Impero users

[MattDLEA]

Can I ask a question of Impero users here.

 

I have just looked at their website, watched the trailer and read a few articles. But I'm unsure over its value.

 

Is it supposed to replace CC3/4 Ranger etc?

 

Basically the filtering and e-safety is done by smoothwall for us. - so not really needed

Computer usage / print usage / power usage is not important in the grand scheme of things. - not needed

 

Packages I tend to deploy via GP and msi.

User creation I can do in AD

 

So is there any real worth in this product for our situation?

 

I can see how remote monitoring may be useful but not really for our kids.

 

What I think im asking is from a Network manager / tech point is there any benefits ?

 

Cheers

[Arreks]

Depends on your budget, size of school and whether or not the teachers would use it.

 

I pretty much use all of these features:

 

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And the numerous Computing teachers use it for monitoring too.

[synaesthesia]

It's not a direct placement for those products, no.

We mainly use SCCM for software deployment, however Impero makes throwing out the odd MSI to a few machines far easier if we need it immediately.

Filtering & esafety is taken care of by Lightspeed, however Impero allows us to fine tune it as we see fit, set schedules, let teachers take some control over who can access what etc.

Monitoring and remote support is it's biggest strength for us, for the staff it's great for use in classrooms and our staff make excellent use of it for demoing work. It's far better than getting everyone to turn round to see the projector in many, many cases and can be used ala RM Tutor for showing off one persons work to the rest of the class.

 

Logging is extremely useful and has been used many a time to prove something has, or has not been done.

 

We don't use any of the auditing bits, printing bits, power usage or anything.

 

It is worth every penny for us. It isn't cheap, but in our opinion far better than the offerings from the competitors. Their support is absolutely second to none.

 

Your mileage may of course vary and it won't suit everyone, however I strongly suggest getting a trial set up.

[Boredguy]

It's primary use is classroom management, similar to RM Tutor on the CCx platform so staff can monitor, restrict and interact with students. Some of our staff use it in addition to the IWB to broadcast their screen onto the whole class so there is no reason why little Johnny can't see what they are doing, and likewise they use it to share good work by a student to the rest of them.

 

From a Support point, we use it quite a lot for remote support for staff. We use it from assisting with what is on their screen (similar to VNC), to unlocking/logging off accounts, running remote commands to force software installation etc.

 

Filtering of sites/programs can be hit or miss at times, but it should be viewed as an additional tool and not a replacement to a proper filtering solution like Smoothwall, as when it does work it lets staff control sites, audio, USB drives etc without having to ask the Support team.

[6Foot2]

As well as the above we use Impero to limit student logons. If we have imposed a sanction at the request of a member of staff we do not want students trying to bypass that sanction by logging on as another student. This works because candidate duplicate logons are often in the same class/group.

 

Impero will also allow you to logon as one user at multiple stations simultaneously.

 

There are message and chat functions for assisting with issues remotley and staff who have console access can blank stations in their rooms and they can also broacast their own screen should they so wish.

[speckytecky]

I use it and find it's invaluable. Saves me hours of trying to do things through Group Policy or other traditional ways. Superb for monitoring and locking down. Nothing I don't like about it at all. I haven't let my teachers near it though as I trialled one who was meant to be Head of ICT and seemed to spend a lot of time unlocking stuff she had actually locked!

[Oaktech]

At it's core, Impero is a classroom management system designed to replace the likes of RM tutor. However it has a stack load of value added features that you may or may not use. Personally I think it could be a bit cheaper, but it is still well worth you pay for it.

 

We use almost all of the classroom management features, we use it to impose internet bans and to filter tricky things. The staff use it to change student passwords. I use it to provide remote assistance.

 

I've don't use most of it's admin features as I have no use for them, or the functionality is provided by a wider suite of software such as SCCM, SWGFL filtering, Parago Asset management etc etc.

[halbaradkenafin]

I'll echo everything said so far, it's a great piece of kit for classroom management and remote support. We also use it to allow staff to reset pupil passwords which saves both sides time, both for keeping pupils in the lesson and allowing us to get on with more important things (especially after holidays when we could have had 20+ pupils a lesson who didn't know their password). It's ability to send commands to multiple computers using Mimic scripts is pretty awesome as well, I've used it when testing deployments of SCCM updates and packages to force the sccm client to check in with the server, or when I've rebuilt a whole classroom to log in to every PC and run IE to get past the first run dialog (we had an annoying problem from that).

