CC4 and Printer Credits

[Rooser]

I was recently sold CC4 for 2008 R2 and was told that as an upgrade from CC3 I'd have no issues.

 

What a bag of untruths

 

For a start Printer Credits don't work anymore and neither does RM Connector, even though I was told that they would work right off the shelf.

 

Has anyone else managed to successfully get any compensation from this company for blatant mis selling of their product?

[zag]

There are lots of better print credit solutions.

 

Try papercut, it doesn't cost very much.

[rad]

Get on to them, hagle them, moan at them, and when you log onto the RM website and it says " Hello I'm Terry Sweeney, the CEO of RM, how are we doing..." tell them, trust me, if you write something bad, they will quickly address the issue.

[X-13]

For a start Printer Credits don't work anymore and neither does RM Connector, even though I was told that they would work right off the shelf.

 

We have CC3 and can't use Printer Credits properly. [Well, it's more that the printers have been saying they can't be managed and to check back in 20 minutes for about 3 weeks so far.]

[andyturpie]

printer credit system works on SQL and they are having to re write the database due to the move to server 2008 etc. I have been told it should be ready in a couple of months or so.

[Rooser]

Try papercut, it doesn't cost very much.

 

I'm currently trialling Papercut and it does well up to a point, my main beef is that I was sold something that doesn't work and they seem reluctant to do anything about it.

 

I can see that they are moving the system to Postgre ( I assume for unification purposes ), but that still doesn't excuse what they've done.

 

It seems that they've spent a long time being able to do what they want without schools giving them what for. Coming from a corporate background I find this wholly inexcusable.

[X-13]

It seems that they've spent a long time being able to do what they want without schools giving them what for. Coming from a corporate background I find this wholly inexcusable.

 

RM pretty much have a monopoly when it comes to managed IT systems.

 

It's pretty much a case of "put up with it or sort it all out yourself".

 

I've been trying to get us to move away from RM for ages... But it isn't looking likely.

[andyturpie]

TO be fair we were told this is the case and I would lay the blame at the door of your account manager, still doesn't excuse the fact though about them upgrading the system with quite a few of the bells and whistles missing though.

[Rooser]

RM pretty much have a monopoly when it comes to managed IT systems.

and

It's pretty much a case of "put up with it or sort it all out yourself".

 

I've been trying to get us to move away from RM for ages... But it isn't looking likely.

 

It's appalling, I've already had to fix the 2008 native backup system that RM said couldn't be used, I've had to manually alter GPO's as their Management console barely works and as much as I'd love to take the site onto a Vanilla network, they need to be able to do things for themselves as I'm only part time.

 

I shall keep things updated as to progress....

[Rooser]

TO be fair we were told this is the case and I would lay the blame at the door of your account manager, still doesn't excuse the fact though about them upgrading the system with quite a few of the bells and whistles missing though.

 

I think this is the main point really, if I'd know that things would have been missing I'd have shelved the project for a couple of months.

 

I take it RM have people on this site too that read these things?

[X-13]

I take it RM have people on this site too that read these things?

 

Possibly, but I doubt they'd be in a position to sort anything out.

[MK-2]

Get on to them, hagle them, moan at them, and when you log onto the RM website and it says " Hello I'm Terry Sweeney, the CEO of RM, how are we doing..." tell them, trust me, if you write something bad, they will quickly address the issue.

 

Not entirely true. We had endless errors (wont go into them) and I filled out their "would you recommend us" survey saying no. they called the head (who wasn't in thankfully) to talk about why I had given them a low score. not talk to me, talk to my head (this during the time RM were telling my head "its not our software its him, he doesn't have the experience")

I got a phone call from someone there saying "oh yes you have had it bad, we'll get right on all these issues" then nothing again.

[andyturpie]

Rooser, we are at the point of moving from CC3 to another. CC4 would be the prefered choice as less of a learning curve and training costs etc, but I am in meetings next few weeks with Impero, Ranger, Viglen Classlink and CSE to look at their products. We have moved our workstations away from RM to Viglen, our SMT want us to look at other options.

[Rooser]

Rooser, we are at the point of moving from CC3 to another. CC4 would be the prefered choice as less of a learning curve and training costs etc, but I am in meetings next few weeks with Impero, Ranger, Viglen Classlink and CSE to look at their products. We have moved our workstations away from RM to Viglen, our SMT want us to look at other options.

 

I looked at Ranger (which is owned by RM anyway) and found that as much as it could do what you need in the end, it'll take a lot of work to get it there, there's a lot of tweaking to do to getting working to give a seamless transition. I plumped with CC4 because, like you, it gives the end users more or less the same experience that they are used to and gives the ability to farm out non tech issues (like passwords and printer credits) to trusted users.

 

It's a great idea in principal, it's just badly thought out and done. Even worse is the fact that they don't seem to care....

[sparkeh]

When we were considering CC4 with 2008r2 we were given a list of things that hadn't yet been ported over from the 2003 system and asked if we still wanted to go ahead. We weren't overly fussed by them so did go ahead.

I suggest that your account manager should have done the same and there are grounds for a complaint if you weren't informed about things that were not working. I would contact the Customer Experience Department as they are generally very good with complaints.

