Sign-in Systems - InVentry Concerns - Alternatives?

[synaesthesia]

Ah, fair enough. Far from me to say, but it sounds like it might be being overcomplicated over and above an IT responsibility   Handy when things are customisable however.

We've quite an odd setup thanks to a link with another local school for our 6th form, but they were happy to advise on solutions for syncing those groups separately from MIS. One was indeed via a UDF but they were able to do this within a couple of days of requesting it. Was about this time last year, hopefully they're not going down the "growing too quick without expanding their capability" trap so many other service providers fall into

Simplifying it outside of tech might be worth a look though - what we had in place with Inventry was a complete shambles and suprisingly most of that was down to school procedure than their laughable tech.

[mdrabble]

We have Inventry, and yes it isn't perfect but works well and have very few issues.

 

The main DB is installed on a one of my VM's so it is my control and is backed up.

 

I have local admin access to to the sign in screen - one located at main reception and one for pupil lates.

 

We have the the quick access terminals at external doors which work well, which been andn show either a green, orange  or red screen when signing in/out - plus have the option to ask why signing out or in late if needed - have this turned off as found people ignored it.

 

Can add staff to different evac groups - although as with any system, if they dont sign in or out then you have no idea if they are if our out etc.......

 

My only grumble is having to manually import ID Card tokens at the start the year and then remembering to add updated ones when I print new cards - I could set to auto code but trying to get staff and 6th fom to do it is a different thing altogether.

[supportman]

Sign in app is the only way to go these days, brilliant little app.

[MrEprise]

Had an issue recently on our second sign-in screen where the SSD had failed (Phison controller issue where the drive ID's as SATAFIRM S11 and it's essentially bricked at that point) and I had no backup image of it so I contacted Inventry support.

 

My initial call was met with the usual customer support engineer with language barrier issues but as long as I concentrated hard and had no background noise, I could just about get the gist of what he was saying. "The unit has just gone out of warranty" he tells me. Oh really, that seems convenient...

 

Anyway, as I tell him about the issue, how I have no system image of it (why would I ordinarily?) and how irritated I was since you'd not normally expect something like this to happen and then be stranded without any means of getting back up and running, he then proceeded to escalate the ticket up the chain.

 

It eventually ended up with a manager who agreed that we shouldn't be left stranded despite being out of warranty so approved an out-of-warranty repair at no extra charge which was nice. However it took them 3 weeks to get to this point and this was apparently due to it being a secondary screen where the primary was still working and they deem this a lower priority. They might see it this way but our SLT don't since we have 2 entrances that Staff use for signing in and some of our Staff weren't bothering to go out of their way to sign in. This became more of an issue when we had a Fire evacuation recently and a few Staff members couldn't be easily accounted for as there was no record of them being onsite. It then took a further week when they told me that someone from their scheduling team would be in contact shortly and it turned out that they wouldn't have contacted me if I hadn't chased it up.

Finally a whole month later they had an engineer booked in to come and fit a new SSD with the OS and Inventry software preloaded and then configure it to connect back to our primary terminal. This went fine. While he was here, I asked him if there was a way of setting the Console shortcut to auto select "Site 1" when we open the console as it gets a bit annoying to select this every time the console is opened as we only have the one site. This is where he tells me he needs to move 1 file out of the Console's program directory and it'll stop asking. So we were configured for multi-site 2 years ago when we didn't need it? He was surprised we were set up in this way if we were only ever going to be one site. Sounds typical for Inventry if you ask me.

 

In the end, we were sorted but it did take a bit longer than I think it should have.
 

[psydii]

8 hours ago, MrEprise said:

Had an issue recently on our second sign-in screen where the SSD had failed (Phison controller issue where the drive ID's as SATAFIRM S11 and it's essentially bricked at that point) and I had no backup image of it so I contacted Inventry support.

 

My initial call was met with the usual customer support engineer with language barrier issues but as long as I concentrated hard and had no background noise, I could just about get the gist of what he was saying. "The unit has just gone out of warranty" he tells me. Oh really, that seems convenient...

 

Anyway, as I tell him about the issue, how I have no system image of it (why would I ordinarily?) and how irritated I was since you'd not normally expect something like this to happen and then be stranded without any means of getting back up and running, he then proceeded to escalate the ticket up the chain.

 

It eventually ended up with a manager who agreed that we shouldn't be left stranded despite being out of warranty so approved an out-of-warranty repair at no extra charge which was nice. However it took them 3 weeks to get to this point and this was apparently due to it being a secondary screen where the primary was still working and they deem this a lower priority. They might see it this way but our SLT don't since we have 2 entrances that Staff use for signing in and some of our Staff weren't bothering to go out of their way to sign in. This became more of an issue when we had a Fire evacuation recently and a few Staff members couldn't be easily accounted for as there was no record of them being onsite. It then took a further week when they told me that someone from their scheduling team would be in contact shortly and it turned out that they wouldn't have contacted me if I hadn't chased it up.

Finally a whole month later they had an engineer booked in to come and fit a new SSD with the OS and Inventry software preloaded and then configure it to connect back to our primary terminal. This went fine. While he was here, I asked him if there was a way of setting the Console shortcut to auto select "Site 1" when we open the console as it gets a bit annoying to select this every time the console is opened as we only have the one site. This is where he tells me he needs to move 1 file out of the Console's program directory and it'll stop asking. So we were configured for multi-site 2 years ago when we didn't need it? He was surprised we were set up in this way if we were only ever going to be one site. Sounds typical for Inventry if you ask me.

 

In the end, we were sorted but it did take a bit longer than I think it should have.
 

Yeah, your mistake was not being the SBM. They move a lot faster when it’s the person who signs the cheque calling them.