AbTutor v9

[2097]

Soo... We originally had ABTutor v7 which i upgraded to v9 due to the Windows 10 Upgrade.

 

Problems i have found so far..

 

Unusable on any machine that doesn't have a SSD or raided HDD's . I believe this is to do with all the little writes it does to a sql file. Bypassed by using the "non-cache" trigger, but is still quite slow.

 

Obviously changing to a server based setup means for us that we can no longer use WOL , as our Meraki switches does not allow WOL over different subnets.

 

Things just seem to take ages to apply , like policy's for e.g.

 

Also had the problem with ESET that when you used the "multi" login feature of ABtutor it saved the credentials in the registry, next time you reboot it will auto logon as that last used user !. Which was solved in the end.

 

 

That being said Support have been good and answer quickly and gave me a few solutions for the time being

Also the server interface is a really good idea and the AD login , ability to set groups up via one console etc ..

 

Any one got a solution for getting this running good ? or at least like the original.

[Zourous]

We're still on v7 and haven't upgraded because I had read similar posts to yours. V7 still works with W10 for the most part although I'm a bit gutted the auto login feature no longer works when we left W7 behind.

[AJWhite1970]

Also still on 7 here and works fine with Win 10 (including the auto login feature....)

[localzuk]

I've not had any speed issues. We have it running in a VM on our VMWare cluster, but at this point pretty much all our machines are now SSD based, including all our servers. We had a number of issues with synchronising groups and computers in it, but they worked to fix these for us, with new versions released. There's about 200 machines all reporting back in to the single server VM from multiple schools.

[DaveJ2717uk]

luckily only went as far as version 8 which work fine with windows 10 including the auto login feature even bypasses the AUP we have.

[supportman]

Soo... We originally had ABTutor v7 which i upgraded to v9 due to the Windows 10 Upgrade.

 

Problems i have found so far..

 

Unusable on any machine that doesn't have a SSD or raided HDD's . I believe this is to do with all the little writes it does to a sql file. Bypassed by using the "non-cache" trigger, but is still quite slow.

 

Obviously changing to a server based setup means for us that we can no longer use WOL , as our Meraki switches does not allow WOL over different subnets.

 

Things just seem to take ages to apply , like policy's for e.g.

 

Also had the problem with ESET that when you used the "multi" login feature of ABtutor it saved the credentials in the registry, next time you reboot it will auto logon as that last used user !. Which was solved in the end.

 

 

That being said Support have been good and answer quickly and gave me a few solutions for the time being

Also the server interface is a really good idea and the AD login , ability to set groups up via one console etc ..

 

Any one got a solution for getting this running good ? or at least like the original.

 

We saw them at BETT and were in a similar situation using version 7. Sadly it has been designed with a centralized server needing to be installed so was a no go.

 

We eventually went with Senso which is cloud based. Its slower but works quite well in a web browser and staff quickly got used to it.

 

Pricing was good as well if you just want a client viewer like we do.

[simpsonj]

Actually much prefer version 10 over version 7...

 

Used to have issues connecting to all the PCs in a classroom with 7, with one or two different ones dropping off and coming back over the course of a day. Version 10 has been absolutely solid in that regard. But then we don't use it extensively here...

[2097]

I imagine most of my speed issues are down to the fact we atm dont have SSD's in our machines , Come Feb all machines will be SSD .. I will then make all teachers admin clients use the cache version which should take a little load off of the server .

[kennysarmy]

Just installed v9.

 

Getting to grips with the interface.

 

So far can't see a way to setup the clients so that they ONLY see the PC's in the room.

[Jaan]

Just installed v9.

 

Getting to grips with the interface.

 

So far can't see a way to setup the clients so that they ONLY see the PC's in the room.

 

If you right click on the "Group" that contains the computers, then under "host name restrictions" enter the name of the machines you want to access this group.

 

in our case is the staff machine in that room.

 

Admin users always have access

 

if you dont have a machine listed, every machine with the tutor client can see them!

 

Edited February 11, 2020 by Jaan

[kennysarmy]

If you right click on the "Group" that contains the computers, then under "host name restrictions" enter the name of the machines you want to access this group.

 

in our case is the staff machine in that room.

 

Admin users always have access

 

if you dont have a machine listed, every machine with the tutor client can see them!

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]56681[/ATTACH]

 

Thanks just got to that part in the manual myself but cheers - you always read the manual after the event right?

 

I thought testing was going well.

 

Pushed out the client MSI to a room.

 

Devices were appearing waiting to be authenticated - those that were were then automatically put in a room group based on an AD sync which I ran. All good.

 

Then I ran the AD sync again and all but the last clients to be authenticated have been removed from the group....can't work out why?

[Jaan]

Thanks just got to that part in the manual myself but cheers - you always read the manual after the event right?

 

I thought testing was going well.

 

Pushed out the client MSI to a room.

 

Devices were appearing waiting to be authenticated - those that were were then automatically put in a room group based on an AD sync which I ran. All good.

 

Then I ran the AD sync again and all but the last clients to be authenticated have been removed from the group....can't work out why?

 

you might need to increase the certificate signing life expectancy in auto approve.

 

also check under devices---merge for any duplicates.

 

[MYK-IT]

We're on v8.2 and was contemplating upgrading to v9. But with others stating they have stayed with v7/8 and it works with Windows 10 I may hang fire. Unless @kennysarmy or others find advanced benefits of using v9 (and an additional server) etc.?

[kennysarmy]

you might need to increase the certificate signing life expectancy in auto approve.

 

also check under devices---merge for any duplicates.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]56682[/ATTACH]

 

Hi,

 

I don't want to auto-approve as some of the OU's I'm syncing with have non-student devices in them which I don't want sync.

 

Under devices I don't see any duplicates, on the right hand side is just a list of my devices under the heading "Unmatched"....it shows the 5 devices that have been removed from the group and the 1 that remains.

[kennysarmy]

I made no changes.

 

A few more of the PC's in the test room picked up the MSI, I approved all of them, ran the AD sync again and the count went from 1 to 21! Even though 6 were already approved. Bit odd!

[PBrawn]

We recently moves from V8 to V9 - it seems like an awful lot more maintenance with approval, getting rid of duplicates, setting up access hierarchy etc. I can see how they've restructured the overall UI and like the idea, but the amount of time I've spent on this (particularly now that we need to be more reliant on remote control), I'm starting to wonder if I should be asking for a refund. The support team are responsive, but I'm really disappointed with how it's going at the moment.

[Scan099]

We have just upgraded from V7 to V9 and yes it was more configuration to setup but i think the monitor function in V7 was better than V9 or will just take some getting used to.

 

We are having an issue when you are monitoring a class some machine disconnect after approx 10 seconds.

[supportman]

As I mentioned earlier, we moved to Senso and its a infinitely better product and cloud based as well. Much more modern feel to it and hardly any maintenance or setup. It just works.

[PBrawn]

Yes, sadly it's out of our price range, and we don't like the 'per device plan' - makes expansion more hassle.

 

We're going to just move back to V8 - it's a much simpler solution for us and we never had issues with it - we just hoped the upgrade would actually be an upgrade and not all this extra work!