ASA-Simon

Framework now accepts bank transfers to a UK account. Not had the need to order any more laptops for Teachers but will be a good one to test out next time.

Some of our students are having the following error when signing in on our Chromebooks: "Google couldn't verfiy that this account belongs to you. Try again later or go to https://g.co/recover for help." We are using OIDC to login with SSO with Microsoft accounts. I have tried turning off the login challenge for 10 minutes but this doesn't fix it. Anyone else run into this issue?

I did attempt to buy one of their laptops for one of our staff just to test it out. Had to give up in the end and revert back to our usual Dell. They don’t have a UK bank account to accept payments. It has to go to a bank account in the Netherlands. This threw our finance team as they don’t usually make payments to international accounts. They also don’t do Net payments terms. Our finance team are also not keen on pro forma invoices. The amount was too big for credit cards which are normally hammered over the summer break for various things. Will check again in the future.

Trouble with SIMS is it’s never just another year. It’s another 3 years you have to sign up for. Glad we are away from them now.

It looks like the embargo for the Framework 12 is today. iFixit have a teardown video:

Curious to know if anyone is using the Framework laptops? (https://frame.work/gb/en) They do come in more expensive than the normal amount we would spend on a teacher laptop. I do wonder if the higher cost is offset by the improved repairability and being able to upgrade it over time. I would say overall teacher laptops are treated far better than student laptops. The Framework 12 does look interesting for student use. My only reservation is the expansion cards. I can see them being removed and thrown all over the place. It would be great to have something so easily repairable. I've had such a mixed experience with different brands of laptops. We can't get replacement keyboards for some Chromebooks anymore, so they end up being e-waste if they get picked apart.

What SMTP server are you using to send the emails out from Bromcom? Office 365 does place limits on this. It is recommended to use Bromcom's own SMTP servers. This does come at a cost though.

First day going live with Bromcom and virgin are having issues with accessing Azure hosted services. Bromcom, Onedrive and Zoho helpdesk are crawling along at the moment. Worst possible timing.

That sounds workable. Thanks for helping to clear that up for me.

Hi everyone. We are days away from our switch over to Bromcom. Something that has come up is when Teachers send messages out through Bromcom. We are being told by Bromcom that all replies from parents come back to a generical email address rather than the teacher that sent out the message. For those that use Bromcom, is this the correct way it behaves?

Would it be worth considering third party support such as https://www.turniton.co.uk/ ? I think Bromcom do offer a discount if you are using third party support services.

I used the template specification provided by Everything ICT and refined it by doing interviews with heads of departments, admin staff etc. I couldn't recommend them more for getting through the process.

We've already done the update to the Autumn release but no change with this issue. I have got a call tomorrow with Satchel to hopefully move over to Wonde.

Running into the same problem with Xporter at the moment. It's been down for 20+ days and support haven't been able to get it going again. I know it's not a filtering issue as we have our SIMS server as an IP exclusion on Smoothwall.

Latest bringmoredata blog post is out: https://bringmoredata.blogspot.com/2024/12/mis-market-moves-winter-2024-change-is.html