SIMS and FMS Autumn Upgrade

The latest release of SIMS.net has been made available to schools.
The new version number for SIMS.net will be 7.124. FMS is now on version 6.124. Notes on these upgrades can be found on the SOLUS Planet on the SIMS Home Page.


Click the links below to read these notes now:

• SIMS Autumn Upgrade 7.124 - PDF


• FMS Upgrade 6.124 - PDF


• SIMS Permissions Spreadsheet 7.124 - Excel

Notes on further upgrades can be found on the SIMS Home Page.

Scheduled Sunday ICT Service Break 29.11.09

During the coming Service Break, essential planned maintenance and security related work will be carried out which will affect a large number of servers. This will interrupt various network services which will be intermittently unavailable between 08:00 and 13:00.

This will include:

• Corporate and NHS Netilla
  
• Swift for NHS Netilla users
  
• E-mail to the NHS and FLARE

Services unaffected include:

• Exchange
  
• Swift (for users other than NHS Netilla)
  
• One and Officebase.

As soon as each service becomes available we will advise the Out of Hours Helpdesk (01223 717333) so that they can answer any queries you may have.

Should you have any queries regarding the availability of services, please contact the Business Support Helpdesk on 01223 717333.

Information is posted and updated with details of upcoming Service Breaks on CamWeb. Please follow this link to go directly to the IT Service Break Information page

Census Spring 2010 - New notes

New notes have been added to the SIMS Home Page in preparation for the upcoming Spring School Census. The next census date will be Thursday 21st January 2010.

Click on the links below to read the notes:

Helpline Census Guidance Spring 2010

Word PDF

DCSF Preparation & Guidance Spring 2010

Primary - Word PDF
Middle - Word PDF
Special - Word PDF
Nursery - Word PDF

Secondary - Word PDF

Errors & Resolutions v1.0 2010

PDF

More notes and possible updates will follow. Keep checking this blog and the Census Panel on the SIMS Home Page for further news.

Adding Structure for OPEN

New notes have been created to support the use of the new OPEN E-Procurement function within FMS.

The notes will show you how to add a cost centre, and link a ledger code to a cost centre.

Click here to read these notes now.

These and other FMS notes are available on the Finance Planet of the SIMS Home Page.

Scheduled Sunday ICT Service Break 15.11.09

This coming Service Break will interrupt the following services:

• Corporate and NHS Netilla will be unavailable between 8:00am and 10:00am
  
• One Net ver.4 (ICS) will be unavailable between 8:00am and 10:00am
  
• MapXtreme will be unavailable between 8:00am and 10:00am
  
• Highways apps accessed via Citrix (eg Insight) will be unavailable between 8:00am and 14:00pm
  
• SWIFT will be unavailable from 18:00pm on Friday 13th November to 8:00am Monday 16th November due to work to integrate SWIFT with Contact Centre Management system (CRM).

Remote Access Services

For your information there are two Netilla services operated by the County Council:

Corporate Netilla is used by County Council staff accessing County Council IT systems via the public internet. Access to the system is granted by authentication using a key fob in conjunction with normal County Council network login details.
NHS Netilla is used by NHS staff to grant access to County Council systems from a PC on the NHS network via the secure link between the networks. No key fob is required for this service.

As soon as each service becomes available we will advise the Out of Hours Helpdesk (01223 717333) so that they can answer any queries you may have.

Should you have any queries regarding the availability of services, please contact the Business Support Helpdesk on 01223 717333.

Information is posted and updated with details of upcoming Service Breaks on CamWeb. Please follow this link to go directly to the IT Service Break Information page

Scheduled Sunday ICT Service Break 1.11.09

Essential planned maintenance and security related work will be carried out affecting a large number of servers. This will interrupt various network services which will be intermittently unavailable between 8:00 am and 1:00 pm. This will include:

• Netilla will be unavailable between 8:00 am and 10:00 am
  
• E-Mail archives (KVS)
  
• File and print services in Godmanchester area

Services that will be unaffected by this work include:

• Exchange
  
• Swift
  
• One
  
• Officebase

Remote Access Service

For your information there are two Netilla services operated by the County Council:

Corporate Netilla is used by County Council staff accessing County Council IT systems via the public internet. Access to the system is granted by authentication using a key fob in conjunction with normal County Council network login details.
NHS Netilla is used by NHS staff to grant access to County Council systems from a PC on the NHS network via the secure link between the networks. No key fob is required for this service

As soon as each service is available, we will advise the Out of Hours Helpdesk (01223 717333) so that they can answer any queries you may have.

