Senso - So frustrating

[Techie-Tech]

We've started the migration to v2, and I'm not impressed with a number of things.

Firstly, there was no migration tool/assistance from Senso at all. Yes, they plug you into the customer success team but they really don't seem to do much at all. In a large muitli-site setup that we have, with dozens of polies and niche configs for particular sites, this has caused resource issues as we're only a small central team, looking after 25+ schools, so the 'other' work work is still piling up elsewhere.  We only took the dive to v2 because we had several hundred devices black screening with a cursor, that was confirmed as being an issues with v1, and would not be fixed.

We are now only a few schools in, and there's issues with screen broadcasting and have been told this is being worked on and should be available at some point after Easter.  This is a fundamental teaching tools that should have been one of the first modules to be ready to go.  We're also getting machines that have been moved to v2 now not connecting to the internet after login. If we stop the Senso service, the internet pings to life.  Also, if we reboot the machine and login again, the internet then works.

This whole thing has driven me crazy to the point that we will not be renewing Senso again, and will be looking for alternatives later in the year.  Even if we have to buy several tools, we will do it as we have lost faith in the product.

 

[TheRobins]

Feel the pain, only being a single site maybe not as much.

 

For the broadcasting we have to deploy an EXE called Senso Direct Broadcast on both the sending and receiving machines. Since doing this it has worked without fault, at least I have not heard about it. There are issues with remote control and remote thumbnails which have been there since we migrated back in September last year to V2. I have been trying to do some remote control of loads of devices today, running a custom script to grad hardware hashes of a load of devices and gave up after a while, went back to straight RDP and action 1 on the machines that I have setup on. 

 

Support have been good when needed, even if not much can be done at the moment. The remote thumbnails is a pain for me as its very handy keeping an eye on a couple of student student devices, the amount I have seen "off track" is interesting. 

[ConceroEdu_Matt]

These are not new issues, we’ve seen them from day 1 of rollout. It’s very frustrating, and I have raised directly at a high level. 
 

in this day and age, we shouldn’t have to migrate within platforms, and if we do - it should be handled their end.

 

there is a huge cost element to migration in terms of time. 

[Techie-Tech]

8 minutes ago, ConceroEdu_Matt said:

These are not new issues, we’ve seen them from day 1 of rollout. It’s very frustrating, and I have raised directly at a high level. 
 

in this day and age, we shouldn’t have to migrate within platforms, and if we do - it should be handled their end.

 

there is a huge cost element to migration in terms of time. 

Exactly!

I'm normally very busy, week in, week out, and this has has meant I can no longer keep on top of things in may normal manner, which I'm finding quite stressful.
 

[Steve101]

V2 is dreadful.. I was in a similar position, they make it sound simple and then once you're 'migrated' they tell you to crack on doing all the work.

[HarkNowHear]

We've had frustrations with Senso ever since we moved to it 2/3 years ago. V2 improved remote connectivity performance a little bit, but was missing some very basic features when we were first prompted to move over to it. The pace of development there seems incredibly slow and both techs and teaching staff have lost patience with it. 

 

I've got one site moving over to NetSupport's classroom.cloud and think we'll likely move the rest later in the year. 

[BKGarry]

We ditched it, v2 was infuriating and the layout was not good on our Staff L13 Yoga screens, just was not a nice experience for both teaching staff and us.

 

We canned it all, moved to Smoothwall Monitor and Cloud Filter for filtering a monitoring, yes it cost us slightly more in the long run, but Cloud Filter allowed us to comply the DfE Digital Standards for staff as well as students. We also moved Classroom Management over to Classroom.cloud without their safeguarding module etc, and the experience there has been great. Teaching staff seem to really get on with it, responds so much better with our Mac Suites in Music and Media and generally feels a lot snappier.

 

[tom_newton]

Thanks for the support @BKGarry - and I am glad your Smoothwall experience has begun well. One day we will also offer the full classroom experience, but we want it to be absolutely bang on, when we do.

[SensoCustomerSuccess]

 

On 30/03/2026 at 14:33, Techie-Tech said:

We've started the migration to v2, and I'm not impressed with a number of things.

Firstly, there was no migration tool/assistance from Senso at all. Yes, they plug you into the customer success team but they really don't seem to do much at all. In a large muitli-site setup that we have, with dozens of polies and niche configs for particular sites, this has caused resource issues as we're only a small central team, looking after 25+ schools, so the 'other' work work is still piling up elsewhere.  We only took the dive to v2 because we had several hundred devices black screening with a cursor, that was confirmed as being an issues with v1, and would not be fixed.

We are now only a few schools in, and there's issues with screen broadcasting and have been told this is being worked on and should be available at some point after Easter.  This is a fundamental teaching tools that should have been one of the first modules to be ready to go.  We're also getting machines that have been moved to v2 now not connecting to the internet after login. If we stop the Senso service, the internet pings to life.  Also, if we reboot the machine and login again, the internet then works.

This whole thing has driven me crazy to the point that we will not be renewing Senso again, and will be looking for alternatives later in the year.  Even if we have to buy several tools, we will do it as we have lost faith in the product.

 

Hi @Techie-Tech,

I’m really sorry to hear about the difficulties you’ve had, especially with a setup of that size. That’s not the experience we want for anyone, and I completely understand how frustrating it must be.

Our Customer Success team can support with the configuration and setup of policies in your new portal, and we’d really like to help get things back on track for you.

If you’re open to it, please reach out to us at [email protected] so we can take a proper look at your setup and the issues you’ve mentioned. 

