SIMS Discover Installation Guide

SIMS Discover is now available to secondary schools. Unfortunately the original plan to rollout the software through SOLUS3 has had to be put on the back burner due to installation and stability issues. The use of SOLUS2 has been extended by Capita so with that in mind we have decided to make Discover available the old, but reliable, way.

So, step by step, here are the instructions (and we'll assume you're doing this on the SIMS server):

1) Download the SIMS Discover install files from

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/221179/discover.zip

2) Extract the zip

3) start the Discover server install. Run  \discover\index.hta and choose the Install Discover Server option.

4) Run through the wizard choosing a typical installation

5) At the point of creating a discover database your screen should like something like this

6) The next screen asks for the sims database details. Just repeat the last step but change the Database name to 'sims'.

7) The next steps relate to the Discover Transfer service. We've installed the software under a Local System account as we generally install Discover and SIMS on the same server. There is talk on the capita forums over whether the two databases should be on different servers but no performance hit has been identified yet as a result of co-hosting. If you do decide to host the Discover database on a different SQL server then amend the account that the Data Transfer software is installed with accordingly.

8) Repeat the above for the Group Synchronisation step.

9) Set your data transfer and user sync times. Any times in the middle of the night will do, so long as they don't overlap backups or other data transfers.

10) Accept the next steps and verify the install.

That's the Discover Server installed, now onto the clients:

11) Run  \discover\index.hta and choose the Install Discover Client option.

12) Run through the wizard and enter the Discover database as follows

13) The next step requires the above but with 'sims' in the database field.

Before anyone can use Discover you will need to set up the Discover configuration tool (see user guide note below)

That's it! Just complete the above steps for each client and you're good to go.

Related Notes

All workstations will require .NET Framework v4 if not installed already. You can find installation files in the downloaded zip under \discover\Setups\DotNetFX40

There is a SIMS Discover user guide, among other guides, in the \discover\Setups\Docs folder.

The software is released on an early adopter basis. Our training program and official support for the product starts in September. Our training can be found at http://www.ictservices.org.uk/content/discover