soveryapt

No worries. Will do. Thanks Andy

Hi My apologies, I don't know why I missed this response, I was literally just coming on to see if anyone had any info. If you still have that doc, I would appreciate it so I can see if Lancashire Digital Services will sort things out for me with Netsweeper. Thanks Andy

To expand on this, could someone perhaps explain how you are supposed to add wild card domains into NetSweeper for inclusion/exclusion as usually I know it is done with a * (so *.edugeek.net), but I read somewhere that if you just have the domain (so edugeek.net) that would allow for sub.edugeek.net, test.edugeek.net, etc as well. Basically, as is always the case with Lancashire Tech Support, I'm just checking they're doing it right in the first place. lol.

Morning all Presently, I'm moving support for schools to Splashtop from ISL, for no reason other than the fact it is integrated with our RMM. The problem I'm having is that for any schools under BT Lancashire's Broadband and Filtering (presently powered by NetSweeper), it would seem I'm unable to connect. BT Lancashire has apparently added in the various domain to the exception lists as listed on the SplashTop support (https://support-splashtopbusiness.splashtop.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001811966-What-are-the-Firewall-Exceptions-and-IP-addresses-of-Splashtop-servers-Services-), but this doesn't seem to have worked unless they add in a higher level exception rule that non of the traffic from that machine is filtered, which strikes me as a bit odd. I just wondered if anyone else is using SplashTop with a NetSweeper setup, and if so, have you managed to get around the situation. It's not often we need the access, but with more remote support, it would be good to have it for trouble shooting where we need to. It works perfectly well through the EXA / SurfProtect side of things without any intervention, and through other client's firewalls of varying degrees, just seems to be NetSweeper that is the issue. Thanks Andy

My thoughts exactly. Lol. Thanks @Jobos for sending them through.

Yup, tried that first funnily enough.. plenty of information about getting the laptops and how you should distribute, but not the actual instruction sheet that they put in with them.. However, if you have a link to where you found them, how about sharing that.. thanks..

Hi Folks. Ok, so one of my schools has sent out the laptops and we’ve not got a copy of the instructions (although we briefly saw them) and now we’re getting hassle from a teacher as the students can’t login. I don’t suppose anyone has a copy of the instructions sent with these laptops that you would be willing to scan and share so you? This way I can translate what are already fairly idiot proof directions (if they read them) into something ours can understand. Lol. Thanks Andy

Hey Folks I'm looking at RMM solutions at the moment that I can onboard various clients to (so this isn't a single school before anyone tries selling my school network management software .. lol). We've a mix of clients from schools through charities to small SMB with a few private clients, and we're trying to move to more of a solution where we have an overview of our clients computers from a single interface. For those clients who currently have servers in place, we do have Spiceworks installed, which means we can dial in and get an overview of the situation, but we're after something that is a bit more proactive with regards to patch management, remote support, etc. We have looked at SolarWinds, but I'll be honest, their extremely pushy and dated sales techniques have put me off their platform. We had a demo of NinjaRMM this week, which we quite like the look of, but initially the 50 client machines may prove an issue as we need to have the discussions with our client base around shifting models to a fee per machine sort of subscription, which may put some schools off. We're currently running a trial of Atera which is great and easy to use, but you have to buy a third party option to do third party patching (Adobe, Java, Office, etc) which then makes it a more expensive model than the previous 2 mentioned. So, with all that in mind, I thought I would tap into the hive mind and see whether there are any other options that I'm missing out on investigating, or any folks who have experience of any of the above, good or bad. Our main focus for the solution is to become more proactive in the approach and to centralise patch management for OS and Third Party software. Presently, we only need Windows and Mac (along with printer monitoring and such), hence looking at Ninja, but who knows if this might change. Looking forward to your thoughts Andy

Afternoon all One of my schools is looking to move from Google Drive to OneDrive (long story as to why they went with Google Drive over OneDrive when they use O365 for emails). Anyone know of any easy way to do this in one hit? I've had a look around, but there doesn't seem to be many straight forward options, so I figured I would come back to the fold and see if anyone has any brilliant ideas. Thanks Andy

Yup, very sure. When I set up a computer for the first time I set the default user that windows makes you create as being ICTAdmin (for schools anyway) with a relevant password for that site. That then takes all the settings of that default one from which I then add it to the network. The only time this is different is when I actually deploy using WDS, in which case the machines are still given a local admin account of ICTAdmin, but all done through WDS should I need to remove it etc, but obviously first login there is then from a domain admin account (which has a different name - either the built in or my own which I set as soveryapt)

Good afternoon all I hope you're well and not too busy in the run up to the summer! Strange one here, I have a Windows 10 laptop that was letting non administrators login, but as soon as it logged in, it logged them back out. Admin accounts logged in perfectly well. So, the first fix I thought I would try (as all the other laptops that were deployed at the same time work fine) was to remove it from the domain and then re-add it after a reboot. Simple you would think yes? No ... When I came to reboot and logged in with the local admin account I created when setting up the machines (username ICTAdmin instead of the built in administrator), it would seem that the local admin has been removed from all groups on the machine, therefore it is no longer part of the Administrators group so I can't do anything with it. I've tried booting up from Hirens on my Zalman drive, but the laptop isn't playing ball, so I can bring a copy on CD with me next week (I might see if there is a blank CD in the school as well) but I thought, I know, I'll ask the hive.. So, anyone else had this or anyone got any brilliant ideas to get around this rather interesting issue? Thanks Andy

A little bump, anyone? (can you tell I'm back in that school today! lol) Thanks Andy