 

If you've got no need for classroom management functionality then it's probably not worth the money, but if you do need a solution to that then all the extra functionality makes it more than worth the cost.

[Griff]

Well used in both our labs the only thing I could say is its pretty expensive considering we only really use the classroom management side of it.

[Mark182]

Well used in both our labs the only thing I could say is its pretty expensive considering we only really use the classroom management side of it.

 

This is what we are thinking at my place. We like it but cannot afford to renew.

[Iain.Faulkner]

Not much to add, we use it across the school. We use it as a network management console (useful for logging what students are doing and provides evidence in some cases). Staff use it for displaying student work (share screen), changing passwords and passing out documents that all users need access to. When we're doing bits of maintenance it's very useful as well to be able to centrally turn on a whole suite of PC's and log them on as well without having to visit each machine individually. We also make use of the powersave functionality, forcing PC's to shutdown at specified times. It is expensive, but it's very good and does make our lives much easier.

[theeggmaster]

We've just gone ahead with the purchase last month but I've been evaluating it for a few years as I've always managed to find something that doesn't quite work for us. Now we're at a point where everything is working.

My reasons for buying it were from a few different points of view. It helps with network management and software upgrades. When we do a SIMS upgrade I simply log in all of the machines at the same time out of school hours, run simsload.exe on all computers, and when the staff come in first thing on Monday, SIMS is updated for them so no need to wait for the files to copy before they can take registers.

We also needed a classroom management solution, and I've used ABTutor, NetSupport etc before. However, as Impero runs from a server rather than the teacher's PC, it has persistent logs and settings and is much easier to manage centrally.

Thirdly, we needed an e-safety solution over and above our Smoothwall filtering, especially with Ofsted looking so closely at e-safety now. I've looked at Securus for a good number of years, but we run PC's, Macs, Android, iPads and Chromebooks, and Securus doesn't work with anything other than Windows. Impero works with everything but Android, but that is on the way, so we are covered on all devices.

 

It isn't the cheapest solution, but for me to get something that covered all of the bases would have been a number of products, and the total cost would probably have been more, plus more complexity to manage. I'm very happy with it and our staff love it.

[CamelMan]

It is expensive but we've found that it the best of its type. It covers the classroom management, behaviour reporting and computer misuse really well and Im using it along side GP to help nail down out new domain security.

 

We dont use all the featured (print management for example) and if your not using the majority of the features then it may be better looking at specific software for those areas you need . However it gets a thumbs up from me - even little things like shutting a load of machines down, or killing services etc is really easy and useful. Our IT teachers love it from their side as well!

[halbaradkenafin]

When we do a SIMS upgrade I simply log in all of the machines at the same time out of school hours, run simsload.exe on all computers, and when the staff come in first thing on Monday, SIMS is updated for them so no need to wait for the files to copy before they can take registers.

 

Anyone else doing this sort of thing I'd strongly suggest using an account which doesn't have a profile stored on the server. I managed to kill our file server and DCs by logging in 300+ PCs simultaneously with the same account, I had to shutdown all the clients and reboot the servers to fix it after watching clients struggle to log in for about 30 mins, some would log in normally, others loaded a temporary profile and others just stuck at "Welcome".

[Griff]

Anyone else doing this sort of thing I'd strongly suggest using an account which doesn't have a profile stored on the server. I managed to kill our file server and DCs by logging in 300+ PCs simultaneously with the same account, I had to shutdown all the clients and reboot the servers to fix it after watching clients struggle to log in for about 30 mins, some would log in normally, others loaded a temporary profile and others just stuck at "Welcome".

 

Blimey bet that was an interesting few days :| lol

[lmrogers]

Has anyone else had an issue with Impero crashing since the recent update to v5?

[halbaradkenafin]

Blimey bet that was an interesting few days :| lol

 

Did it in the holidays when there was only 3 other staff in. I'm sure there was a good reason for trying it but I can't remember now.

[6Foot2]

Has anyone else had an issue with Impero crashing since the recent update to v5?

 

We are currently on Version 5.0.03. My station does not have any issues with Impero apart from the occasional 'not responding' problem. However, that is more likely to be because I haven't shut it down in a while.

 

Workstation O/S: Windows 7 Pro: 64 Bit

RAM: 4 GB.

CPU: Pentium Dual Core: 2.5 GHz

 

Server O/S: Windows Server 2012 Standard: 64 Bit

RAM: 4 GB

CPU: Intel Xenon Dual Core: 2.6 GHz

[lmrogers]

Yeah, it was running fine for a while and then the server just keeps crashing and disconnecting the workstations.

