Search the Community

I'm trying to use the CommandReporter, but failing at the first hurdle. I can't get it to authorize against my hosted service. If I do not provide Server name and Database name, it instantly fails. If I provide these details (grabbed from connect.ini) - it times out looking for the server. I believe it is a formatting issue, as the instant fail returns an error like "Login failed for user School_Name_Here_SchoolCode_UserName" (which I believe to be an incorrect username), and the timeout error complains about not being able to find the server, though I can ping it so I believe it is to do with the formatting of including the port number. Here's the command i'm running so far. I'm testing so haven't specified an output file yet. Has anyone successfully used CommandReporter with the hosted service? Can you give me any hints? I've got a ticket open with Capita, but we all know what their "4 Hour" SLA is like... Any help would be massively appreciated.

Hi all, I'm looking for a script which is hopefully relatively straightforward. I'd like to run CommandReporter.exe every day (via scheduled task) and have it produce me an XML file which I can then manipulate with PHP. I'd like the script, if possible, to produce the following information: Staff Firstname Surname Subject? Role? Student Firstname Surname UPN Intake Year Registration Group Gender Flags (SEN, FSM etc) Does anyone have such a script currently working that I might be able to have a look at? I've fiddled with CommandReporter.exe before, albeit some time ago. If I remember correctly, I had to send it some parameters in the form of an XML file? Thanks in advance, Duncan

Hi there, I'm having trouble with special characters when trying to load in xml commandreporter reports into Excel. I've traced the problem down to the fact that SIMS creates the xml report as UTF-8, but Excel wants ASCII, and if you use ASCII encoding when loading in the XML file, some characters don't come out right, so for instance, Siôn ends up being SiA'n. Now the obvious solution is just to load in the XML file as UTF-8, but the methods that do this are proving extremely slow, especially as I'm using quite large files with some 400,000 lines of text. I'm trying to investigate various options to get around this, but is it possible to get commandreporter to produce an ASCII encoded file, instead of UTF-8? Can I define that in the param file for instance? Many thanks, Chris

Hi All, I am having some problems running a SIMS custom made report using CommandReporter and I was wondering if you could help me diagnose the problem. Basically I have created a custom made report in SIMS which returns basic pupil info, but it has a series of filters included to also return pupil results. I've also created a program in Excel (using VBA), which you set up and tell it what data you want from SIMS. The VBA program then creates an XML definition file to run CommandReporter with, which tells SIMS what year group I want data for, which subject and what aspects of data. The report returns an XML file with the pupil data in, which my VBA code reads and it adds the data to the excel spreadsheet for a HOD to analyse. I have been running this for a couple of years now and all works really well. However, I'm now trying to set this system up in a different school, and it's not working. I've exported the custom report from the previous school to the new one, and it loaded in fine. The VBA code can run the report, but all that gets returned is an XML file with no data. I can run the report from within SIMS fine, but it's when I run it remotely and feed it my def file that it doesn't seem to like it. I think I've narrowed down where the issue is, and it seems to be when I try to change the year group. If I remove that from the def file the report runs, and returns the data, but if I try and feed it the year group, it just returns no data at all. For the life of me I can't see what's wrong, or what I'm doing wrong. Can anyone suggest anything, or give some tips on how I can diagnose the issue? My def xml file uses this code... Year Integer Year group Yr 7 1 Yr 7 When I run paramdef the output I get looks like this... so I'm using the correct filter code. I've tried changing the from List to Integer (and String) but the same thing happens. Year List Year group Yr 8 1 Yr 8 Any help will be much appreciated! Chris

First post incoming.... I have a SIMS report that runs successfully from within SIMS and I can run it from the command line and generate a params file for it. My intention is to change the dates for a certain bounding parameter dependant on values entered into another script. This parameter is a filter clause and is set to "Prompt at runtime" for just this reason but even so the report requires me to enter 2 "default" date values for 'Start' and 'End' dates. The generated paramsfile has 2 issues for me: The XML is not fully fleshed out by including the "default" start and end dates and therefore requires checking of the schema and/or guesswork in order to create the required XML. The parameter ID seems to be dependant on the information entered into the clause in the report and I have no way of generating a new one. For example changing either of the "default" dates or the prompt text causes the ID to change. Here is the relevant part of the paramsfile as generated using CommandReporter with the /PARAMDEF switch: Active DateRangeRange Active during [color="#FF0000"][/color] You can see the blank element is where I hoped the "default" dates would be. Using the inline schema I reckon the fully fleshed out version with example dates should look something like this: Active DateRangeRange Active during [color="#0000FF"] 2011-09-01T00:00:00 2011-09-20T23:59:59 [/color] However, with the completed params file sorted and saved as above and read back in by the CommandReporter this section seems to get ignored and the report runs with the date values which are stored in the actual report. Either the format of the element is wrong or the parameter ID is now wrong. If the element is wrong how do I find out what the correct syntax should be? If the parameter ID is dependant on the contents of the parameter as some sort of encoded hash how do I generate it? My feeling is that the structure is right but the ID is now wrong but any help here would be very gratefully received. Thanks in advance, Polski

