Dinner Money - Catering Return Start Date

A reminder to Dinner Money Users (including Centrally Hosted Schools). After you have run off your final CAT form for the Spring Term i.e. week ending Friday 27th March, the Catering Return Start Date for the new financial year needs to be set.

Use route Systems Menu Settings Menu System Defaults and click on the Catering Returns Tab. The new Start Date should be 30/03/2009.

Foundation Stage Profiles - Early Years Profiles

Attention all schools that use the e-Profile software to record their Foundation Stage Profiles. It is necessary for schools to have upgraded to the new eyeProfile (EYFsp) in order to be able to make an early years results submission this summer.

Please read the notes on the ToPP page on the Portal before carrying out this upgrade. The upgrade can be easily carried out by visiting the website http://schoolsportal.suffolkcc.gov.uk/schools/FSP/index.htm and selecting Version 3 Autumn 2008.

This will need to be carried out on ALL machines that use eProfiles. Please note scores recorded against On Entry will appear as Pre Entry in eyeProfile.

March SIMS .net Upgrade

The next SIMS .net upgrade is due be released by Capita on 20th March (although this date may slip). This is an important upgrade containing updates required by all schools.

• New look Home Page - see blog item below
  
• Updates necessary to enable schools to run the School Summer Census in May.


• Updates to the AMPA folder containing the End of Key Stage Wizards for 2009


• Update to include Exams in Cover Scope
  
• A number of fixes for known issues.

This upgrade will be performed on Centrally Hosted databases during the next scheduled downtime (hopefully 28th March, the Capita release date permitting).

New Home Page in SIMS .net

Please note, when you open SIMS for the first time after the next upgrade, you should see a completely different screen, providing lots of new information panels and functionality.

The Capita “Mini Guide” has been posted on the Portal but be warned it is 63 pages long. This should also be accessible from the Documentation Link and selecting Mini Guides, once the upgrade has been performed. Each user should be able to customise their home page, thus selecting the panels that are most appropriate to their role in the school.

Service Level Agreement 2009/2010

Please can we ask all schools to complete and return their SLA sign-up form as soon as possible, if this has not already been done.

The new Agreement takes effect on 1st April. Support can only be provided to schools that have returned their Sign-up Form, thus indicating their commitment to continue using our services over the coming year and the level of support required.

Any queries about the SLA should be addressed to our Customer Services Team. Telephone 01480 376655, or e-mail ict.service@cambridgeshire.gov.uk.

Exams Officers - Bulk import of ULNs

Schools with Students entered for Diploma qualifications this year, need to have a ULN for these students. The simplest way of carrying out this procedure is in bulk. Create a CTF containing just Basic Details of Students for whom a ULN is required.

Use the Destination LA/Other of Cambridgeshire. This CTF can then be uploaded to the Key 2 Success Website. A replacement CTF containing the ULNs can then be downloaded and imported back into SIMS .net. Members of your Admin Team will have the usernames and passwords and the appropriate rights in SIMS .net for carrying out this procedure.

Addresses in SIMS

Since the December SIMS upgrade there have been a few issues with the address search in SIMS .net. When adding an address a post code should be entered, then the Continue button used to search for addresses with this post code.

Using the Basic/Advanced toggle switch defines whether the search is restricted to addresses already in your SIMS database (Basic) or to include any addresses with this post code on the Web Address Validator web site (Advanced).

Since the December Upgrade, Basic searches also bring up all the addresses on your database with no post code. This can make locating the correct address difficult. Including the house number in the search boxes can limit the number of possible matches. Sorting by post code can also help.

Please do take care to search for and use addresses that are already in your database, not doing so will result in duplicates and the probability that family links and parental addressees will not work correctly. This issue will be fixed by a future upgrade.

Contact addresses in the School Census
The ONEVision team have run the contact addresses contained in the School Spring Census through some data checking software. Schools will be issued with a list of suspect addresses. Please do use this list, it provides a very valuable tool for identifying possible data problems in SIMS. This is just one more aid to improving data quality in Cambridgeshire.

Address Tidy and Merge
The Tidy and Merge tool was activated by the December upgrade. Use of this tool can remove duplicate addresses in SIMS which can result in family links and parental addressee etc. not working as they should. Please do not use the tool without reading the Guidance notes which can be found on the SIMS Home Page on the Portal. If you have any queries, please contact the Helpline.

Proposed Question Level Date Entry Project 2009

Due to the overwhelming success of the 2008 QLD project, ICT Service are proposing to offer the same service to schools again this year. ICT Service took school results either directly from the completed test papers or from the Teacher Assessment spreadsheets and entered these into downloaded templates from RAISEOnline.

Once complete the results were uploaded to RAISEOnline on behalf of the school, thus making the data ready for the school to analyse.

At this early stage we are asking schools to express their interest of intention should the project run. If your school is interested in taking part in the 2009 project please contact ICT Service by emailing ict.courses@cambridgeshire.gov.uk giving the school name, contact person, contact email address, and telephone number and that you would be happy to share the school’s RAISEonline Administrator password with the ICT Service, Godmanchester.

