ComputingData

The pupil list teacher pulldown is just a way of saving the admin having to cut up the csv file (that can take some time). Teachers don't see other teachers work. It is useful for teacher who teach multiple classes like a French teacher, as they can go form by form just adding the bits to French - then the merge takes care of it all later. Some very small schools like it if they only have 1 pc in a staffroom that everyone shares with 1 logon. If a two teachers add to the same subject then the merge will bring both in, but separate them with a blank line. To select 3rd page in KS2, select the KS2 profile on 'options > printing', then on the third 'page' pulldown to the page you want - rather than the big 'X'. If you're sure things aren't woring quite right, 'export the settings to a file' (see the top help menu) then email it me - I've PM'ed you with my email address - explaining what should be there and I'll have a look at it. It could be a conflict somewhere in the settings or possibly some kind of error, either way it shouldn't take too long to fix and I'll either send you back a corrected settngs file or update the program. The best way to test things out is not to unvalidate then validate as a different program user on the same windows logon. It would be much better to export the settings (either to the server or to a stick), logoff, then login as a different user, install the program, validate as that user then import the settings. This is because Windows normally keeps different users documents and settings seperate - only user read-only areas such as Program Files are usually shared. The template file was a *ALL template, any pupil who's reference number starts with a * is considered a template and not a real pupil. There are a few special templates: *ALL, *EYFS, *KS! thru *KS4, *FE and *NURSERY (I can see Secondary teachers starting to get curious if they read this!) These are all (if they exist) applied to all 'empty' pupils, with *ALL taking the lowest priority on a subject by subject basis (that is they all override *ALL per subject). To apply the templates once you have created the pupils, just do a 'file > empty pupil file', this will clear any text from all pupils and re-apply the templates.

To answer your questions: Save pupils file saves all pupils. This is the easiest way for people to save a file to a memory stick - as it is just a single click. They click 'load pupil file from memory stick' in order to load the file from memory stick when they go home (it's under the validate pulldown or the file > import menu). To get rid of the half page acknlowledgement slip, just go to 'Options', select 'Printing' and you will see a 6 'pages' on the right. The first one is the front page layout, the second is the main text and the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th ones are the optional 'back' pages. Select the pages that you don't want - in this case it would be the 3rd one (top right), with the pulldown to it's right select the page that has the big red 'X'. Do this for all the profiles that you don't want this page to appear on (the profiles selection box is just above the 'pages'). If you want the program to 'know' which teacher is the form teacher for a particular set of children in the csv file, just add a 'teacher' column. If the teacher name is in this column of the list of children then it will be associated with that particular child. Or, if you want, just right click the child once imported and select the form teacher or a particular subject teacher there. You could also use the pupil/subject matric that is under the teacher menu to assign a teacher as a form teacher or a sepcialist teacher to any of the children just by ticking a box or selecting multiple boxes and then ticking 'set'. If they are using a proper Windows Logon to login individually then they should login as themselves and validate, save the password, then save and load their own work individually - as with ANY windows program (windows provides each properly logged on user with his/her own documents and settings on login), they shouldn't unvalidate as windows keeps them all separate, only some of the user 'read only' areas (such as program files) are shared on a modern day system (unlike ReportAssist, NO user data is stored normally stored in Program Files - unless you are running the Alternative installation as described in the resources section of the website - as this is considered 'bad practice' and by default is not allowed on any modern window system, as is the sharing of user data unless in a specific shared folder). If they are all sharing the same computer and are not logging off - for example it is a very small school with a single computer in the staff room and they all take turns 'sharing' the same single user logon, then they just write their own bits to the reports using the teacher pulldown to select their children (if they have bothered to do that). I'm sorry if you had trouble setting up, but to answer your initial comment about comparing RA and RP installing taking different amounts of time... Grrrr! If you already had ReportAssist installed and the school was familiar with it then it would take only 30 mins to setup - it most probabily had been custom setup for that school before on the CD. If you are familiar with installing and setting up programs then I can't understand how it too so long to setup though: *1) You install the program itself, takes all of 30 seconds - click - click - click and your done. *2) You create your user accounts for your teachers. *3) You import from ReportAssist your front page and subject order, edit these if you need to. 4) Export your CSV file from whatever program you're using, then import it into the program. *5) Do a custom *ALL template if you need to, edit it a while, make changes. 6) Upload everything to our servers if you want (some LEAs block saving files to external systems, in this case you can save all the settings to memory sticks like RA) - typically a few moments for the online system if you have a few files, instant for the memory stick. *7) Go to another users machine, install the program, validate as the user on that machine. 8) Either download the settings from the server or import from a memory stick. Click 'yes to default class, select the teacher if you have set them up. Done! The * steps only ever need to be done once - you don't have to do these again next year. You time delay could have been due to external factors. It could be that you have a strange 'buggy' network and have had problems and need to install the alternative network install instead, or you have an LEA that seems to think that schools should be 'locked down' like some episode of 24 - in which case use memory sticks to transport data/settings. Or you may have a proxy that hasn't been tested properly and the ftp settings have been entered in the same as the http settings when they shouldn't have been or ftp proxy hasn't been enabled at all. This may not be a problem next year as I've figured out ways of bypassing the file proxy lockdown issues and will be testing this out over the summer... Edit: I've just re-read the last bit that I wrote and it sounds a bit mean. I'm sorry, it's been edited, and I userstand that you may have just been unfamiliar with how the program works, a lack of comprehensive instructions (being rectified) and somehow it took an extra long amount of time. If you were struggling though, you could have contacted me via a PM or via the RP support email and I would have helped as much and as soon as I could. Further edit: I've sent you a PM.