Should you have any queries regarding the availability of services, please contact the Business Support Helpdesk on 01223 717333.

Information is posted and updated with details of upcoming Service Breaks on CamWeb. Please follow this link to go directly to the IT Service Break Information page

Dinner Money 7 in the classroom

Many thanks to Fourfields Primary School who have very kindly produced this video, showing how it's possible to record Dinner Money along with Attendance in the classroom.

Narration for the video is provided by the school's Business Manager. Getting the class teachers to record attendance and dinner money in the classroom could save time and free up the school administrators to perform other tasks.

ICT Helpline

The Helpline is now available from 8.00 a.m. to 5.00 p.m. Monday to Thursday and 8.00 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. on Fridays.

Please be aware that during the Half Term holiday we will be having a new telephone system installed. We are not anticipating any major disruption to our service. Should you encounter any difficulties reaching us by telephone, please e-mail your queries to ict.helpline@cambridgeshire.gov.uk alternatively log them directly into Ambercat.

We do also use school holidays for Inset, should the Helpline be unavailable please do leave a message on our voicemail and we will respond as soon as possible.

Impulse Conferences 2009

• Tuesday 17th November — Buckden Millennium Centre 9.30 - 3.00
  
• Wednesday 18th November - Oliver Cromwell Hotel, March 9.30 - 3.00
  
• Wednesday 25th November - Cambridge Professional Development Centre 9.30 - 3.00

There are two free places available for every school, including lunch. We would strongly recommend all schools attend one of these conferences, which are our opportunity to inform you on a range of topics that will affect all schools, Subjects covered will include On-line Reporting to Parents, Schools Workforce Census, RAISEonline, FFTlive and Managing Identified Groups.
Full details of the programme can be found on the Fliers recently sent out to all schools and on the Portal.

Early Years Foundation Stage Profile

Import Last Year’s EYFSP Results into Assessment Manager
Primary Schools, don’t forget to transfer your EYFSP results for last year’s Reception Pupils from eyeProfile into SIMS .net. This is quite a straight forward process, inside eyeProfile Create a Results file for your MIS.

This creates a CTF file that can be imported into SIMS .net . Import the FSP Summary Wizard into SIMS .net in the same way as the KS1 and KS2 Wizards were imported, then import the results CTF in the usual way.

Early Years Foundation Stage Profile (EYFSP) - Autumn A Return
The ONEVision Team will be collecting EYFSP for this year’s Reception pupils again this year, due week commencing 2nd November 2009. Pupil details should be imported into eyeProfile using a CTF generated in SIMS .net with Basic Details and Address information. The current version of eyeProfile can be downloaded from the Portal - Search for TOPP and click on
the TOPP Primary from the Primary Quick Links.

Archiving Historical Attendance Data in SIMS .net

The facility to archive previous years’ attendance data is now available within SIMS .net. We would strongly recommend that schools make use of this facility as it can greatly improve operating speeds within SIMS.

Take a full backup of SIMS before proceeding. In SIMS .net go to Tools Housekeeping Archive Attendance Marks - this then runs a wizard that allows you to select the years you wish to archive.

Bear in mind that this may take a while to run, so it may be an idea to run this process outside of normal school hours. Please do not attempt to archive this year or last year’s data. Once data has been archived it can no longer be edited but reports can still be run off against it.

School Workforce Census - B2B Personnel

As many schools may be aware we have encountered a number of problems with B2B Personnel and import of the EPM Data into ONE, which has had a knock on effect on our project to activate all schools.

Thank you for your patience and continued support . We will resume arranging dates for B2B to be activated in those schools that have not yet been contacted, as soon as we can. We would be very grateful if you would do all you can to assist us, as we still have a large number of schools to process which all need to be in place for the first Live return in January 2010.

For schools that have already had B2B activated, a replacement Export file from ONE should be released in the near future.

Central Hosting

A plea to schools to ensure all users log out of applications in the correct way. Many people do not appear to be aware that closing out of programs using the X does not close the programmes down correctly.

This can cause many problems for other users and yourself the next time you try to access applications such as Central Hosting, FMS, Internet explorer. Please make sure
ALL USERS KNOW TO LOG OUT OF CENTRAL HOSTING BY CLICKING START LOG OFF
(having closed out of all applications correctly first).

Users who close out of FMS6 using the X at the top right hand corner are not closing the program correctly, the next user may not be able to access areas within FMS6 that are locked out as still in use by the first user. Always close out of FMS using Focus Exit.

Dinner Money 7

Training for Dinner Money 7 began in earnest on 24th September 09. To date (as of 9th October 09); 25 Schools have been successfully trained.

