Support

CASPA comes with a built-in help system, a series of PDF guidance notes and reference documents.  The CASPA website has a host of help in the Resource Centre and if you need to speak to/email someone, you can identify who is your correct contact from within CASPA too.  Click here to see more detail on these options.

Every installation has at least one user who is a ‘System Manager’ in CASPA.  They can advise you of your username and/or reset your password via the menu option Admin | Maintain CASPA user accounts for this installation. If you are the only user of CASPA (a single user is not recommended) you will need to contact your support provider for assistance; check Help | About for your correct support contact.

By the way, there is no ‘backdoor’ or default login to CASPA.  CASPA contains personal details and either of these would breach data security.

CASPA is supplied with guidance notes that describe how you import ‘Basic pupil data’ and results or targets.

To create pupil records in CASPA you will import basic pupil data (name, UPN, gender, etc) from your school MIS, or enter manually.  Go to Help | Guidance notes where you will find a document whose name starts ‘Transferring basic pupil data for…’ specific to the MIS type configured on installation.

To import results or targets, go to Help | Guidance notes where you will find a series of documents named ‘Import assessment results…’ or ‘Import results or targets from…’.  Select the document that matches the source of your data.

If this is the case, the question is whether there is a problem with the data exported from B Squared or a problem with the import into CASPA.

There is a distinction between the data exported from B Squared and what you see ‘on screen’ in B Squared – they are not necessarily the same so the simplest way to manage this is to view the contents of the B Squared export.  If the data is wrong in the export file, you know to call B Squared – if it is correct in the export file, you know to call us.  CASPA includes a tool to view these export files.

When logged in to CASPA, go to Tools | B Squared file export viewer.  Select the same file you imported, select the pupil of interest in the middle panel, then in the bottom panels select either the summer term result (31st August) for the year of interest, or the date of the export for the ‘Current’ result.  The results are all displayed on the right hand side, unconverted and unchanged in any way.

The ‘CASPA assessment data’ pages (aka Main data entry pages) normally* allow for results and targets to be edited manually but prevent editing of previous, historic, years to avoid accidental changes to historic data. Usually only current-year data is changed so editing historic data will normally only take place when populating CASPA after installation or if erroneous data is found and needs to be corrected. In these cases, go to Data | Advanced tasks | CASPA historic data.  From here, all results and targets for each year can be edited*.

* Note that if CASPA was configured to import results from B Squared, PIVATS or via the BAREonline import route, the results fields will remain read-only for the subjects that would usually be imported.  Normally, if you need to amend these, you are advised to correct the data in B Squared, PIVATS, etc and re-import.  If this is not possible for some reason, you can go to Options | CASPA configuration options and amend the ‘External data source options’ to maintain results by direct entry (top radio button).  Be aware that if you import results again for the same year, any manually edited data will be overwritten during the import.

A CASPA installation has no registry settings or external dependencies and so can be moved as a fairly easy task.  You should avoid re-installing CASPA under almost every circumstance to prevent loss of the data you have built up over a number of years.

Should you wish to move a CASPA installation, for example to move a stand-alone installation of CASPA to a network share from where it can be accessed by many users, we recommend the following procedure:

1. Identify the location for the new CASPA installation and create a new ‘parent’ directory for this CASPA installation
2. Copy the CASPAApp and CASPAData directories from your original CASPA installation into this new parent directory; you can, of course, specify entirely separate paths for your CASPAApp and CASPAData directories should you have a need to do so.
3. Edit the CASPA.INI file in your new CASPAApp folder, and edit the ‘DataDirectory’ value as follows:

DataDirectory=<UNC path to your new CASPAData folder>

4. Repoint any existing CASPA short-cuts to your new CASPA installation
5. Rename the CASPAApp and CASPAData folders of your original CASPA application to make it clear that this is an obsolete version of CASPA; once you are satisfied that the new installation of CASPA is performing correctly, the original installation can be uninstalled by running the CASPA uninstaller, Uninstall.exe, which will be found in the original CASPAApp directory.

Please note that once an installation of CASPA has been moved to a location that is different from the location to which it was originally installed, it can no longer be uninstalled using the CASPA uninstaller.

Occasionally, something may prevent you from completing your update to CASPA, whether running the automatic ‘Check for updates’, or via the manual update route.  CASPA will normally be able to create an update log which is likely to outline why the update failed.  This might not be a technical description so should be the first step in resolving the issue.

The update log is a file that is saved to the CASPAApp directory (‘CASPA’ directory in older installations) and has a name similar to the following:

‘CaspaUpdateLog 19-09-2011 12-10-37.txt’

Check that the date matches with when the update failed and open the file to view the information CASPA provided.

To give one example, a common error reported includes the text “…the user who is running this update must have sufficient network or opertaing system privileges…”  This is an issue with the user’s network login status, not with CASPA; the update should be carried out by a user with adequate network privileges.

An upgrade from one year to the next (eg CASPA 2013 to CASPA 2014) is straightforward.  However, if your main CASPA installation is well over a year old, a software update may or may not still be practical – there are options you ought to consider before you proceed to maximise use of any data you have either in CASPA already, or from original sources such as your school MIS and assessment system.

We have provided guidance that answers this question and summarises options to help you decide whether an upgrade or a re-installation is the best option for you.  Click here for guidance.

If you held a Single School licence prior to conversion, nothing changes.

If you used CASPA under and LA licence prior to conversion, you will retain access to your CASPA installation, but unless you take positive action, you will not be able to update CASPA, nor will you be entitled to support since as an Academy, your school is, by definition, non-maintained whilst a Local Authority licence for CASPA caters for the LA’s Maintained schools.

If your LA requests that your Academy continues to be catered for by their CASPA licence, we will usually be able to agree to it.  We require that all support for your Academy is provided by the LA.  There will be a modest one-off charge to convert your data if the school name changes.  Please contact your normal LA support team to initiate this process.  They (not the Academy) should contact us to agree what is required, so please contact your LA contact to arrange this.

If you prefer, or need, to purchase a Single School CASPA licence directly from us, you can.  Usually, this can be managed as a renewal to your existing CASPA installation and it’s data.  There will be a modest one-off charge to convert your data if the school name changes.  Contact us directly if this is your preferred option.