It's not the same as ReportAssist, so it shouldn't have the same problems (i hope!) ... We are planing a Secondary version, it's early days but most of the work is done and I've sent you a PM about what we may need...

Sorry for going on. lol!

First, to make it clearer, here is what happens when the various 'buttons' are clicked... An admin validates the admin account and creates users, they should never need to unvalidate. They give the user/password combinations to the other teachers, each teacher should have his/her own username/password. When an admin clicks on 'Upload settings' it sends the school details and settings, teacher names (not usernames) that have been created, custom subjects, custom layouts, subject order and a blank set of pupils and any template 'pupils' they may have created. When an admin (within the admin dialog) selects a user, then clicks 'download', it will download a copy of that users work into the 'reportplus/admin' folder in docs and settings (it creates the folder if it doesn't exist at the same time). It doesn't load the report afterwards, it is just a way of backing up what we have. If the admin (within the admin dialog) selects MORE THAN ONE user, the 'download' turns into 'merge' and by clicking this it will download into the admin folder the select users reports, then it will merge them together with the current report. This way the admin can see a current 'state of play', it appends a '_merged' to the save filename, so the admin can't accidently overrwrite his/her original work (in case they are a teacher as well and also using the admin as a username). A user validates his/her account, they should never need to unvalidate. When a user clicks on 'download settings' it will download all the settings, etc that the admin has uploaded. The program will then shut down and should be restarted for the new settings to take effect. When a user has done some work they can save as normal to the hdd or to memory stick, if they also wat a copy to be saved online they click 'upload pupil file to server', we may change this text to 'save pupil file to server' next year to avoid confusion. It is saved on our system under the validated username they used, that is why each teacher should their own username. If the user wants to recover their file from the server they can also 'download pupil file from server'. This downloads their file that is stored under their username. Finally, in order to answer your original question, settings and pupil text are independent from each other, this means that as an admin you can change settings and layouts then re-upload them. If the users then re-download them it will not delete work. However, if you rename or merge subjects (to create a new subject) then people who have started work on the original subject will see that text disappear. But if they re-enable the original subject it will re-appear - it is not deleted. If you are just messing with page layouts, etc then there won't be a problem. Changes to templates will obviously not be applied once a user has started work as they may have changed some of the text that is within what the template created. I know it's not related to your question, but one thing that may be confusing is that the teacher pulldown is just an aid to seeing just your pupils out of the school list of pupils, a teacher cannot see other teachers work. It saves the admin a stage in cutting up a school csv file for each teacher. Reports are usually only merged at the end, it is not a 'live' merge.

The problem then would be that the teacher handwriting is often worse than the pupils (even the under 10's) , so nobody would be able to read it! lol.

I didn't know about those drop downs until relatively recently. Because of the way that RA works - each subject is in it's own edit box and RP uses a single window to edit a report (similar to a wordprocessor) - adding that feature required a little more planning than normal in order to 'get it right'. I'm looking at adding a system I'm calling 'QuickMarks'. It will allow you to do the drop downs for grades, attainments and more. Basically you are not limited to the 2 boxes (one on the left, one on the right) you have with RA. You can also have multiple 'sets' of them per subject. For example some text, some grades, some more text, more grades, etc... if you like. Although it may be too late for your school, this should be added to the program *very* soon. It will be added in such a way that it doesn't disrupt the reporting process. You may want to try using ReportPlus again next year, once more LEAs know about it and/or the http system bypasses them anyhow. In any event I'd stop using Report Assist as soon as you can as the problems it has with Vista and Windows 7 won't go away, they get even worse if you have a 64-bit version of Windows. I'm not quite sure if the reporting system in SIMS would be a good choice though, have you looked at it yet?

