School Lockdown notice on screens

[timbo343]

We had a "lockdown" drill the other day which is a terrorist drill - incase someone storms the school. It has been decided that there are 3 means of communication - number of bell rings, text messages to everyone and a message on screens to all machines stating what to do.

 

I'm trying to perfect the message to computer screens as we have impero and decided to use the "send Message" feature. The trouble with this is the message cannot be saved nor can the format of the message. Also the message received on screen isn't big enough, im wanting something that is going to fill the screen, maybe an image that could be minimised or a message box that can be set to a specific size with formatting.

 

I was wondering if anyone knew of any program that would allow us to do this.

 

Thanks

[Steve21]

This might help was another thread with some ideas few weeks back: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/general-chat/161842-lockdown.html

 

Steve

[sted]

cant you lock computers with a pre defined on screen message with imperio

[timbo343]

cant you lock computers with a pre defined on screen message with imperio

 

You can lock the screens but staff need to keep things open as a means of communication (not my idea). Im not sure if the impero lock message can be configured though. It would be nice if impero added this function (ive requested various features many years ago but not had any confirmation of them) but i doubt they will implement it.

[NokiX]

cant you lock computers with a pre defined on screen message with imperio

 

I believe you can however you can't have more than one message so you have to change the default lock screen text which wouldn't exactly work well if teachers lock the classroom PC's and the message shows something like 'School Lockdown'.

 

I'm not sure if it's still the same in the newest version but we do use Impero to do this but it just has the standard lock screen however it works quite well in the sense that you just drag all the PC's into the lockdown group and all the PC's are then inaccessible.

[Manny-Tech]

Is it a standard image that wouldn't change? If so, can you not just drop it into a folder on the machines and run a command from Impero to launch it? Or an image on a network drive where everyone has access to?

[timbo343]

Is it a standard image that wouldn't change? If so, can you not just drop it into a folder on the machines and run a command from Impero to launch it? Or an image on a network drive where everyone has access to?

 

That's a bloody good idea .

[timbo343]

Is it a standard image that wouldn't change? If so, can you not just drop it into a folder on the machines and run a command from Impero to launch it? Or an image on a network drive where everyone has access to?

 

Working like a charm - just need to remember to use "Run website / file" than using mimic script. Will be using this method for other things.

[Max_Power]

Our of interest does your image display via this method if the user is viewing a powerpoint presentation?

[timbo343]

Ummm, not tried, will test it.

[timbo343]

Tested.. it runs.

[chris_uk]

We are doing the same thing, we purchased this. Does everything that you need, NetSupport Notify - Multi platform alerting solution incredibly cheap as well.

[timbo343]

We are doing the same thing, we purchased this. Does everything that you need, NetSupport Notify - Multi platform alerting solution incredibly cheap as well.

 

We looked at pricing for that before @Liam86 suggested his idea. NetSupport Notify was a cheap option for us however could only justify it if it did something else other than just notify.

[chris_uk]

We looked at pricing for that before @Liam86 suggested his idea. NetSupport Notify was a cheap option for us however could only justify it if it did something else other than just notify.

 

How much did your quote come in at? Our Attendance department are using it to bug people who do not do registers.

[timbo343]

How much did your quote come in at? Our Attendance department are using it to bug people who do not do registers.

 

Ill PM you.

[Manny-Tech]

That's a bloody good idea .

It's only taken me 3 and a bit years to contribute something meaningful

 

As a standard I have a folder on the server that I robocopy (mirror) to all machines at startup, the first copy can take a minute or so but after that it only does changes. I have folder redirection for all user groups in there, also I have the delprof2 tool so I can remove profiles remotely as and when I want.

[mikes]

if I was setting something like this up, I'd write a small utility in VB6 that runs on each client, on a timer set at 10 seconds; if the timer.tick detects a certain file (warning.jpg) exists it will display it full screen over everything else. Set it to read from a specific folder in a staff accessible share and any member of staff could put any image there (provided they had the appropriate permissions for the folder) I know it might not be "enterprisey" enough for some but all the enterprise software we have tried has just been too complicated for our staff to grasp, especially when it is used infrequently. The only caveat the staff had to remember was they needed to save their PPT's as PNG as I never learned the VB powerpoint controls.

I ended up using a solution like this for our TV virtual signage as the commercial software we used had difficulties converting from PPTs, and sometimes didn't display updated new images for hours.

 

Also do your phones not have broadcast functionality? We find the best way to send a message globally is to use our phones broadcast functionality (not sure if IP phones have this however...)

[jdoyle]

 

I'm trying to perfect the message to computer screens as we have impero and decided to use the "send Message" feature. The trouble with this is the message cannot be saved nor can the format of the message. Also the message received on screen isn't big enough, im wanting something that is going to fill the screen, maybe an image that could be minimised or a message box that can be set to a specific size with formatting.

 

 

Presumably the students in classrooms without computers would be listening to instructions from their teacher while students at computers ignore the teacher and focus on a set of instructions on screen?

 

Would have thought schools would want one standard process to be followed in all classrooms (which might require that student computers are automatically shutdown).