I am trying to use CR with parameters to limit dates. If I make the paramdef xml file using the \PARAMDEF switch, alter the dates in it and use a batch file to run CR with the \PARAMFILE parameter pointing at the file it works OK. However, (trying to avoid using the file) if instead I take the contents of the xml file and simply pass that entire string as a \PARAMS parameter CR gives me this error. That corresponds to the first part of the xml where it states the version i.e /PARAMS:" Has anyone used \PARAMS sucessfully? BTW I would prefer to do it with a \PARAMS instead of PARAMSFILE as in my real application I use a Delphi program to call CR, not a batch file. However that seems to fail if I use either the /PARAMFILE or /PARAM swich, but works OK if I dont use parameters at all. Howard

I wish to export some data from Sims on a regular basis using VBA. I have created and saved a report definition in Sims which creates an xls file. I can run this report in Sims although I have to enable macros before I can see it. I have created the following statement in my application: ShellWait crPath+" /USER:" + userName + "/PASSWORD:" + simsPassword + " /REPORT:" + reportName + " /OUTPUT:" + importFolder + importFile, vbMinimizedFocus The application provides the parameters (importFolder + importFile are the destination path and filename). When run no error is reported, but the xls file is not created. Can anyone tell me where I am going wrong. A solution would benefit a number of different schools who use my application.

I would like to run and save the output of a SIMS.net report using the CommandReporter.exe tool included with the package. I have tried running the following command: CommandReporter.exe /user:username /password:password /report:"No Photograph Report" /output:nophotoreport And when I run it, this is displayed: SIMS.net Command Line Report Exporting Utility 7.159.4.0 Copyright ¸ Capita Business Services Ltd 1984-2014. All rights reserved. Logging into to SIMS.net as user username Getting reports for user username Report 'No Photograph Report' found. Running Report Error Running Report. Reason :Incorrect syntax near ')'. Incorrect syntax near 'a0'. Do I have to include parameters aswell? Is it a problem with permissions? Thanks in advance.

Hi all, Does anybody know how to tell the CommandReporter which database to connect to when there are multiple entries in the connect.ini? Tried prefixing the username with the database name as the error returned is along the lines of "login failed for [DB_NAME]_[uSERNAME]" but it seems it's not that simple. Any help will be appreciated (and thanked)! Josh

Hi, Apologies if I miss any rules, this is my first post. I have written a console app in .NET which calls creates a param file and calls CommandReporter with it and it works perfectly pulling out the reports in to XML. However, when I run the app via Task Scheduler it breaks every time trying to run CommandReporter. Are any known issues with this? Thanks

I've seen a few posts on here regarding people using commandreporter to generate/automate running the reports and exporting .xml files. For a while now ive been creating a set of templates in excel to create graphs/student/department/behaviour profiles for students etc. command reporter is very usefull and plays right into my hands having based my excel template files on reading xml reports. I've got my head around the param files and using filters and have now got a batch script running as a scheduled task. The script essentially does the following: open and excel file with auto_open macro that >Works out the date range for last week for the report parameters > generates a prama.xml file for the command report (to make the date rang dynamic)> closes the excel file> Runs commandreporter> opens the excel template for the chart/profiling sheet i'm using> this then reads the XML output from the report and emails PDF's to departments/people etc in the template. Setting up the reports has reduced so many repetitive tasks but i think i could refine this further. I looking to code this further/simplifiy how I've done this and am think maybe .Net or something may help. Has anyone else gone down this route themselves or have people tended to buy in software from other vendors.

We are running SIMS commandreporter successfully to generate csv data out of SIMS. However, we are aware that it would be better to export the data in XML (not least as a spurious comma in some student data recently caused a minor hiccup). XML is a [relatively] new venture for us for this kind of thing (CSV has worked till now so we have not fixed it), but it seems that Python is adept at handling it and so progress drags us forward (another spinning plate). A [test] report has been created to list the classes of students. (see attached pdf, slide 1) Commandreporter generates the xml shown in slide 2 - note the attribute 'multiple IDs' and the 'x0020' in the middle of the attribute labels (hex for the space in the field name in SIMS?) When run manually from SIMS it generates the XML shown in slide 3. No multiple IDs and no 'x0020' in the middle of attribute names. However in the schema the attributes have a 'caption' of the field name. The question is a)why the difference? and b) is the x0020 consistent or might it change (if it is derived from something other than my guess) [would be better/simpler for coding if we can get commandreporter to generate the simpler 'manual' xml] OK that was 2 questions. [No one expects the Spanish Inquisition.] Any constructive help/advice gratefully received, even if only to confirm this is expected behaviour and we have to live with it (should others have come across this also). We did try to generate a paramdef file in case that is relevant, but it did not make much sense to us (other than date fields referred to in other posts). If it helps our cmd file for comandreporter is as follows: "\\server\c$\Program Files (x86)\SIMS\SIMS .net\commandreporter.exe" /USER:username /PASSWORD:**** /SERVER:server /DATABASE:dbase /REPORT:"_xxxx_StudentClassesx(xx)" /OUTPUT:"\\server2\m$\xxxx\xxxxx\StudentClassesx.xml" (comparable syntax works fine for CSV files and when run from CLI) Have not found specific reference to this question in other posts here. TIA xmlvariation.pdf

Hi, I'm trying to get a report to run using the CommandReporter, my bat file contains the following: CommandReporter.exe /user:username /password:password /report:"GV Tutor Email" output: "C:\testOutput.xml" pause The command line reports I'm logged in, the report is found and run but I cannot see any output? Am I missing a trick or should some privileges be set to generate output?