Laserblazer: I'm sorry to hear that. Could you let me know what features were missing? I'll be adding them asap! It is a pain how much some of councils lock down web access for teachers - I think they have seen one too many episodes of 24! lol The web side of things is optional, you could use memory sticks in virtually the same way as you did with ReportAssist. See: http://reportplus.co.uk/downloads/usb_settings.pdf and http://reportplus.co.uk/downloads/usb_reports.pdf Over the summer I'm creating an alterative method of transporting the data using http, this doesn't seem to have any of the proxy server problems that the normal ftp system has - if you can create the teacher username when this new method would work fine.

kaphc: If you PM me the details (also include your licence name and the first and last letters of the password) - I can sort the changes to the usernames/delete them for you. If you want to mass-edit the teachers allocated to pupils then you can use the pupil-subject matrix - it's on the teacher menu at the top of the screen. It may look very complicated, but it's like a spreadsheet. Just select the teacher, then tick the pupils who are in his or her class (one of the first columns). laserblazer: If you email me your csv file, I'll take a look at it and see what went wrong - that way it can be fixed for the future.

Hi, If you edit the pupil details (there is an edit icon on the left of the pupil list), then there is a pulldown option to select the class teacher. You can also right-click a pupil and set the class teacher that way, or assign a specialist teacher for a certain subject. I haven't seen the email you sent? (unless you sent it today - in which case, I've just replied - are you R.B.?).

The guide was written as general instructions, if the school doesn't feel comfortable sending the information in that very last section then they don't need to - they can save the settings to memory stick or as a compressed file for importing to other computers (or they can use the alternative method that I've emailed to you). In fact, the original ReportAssist also allowed the user to save settings to their server via plaintext ftp using a standard MS access file. If you're installing remotely then you may like to know that the install has a '-silent' switch, this will install without any messages or windows being opened. If you want or need more switches, please contact me with what you would like them to do and I'll try put them in for you.

smegbrains: Sorry you're having a hard time installing the program. I have a pdf I can send to you if you want to install on a network like ReportAssist did - multiple users accessing subfolders of a shared drive. If yo PM me with an email address I'll send it asap. Currently the way a lot of the hubs/school firewalls/proxies seem to be setup, they seem to ban https protocol and only allow standard http over port 80 - that is why it is disabled as default. It would cause more problems than it would solve. I've no idea why so-one at support has responded to the request for more information. If you try again (email 'ask', but mark it for my attention (Anthony)) then I'll sort out the information you need. Here is some info anyhow : To use the program (without the reportserver save/load system) then no teacher data is sent to our server - only username/password combinations - passwords are sent using a one-way encryption system conbined with a salt string so they cannot be reversed, even if you know a known password and the algorithm used. Usernames do not have to be related to teacher names, that is up to the admin of the system on the schools side.

kaphc is correct. ReportPlus is a good program to switch to if you are already used to ReportAssist. It is not the same program, but has a similar user interface and some of the telephone support staff from ReportAssist also work there.

Lazerblazer: I've looked at it and your right, it has been fixed in the next update.

I'll check out the uninstall. Did you try to uninstall using add/remove programs or the uninstall shortcut? If all else fails, you can delete the ReportPlus folder from program files. But obviously this isn't ideal.

Rachella: Do you mean you want a secondary school version of the program? If so then please PM me and we can chat about what the requirements you might have for a full secondary school version. LaserBlazer: You can set the teacher per subject, but you're right about the effort/attainment drop downs. I'm sorry, but I wasn't aware of them until recently - they shouldn't be much of a problem so they will be added to the program soon (it's just a matter of making them fit in with everything else and updating the RA import wizard routines). I've tried to make the program as flexible as possible so you can go to up to FE if you like (just no built-in statements above KS2 for the time being).

