Secondary Schools: Things to Consider Before Upgrading SIMS to 7.106
I am in the process of contacting secondary schools to discuss the latest SIMS .net upgrade. While many colleagues who attended the Cover 7 training courses last week will be keen to get their hands the new module, there are a few things to consider before upgrading to 7.106.
.net Framework 2
Microsoft .net Framework 2 must be installed on SIMS clients prior to upgrading to the SIMS June 2008 Update Release. If .net Framework 2 is not installed, it will not be possible to log into SIMS .net.
Personnel 7
Personnel 7 is activated as part of this release as it is required for Cover 7 to operate normally. Please note that the additional functionality provided by Personnel 7 is not currently supported by Bolton Council.
Nova-T6
A link for Nova-T6 has been added to the shortcut panel in SIMS .net.
The problem is that anyone with access to Nova-T4 gets FULL access to Nova-T6 via the new link. Access to Nova-T6 via Nova-T4 is unaffected.
This isn’t expected to be resolved until the August 2008 Main Release (7.108).
Full details of this update and the previous release (which wasn’t installed by most schools due to stability issues) can be found in the Release Notes, available at the following internet links:
If you have any suggestions on how your school might get around the Nova-T6 access issue, please leave a comment below.
As always, please don”t hesitate to get in touch if you wish to discuss this further.
Sam Prince:
I think Rick at Turton has set up a software restriction policy (i.e. a group policy) to block access to Nova-T6, but when staff click it with the restriction in place I think SIMS.net crashes. Is that better than allowing access to T6? Probably?
BTW the issue with the T6 shortcut is from the May release onwards - we have it and I”ve not taken the leap to June yet. As far as I can tell we can hold on until the August release without any problems unless you know different John.
10 July 2008, 1:47 pmJohn Howarth:
Hi Sam, you”re quite correct, the issue raised its head in the May release, which was only installed by Canon Slade, Turton, Thornleigh and St James”. Your school and Turton needed the release for the Cover 7 Field Trial. It was installed at Thornleigh and St James” to resolve certain site-specific issues.
The re-release of May fixed the majority of issues created by the initial version and June was supposed to resolve the Nova-T6 access issue. According to Capita’’s Knowledge Base article KB79814, “The necessary changes were unfortunately not completed in time for the June 2008 release of SIMS .net. They will be done for August 2008″.
We held back on authorising May to most schools because we thought that June would resolve the T6 issue. I suspect most schools wouldn”t be bothering with June 7.106 if it wasn”t for the fact that it enables Cover 7 functionality (remember that most schools are upgrading from March 7.102) for the newly trained and soon to be on leave cover managers.
For your school Sam, there are additional Cover 7 enhancements included in June 7.106 as well as a small fix for Exams Organiser, full details of which are in the release notes (link in original blog post above). I doubt these fixes are desperately needed, however, and I”m sure you”ll be OK to wait for August 7.108.
For your planning information, please remember that August 7.108 is a Main Release and as such will include new functionality, which may mean it will be re-released like the previous two Main releases!
10 July 2008, 2:52 pm