Feedback so far has been extremely positive with many schools opting to use the new module in the afternoon (following the morning of training)! Many are now choosing to use it electronically in the classroom.

If you have not heard from us yet, please do not panic; we have a ‘roll out’ scheme in place. You will be contacted by e-mail and requested to attend training. We strongly recommend that you accept your proposed date, if you are unable to accept the date offered you may have to move to the end of the queue as we have approximately 200 schools to train. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact Helpline.

CTF Alternative Destinations

There have been changes to the Alternative destination codes required when uploading CTF files to S2S.

For students that have moved overseas the MMMMMMM alternative destination should be used instead of the XXXXXXX which should be reserved for Lost Pupils.

It is recommended that schools edit the descriptions of these alternative destinations to reflect these changes. In SIMS .net use route Tools Setups CTF. On the Alternative Destination Panel edit open Destination XXXXXXX and edit the description to read Lost Pupils. Repeat for Destination MMMMMMM and edit the description to Overseas or Independent Schools.

Key Dates Nov - Dec 2009

• Fischer Family Trust (Primary) - 5th Nov (W)
  
• Impulse Conferences - 17th (B), 18th (OC), 25th (C) Nov
  
• Central Hosting Workshop - 2nd Nov
  
• FMS6 for New Users 2 x half days - 4th Nov & 25th (W)
  
• TOPP Assessment & SIMS Home Page - 12th Nov (G)
  
• RAISEonline for Senior Leaders & Teachers - 26th Nov (W), 10th Dec (G)

For booking and availability of all courses listed:
Telephone: (01480) 376670
Email: ict.courses@cambridgeshire.gov.uk

G = Godmanchester, B = Buckden, WB = Waterbeach, OV = Over Community Centre, OC = Oliver Cromwell March, C = CPDC

Scheduled Sunday ICT Service Break 18.10.09

During the coming Service Break essential planned maintenance and security related work will be carried out, affecting a large number of servers. This will interrupt the following services:

• The One V3 and One Net V4 will be unavailable for the whole of Sunday
  
• Users will be unable to log in between 08:00 and 09:00
  
• Email will be unavailable between 08:00 and 16:00
  
• Corporate Netilla will be unavailable between 08:00 and 13:00
  
• Cambridge based users will not be able to login between 08:00 and 13:00
  
• Various network services including printing and Swift will be intermittently unavailable between 08:00 and 13:00

Remote Access Services
For your information there are two Netilla services operated by the County Council:

Corporate Netilla is used by County Council staff accessing County Council IT systems via the public internet. Access to the system is granted by authentication using a key fob in conjunction with normal County Council network login details.

NHS Netilla is used by NHS staff to grant access to County Council systems from a PC on the NHS network via the secure link between the networks. No key fob is required for this service.

As soon as each service becomes available we will advise the Out of Hours Helpdesk (01223 717333) so that they can answer any queries you may have.

Should you have any queries regarding the availability of services, please contact the Business Support Helpdesk on 01223 717333.Information is posted and updated with details of upcoming Service Breaks on CamWeb. Please follow this link to go directly to the IT Service Break Information page

Archiving Attendance Marks in SIMS.net

There is now an option to archive your old attendance marks in SIMS.net, which has been reported to help speed up the schools database.

This option is found by logging into SIMS.net, and then clicking on Tools, Housekeeping and Archive Attendance Marks.

Bear in mind that this may take a while to run, so it may be an idea to run this process outside of normal school hours. You also won't be able to archive this current academic year or the proceeding year.

If you have any queries, please contact the helpline.

Autumn School Census - Thursday 1st October 2009

New notes have been added to the SIMS Home Page to support schools through running and uploading the Autumn School Census.

Click on the links below:

Helpline Overview - A concise document detailing what information is collected on Census Day, and how to produce and upload your census file. Available in Word and PDF formats.

Errors & Resolutions - A handy guide detailing all the possible error messages you could receive whilst validating your census, complete with a description of the error and possible solutions.

Validation File - For Central Hosting schools only. This new file will need to be imported to rectify issues with the census summary, detail reports and validation. Click the link to read more.

COLLECT Website - When your census file has been authorised and checked, you can upload the file to this website.

These links and many more are available on the Census Panel on the SIMS Home Page. Secondary Schools will also find items relating to Post-16 and Learning Aims by clicking here.

Good luck!

Updated Validation File for Central Hosted Schools

Attention School Secretaries/Admin CENTRALLY HOSTED SCHOOLS ONLY

Re:- School Autumn Census - 1st October 2009 - Updated Validation File

An updated Validation file has been released to ensure the Summary, Validation and Detailed Reports in the Autumn Census generate correctly. All Centrally Hosted Schools will need to import this file before completing the School Autumn Census.