I think they are going to expand both the help and the manual based on feedback over the next couple of weeks. The problem with a help file/manual is gauging the experience of those reading it so you simplify things enough whilst still leaving in details they may need in unusual situations.

kaphc: I've asked at the office for you and they said the csv headings are in the help file that can be downloaded by the program - they are also reproduced in the pdf version thats available in the resources section of the website. Here is a direct link: http://reportplus.co.uk/downloads/instructions.pdf Look on page 19 (currently it's 19, but this may change with time) of the pdf. It's the section called 'Importing from csv'. Hope this helps. -Anthony

Digital Dan: Back to trying to get your RA 2009 working, are you using a x64 version of windows (xp x64, Vista x64 or 7x64) ? If so it may work if you put it in the (x86) version of program files, I personally couldn't get it to work either - I had to try it through the Windows 7 xp emulator! Also, if you startup the task manager, is RA there? If not try starting it with Task Manager visible - see if it even starts up and for how long. ReportAssist also 'breaks the rules' by writing to files within program files. With modern versions of Windows make sure that the 'user' has read/write access to the ReportAssist folder or it may not work. If you have copied the ReportAssist files from a CD to your hard drive then they will be marked as read only, you should right-click them and untick this. This can sometime also happen when coping from memory sticks to hdd. Hope this helps you out and remember that ReportPlus doesn't have any of these problems!

I've just done a search through the programs 'source' code, the word 'Tecaher' isn't present, so it must be local to you. Did the ReportPlus office create the custom title for your settings or did it import from ReportAssist like that? If it was the ReportPlus office then you should contact them (with your licencename/password) and they will change it for you, or you can go to "Options > Subjects", click the subject, rename it, then re-upload your settings for the other teachers to re-download and use (note: only the admin user for your licence can upload settings). You should do this BEFORE they start work on the reports - actually for this particular subject it doesn't matter as no-one would have entered anything in this subject yet. If it was imported from ReportAssist like that it must have been like that last year? If not, if you could PM me I'll investigate your old ReportAssist file and see whats going on. The csv file import routine has loads of different column names it looks for. Some schools don't use SIMS and they have different default column names that cannot be user-defined. I'll let them know at the ReportPlus office that there needs to be a resource somewhere (eg a pdf) that explains what column names will work, but to also tell the user to get in touch if they can't change column names in the software they use. Other than that, what do you think of it so far (compared to ReportAssist)?

Basically the two packages are almost the same - but they differ in default setup values, the costs and type of support. Another slight difference is that Elementary Reports is licenced per teacher, but ReportPlus is licenced per class.

It's from Elementrary Reports, it's official name is 'PasteAI'. Whole editor constantly keeps track of pronouns from the original source, this way it can convert from one gender to another without making mistakes (as long as the original source was correct!). When possible, it also converts the subject name. So if you clicked on 'Anthony is very good at Art, he is a credit to his class!', then you copy and paste this into Jane's science... You get 'Jane is very good at Science, she is a credit to her class!'. Normally programs like this (and also the original ReportAssist) will only convert pronouns when you copy the statement in direct from the statement bank - not later, when it is in the document. Other programs will try and do best guess attempts (sometimes plain search and replace) to convert from one gender to another once it is in the document - but without pronoun tracking this is prone to errors. Other programs also have problems (if doing a search/replace copy) when changing from 'her' to 'him' or 'his' as this is particularly difficult, eg 'She described her bike.' to 'He described his bike.', they sometimes make it 'He described him bike.', or (if they get that example correct) then will most likely change 'She is a credit to the class, it was an experience teaching her.' to 'He is a credit to the class, it was an experience teaching his.' - his what? lol.

If you have any fields in the csv that it doesn't pick up, or you think would be useful for your reports - let me know (via support) and I'll get them put them in. -Anthony

Here is the information I think you may want...? The ReportPlus program uses the already established (and highly rated) 'ElementaryReports' engine, but with a front-end thats very familiar to ReportAssist users. That said, the RA look-a-like frontend has been dragged into the 21st century and it much more like a 'proper' windows program and imho has much nicer graphics. There is none of the original ReportAssist program in ReportPlus (I didn't have [and wouldn't want ] access to the original source code). The program can import your ReportAssist frontpage and subject layout, most of the time it can do this automatically, otherwise you can browse to a teacher 'folder' and double-click the 'turtle.mdb' file. Because it uses the ElementaryReports engine, it's MUCH faster and more 'fluid', it also now has extra 'goodies' like smart cut and paste (it tracks pronouns, even AFTER they have been entered into text), statement history (it tracks statements that have been entered so you get a warning if you try enter the same statement more than once), statement search, optional U3 install, 35000 statements, etc Some of the old ReportAssist 'team' now work at ReportPlus (ReportAssist had a very good support team) so if you need help in moving to the new system from ReportAssist you can be helped by people who know both systems. Hope this helps any questions you may have. -Anthony

With RA, it looks like the files are in an access database that passworded (a 2 min hack to 'crack') - it's then zipped - but renamed to something other than .zip - lol! With ElementaryReports - it's compressed but not encrypted. If installed to the recommmended U3 smart memory sticks then they can have hardware encryption turned on - I think it's AES-256? Don't know what PL report systems does with regard to encryption, etc...