The solution will pull data from iSAMS and ensure that your PASS Finance system reflects the data in iSAMS. This avoids manual re-keying and the resulting mistakes creeping in.

We are partners with both iSAMS and WCBS so you can be assured that the solution is fully supported.

Currently, we support updating pupil and contact information in PASS. So whether it’s applicants, current pupils or leavers we can update PASS. The system is completely configurable, so you can integrate as little or as much information as you want.

Staff, extra curricular and exam billing integration will follow once WCBS complete their API.

It’s also not just iSAMS we can integrate with PASS, we can pull data from any of our supported MIS systems (e.g. Sims, Facility CMIS, Integris, Phoenix) and update PASS with it.

The full list is:

Public Cloud

Desktop

Private Cloud

I’ve created an iCalendar file containing all the events which you can import into your favourite Calendar program. Download from here.

Dave Coleman posted a great blog on it at http://www.sharepointedutech.com/2010/05/19/licencing-sharepoint-2010-for-education-in-the-uk/, however on further investigation it has since come to light, and verified by Microsoft that he is missing a component which will in all likelihood double the price.

Basics of Licensing

Forgetting the educational differences to start with, the different types of license which may or may not be required to run SharePoint are:

1. Server License per server running SharePoint
2. Device CAL to allow a specific computer in your intranet to connect to the SharePoint server
3. A User CAL to allow a specific user in your intranet to connect to the SharePoint server
4. A student device CAL for student users
5. A student user CAL for student users
6. A device CAL to allow access to SharePoint from a specific computer/device
7. Office 2010 licenses to use Office Web Applications
8. External Connector License is required if you have an external users (i.e. not part of your organisation) logging into SharePoint. It covers an unlimited number of external users.
9. SQL Server licensing. Every authenticated user must also have a valid license for SQL Server.

The server licenses break down into Standard or Enterprise and then again into intranet or internet options.

• The Enterprise version has more features than the standard one.
• If you want to host an internet site with anonymous users you need the internet option.

For Education

That the basics of SharePoint licensing. Now to consider the educational licensing:

You obviously need a server license per server. I’ll come back to internet or intranet later.

Each SQL Server which is used by SharePoint will need licensing in the normal way. Every user which access SharePoint is will need a license for SQL as well. If you’re using the same SQL server as for other applications, you may well already be covered, otherwise a per-processor license is usually cheaper than individual SQL Server CALs.

Then for each staff member who will be using SharePoint you need a full user CAL (£11.95). So far nothing complicated.

For students it’s where it gets different. For SharePoint 2007, you needed a student user CAL per student. Now if you refer to the licensing for SharePoint Server 2010 at http://www.microsoftvolumelicensing.com/userights/ProductPage.aspx?pid=320 it states

Student Only CALs (Academic Open License and Academic Select)
Student Only CALs are restricted to license student owned PCs or institution owned PCs dedicated to an individual student and are NOT for use in labs or classrooms.

So you will still need a student User CAL(£0.85) per student to cover them accessing SharePoint from home. However in addition to this you will need a full Device CAL (£11.95) for every classroom PC which is not dedicated to an individual student. This is where it could get really expensive. Microsoft estimates that there’s approximately 1 PC per 3.5 students in the UK, so using Dave’s figures of 1000 students, that’s about 285 machines which will cost £3,405.75, which is slightly more than the other licenses put together. Of course if you one of the fortunate schools who has issued on laptop per student you only need student CALS, and if you are on the Schools Agreement the core CAL should cover SharePoint access.

What if you want to use SharePoint to communicate with parents, feeder schools and prospective students? Ray Fleming has blogged on this at Licensing parents for SharePoint – what’s free and what isn’t. Basically for every student which is licensed for SharePoint, then their parents/legal guardians are also licensed for no extra cost. In addition if ALL of your students are licensed then you get a no cost External Connector license for

• Prospective students
• Alumni – student & staff
• Students & staff of collaborating academic institutions or government institutions

You can find out more details about these no cost licenses from Ray’s blog post and download the Parent/Guardian CAL Grant Letter and External Connector Grant Letter. In particular this should mean that you can host sites for your feeder schools with no additional license costs.

