SIMS 7 and FMS 6 - The Spring 2022 Release is available

We have now released our Spring updates for customers and will shortly be in touch with TI's who subscribe to these releases to provide download information.   

Other Useful information at the time of advice.

We are currently updating the SIMS Technical Roadmap for April 2022
We will publish an updated SIMS Technical Roadmap in April, but wanted to provide some advance notice on a few items:

• .NET Framework. We have stated for a while that PCs running our applications will require a minimum of 4.7.2, as does the computer running SSM for Teacher App.  We have recommended that the Document Management Server also runs 4.7.2 but not made this a minimum version.  From the Summer release of our software, .NET 4.7.2 will be a minimum across all products.

TIs may need to factor this in if they use a lower version of the .Net framework because there is no guarantee that new SIMS workstation would have earlier versions of the framework installed.   

Further information may be available from the link below.

SIMS - SIMS7 Release and Product Information (service-now.com) 

SIMS Installations for TIs

TIs may need to seek advice if they need to install SIMS / FMS on new machines. 

Please contact Partner.Support@educationsoftwaresolutions.co.uk if problems arise with clean installs. 

For example current training data requires a later version of SQL than the TI installer offers, but this can be overcome simply by installing the current SQL Express directly from Microsoft's site (subject to their licensing requirements) in advance of the installation.

Eligibility  Checker

SIMS now checks whether a customer is eligibility for some parts of the software and will offer functionality accordingly.

This uses

• LA Number
• School Number
• Post code

to validate.  Training data is should have full eligibility granted; however this was not the case when tried by the TI Team.  Click on 'Remind Me Later' and most functionality is available to you. It is unlikely that TIs will be impacted any further and APIs should continue to work as before.  This may be fixed by the appropriate team in the near future.

APIs behind the screen above and related screens are not supported for partner access.  The data behind this functionality is ESS data rather than genuine 'School's Data'.

In live use with schools the SIMS APIs would be unaffected.

A similar implementation can be found  in FMS

If a TI has a need to use different school numbers or needs access to the protected functionality, please email partner support to explain the issue including the above information from each version and we will be in touch. 

Please also report any issues that you or your customers have with this new functionality.