Synergetic v67 Gold Release Announcement

We are pleased to announce that Synergetic v67 is now available for production servers.

v67 Enhancement Summaries

Synergetic is committed to providing new functionality in our software and quality improvements across the board.

The more significant enhancements are detailed in the ‘Enhancement Summaries v67’ document attached. More detailed v67 information is available on our web site (http://www.synergetic.net.au) under the Recent News > Release Announcements (or on the front page).  Further documentation can be found at: http://support.synergetic.net.au/Downloads/Manual/

All Synergetic clients have at least one allocated System Administrator (SysAdmin).  

It is important that you liaise and collaborate with your SysAdmin  to gain a meaningful understanding of the new features. SysAdmins are a useful resource if you have any questions or if there are particular new features you are interested in using at your organisation.

v67 Requirements

While there are no significant architectural changes to the database, there are certain considerations depending on your installation requirements.

These include:

• All web products now require a Wildcard SSL Certificate.
  • A single Wildcard SSL Certificate secures all your sub-domains for any test or production environments, ie. https://synweb.yourschoolname.edu.au
• DNS entries required for Middleware and Application Portal.
  • Middleware is software that acts as a bridge between the database and Synergetic applications, such as the Form Builder
  • Our Systems Team will assist you on further details when you arrange an upgrade or a new install of the relevant products

Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability (NCCDSSD)

The Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability (the national data collection) is a joint initiative of all Australian governments and all state and territory government and non-government education authorities. National data is collected annually to identify the number of school students with disability and the level of reasonable educational adjustment provided for them. The national data collection has been progressively implemented over the period 2013-2015. From 2015, all government and non-government schools participate annually in the national data collection.

https://www.education.gov.au/what-nationally-consistent-collection-data-school-students-disability

Synergetic has provided support for this in v67 and by way of user forms for impacted clients using v66r2 or earlier. This has been previously advised to Synergetic clients, however, if you would like any more information please contact the support desk.

Supported Versions

With the release of v67, v65 moves out of mainstream support and all clients should already have migration plans in place to move from v65 to either v66r2 or v67.

We have provided a grace period for v65 support until December 2016 to allow surety of ongoing support for clients who have had scheduling difficulties.

We encourage you to make contact with our systems team or consulting team for queries regarding upgrading or project management.

Windows Server 2008/2008R2 has ceased mainstream support- contact our Systems team to discuss and plan for a server migration if necessary.

If migrating to a new server we recommend Windows Server 2012R2.

SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2 mainstream support from Microsoft ended in August 2014.  As a result, all clients running SQL Server 2008 have limited support.

As with Synergetic v66, Synergetic v67 will only support SQL Server 2012 and SQL Server 2014.

Please note that SQL Server 2012 will cease mainstream support during 2017 (v69)- contact our Systems team to discuss and plan for migration if necessary.

If migrating or creating new instances we recommend SQL Server 2014.

SQL Server 2016 has a number of exciting features and is expected to be supported for future Synergetic versions.

Supported service pack levels:

• SQL 2012
  • SP1 - build 11.0.3000.00
  • SP2 - build 11.0.5058.00
  • SP3 - build 11.0.6020.00
• SQL 2014
  • SP1 - build 12.0.4100.10
  • SP2 – build 12.0.5000.00

Synergetic follows Microsoft mainstream support.

Microsoft SQL Links:

• http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/search/?sort=PN&alpha=SQL  – SQL Server support lifecycle
• http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2755533 – How to obtain the latest service pack for SQL Server 2012
• http://support.microsoft.com/kb/321185 – How you can determine the current service pack level
• http://sqlserverbuilds.blogspot.com.au – Unofficial Microsoft SQL Server version list

Upgrades/SQL Migrations

Please contact support (support@synergetic.net.au) to organise your upgrade or server migration. 

There is a first in, first served policy in booking these into our calendar.

If you are considering migrating to a new server we strongly recommend Windows Server 2012R2 due to the end of Microsoft mainstream support of Windows Server 2008/R2 in January 2015.  

Additionally, we strongly recommend you utilise our expert Systems team’s services for installing and migrating SQL Server - we have often received urgent requests from clients who have attempted to perform their own migration and encountered unforeseen installation/backup issues; despite our best efforts to assist without advance notice, a resolution may not always be achievable within an acceptable timeframe and it is recommended to utilise our services to avoid this risk in the first place.

Please be aware there is currently a 4 week lead time for installations such as new servers and migrations.

SIF (Systems Interoperability Framework)

SIF is a standard that defines how systems such as Synergetic, can publish and consume school based information with other systems and government.

Synergetic has an early SIF agent operational at several sites and we have completed development to the Australian version of the open-source framework called the “SIS Baseline Profile (SBP) Agent Framework”, a minimum set of data required for real time student data exchange.  

More information is available at http://www.nsip.edu.au and http://www.sifassociation.org/au.

Synergetic see the SIF model of data interchange revolutionising the way data is shared.

To this extent we will be continuing with development in this area working closely with the relevant bodies to develop the SIF (AU) specification 1.4.

https://www.sifassociation.org/Specification/Pages/Australia.aspx

Planned for v68

Synergetic v68 will focus around what we refer to as the Single Database approach. Details around this are included in the attached document.