• Use the SIMS .net route Tools Setups Import Filesets


• The file 0018-SchoolCensusAutumn2009UpdateFileset.mfs should be visible in your SIMS .net Folder. (Central Share, SIMS Share, _SIMS.net & Dinner Money, SIMS.net)


• Highlight the file


• Click Open.


• Click Import Fileset.

If you have any queries, please contact the Helpline.

Scheduled Sunday ICT Service Break 27.9.09

This coming Service Break will interrupt the following services:

• The One system will be unavailable for the whole of Sunday
  
• Biztalk will be unavailable between 8:00 and 12:00
  
• E-forms will be unavailable briefly between 8:00 and 12:00
  
• Internet mapping services will be unavailable briefly between 8:00 and 12:00
  
• Netilla (Corporate and NHS) will be unavailable between 8:00 and 12:00

Remote Access Services
For your information there are two Netilla services operated by the County Council:

Corporate Netilla is used by County Council staff accessing County Council IT systems via the public internet. Access to the system is granted by authentication using a key fob in conjunction with normal County Council network login details.

NHS Netilla is used by NHS staff to grant access to County Council systems from a PC on the NHS network via the secure link between the networks. No key fob is required for this service.

As soon as each service becomes available we will advise the Out of Hours Helpdesk (01223 717333) so that they can answer any queries you may have. Should you have any queries regarding the availability of services, please contact the Business Support Helpdesk on 01223 717333.

Information is posted and updated with details of upcoming Service Breaks on CamWeb. Please follow this link to go directly to the IT Service Break Information page

Latest SIMS and FMS release notes

The release notes for the latest version of SIMS.net and FMS have been uploaded to the SOLUS planet on the SIMS Home Page.

Click on the links below to read these notes now:

• SIMS.net August Release - Version 7.122


• FMS Release - Version 6.120


• SIMS.net Permissions Spreadsheet - Version 7.122

These and other update notices can be found on the SIMS Home Page.

Learning Aims End Dates

It has come to Capita's notice that DCSF Guidance regarding post-16 learning aim end dates states that Learning Aims End Dates must be on or before 31st July and this must be the case for this Autumn's School Census return.

If you have course membership end dates after 31st July (e.g. 31st August) in either the previous (2008/9) or current (2009/10) academic year, you must alter these before you submit your Autumn School Census return on 1st October 2009 to ensure that your post-16 funding is correctly allocated.

To read more, click here.

These and other Secondary Census helpsheets are available on the SIMS Home Page.

New Regulations for Registering Post-16 Students

Summary of DCSF Guidance on Attendance Regulations for Partnerships and Consortia (England Only)

Regulations: The Education (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2006 - It has taken some time to confirm all aspects of the DCSF guidance on these regulations, but we believe that the following sums up the DCSF position. We are continuing to look at how we can help schools implement this new DCSF position and we expect to be able to publish advice shortly.

To read more, click here.

These notes are also available on the Secondary Planet of the SIMS Home Page.

Scheduled Sunday ICT Service Break 13.9.09

This coming Service Break will interrupt the following services:

• Corporate Netilla and NHS Netilla will be unavailable between 8:00 and 12:00
• Wisdom will be unavailable between 8:00 and 12:00
• Aspire, Corvu, EMS, Estart, Enurseries, Extranet, and Planapps will be unavailable between 8:00 and 12:00
• Browsing the web on the internet will be disabled between 8:00 and 12:00
• Email will be unavailable due to essential maintenance between 8:00 and 12:00
• Email archives will be unavailable due to an upgrade to the service between 8:00 and 18:00
• If you are usually located at Amundsen and Speke House's you will be unable to access the network between 8:00 and 18:00
• E-forms will be unavailable between 8:00 and 18:00

Remote Access Services

For your information there are two Netilla services operated by the County Council:
Corporate Netilla is used by County Council staff accessing County Council IT systems via the public internet. Access to the system is granted by authentication using a key fob in conjunction with normal County Council network login details
NHS Netilla is used by NHS staff to grant access to County Council systems from a PC on the NHS network via the secure link between the networks. No key fob is required for this service.

As soon as each service becomes available we will advise the Out of Hours Helpdesk (01223 717333) so that they can answer any queries you may have.

Should you have any queries regarding the availability of services, please contact the Business Support Helpdesk on 01223 717333.Information is posted and updated with details of upcoming Service Breaks on CamWeb. Please follow this link to go directly to the IT Service Break Information page