1. SICTS Autumn User Group 14th November 2013
Kay Vickers
Mark Blackwood
Telephone/Helpdesk:

2. Autumn Release Release Date: Friday 29th November Scope Document ID:
Beta Date: Friday 4th October – showing this today

3. 2014 Releases Provisional Dates for 2014 Spring Release: End of March
Summer Release: End of June
Autumn Release: Early November

4. Technical Update – Operating systems

5. Headlines Windows XP retires in Autumn
Windows Server 2003 retires in Autumn
You will need to upgrade to SQL2012 by Autumn 2014
This will be completed for our SLA schools as part of our normal service offering (no hidden fee!)

6. Technical Update - Desktop

7. Headlines Office 2003 has retired (only affects me!)
Office 2007 will retire in Spring 2014
Office 2010 ok for at least a year
Office 2012 supported fully from Autumn release

8. Autumn 2013 Release
The SIMS 2013 Autumn Release contains enhancements to Admissions, Agora, Assessment, Attendance, Course Manager, Cover, Discover, Homepage, InTouch, Nova-T6, Options, Partnership Xchange, Personnel, SIMS FFT, and the SQL Migration Tool

9. Autumn 2013 Release Assessment Discover
Button added a for the Assessment Group Filter on Individual Reports
Discover
‘Copy to Clipboard’ button added to the front of the graphs
Quick Search function added to the drop down menus
Ability for users to share their filtered graphs across their school.

10. Autumn 2013 Release Discover
The following graphs have been added to SIMS Discover:
Half Termly Attendance graph
Half Termly Behaviour Points graph
Half Termly Behaviour Incidents graph
Half Termly Achievement Points graph
Pupil Mobility graph

11. Autumn 2013 Release SIMS Homepage/Student Teacher View
Attendance and intervention widgets now show figures correct to 2 decimal places, and separate present and authorised absence
Student teacher view timeline amended to see only one box per class, regardless of how many teachers are attached to the group
Conduct widgets configured to count either points or number of incidents on the Student Teacher View
Absence, covered lessons, and room changes can be shown on timeline if desired

12. Autumn 2013 Release Homepage Performance
Refresh times can be altered globally / by user groups for individual widgets so that server impact is reduced.
Configure time line for groups.
Configure widget refresh rates for groups.
Add permissions for groups to be able to configure what appears on timeline.
Add permissions for groups to be able to configure refresh times.
Review and amend underlying code to improve performance.

13. Autumn 2013 Release InTouch
Attached documents converted to PDF when Office 2007 or later is used. This will reduce the size of the attachments and give options for logos and images to be included.
Cumulative Achievement alerts can be set up to automatically notify users when a pupil reaches a defined points score.
The message editing function has been enhanced, enabling schools to produce fully formatted messages.
Scheduled messages.

14. Autumn 2013 Release Personnel
DBS Check (Disclosure and Barring Service) and associated clearance levels have been added to the checks area of the employment details tab. The DBS check replaces the CRB check, although the CRB check and its associated Clearance Levels have been retained in the database to maintain historical records. The CRB check is now inactive.

15. Autumn 2013 Release Statutory Returns
School Census Spring 2014 (England)
Catholic Education Service (CES) Census 2014 (Catholic England and Wales)
CTF 13 (England and Wales) and CTF NI 13 (Northern Ireland)
PLASC 2014 (Wales)
Introduction of support for Middle Schools
Exclusion codes amended to match those in England
Exclusion information for academic year 2012/13 is now mandatory

16. Autumn 2013 Release Statutory Returns
Bulk update routine for Speaks Welsh at home
Removal of Post 16 menu route
Independent School Council (ISC) Census 2014 (Independent)
Boarding type information now maps to categories used by the ISC. (This is applicable to all Independent schools, therefore both ISC and SLASC census).
Boarder status codes are Day, Full, Weekly and Flexi.
School Level Annual School Census (SLASC) 2014 (Independent)

17. Attendance
F code has been disabled!

18. Pupil Premium
There is now an import routine to utilise the csv files available from K2S
Note that there is already a Pupil Premium field (yes/no) available to report on