Office 365 Teams and pupil membership

[mikemcsharry]

The answer to this question is probably "I wouldn't have started from there".

 

Here's the challenge - I work with an infant school who has 365 and has been adopting it very slowly until "We need all the pupils on Teams this afternoon"

I found the powershells to add users to 365 then add those users to Teams groups.

I've used some of the policies available but limited.

 

My problem is that I now need to do that "Let's sit down together and work out exactly what you need" on a live system.

 

The first issue I've caused my self is that all these users have school based email.

Following this link https://canopyit.com/restrict-email-office-365/ I can pick out users or groups and block emails. The test is working okay.

The problem is that I can't locate the Teams name in the look up for the block.

I suspect that either the Team is somehow hidden or I need to add all these users to a different sort of group which the mail rule can find

 

 

In addition, does anyone have a 'Best practices for rolling out 365 in a primary school' link handy?

 

Thanks for any help

[itmanager___]

In a similar situation, we just received our built 0365 provision, now we need to roll it out.

Hopefully someone will be able to give ideas.

[mikemcsharry]

One thing I would say for 365 is to make sure that you have full powershell admin access available to you. Also, make sure you update powershell help files.

So much of 365 admin seems to revolve around powershell and the need to login to your 365 in various ways.

I'm busily working my way through 'Powershell in a month of lunches' - I like to be able to understand what I'm copying from t'web

[Ditto]

I'm wondering if you should make use of the scheme mentioned in https://covid19.thekeysupport.com/covid-19/deliver-remote-learning/make-tech-work-you/digital-education-platform-hub/ and get outside help. You might want to delete all the pupil accounts before going down this route.

For the best practices, I can't think of a good single source. I think there is a market for this, one for Primary, one for Secondary, and for each, one for 365 and one for G Suite. If I had the skills, I'd love to write a book and sell it on Amazon. However, in the meantime, this is the best place to get the advice.

A third alternative, and it might be the most cost effective if you factor in your own time and rectifying errors as you learn, look to expert third parties. Salamandersoft, Cloud Design Box (currently advertising due to growth in demand) to name just two.

[mikemcsharry]

I'm wondering if you should make use of the scheme mentioned in https://covid19.thekeysupport.com/covid-19/deliver-remote-learning/make-tech-work-you/digital-education-platform-hub/ and get outside help. You might want to delete all the pupil accounts before going down this route.

For the best practices, I can't think of a good single source. I think there is a market for this, one for Primary, one for Secondary, and for each, one for 365 and one for G Suite. If I had the skills, I'd love to write a book and sell it on Amazon. However, in the meantime, this is the best place to get the advice.

A third alternative, and it might be the most cost effective if you factor in your own time and rectifying errors as you learn, look to expert third parties. Salamandersoft, Cloud Design Box (currently advertising due to growth in demand) to name just two.

 

I deliberately gave all the pupils accounts starting with pu_ so they are all together in the listings. My task tonight is to make a new group “pu_group” add one test account there and work with the exchange admin rules on that. I’ll put a comment back on here to let folks know how it is going

[mikemcsharry]

An update on the work in progress.

Teams groups are special groups and are 'hidden' from general view.

I made a new group called 'Pupils-Policy' and added all pupils to this.

In the settings for the group I turned off a few of the options.

Then in the exchange admin centre I made a few mail flow rules.

If they try to send or receive the email is blocked, sender not informed, but the email is automatically re-directed to the safeguarding group. This seems to be working okay