in, connect to the 'first' server and change a 1 to a 0 in the CC4 database row for this user and watch as every user you have ever had is listed in there (just with a zero in one of the columns instead of a 1).

Firstly, this clearly is a SIMS issue. Decent software doesn't display errors like that to the end users. Probably an obvious suggestion but as you are an RM school, do you know if the problem only effects one user and if so have you tried a profile reset for that user in RMMC? The other method of printing these reports is to generate them as files and then drag them all on to the attached VBS file. This is probably quicker than SIMS printing them anyway. Print.vbs

Also being discussed here... http://www.edugeek.net/forums/mis-systems/198167-urgent-capita-sims-data-issue-issued-childrens-services-15.html

Have you had confirmation from Capita that they are aware of this issue and they are not going to fix it? I have raised a call with Capita this morning and had no response yet.

I think this must be new as I found it earlier today too. I think I was taken to this page when I switched user accounts.

Changing your SIMS data to be knowingly incorrect (i.e. recording the fact that you have parental responsibility for a child when in reality you don't), must be against GDPR even if you do ask the parent(s).

How do you know you have this issue? Do you rely on parents telling you?

Are other schools having any issues with SIMS InTouch today? Text messages not being received by the school and text messages sent by the school taking ages to arrive?

I wouldn't know, Capita don't offer the ability to see what parents see or for anyone who isn't a parent to see what the app looks like or how it works. I suppose even Capita couldn't mess up a simple app like SIMS Parent though. That's assuming parents can get past SIMS ID and never want to change the third party social media account they sign in with because Capita have decided that that process should involve the parent having to notify the school and the school having to send a new invitation code, and assuming Capita haven't been sending out invitation codes that are invalid for the past few days for some reason and assuming that the parent hasn't already registered for SIMS Agora and so SIMS Parent tells them they are already registered but doesn't let them log in with their existing SIMS ID linked social media account and the only advice Capita can offer after having a ticket open for several weeks is to unregister them from SIMS Agora, send them a new SIMS Parent invitation, which gets stuck on 'processing' for half an hour, then have the parent register with SIMS Parent then send them another SIMS Agora invitation so they can register with that again and finally they can see their child's attendance percentage which doesn't match with what they have been told by the school because the attendance figure in SIMS Parent is displayed termly rather than by academic year to date like it is everywhere else, that's if the parent doesn't have their font size set higher than the default on their device because then the app will not only look terrible but will display the wrong date for some reason and Capita only seem interested in closing and merging tickets rather than resolving the problems reported or escalating the tickets to someone who can. I could go on.

It's worth mentioning that the field that shows the email address in the 'Reinvite Users' screen is called 'Sent To' and doesn't update until you have sent an invite again. So, if a parent has an email address of [email protected] and you send them an invite but the email address is later corrected to [email protected] in SIMS, the 'Sent To' column will still say [email protected] because that's where the invite was sent to. If you send the invite again, assuming the SIMS Sync has run (which you have no real way of knowing) then it will send an invite to the correct address and update the 'Sent To' field. I am actually not sure what the 'Invite New Users' screen shows. You might find that it too doesn't update the email address until an invitation has been sent. Also, the whole system is rubbish by design, doesn't work properly anyway and Capita seem unable to fix it. Good luck.