| iWise Frequently Asked Questions |
Currently you can use Netscape, Mozilla, Opera, Konqueror, Safari and Internet Explorer (Version 5.5 or above) with iWise. This means that you can access iWise from a PC, Mac, Linux or Unix box using most popular browsers. There are no extra components required since iWise uses pure HTML. This is important if you a considering offering access to staff from home as home computers may be a complex mix of platforms and browsers.
You can load student and staff pictures into Maze that will then be displayed in iWise. These pictures do not have to be huge, in fact it is much better if they are not. The bigger the images the longer they take to download. While this may not be a concern when staff access iWise on you internal LAN, it may become an issue if/when they access it from home. Typically you will need to reduce your images to between 32 and 64 Kbytes. This is ideal. Any larger and extra configuration may be required on the iWise server.
Yes.
A lot of work has been done to ensure that iWise is as flexible as possible. You will be delighted to know that iWise will fit in with your school.
Yes. iWise allows you to group staff into different roles or security groups. These groups permit certain levels of access to the users in the group. Some examples of these groups are:
As well as groups assigned to the user certain functions are enabled for special users defined by your Maze data. For example Pastoral Carers can access extra Pastoral menus in the Academic and Student Admin modules. Heads of Department can see all classes for all subjects in their faculty.
The great thing about iWise is that it has been designed to work with the standard Maze product, so there is nothing you need to change in Maze to be able to use iWise. However, many schools have made significant changes to the standard Maze, and iWise is flexible enough to adapt.
Whilst no changes are required to run iWise, some of its functions will not be available without a few minor changes. The first is if you want to record the head of faculty, you will need to add a field to store this data (KSF.HEAD). Also, if you want more than 15 outcomes, you will need to increase the number of outcomes fields (iWise allows up to 25). That being said, if you do not make these changes, iWise will automatically configure to fit with your school.
No, not for any of the SQL Versions of Maze. iWise uses a different and totally secure method to access your Maze data. For version 7 (Jet) Databases publicuser access is required for the tables you wish to display.
iWise can be run with Maze versions 7 and 8. If you wish to purchase just the Helpdesk module then you don't need Maze at all since it can run standalone. However if you do have Maze the iWise Helpdesk has hooks into your Maze data (users/staff and asset data for example).
You do not need to worry about installing new updates or fixes for iWise. This process is done automatically and seemlessly using a remote release process. The release process is highly secure using a 1024bit SSH session to the iWise appliance server with RSA key pair authentication. This process ensures that you have the latest release of iWise without the timely and costly process of having to manage updates/patches. This also means that enhancements can be made incrementally rather than once every six months.
The Linux version of iWise is offered as a network appliance. What does this mean? Basically this means the following:
inspiriti has developed iWise as a simple network appliance that sits on your school's network - whatever your operating environment (eg. Netware, Mac, PC/Windows, or Unix). Just like a printer, the iWise appliance server simply needs a network address and its ready, removing the hassle of configuring existing servers to enable secure web delivery.
There is no recommended firewall for use with iWise. The only recommendation is that you use something! IE. A firewall between your internal servers/users and the external internet is usually the first step in securing your environment and should be part of your security plan for your site. However you should not rely on your firewall to provide you with all your security (see security section for more details). If you are looking for cheap but effective firewall you may like to checkout the SmoothWall firewall which runs on Linux, is easy to install and can be managed via a web interface if required - http://www.smoothwall.org
We recommend the following minimum specs:
We use a standard Linux build tailored for iWise, which you can install yourself off the iWise installation CDs, or have us install our office. This way we can ensure that each web server is exactly the same and secured in the most reliable fashion. If you choose to have us install your server, shipment of your server is arranged at the time you place your order.
Redhat 9. See http://www.redhat.com for more details.
See "Will iWise work in my network environment?" above for a description of the iWise Web Appliance Server which is built on Linux technology.
A lot of people ask why do you recommend Linux? - they say "we would prefer to use a Windows 2000 server (or similar) hosting Microsoft's Internet Information Service (IIS)". Firstly running your webserver on Linux allows you effectively put to use recycled PC hardware at your school. Although our recommended spec is a Pentium III, some sites with a smaller load may find that a Pentium II will fit the bill. Given that this may reduce the cost of implementing iWise it is an attractive benefit.
We recognise that this is a sensitive subject for some, however we also believe Linux is easier to secure than Windows. Redhat (the Linux build used for iWise) makes concerted efforts to patch problems quickly when they arise. This is not to say Linux is problem free however and, as always, most problems come down to configuration or administrator error or running old versions of software. The Linux build used for iWise has been severely cut down and only runs the bare minimum services. The only ports open to the world are SSH (for admin) and HTTPS. The opensource community (eg. Apache and OpenSSH) have a pretty good track record when it comes to providing quick security patches when problems arise. This means that when problems are discovered they are fixed quickly. We make sure that when vulnerabilities to these key services are reported that iWise servers get updated as soon as possible.
Complexity is the greatest enemy when it comes to security. Unfortunately Windows solutions may appear easy to use but under the cover there are multitudes of options and switches which inevitably makes the system more complicated, prone to programming error and therefore compromise. Recently the Gartner Group made a recommendation not to use Microsoft IIS for internet web sites. QUOTE: "other platforms (such as Apache and iPlanet) have much better security records than IIS and are not under active attack by the vast number of virus and worm writers". This recommendation is not made lightly.
Other articles of interest:
Firstly you may ask what is "collation"? A quote from SQL Server 2000 help file may help answer this question:
"Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000 supports several collations. A collation encodes the rules governing the proper use of characters for either a language, such as Macedonian or Polish, or an alphabet, such as Latin1_General (the Latin alphabet used by western European languages).
Each SQL Server collation specifies three properties:
In order for iWise to work with your MAZE database the collation sequence for the MAZE database must be the same as the default for your SQL Server. NOTE: Very few schools will need to change their collation sequence. They usually only differ if MAZE has not been installed correctly.
If the collation sequence of your MAZE database and the master/tempdb in your SQL Server are different you will need to change the collation sequence for the MAZE database and re-verify the MAZE schema to update the tables with the new collation sequence. You can run the following SQL statements in Query Analyzer to see if you MAZE collation differs from the default:
select databasepropertyex('tempdb', 'Collation')
select databasepropertyex('Your School MAZE DB Name', 'Collation')
If the two lines output from these commands are different then you will need to change your MAZE database collation sequence. To change the collation sequence of your MAZE database you will need to do the following:
Set "<new collation>" above to the collation sequence of the tempdb or master db in your SQL Server. This value can be seen by running the first "databasepropertyex" statement above in Query Analyzer. An example would be:
alter database [SQL 815 Standard Database] collate SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS
This may take several minutes to run. After which your collation sequences will match. You must now re-verify you MAZE schema to re-create the MAZE collation.
There is no need to purchase the Maze academic module to use iWise to generate academic reports. iWise comes with a comment bank inbuilt. If you have purchased Maze Core, then you will have all you need to run academic reports in iWise. iWise will allow you to have up to 25 different outcomes for each semester, and 20 different student profile indicators per Semester.
iWise comes with its own comment bank. This can be integrated into the standard Maze comment bank if your school has purchased that module. A comment bank might not be appropriate for your school. It is quite easy for a school to switch this comment bank off for the whole school or just individual subjects.
To fully utilize the Academic reporting module in iWise there are a few data items that need to be setup in Maze. Most of these changes you can do via the standard Maze interface and will only need to be done once.
If you already use Maze for your academic reports, you will already have a report, so nothing more needs to be done. Otherwise your Maze support representative will need to design your academic report.