Good afternoon all Long time no post. I'm looking to set office 365 as being the default action for email links. So far, I've managed to get the following to work to some extent: ftype mailto="C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" "https://outlook.office.com/?path=/mail/action/compose&to=%1" which I've run from an elevated Command Prompt in Windows 7. This now gets email links to open when clicked using Office 365 in Chrome, it opens the Compose window in Office 365, but then the email link has "mailto:" stuck on the start, as obviously it's pulling the whole link through and not discarding that bit of it. Does anyone have any idea how I might do this and get rid of the mailto: bit of the address? Thanks Andy

Evening All One of my schools is looking to start using Nova 6 for their time tabling and have asked if I could possibly locate a school in their locality that is using it so they can see how it functions and ask a few questions of whoever administrated it. They're going to arrange a demo as well but would like some real world advice as well. Anyone who might be able to help out, please get in touch. Thanks Andy

I've found Exa to be OK through the reseller BlueOrange that I use for them. Personally, if you need control of the domain then get the school to draft a letter asking for your email address to be added to the admin contact for the domain and have it addressed to Nominet. When they have done this, scan and email the letter to Nominet and they will make the changes for you which will give you access to change details on Nominet. For £10+VAT you can then change the registra back to Nominet if you wish (or some other provider) and then use their facilities to operate the domain and you won't get bothered. Now I know EXA do sometimes charge a fee for the config a for O365 or GApps to make sure settings are kept up to date, so whilst the domain is free, they charge for that service. Of course if you move the domain from them, be sure to get all the various DNS settings first using something like DNS Stuff to get a print out. I've moved a couple from EXA this way when I've taken control of their web services and the schools didn't even notice the switch (so long as you get the new DNS set up first). Hope that helps Andy

I had this a while back. Here's a photo of the notes I got sent by Lancashire. Hope it helps Andy

Yeah, they have CASPA but are moving away from this as this is only used by the admin staff. The reporting we're after needs to link in. I'm sure there is probably a way to do it in BSquared as well but I'll look at the Assessment Module in SIMS.

Sorry yeah. It's reports on pupil progress. It's an SEN school and it's for tracking how the pupils have performed over the year so you have previous targets, progress and current targets. (I'll be honest, I couldn't remember the word reports when I was typing it up initially.. ) Edit: I should point out they use BSquared for the formal levels tracking, the reviews I'm referring to here are more personalised progress reports and such.

Good afternoon all A recurring problem at one of my schools are the pupil reviews. They have used the same old word documents since I started at them in 2008 and despite my desperate attempts to move them away from this, it's just not happening. However, that said, I'm not giving up. The school uses SIMS and is looking to role out the teachers app at some point soon, so I figured there must be some software that might tie into SIMS and allow pupils reviews to be done in there. The main problem with the word stuff is PICNIC stuff (copying whole tables from previous reviews into a table in a new review and wondering why all the margains are buggered as the main point), and the way I figure it is whilst there will be a small learning curve, that if they're going to roll out the SIMS classroom features, this would be a good time to roll out new software for the reviews and bring it all together at once. This would mean the reviews are then stored in SIMS and tied to pupil data as well. Any suggestions (even if they don't tie into SIMS and information needs to be inputted manually) for review software would be great as I don't fancy writing an Access Database (which is the other option I've thought about, but I'm a bit rusty on that). Thanks Andy

Thanks again, eventually managed to find that page when looking through the forums (if I'd have come back instead of just reading it would have saved me some time). Eventually managed to get Google to phone me (yes folks, a phone call from a human at Google!!) and we went through a few details which lead me to the right addresses and such, thankfully they hadn't changed the recovery e-mail addresses so I was able to contact their old webmaster who set the GApps up for them in the first place and we're back in, and they're locked out.

Just looked more into this and I'm just going around in circles on the Google site.

Yeah, I have control for the DNS on these accounts and I saw something vague about that, but then couldn't see anything further as to what settings I needed to change. If you have any further information that would be fantastic though.

Good morning folks Right, interesting issue. One of my clients is having some issues with regards to their Google Apps (Legacy) accounts. Being legacy, you can imagine the block I'm getting from Google with regards to this, so I thought I'd bounce it off you guys to see if anyone has any other suggestions. The issue is simply this, they have 3 companies in one office, a minority share director for one of those companies has gone a bit rogue, the ex-IT guy for those 3 companies is a relation of the rogue director and as a result has locked the email accounts for all the companies, each one is on a separate Google Apps (Legacy) account. Now, we have access to the inbox emails for the companies as thankfully the ex-IT guy wasn't the sharpest tool, and he essentially used forwarding rules and the "check other accounts" for getting access to the e-mails in the Google Apps area instead of setting up correct MX records and all that jazz. So, on one front, it's good, we have control of the e-mails and anything going forward is all in one place and sorted. The issue is the records of the sent e-mails from the company accounts which are on the Google servers. The passwords have all been changed on the accounts the remaining directors do not have administrative access to the accounts (I don't know if they ever did) so we're not able to get an administrative password reset and just keep meeting the "contact your administrator to reset your password" message. I've tried phoning Google but their lines are harder to find a real person on the end of than when you phone the DVLA or similar, and the only chance you apparently have of talking to a real person is through their support line with a support PIN, which you can't generate for a legacy account anyway (I tried on my own in case I could get through and then seek advice sneakily), so I'm at a loss. I've advised my client they seek advice from their legal team and issue various demands for the passwords etc, but in case there's anything else anyone can think of to try, I figured I'd consult the hive. Thanks all in advance Andy

The DT class are currently in the IT suite doing some bits of CAD and there's one lad who is a bit fanatical about Meghan Trainor. Anyway, a few have started mock ups of their models in the real world, and I suggested how to show his commitment to MT and knowledge of DT construction, he could put something on to say "It's All About The Base" I feel dirty having made such a pun.. lol..

I may just buy a couple of sticks of Kingston and see how they go and then get more in if they work ..