[andyturpie]

Agreed, the CC3 to CC4 migration would be pretty seemless as most of it can be imported/exported only thing which cannot be migrated is your custom user templates. BTW we don't even let anyone bar my team reset passwords or add printer credits are we being too cruel lol?

 

Having been to a few schools with CC4 implemented, they seem happy enough (they didn't use the printer credit system anyhow). The blessing with moving away from CC3 would be the freedom of not faffing around with DOS network drivers to build, it really limited our choice in workstations and laptops this refresh......

[sparkeh]

Having been to a few schools with CC4 implemented, they seem happy enough (they didn't use the printer credit system anyhow). The blessing with moving away from CC3 would be the freedom of not faffing around with DOS network drivers to build, it really limited our choice in workstations and laptops this refresh......

Yep we are very happy with CC4.3, server 2008r2 and Win7 is working really well, the system is solid and leaves me times to get on with more interesting things than just managing the system.

[Sylv3r]

Other than a niggling issue with Printers following users around the school (not literally!) we are happy with our CC4.3 Server 2008 R2 install with Windows 7 clients. Hopefully fix to sort the printer problem is due in the next few weeks.

[Tallwood_6]

The list of things which won't be ported over from cc3 or cc4.2 as well as add ons under development is listed on the support website and is talked about on the RM communities website. Although this clearly hasn't been communicated by your account manager it would have been prudent to do some checks yourself. At any stage did you ask if all of your current cc3 options would be available on cc4.3?

[X-13]

The list of things which won't be ported over from cc3 or cc4.2 as well as add ons under development is listed on the support website and is talked about on the RM communities website. Although this clearly hasn't been communicated by your account manager it would have been prudent to do some checks yourself. At any stage did you ask if all of your current cc3 options would be available on cc4.3?

 

You assume people are told about things like this beforehand.

 

If it happened with the first HT I worked with, it would have been done, badly, over a weekend without anyone being told.

[Tallwood_6]

Well printer credits for CC4.3 is under field trial currently by the looks of it so you may be able to get in on this if you dont want to wait. RM Connector it seems they have no timescales for if or when this will be available on CC4.3.

CC3 - CC4.3 software compatibility

[bossman]

@Rooser:

 

Bought CC4 early doors cheaply and stipulated my own hardware for the job, obviously its 2003R2 but it was a brand new commission. We have always used the printer credits and the print management tools which work very effectively due to our printing strategy which the SLT team backed and has seen our printing costs fall dramatically from 14k to 3.5k.

 

Staff receive 200 printer credits every week and they are fastened down to printing off their own subject printers and non of the ICT suit printers so no one is using them as reprographics now like they used to.

 

@webman built a great web app called student viewer which allows the staff to view the students work and mark it without having to print it off and they can access this from home which saves drastically on toner and paper costs.

 

We have not looked back since migrating from our very rigid CC3 to our new CC4 which we did in 8 days, it has been a very successful migration.

 

I know that we have the odd printer mapping problem but this will hopefully be resolved shortly, it is nothing that the staff and students cannot cope with as they really don't need to print that often because of the strategy and the student viewer app.

 

We have now had 10 years of RM products and to be really honest it has been absolutely fantastic for our school and I hope it keeps evolving, we will see as I think they have learnt some very hard lessons of late but from this they have made a positive upgrade path from their earlier products.

 

I have no objections to using a Vanilla product either may I add as I do think that Microsoft have made valuable steps in moving forward. I do feel that when windows 8 becomes a full product we will see some real intuative use of an OS especially with the different hardware scenorios, can't wait

[MR3006]

Other than a niggling issue with Printers following users around the school (not literally!) we are happy with our CC4.3 Server 2008 R2 install with Windows 7 clients. Hopefully fix to sort the printer problem is due in the next few weeks.

 

We are also having this issue but to be honest i have only just realized that its actually a issue now that i have seen this post.

 

This would explain why users are getting printers mapped to wrong rooms (or indeed to the room they were last logged into), anyway good to know and hopefully shall have a fix for this soon.

 

Would just like to point out that we hadn't been made aware that printer credits wouldn't be working, recently moved from CC3 to CC4 over the summer, the printer credits were even covered in the two day training along with the network recycle bin!!! and then when the product appears no sign of it!! same with the low level internet access control and domain content filtering.

Edited November 24, 2011 by MR3006

[Sylv3r]

We are also having this issue but to be honest i have only just realized that its actually a issue now that i have seen this post.

 

This would explain why users are getting printers mapped to wrong rooms (or indeed to the room they were last logged into), anyway good to know and hopefully shall have a fix for this soon.

 

Would just like to point out that we hadn't been made aware that printer credits wouldn't be working, recently moved from CC3 to CC4 over the summer, the printer credits were even covered in the two day training along with the network recycle bin!!! and then when the product appears no sign of it!! same with the low level internet access control and domain content filtering.

 

NRB, Printer Credits and Internet Control are all either currently in Fieldtrial or looking for volunteers for fieldtrial now - so hopefully shouldn't be much longer for you to wait.

[Danp]

We too are in the same situation, upgraded from CC3 to CC4.3 in the summer and now printer credits, so we are using PCounter very successful