— Senso Customer Success Team

Edited March 31 by SensoCustomerSuccess

[Techie-Tech]

16 hours ago, SensoCustomerSuccess said:

 

Hi @Techie-Tech,

I’m really sorry to hear about the difficulties you’ve had, especially with a setup of that size. That’s not the experience we want for anyone, and I completely understand how frustrating it must be.

Our Customer Success team can support with the configuration and setup of policies in your new portal, and we’d really like to help get things back on track for you.

If you’re open to it, please reach out to us at [email protected] so we can take a proper look at your setup and the issues you’ve mentioned. 

— Senso Customer Success Team

@SensoCustomerSuccess

Unfortunately, with there being no proper migration path/hand on assistance, modules that aren't working, and the stress of jumping out of the frying pan of v1 (Black screen and cursor issues on hundreds of machines across our trust) to v2 (above issues) this has been a complete and utter mess, and very stressful.  

We are already lining up demos of alternative products.

 

[SensoCustomerSuccess]

29 minutes ago, Techie-Tech said:

@SensoCustomerSuccess

Unfortunately, with there being no proper migration path/hand on assistance, modules that aren't working, and the stress of jumping out of the frying pan of v1 (Black screen and cursor issues on hundreds of machines across our trust) to v2 (above issues) this has been a complete and utter mess, and very stressful.  

We are already lining up demos of alternative products.

 

@Techie-Tech
 

I completely understand how stressful this experience has been - it’s not what you should expect, especially during a migration.

I appreciate that you’ve already lined up alternative trials, and in the meantime, we’d love to help get Senso working correctly in your environment so it can support you through the last stretch of the school year.

If it’s useful, we have availability today at 1 pm for a configuration and policy replication call. I have reserved the appointment for you, just in case - no pressure, just a chance to get things running smoothly.

Senso Customer Success team

[BKGarry]

Couple of personal suggestions - Work with some actual teachers on your layout, it has been shocking, having staff with 13" 1080p screens and having to scroll down past the class selection box is not idea.1

 

Make the v2 client uninstall v1 and bring in the ability to apply different policies to different groups/folders as before, applying to the whole organisation at all times will not work for a lot of people.

 

and most importantly, make it not feel like we are all in a massive Beta test rather than a finished product.

 

[SensoCustomerSuccess]

6 minutes ago, BKGarry said:

Couple of personal suggestions - Work with some actual teachers on your layout, it has been shocking, having staff with 13" 1080p screens and having to scroll down past the class selection box is not idea.1

 

Make the v2 client uninstall v1 and bring in the ability to apply different policies to different groups/folders as before, applying to the whole organisation at all times will not work for a lot of people.

 

and most importantly, make it not feel like we are all in a massive Beta test rather than a finished product.

 

I have raised your feedback!
We actually have a UI update for the technical view coming to make it more user friendly based on schools like yourselves providing suggestions.  

We appreciate all the feedback and suggestions we get.

Senso Customer Success team

Edited April 1 by SensoCustomerSuccess

[Simcfc73]

3 hours ago, BKGarry said:

Couple of personal suggestions - Work with some actual teachers on your layout, it has been shocking, having staff with 13" 1080p screens and having to scroll down past the class selection box is not idea.1

 

Make the v2 client uninstall v1 and bring in the ability to apply different policies to different groups/folders as before, applying to the whole organisation at all times will not work for a lot of people.

 

and most importantly, make it not feel like we are all in a massive Beta test rather than a finished product.

 

 

Alpha

[TheRobins]

Just seen an updated client for V2 has been released on the portal. I have pushed this out as well, it couldnt be any worse. So far it seems to make end points more responsive and thumbnails in thumbnail view seem to be much better.

 

Version number is 2026.4.13.1

 

Cannot see any notices or changelists so must have just been pushed out. 

[Techie-Tech]

Testing at one school now. Client has been distributed via GPO, and have been getting quite long install times 20-30 mins.

Will report it to Senso now.

[SensoCustomerSuccess]

34 minutes ago, Techie-Tech said:

Testing at one school now. Client has been distributed via GPO, and have been getting quite long install times 20-30 mins.

Will report it to Senso now.

We’ve given our Support team a heads‑up that you’ll be reaching out. Once your ticket comes through, we’ll keep a close eye on it to make sure it’s handled quickly and to spot any other ways we can support you during the migration. That includes helping replicate your policies in the new portal and getting you licensed for the trial of our new Broadcast module, which is currently in beta.

We’ve had some great feedback on the latest update, and our Customer Success team is here to help with anything you need along the way.

[Buzzer90]

Anyone else get the Internet issue as mentioned by the OP?  Just trying to pin down if it is another Senso quirk (we had the issue in v1 that was causing file explorer to crash on login...) 

[noelmm]

We've had issues with dropping the internet since the latest version of senso and have been working with Senso to fix the issues, which they have for us.  The problem related to the Filter Bridge, since making a change last for us last week the problem seems to have been fixed. 

[Techie-Tech]

3 minutes ago, Buzzer90 said:

Anyone else get the Internet issue as mentioned by the OP?  Just trying to pin down if it is another Senso quirk (we had the issue in v1 that was causing file explorer to crash on login...) 

The 2026.4.13.1 resolved this for us

We're still likely to move away from Senso, I've had enough of it!

[psydii]

Nothing to report about "slow" internet, but I did see defender and something in the senso client folder having a fight for about 20 minutes today. One machine, running an older version of the senso client, it made the machine extremely slow, to the point task manager felt like it was about to lock up. Since we've had  about 50% of machines on the newer version, and for the teachers that use it (and those machines) I've not heard any of the reliability complaints that I used to get weekly, but its a strange time of year so that might just be because people are busy / using the IT Suites less.