[6Foot2]

Yeah, it was running fine for a while and then the server just keeps crashing and disconnecting the workstations.

 

Give the Impero helpdesk a call? As has been stated in this thread already they are good at what they do.

[theeggmaster]

Anyone else doing this sort of thing I'd strongly suggest using an account which doesn't have a profile stored on the server. I managed to kill our file server and DCs by logging in 300+ PCs simultaneously with the same account, I had to shutdown all the clients and reboot the servers to fix it after watching clients struggle to log in for about 30 mins, some would log in normally, others loaded a temporary profile and others just stuck at "Welcome".

 

Hahaha. Yes, the account I used doesn't have a server-based profile. The first time I tried it I did it room-by-room and then worked up from there to see how the network would cope.

[timbo343]

Can I ask a question of Impero users here.

 

I have just looked at their website, watched the trailer and read a few articles. But I'm unsure over its value.

 

Is it supposed to replace CC3/4 Ranger etc?

 

Basically the filtering and e-safety is done by smoothwall for us. - so not really needed

Computer usage / print usage / power usage is not important in the grand scheme of things. - not needed

 

Packages I tend to deploy via GP and msi.

User creation I can do in AD

 

So is there any real worth in this product for our situation?

 

I can see how remote monitoring may be useful but not really for our kids.

 

What I think im asking is from a Network manager / tech point is there any benefits ?

 

Cheers

 

We used to have Smart Synchroneyes which used to be for classroom management only. Then we got LanView for us in IT support so we were running 2 systems. Our version of Smart Synchroneyes failed to work on Windows 7 so we needed to come up with a new solution. Previous to Synchroneyes we had NetOp which kept failing. We looked at LanSchool and Impero and after reviewing both we opted for Impero.

 

You mention the Filtering and E-safety is done by smoothwall. We have smoothwall too but impero adds that extra layer and makes the teacher incharge of their lesson. What I mean by this is, say the BBC for example is allowed through smoothwall. Impero gives the teacher the chance to block certain sites from that room/at that time. It even goes as far as only allowing certain sites, so this is good for saying to staff, right if you are having a revision lesson, set a rule in impero so say that students in this room are only allowed to access bbc bitesize.

 

Computer usage/print usage/power usage - this is something that we don't really use as we have Userlock for computer usage/papercut for print usage but we kinda do use the power usuage - only for remote wake and shutdown. Computer usage in impero us useful for seeing what students have been on in that lesson and gives staff the chance to see what students have been on by drilling down to active windows, what has been opened and viewed. Its a nice little feature to see what has been going on in the lesson.

 

Packages - again group policy can do this but impero gives you the ability to send out to some machines on an ad-hoc basis.

 

I don't use the User creation or Change Password features.

 

Some other features of Impero:

- Share teacher's screen/share a student's screen to all users

- Live chat between students and teacher

- Disable internet/printing/sound/usb per user/group

- block applications in certain groups at certain times

- Keyword detections

- Screenshot/record/lock screens

- Create small tests for the class to answer and then get the results back

- batch logon to machines

- mimic scripts (this is where you can create keyboard presses to run scripts)

- Access control - set certain users/groups/computers to have specific access to certain areas of impero

 

Since having impero, its made our lives a hell of a lot easier from a Support POV. As for teachers, I know some wouldn't be without it but yet some only us the basics (these are the ones who haven't had the training from us)

 

Why not get a trial of it and see what you think, that way you will be able to get a true idea of how it works.

 

I forgot to mention - its modular so you can take bits out that you don't want - see attached. My license is a bit borked - it claims ive got support until 2099 and some of the modules are listed as not working but they are.

Edited May 13, 2015 by timbo343

[6Foot2]

Useful as Impero is already I expect to get more use out of it after we renew next month as we are now buying into the Patch Management feature.

 

...The Impero 'Patch Management' system ensures that computers across your network are all up-to-date and running the latest patches. It scans remote computers to identify which patches are missing, and will then download and apply the patches as per a predefined schedule. Providing your computers support Wake-On-LAN, Impero Patch Management can wake up computers, apply patches and then power off the computers during the night or any other convenient times...

 

[Edu-IT]

What is the latest Impero release number?

[6Foot2]

What is the latest Impero release number?

 

I believe that is 5.0.03.