Welsh schools - Hwb Intune for Windows devices instead of local domain

[3s-gtech]

That'd be a big help - we've seen nothing.

[mikes]

Here it is, unfortunately it goes into very basic detail what was involved.  From a school in Powys. Unfortunately it doesn't list any issues or snags they came across, which seems par for the course IME. I will hear "it all went well, no problems at all, system is much better".  But when I go to see it in person I'll often see kludges, issues, staff dissatisfaction, stuff like that.  

Reading this document it seems they actually have their old domain still in use for papercut, users have to authenticate against that. There's probably more not mentioned too.

 

I have done some more experimenting; an issue I keep coming across is the reliability. Yesterday and the day before; the functionality to upload computer hashes was broken for EU intune (which allows you to remote build computers), but there is no error message or notification about it. It just silently fails. So I spend a good 5+ hours trying over and over various things to get a hash uploaded until I figure it's an MS issue.

Now today I am configuring groups but the settings I chose before are not there, I am getting an error about group settings being unable to load. So I guess I can't experiment with student computer group settings until it suddenly starts to work again?

I was getting messages about server requests being throttled so I wonder if they haven't set up routing or IP addresses properly?

 

Onto the positives I have stations hwb users can log into, with Office and Adobe CC installed; Impero works minus the browser plugins, I did get printers showing up using Papercuts cloud script thing, (not the clone tool) but it only worked for the user I ran the script on not for all users of the device.  But I have 9 or so months to work on it so there is time yet.

Hwb Onboarding Case Study (Report)V1.pdf

[3s-gtech]

Your PaperCut feedback is interesting. We’re starting to get an inkling that they want us to cludge our old PaperCut onto the Hwb Intune devices, mainly as that will be cheap and stop us moithering.

 

Chance for a clean sheet, or bodge, cludge, fudge and create a new mess?

[garethEds]

1 hour ago, 3s-gtech said:

Your PaperCut feedback is interesting. We’re starting to get an inkling that they want us to cludge our old PaperCut onto the Hwb Intune devices, mainly as that will be cheap and stop us moithering.

 

Chance for a clean sheet, or bodge, cludge, fudge and create a new mess?

 

Printing is the issue stopping me going full pelt -also the lack of direction from the LEA. Apparently Hwb want each LEA to have one printer server. We have our own contract and are not part of the LEA's SLA for printers.

 

Only one Comp in Swansea has gone Hwb and in fairness if I ask a question I get the help (Hi MJ). I feel there needs to be more direction from the LEA though.

 

[mikes]

Yeah our LEA (not swansea) is similar, as far as they are concerned each comp does its own thing. We have entered into a dialog with our LEA but I think they are only a bit more experienced with the Hwb than I am (and I am not sure if the Hwb give them that much support). 

 

If the Hwb really want schools to move over there should be a pre-set up Intune environment with all policies already set (at the moment if a pupil logs into one of my Hwb machines they can install Roblox if they want), groups made, and a selection of education apps pre made for allocation

 

Can't see our LEA having 1 print server for the whole authority? That sounds like a nightmare to me, for them to manage. They would have to get a print contract for the entire county plus get all schools to agree with it ??  The whole point of moving Hwb is serverless but with Papercut I'll need to keep our old domain running.

But at least if our SAN fails then we will only lose printing. And also local shares because GameMaker will not run on OneDrive so I'll need a file share for that.

[garethEds]

8 minutes ago, mikes said:

Yeah our LEA (not swansea) is similar, as far as they are concerned each comp does its own thing. We have entered into a dialog with our LEA but I think they are only a bit more experienced with the Hwb than I am (and I am not sure if the Hwb give them that much support). 

 

If the Hwb really want schools to move over there should be a pre-set up Intune environment with all policies already set (at the moment if a pupil logs into one of my Hwb machines they can install Roblox if they want), groups made, and a selection of education apps pre made for allocation

 

Can't see our LEA having 1 print server for the whole authority? That sounds like a nightmare to me, for them to manage. They would have to get a print contract for the entire county plus get all schools to agree with it ??  The whole point of moving Hwb is serverless but with Papercut I'll need to keep our old domain running.

But at least if our SAN fails then we will only lose printing. And also local shares because GameMaker will not run on OneDrive so I'll need a file share for that.

 

We have thought about moving our PaperCut MF to the cloud - but not sure of the logistics in that. I've never played with cloud based servers and am not sure of the costs to do that. Yet we still have a media file store which is needed at the moment. Cannot see us being able to move that to the cloud - so am not sure what to do with it. We also have our catering server. 😞

 

So many variables - yet options seemed closed off and there is no discussion that we can be part of.

[3s-gtech]

What we're going to end up with is staff and students machines on Hwb, with all of their files in Onedrive, and pretty much every service (plus the exams accounts) still on our domain (with a potential for security issues either way). Not sure how this saves us money or stress but it's progress, right?

[Olliekai]

On 02/10/2026 at 10:48, 3s-gtech said:

What we're going to end up with is staff and students machines on Hwb, with all of their files in Onedrive, and pretty much every service (plus the exams accounts) still on our domain (with a potential for security issues either way). Not sure how this saves us money or stress but it's progress, right?

Pretty much