What about using SharePoint for my internet sites?

In my reading of the grant letters, they give you:

• CALs for parents
• The above groups of your community rights to log in to SharePoint

My reading of an External Connector License is that it only applies to authenticated/logged in users. So in a strict reading you would be licensed for parents (and your licensed students and staff of course) to access an internet site. You would not be licensed for anyone else to anonymously access an internet facing site as those groups above are only licensed to log on.

Arguably, the intent of Microsoft is to allow all those groups above access to your SharePoint, and you could argue that would include anonymous and logged in access. I don’t have an answer as to whether you are truly licensed for this or not, and neither is anyone I have spoken to, including Microsoft employees! If it doesn’t license you then you will need an internet edition of SharePoint, but if it does, then for the majority of schools their target audience for any anonymous internet web site is going to exactly be those groups above.

Conclusion

The release of SharePoint 2010 has only seemed to muddy the waters even more over SharePoint licensing. I have been told that Microsoft is looking at this area of Educational licensing for SharePoint and feedback is valuable so I would suggest emailing Ray via his blog and letting him know your thoughts.

Sorry about that Ray, but I hope you get lots of feedback!

It’s that time of year again when Olympia opens its doors to the world of IT in Education and BETT begins. I’ll be there on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and would love to meet as many of your as possible, whether you are customers, SLK users or just vaguely interested in what we do. Again I’ll be spending most of my time looking at the stands, so if you want to meet we can either arrange a date and time or you can just give me a call when you are free – although judging from past years it’s not always possible to hear my phone at BETT. Failing that, I’ll probably spend some time at the LP+ stand (E46 in the Main Hall), currently I’m planning to be there 1400-1445 every day. I also expect I’ll be hanging around the Microsoft stand as well as I know quite a few of the guys on there.

So whether you are using Sims, Facility CMIS, Integris, Phoenix or any of the other main systems, we can now automatically maintain users and courses in your hosted Moodle as they change in your MIS.

On a technical level, we using MoodleRooms’ system integration tool (UIB) over https to send the changes up to MoodleRooms.

1. Not being able to use keyboard shortcuts as it was hosted in a browser
2. Not being able to use the Favourite links set up in explorer. About 90% of what I upload would be available in one-click from there.

So I started looking for an alternative client. What if found was even better. You can add a network location in Windows Explorer which is an ftp location and can then drag and drop files completely within Explorer.

To set it up all you need to do is select Computer in the folder view, then right click in the details pane and select "Add Network Location" and follow the wizard.

I imagine it’s present in other versions of Windows, but I’ve only tested it in Vista.

This was the result of overcoming the double-hop problem – one option is to access the file system as the SharePoint app pool, or the user defined in a configuration file. In these cases, it was this user who was set as the owner of the object. I’ve now fixed this so the owner will be the user logged into SharePoint.

Now that I’ve localised the web part once, all I need for other locales is a translation of the messages within the application, which makes it easy to get ready for other locales.

Quoting from the bbits blog:

Roy Osherove is giving an hands-on TDD Masterclass in the UK, September 21-25. Roy is author of "The Art of Unit Testing" (http://www.artofunittesting.com/), a leading tdd & unit testing book; he maintains a blog at http://iserializable.com (which amoung other things has critiqued tests written by Microsoft for asp.net MVC – check out the testreviews category) and has recently been on the Scott Hanselman podcast (http://bit.ly/psgYO) where he educated Scott on best practices in Unit Testing techniques. For a further insight into Roy’s style, be sure to also check out Roy’s talk at the recent Norwegian Developer’s Conference (http://bit.ly/NuJVa). 

Full Details here: http://bbits.co.uk/tddmasterclass

bbits are holding a raffle for a free ticket for the event. To be eligible to win the ticket (worth £2395!) you MUST paste this text, including all links, into your blog and email Ian@bbits.co.uk with the url to the blog entry.  The draw will be made on September 1st and the winner informed by email and on bbits.co.uk/blog

While I’ve been away ITWorx and Microsoft have finally released SLK 1.4. Once I’ve got the booked in installs done, and any support the start of term starts, I’ll be properly integrating releasing it and integrating it into the source code repository.