Esteban_Child_of_the_Sun

Are you excluded from the Results Embargo in Exams?

For those who don't have Salamander you can use Capita's SIMS ID Lite to do this.

Your only option in SIMS is to do them individually, but there are 3rd party products that allow you to manage your linked documents (including bulk export) e.g. DMSA for SIMS

I really like their triggered events as it is functionality that is mostly missing from SIMS. The inconsistent nature of triggered events between things entered through their interface and entered through SIMS means it just isn't usable for most of our schools. I'd love it if they found a way around this big limitation and I'm sure most of our schools would too.

If you don't use InTouch, then I'd log a call with Capita to investigate why it's so big. as a "very small Junior School" I'd expect it to be no more than 8-10GB unless you have a lot of add-ons When I say Full SQL I mean not the express version but a fully licenses version, you are correct that the database should be in simple recovery mode. Which bit of Capita set up your SIMS server, was it Capita Children's services or another bit like Capita IT Services (they are not the same). They advised me to use management studio, but I think it depends on which analyst you get on your call at Capita as to the exact response.

With an LDF of 40 GB I assume you are using InTouch and have been for a while (as InTocuh stores all messages in the SIMS DB). Capita have a separate set of resources for removing old InTouch communications form a database which I would recommend you request a copy of. Given your database is over 10GB I'm assuming you are running full SQL so you would be better off following Capita's guide on setting up SQL maintenance plans rather than using the patches/bat file. For shrinking the database Capita say "It should be fine to run a shrink on the Database. For ease we would suggest using the shrink process in SSMS as highlighted in the below guide. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/databases/shrink-a-database?view=sql-server-2017 We would advise running the reindex and update statistics patches after shrinking the database, and of course, taking a backup prior to shrinking the database. Regards 2nd Line Technical Analyst Capita SIMS" Capita may have finally written the KB for this so again I'd recommend requesting this from Capita or attempting to Search MyAccount yourself if you are feeling brave.

Capita have just replied to the call I logged regarding their documentation mentioned above saying "Thank you for getting in touch. We've been informed that patch 25040 was included in the Summer release and the file in question will be updated.". So it looks like Capita just haven't updated their records yet.

according to the Capita documentation that details all the patches that are part of the release (https://myaccount.capita-cs.co.uk/Notifications/SIMS-Release-Download-Links/#Patches-Included if you have a MyAccount login), patch 25040 was NOT included and needs running in addition before the Summer release is applied.

Get a quote from your SSU\Capita and then decide if it's worth it. There will also be a one off license cost as well int he first year.

Lesson Monitor is fairly cheap these days for a primary school unless they are a very large school, one of ours pays a few hundred a year for the annual entitlement for it.

I don't think I'd ever describe NOVA-T as easy, comprehensive would be my word of choice. The standard training on how to use it is 4 days long. Once you understand it then making a Primary school level timetable would be easy, it's getting the understanding that is the difficult bit.

I've not modified that template in particular but I have changed a lot of the attendance/Lesson Monitor ones that use the same method. I logged a call with Capita and they sent me the default template that the system uses for the report I was working on so I could use it as a basis for making alterations.

I've found it is 3rd party applications that link to SIMS that cause this on our systems, I never managed to track down which one(s) and it didn't seem to be causing any problems for anyone so I let it be.

Count is the default when you add any sub report, if you click on the sub report section you added to the right hand side of the window it should change the options available to add.

You need to add data items to the sub report you have added. If you click the blue symbol/icon next tot he sub report you should get all the relevant fields to add to it.

you can add a sort order in the sub report filter

yes you can, I use this Powershell command to run it &$commandReportImporter /TRUSTED /REPORT:$reportfile | Tee-Object -filepath $log -Append

Here is an article about symbolic links that explains it reasonably well. https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16226/complete-guide-to-symbolic-links-symlinks-on-windows-or-linux/

We use the directory junction of mklink to get round this issue. On 64 bit workstations we run as Administrator C: cd "C:\Program Files" mklink /J SIMS "C:\Program Files\SIMS"

I believe that if you have InTouch then it can send attachments through the app in an upcoming release of the Parent App. Capita mentioned it at their latest software update seminar.

Yes you can create marksheets for user defined groups, but before you go down that track how are you creating the reports? If profiles you'll need to stick with the time table route.

Everyone has a test environment, some people are lucky enough to have a separate live environment

Document Management is easy, the folder structure follows the format :\DOCSTORAGE\\\\

We've done this with some of our supported schools, they rent a VM running Windows Server 2016 in the cloud and joined it to their domain (1 domain over all schools) and that 1 VM has everything SIMS related for 3 schools, each SIMS & Discover DB has a prefix of the schools initials and the same is reflected in the Document Management Server. They have been using it like that for over 3 years now with no issues.

You could just specify the UNC path for the SIMSDirectory variable in the sims.ini and that way it wouldn't matter what drives are mapped or used.