Groupcall Xporter | 2010
Recommended MIS Security Settings
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Xporter Edition
This information applies to all editions of Groupcall Xporter.
Version Control
1
2
3
Date
2010-11-22
2010-11-23
2011-07-19
Author
Tim Verlander
Tim Verlander
Becky Thornton
Groupcall Xporter Support
Notes
Highlighted impact of minimum settings on multiple extracts
Added link to SIMS video and details of how to amend the
user referenced in Xporter.
Tel: 0208 502 7344
Email: xporter.support@groupcall.com
Latest Xporter First-Line Support Procedures at www.groupcall.co.uk/download/firstline/
Groupcall Xporter | 2010
Contents
Xporter Edition ........................................................................................................................................ 1
Version Control ....................................................................................................................................... 1
What is Xporter and why is it being installed? ....................................................................................... 3
Xporter Recommended MIS Security Settings ........................................................................................ 3
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Video Instructions for SIMS ................................................................................................................ 3
Are the Recommended MIS Security Settings Safe? .............................................................................. 4
Credentials .......................................................................................................................................... 4
Data Selection ..................................................................................................................................... 4
Data Agreement .................................................................................................................................. 4
How do I specify the user with which Xporter will access the MIS? ....................................................... 4
Initial Setup ......................................................................................................................................... 4
Changes at a later date ....................................................................................................................... 5
My Organisation Cannot Use the Recommended MIS Security Settings ............................................... 6
Identifying the Minimum Necessary MIS Security Settings .................................................................... 7
Where can I go for further information? ................................................................................................ 7
Groupcall Xporter Support
Tel: 0208 502 7344
Email: xporter.support@groupcall.com
Latest Xporter First-Line Support Procedures at www.groupcall.co.uk/download/firstline/
Groupcall Xporter | 2010
What is Xporter and why is it being installed?
Groupcall Xporter is a versatile data extraction tool and can take information from a wide variety of
systems, including the most common School MIS systems, and present it to other systems in a
standardised format.
Many companies choose to use Groupcall Xporter to extract data for their software in order to
simplify the data extraction process by not needing direct access to the many different MIS systems
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in use. The company that supplied Groupcall Xporter to you has approached
Groupcall
and provided
us with a data specification, which Groupcall Xporter produces by querying your MIS system, and a
secure upload mechanism, which Groupcall Xporter will use to transmit the data.
Groupcall Xporter is used by a wide number of different vendors, including cashless catering,
payment systems, library systems, attendance reporting software and local authorities.
Xporter Recommended MIS Security Settings
Because Groupcall Xporter is a versatile data extraction tool and provides data extracts for a very
wide variety of systems the support requirements can be very complex and vary depending on what
Xporter is being used for and where it is extracting data from.
In order to simplify the customer setup and support experience Groupcall makes a recommendation
on security settings for MIS access that provides a good balance of versatility, security, simplicity and
supportability.
The recommended MIS security settings for the two most common MIS systems are detailed below.
If you are using a MIS system that isn’t listed them please contact the Groupcall partner that
provided you with Xporter for details of the recommended MIS security settings.
For Capita SIMS .net Groupcall recommends the following group memberships for the user
accessing SIMS:




Personnel Officer
School Administrator
Senior Management Team
Third Party Reporting
For Facility CMIS Groupcall recommends use of the stud_admin schema, via the STUD_ADMIN user.
Video Instructions for SIMS
A video showing the creation of a SIMS user with Recommended MIS Security Settings can be found
at http://www.groupcall.co.uk/download/firstline/videos/ under the link “Creating a SIMS User for
Groupcall”
Groupcall Xporter Support
Tel: 0208 502 7344
Email: xporter.support@groupcall.com
Latest Xporter First-Line Support Procedures at www.groupcall.co.uk/download/firstline/
Groupcall Xporter | 2010
Are the Recommended MIS Security Settings Safe?
The recommended MIS security settings for data extraction are designed to expose all information
within an MIS for potential extraction by Xporter. Xporter security covers three areas:
Credentials
Xporter encrypts the password used to access the MIS system such that it cannot be used by
anything other than Xporter.
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Data Selection
Xporter cannot arbitrarily access data, it only extracts what it has been scripted to obtain.
Data Agreement
Data agreements are a legal enforceable agreement (in the case of statutory data collection by Local
Authorities data agreements may be implicit) between the Groupcall partner providing Xporter and
the organisation that Xporter has been installed in. They specify the scope and purpose of data
collection. An Xporter extraction will be designed to the specification of the Groupcall partner and
will therefore comply with the data agreement.
How do I specify the user with which Xporter will access the MIS?
Initial Setup
If you have created the user as per the recommended settings above prior to installing Xporter, then
you will need to specify those credentials during the setup of Xporter as shown in fig 1.
Fig. 1 – MIS Settings specified during setup.
Groupcall Xporter Support
Tel: 0208 502 7344
Email: xporter.support@groupcall.com
Latest Xporter First-Line Support Procedures at www.groupcall.co.uk/download/firstline/
Groupcall Xporter | 2010
Changes at a later date
If you originally setup Xporter using different settings, then once you have configure the user as per
the recommended settings above, you will need to amend the reference in Xporter accordingly.
From the Xporter management Console;
1.
2.
3.
4.
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Select ‘Passwords’ on the left
Choose the MIS login option (SIMS.net shown in fig. 2)
Choose Modify Password on the right
Specify the user you created to meet recommended settings in the pop up window.
Fig. 2 – Changing the user referenced in Xporter.
Groupcall Xporter Support
Tel: 0208 502 7344
Email: xporter.support@groupcall.com
Latest Xporter First-Line Support Procedures at www.groupcall.co.uk/download/firstline/
Groupcall Xporter | 2010
My Organisation Cannot Use the Recommended MIS Security Settings
If the requirements of your organisation do not allow use of the recommended MIS security settings
then there are a number of options available to you:


If the organisation does not allow one individual to hold the recommended MIS security
settings then a dedicated account can be created for Xporter to use. This ensures that there
is no sharing of MIS accounts and that the account is only used for defined Xporter extracts.
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If the organisation does not allow MIS accounts that do not belong to individuals then
Xporter can be configured to run using a SIMS account belonging to a specific person with
the necessary security rights. In this configuration Xporter would automatically share the
account with the individual it belonged to.

If the organisation requires human intervention for data extracts then the data extraction
can be executed manually by setting and clearing the Xporter MIS password value. This
means that extracts can only be run under immediate supervision of an individual with the
appropriate rights to SIMS and would not be able to run automatically.

If the organisation requires the minimum necessary MIS security settings to be applied
instead of the recommended MIS security settings then these can be identified and applied.
This requires identification of the minimum necessary MIS security setting for each column
in an extraction, including those used internally during generation, and then configuration of
MIS security settings to support an aggregation of those minimum necessary MIS security
settings.
Groupcall Xporter Support
Tel: 0208 502 7344
Email: xporter.support@groupcall.com
Latest Xporter First-Line Support Procedures at www.groupcall.co.uk/download/firstline/
Groupcall Xporter | 2010
Identifying the Minimum Necessary MIS Security Settings
For any given extract there may be a smaller subset of the recommended MIS security settings that
would allow successful data extraction. This subset is called the Minimum Necessary MIS Security
Settings and is likely to vary for each extract configured. Because Xporter uses a single account to
connect to an MIS this means that it will be necessary to aggregate multiple sets of Minimum
Necessary MIS Security Settings into a single set of permissions in order to run multiple extracts.
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If an organisation requires the identification of the minimum necessary
MIS7security
settings then
Groupcall can supply details of the columns being extracted from MIS to calculate and output an
extract. Your organisation can then apply their local knowledge to identify and assign specific
security rights.
Please be aware that while Groupcall will support any customer using minimal security
requirements, the following conditions apply to this:

If an issue is investigated and the cause is identified as use of security settings other than the
Recommended MIS Security Settings then the support time in identifying and resolving that
issue may be chargeable.

If an organisation wishes to engage Groupcall to identify the minimal security requirements
for a specific report then this work may be chargeable.
Where can I go for further information?
Groupcall recommends that, in the first instance, you should contact the company that supplied
Groupcall Xporter to you as they will know most about their software, the data extracted and how
the data is transmitted and used.
Groupcall Xporter Support
Tel: 0208 502 7344
Email: xporter.support@groupcall.com
Latest Xporter First-Line Support Procedures at www.groupcall.co.uk/download/firstline/