Intranet messaging service

[scotyboy56]

So before I start googling away looking for the right piece of software thought to myself I know a bunch of people who would have hundreds of ideas. So help me edugeekers

 

The head at one of the primary schools has asked me to find something that they can message teachers and it pops up on there laptop for them to read. Yes I know what your saying EMAILS!! The ones who work in primary schools will most likely know that majority of the teachers deny any knowledge of school email system even if you shove it infront of there face!

 

So I was thinking of something like msn, but for on the intranet, I ended up causing havoc for the IT guys at high school when I did this during my ICT lessons, but for the life of me I can't remember what it was called. I'm hoping you guys know of some decent software that is hopefully free and easy to setup and more importantly teacher proof!!

 

Thanks

[abillybob]

So before I start googling away looking for the right piece of software thought to myself I know a bunch of people who would have hundreds of ideas. So help me edugeekers

 

The head at one of the primary schools has asked me to find something that they can message teachers and it pops up on there laptop for them to read. Yes I know what your saying EMAILS!! The ones who work in primary schools will most likely know that majority of the teachers deny any knowledge of school email system even if you shove it infront of there face!

 

So I was thinking of something like msn, but for on the intranet, I ended up causing havoc for the IT guys at high school when I did this during my ICT lessons, but for the life of me I can't remember what it was called. I'm hoping you guys know of some decent software that is hopefully free and easy to setup and more importantly teacher proof!!

 

Thanks

 

Hey mate, is there a specific reason the traffic can only go through the schools LAN? Why could you not just use something like Skype for teachers to easily communicate to each other?

It would be interesting to know why they want/require this service as I don't know of many teachers here that don't have a phone by their desk if they need to call another member of staff and speak to them promptly, could be overkill?

[scotyboy56]

Hey mate, is there a specific reason the traffic can only go through the schools LAN? Why could you not just use something like Skype for teachers to easily communicate to each other?

It would be interesting to know why they want/require this service as I don't know of many teachers here that don't have a phone by their desk if they need to call another member of staff and speak to them promptly, could be overkill?

 

Main reason I don't want to use skype is security reasons tbh, would rather keep everything in house. Also I don't want to have to tell every teacher how to create a skype account and then how to use skype. They do have phones every classroom, except year 2, however the teachers complain about getting disturbed with phone calls during there lesson, hence the reason for needing a messaging thingy.

[abillybob]

Main reason I don't want to use skype is security reasons tbh, would rather keep everything in house. Also I don't want to have to tell every teacher how to create a skype account and then how to use skype. They do have phones every classroom, except year 2, however the teachers complain about getting disturbed with phone calls during there lesson, hence the reason for needing a messaging thingy.

Skype is extremely secure and very well made, I couldn't think of any security problems you'd experience with it. Anyway if it must be the only one I can think of is Tonic (only works on Windows as far as I know) but this requires the staff having other staffs IP address to add contacts, this could be an issue if you're using DHCP rather than Static addresses!

Tonic is also free (I used to use it in secondary school to talk to my friends mwahaha)

[elsiegee40]

Skype is extremely secure and very well made, I couldn't think of any security problems you'd experience with it. Anyway if it must be the only one I can think of is Tonic (only works on Windows as far as I know) but this requires the staff having other staffs IP address to add contacts, this could be an issue if you're using DHCP rather than Static addresses!

Tonic is also free (I used to use it in secondary school to talk to my friends mwahaha)

 

It's also hard to control who skypes who within a school environment. How do you ensure it is only being used for professional purposes? I am not sure how it would work with filtering and safeguarding in mind either.

[scotyboy56]

Skype is extremely secure and very well made, I couldn't think of any security problems you'd experience with it. Anyway if it must be the only one I can think of is Tonic (only works on Windows as far as I know) but this requires the staff having other staffs IP address to add contacts, this could be an issue if you're using DHCP rather than Static addresses!

Tonic is also free (I used to use it in secondary school to talk to my friends mwahaha)

 

Ye DHCP so that's a no no unfortunately and as elsiegee40 said, skype they can talk to anyone and do anything with it

[X-13]

Off the top of my head: chrome has a taskbar notification.

 

Could work with gmail for education.

 

Chrome also has built in flash, so you don't have to worry about that any more [unless you need the software for something else...]

 

Plus you can manage it with GPOs.

[scotyboy56]

Off the top of my head: chrome has a taskbar notification.

 

Could work with gmail for education.

 

Chrome also has built in flash, so you don't have to worry about that any more [unless you need the software for something else...]

 

Plus you can manage it with GPOs.

 

We use office 365 instead of gmail for education unfortunatly or that would have been a good one

 

I have come across this: LAN Messenger | Free Communications software downloads at SourceForge.net on my little hunt, what do you guys think?

[FN-GM]

How about using Microsoft Lync? Its free with Office 365.

[scotyboy56]

How about using Microsoft Lync? Its free with Office 365.

 

I thought about that, but that requires getting county broadband to make some changes for me to make it work, which can be a bit of a hassle sometimes and I know that the teachers are going to use it for a week then just forget about it

[Norphy]

Your best bet would probably be a Jabber server of some description. Openfire is one that we've used in the past before we went over to Lync

 

Or if you really want to go the whole hog, you could get a copy of Lync to host on-site. However, simple it isn't

Edited June 5, 2014 by Norphy

[FN-GM]

I thought about that, but that requires getting county broadband to make some changes for me to make it work, which can be a bit of a hassle sometimes and I know that the teachers are going to use it for a week then just forget about it

 

It goes over https so it will probably work.

[Boredguy]

Lync client works happily without any firewall modifications for us... only a DNS entry and as long as the users have remembered to sign in it's great.

 

We used to us MDaemon as our previous mail solution and they provided a application called ComAgent which would act as both IM client and e-mail notification service.

 

I believe the application you likely used before was Net Send, but that got locked down by most people back in the XP days otherwise students ended up sending silly messages all over the network instead of it being used to notify you when your print job had completed.

 

I would try and go for something that's integrated with current programs they use than a different application as I know our staff can be a bit tricky when it comes to new communication methods.

[MatthewL]

Spark/Openfire is what I'd recommend, small client and small server based application.

[plexer]

Another jabber server for you ejabberd - World's Most Popular XMPP Application Server

 

Ben

[Oaktech]

I'd certainly look at lync...

[spadam]

We use Lync here for this purpose with varying degrees of success. As already mentioned it requires the teachers to login to be able to receive messages. Lync runs on login and prompts for password but the majority of our teachers just close it down without signing in so it is mainly used by the admin team.

 

Other thing to consider is what messages you would be sending - With a phone call you know you are speaking to the intended recipient but with a messaging service you have no way of knowing who might be viewing the screen at the time the message is sent.