End of Key Stage and School Workforce Census Briefings

End of Key Stage Seminars will take place during April. These are briefing sessions for End of Key Stage assessment reporting for FSP, KS1, KS2, KS3 using EyeProfile, Assessment Manager and Target Tracker Software. There will also be an update on School Workforce Census.

• 22nd April Over Community Centre 10.00 - 12.00 and 13.00 - 15.00
  
• 23rd April Buckden Community Centre 10.00 - 12.00 and 13.00 - 15.00
  
• 27th April Oliver Cromwell, March 10.00 - 12.00 and 13.00 - 15.00
  
• 29th April CPDC Cambridge 10.00 - 12.00 and 13.00 - 15.00

These sessions are being organised by the ONEVision Team. To book your place, please call 01480 355977. There will not be a live demonstration of this process this year, but there will be hands-on training sessions available for new staff to help them through this process.

Key Dates Apr - May 2009

• FMS6 Year End Primary - Further dates on request
  
• SIMS .net for new users - 23rd & 30th Apr (G)
  
• SIMS .net Reporting for Primary Schools - 1st May (G)
  
• End of Key Stage & SWC Briefings - Book places with ONEVision Team - 22nd (OV), 23rd (BMC), 27th (OC), 28th (CPDC) April
  
• End of Key Stage Data Entry Admin - 15th (G), 22nd May (WB)
  
• Budget Input Session - 12th (G), 13th (WB) May

New look SIMS Home Page

The front end of the SIMS Home Page is changing. As of the upcoming March Release 7.116, there will be some new functions available on the standard home page of your SIMS system.

Click here to read the PDF document.

Further news on the SIMS March release will be made available shortly on the SOLUS planet of the SIMS Home Page.

Scheduled Sunday ICT Service Break 22.3.09

The following services will be affected by the Service Break from 08:00 until 18:00 this Sunday:

One.net
Access to One.net will be intermittent due to important Server Patching.

Home areas and Profiles – Cambridge
Cambridge users will not be able to login due to an upgrade to increase server capacity.

Remote Access Services
Netilla will be unavailable for all CCC Users due to security updates.For your information there are three 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 keyfob 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 keyfob is required for this service.

Schools Netilla is used by Cambridgeshire schools staff to access County Council systems. Access is granted by authentication using a keyfob.

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 on Sunday 22 March 2009 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

E2BN Maintenance - Thursday 19th March 2009

To All E2BN Planned Maintenance Contacts:

This is to provide you with advance notice of minor maintenance work being carried out on the E2BN core network on the night of Thursday 19th March 2009.

Purpose : Adjustment of routing protocol between NAT routers and VC/GRE routers.

Thursday 19th March 2009 : 20:30pm to 23:00pm : Maintenance : Planned Outage - NONE

This is a minor adjustment to more efficiently route traffic within the E2BN core. There is no planned downtime to any services.

Work will begin at 20:30pm and will be fully tested by 23:00pm

If you require any further detail or clarification, please reply to service@e2bn.org

Scheduled Sunday ICT Service Break 8.3.09

The following services will be affected by the Service Break from 08:00 until 18:00 this Sunday:

Upgrade of CCC Internet feed
There will be no access to Netilla or any other system from the internet on Sunday. CCC Users will not be able to get to the internet from internal offices and there will be no CCC Web presence (www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk and www.cambridgeshire.net) over the course of the day.

Outlook/Exchange
There will be no access to e-mail internally due to important security updates to the servers. Additionally, no external e-mail will be received whilst the internet feed is upgraded (this will also affect Libraries).

Swift Citrix upgrades
Access to Swift will be intermittent due to important application upgrades, these upgrades are necessary to support the rollout of ESCR.

Home areas and Profiles – Cambridge
Cambridge users will not be able to login due to an upgrade to increase capacity to their server.

E-Business Suite unavailable for the whole weekend
EBS will not be available from 4.00pm on Friday 6 March until 9.00am on Monday 9 March. The Tax Year End patches will be applied this weekend. For any additional information please contact E-Business Support Services

Clearing of Large Profiles
Various users will have their profiles reset and data moved around on the weekend as their profiles appear to be faulty (all users affected by this work have been contacted directly by IT Business Liaison Officers).

Link upgrade and server work
The following Applications will be unavailable due to link upgrade and work to cluster servers:

• ACOLAID
• CALM for Archives
• Chief Executive's Blog
• CPED
• Cambridgeshire.net (Infocam)
• CorVu
• Extranet (Sharepoint)
• FLARE
• Heritage Gateway
• Schools Website
• Website Applications
• Cambs.net
• OneVision
• Libraries

Remote Access Services
Netilla will not be available on Sunday.

For your information there are three 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 keyfob 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 keyfob is required for this service.

Schools Netilla is used by Cambridgeshire schools staff to access County Council systems. Access is granted by authentication using a keyfob

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 on Sunday 08 March 2009 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