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:

• SIMS .net 7.106 (June 2008) Release Notes
• SIMS .net 7.104 (May 2008) Release Notes

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.

A number of schools have contacted me to discuss Capita’’s SIMS Infrastructure Update Tool. According to Paul Christie at Ladybridge High School, RM are advising that this program be run on all SIMS workstations.

The SIMS Infrastructure Update Tool does the following:

• Installs .net Framework 2 and 3
• Removes old setup files from PCs which had SIMS installed prior to March 2004
• Installs two bar code fonts used by SIMS Partners

Even if .net Framework 2 hasn”t been rolled out, I suspect most schools won”t need to use this tool as PCs will have been rebuilt/replaced since March 2004. Also, unless schools use optical mark readers, the bar code fonts won”t be required.

In addition, Judith Holden at Sharples Secondary School has reported that the program takes a long time to run. Judith has kindly informed us that Capita document InfrastructRNa_12377.pdf suggests it can take 15 minutes or more depending on network configuration and memory. Judith has also tried installing .net Framework 3 onto a PC with 1GB RAM and that too took a long time to install.

The SIMS Infrastructure Update Tool can be downloaded directly from Capita by clicking here.

To download the SIMS bar code fonts on their own, please click here.

If you wish to discuss further, please don”t hesitate to get in touch or leave a comment below.

As we have discussed at Secondary Technical Forum meetings over the last eighteen months, the next version of SIMS .net (the June 2008 Update Release) will require Microsoft’’s .net Framework 2 to be installed on client workstations.

Workstations running FMS 6.91 or higher will already have had .net Framework 2 installed as part of the migration to Microsoft SQL.

If you wish to discuss this further, please drop me an email. Alternatively, please feel free to leave a comment below.