dapaulio

Good evening all. im not sure whether i have been experiencing this since before the recategorisation but i seem to have a load of devices across the network hitting dmd.metaservices.microsoft.com with a 503 error. Googling it seems to be a services which are related to the OS and the device metadata but trying to understand it better and is the 503 is as it say service unavailable or is there a misconfiguration in my smoothwall somewhere

Whilst we seem to have a similar structure in place as Jthomson personally i dont think it is really an IT issue if the power goes out. the exam would have to stop under extenuating circumstance anyway. in a powercut you will have little to no lights, heating will likely go off as well as the network resources will go down. The job of the UPS is not to maintain power for any lengths of time but is used to clean the incoming electric and keep the network up long enough for the automated or manual Disaster Recovery system protocols to do their job. the job and protocol of an IT engineer is not to worry about the exam but to ensure in the time the UPS has, to ensure the network is gracefully shutdown in prolonged power outages. If you have a backup generator like in hospitals for life saving equipment then this could be a different story.

Thankyou both @simonw - thats great to have in within my diagnostic tools but the LGfL one is not detailed enough for what i need. @ibpalle - thank you, is this something which is in the pipeline as i always found it a useful tool especially when onboarding schools. i would be interested in knowing as soon as one is updated.

Hi all Since the category changes made to smoothwall I have been testing web filtering across all our schools using test.smoothwall.net. And I am finding that the results are not accurate. All the results return the old categories and show everything is allowed when they are definitely not. If anyone knows or if there is someone from smoothwall is here reading this it there an updated tool to test smoothwall filtering with please Thanks Paul

I appreciate the advice thanks

Interesting reading . I didn’t see this email either although i don’t think whether we are using “themes” or parent categories to block. We Tend to create a core block category group and a student uap category group used with a block rule which ticks the categories they not allowed. Then we fine tune with creating custom categories for websites and services which operate under http and auth exception rules. Explicit group rules like allowing social media are bonded to a ad security group and specific web filtering rule is then applied.We Using ntlm identification practically in most schools still and using idex in others and we still finding issue with most sites but worth me checking to see whether idex schools are affected Is that update being rolled out with a major or minor release eg Leeds 68 or is this recategorisation and terminology being rolled out thru definition updates?

Recently we have had several websites in several schools all experience issues with their website not loading properly. This includes Seneca, room booking system, blooket, accessacloud, Facebook, twitter and several sites who have checkouts, eg premier inn, Amazon, etc there are loads others also and likely loads that not been reported either. I’m already seeing this to be a massive job to resolve All sites have smoothwall all on different versions dating back to Leeds 63 to recent 68 I found that suddenly these sites are partially blocking with 407 proxy authentication errors. They are all the affiliated sites causing the website to not function or display properly Has there been and smoothwall recategorisations that could have caused this sudden partial block of un authenticated traffic? Tia

We too had similar issues. Create an updated whitelist as suggested above. As per linfit post.

I understand it’s a long process but your meant to do the house keeping attendance task in sims first Then run the mentioned exe over a weekend was recommended to me.

We looked at google slides a while back but the school at the time were conscious that despite the complexity of slide show address and to make it work you had to make it public so anyone could technically view the slide show. This didn’t sit comfortably with the school from a children’s names and faces were also shown in events being shown around the school. It was then we created an xibo server and display screens. This was a bit more complex for the end user but was completely internal .

Roll on 6months and uniflow was installed on the canons in two of our schools. The outcome has not been a good experience so far. I can understand in a small school environment but in an average size school it’s been chaos. But by decision of the trust it’s here to stay so How have others made the client work efficiently. My understanding for the printers to work a client is ran in the user context and logged into but this client is easy to close down or ignored on startup causing printing disruption. Has anyone manage to run the client seamlessly and purely in the background without relying on the user input?

2 up here for sign in app. I have it installed on two of my sites Relatively inexpensive and as AD integration works likes a charm. Think this was extra if memory recalls. Not that I’ve needed just yet but looks like it will work with trusts and or schools over multiple sites also One of the sites is in a excellent 4g coverage area where auto sign in using mobile location service and the app is great if you want to limit the hands on approach just to guests using the tablet. The other site is a bit out in the sticks where the 4g can be 1-2 bar and can be a bit flacky Pre authorised guests can also be sent an email which will allow the iPad camera to scan a guest in in seconds. Fire report is online. Either unclip the iPad or use your own mobile device. Overall I give this app a 9/10. With some scope I see some development. I am guessing the very competitive price will be temporary once they got their foot in the door I can see the price going up so if you going to make the jump do it now

I have spoken to many sims support providers and there is no news in the channel to support 2022 in the foreseeable future

Yea dispute warnings not to, it was done by accident on one of our sites and sims does appear to work fine however i know they have had a dcom permissions issues with solus deployment, which was identified in server 2019 also but an ms fix released thru windows update however to date I’ve not seen an update for 2022.

Had Vericool at one of my schools for several years, product was great, ok it aged and the school didn’t want to invest in upgrading but it remained robust for up to 10 years until the school decided against my opinions they wanted a change (likely the cheaper option) and went to Cunningham’s face recognition which is good, I’ll give them that, but they have been dealt a blow as the school asked me to try fix a problem on an admins pc with their system which cunninghams want to charge the school for. Relative straight forward but find this support model very scam like

Also a sign in vote here. Very easy setup and works well with mobile auto signin thru location services. And we have ours azure AD integrated Great for large events as organisers can pre-stage the invite and the guest sign in with a qr code. We use a feature also where the students who are late sign in and the late mark is sent thru to SIMS (premium feature) and if a student leaves early eg medical appointment similarly it writes back to SIMS Not that I’ve used it but it looks good if you have multiple sites or trust with multiple schools as you can link multiple sites together

Brill thank you

Anyone got a recent version of the technical roadmap. Latest I can find is December 22 Thanks

What’s with the group policy user profiles. There was a period of time this wasn’t working. Is it working again now? I have several sites that used to have delprof but that broke and then the group policy but that also broke. I have techies running delprof manually and it’s a bit of ball ache especially if you have no remote management software on site

It’s weird we have device licensing on all our schools and oddly 3 have started to expire the subscription in the last 2 weeks. License wise they are all within there device limits and subscription end date. The only thing I can think of is the server firewall endpoints have changed and the software grace period has expired. Which I fear if this is on 3 sites so far am I expecting all our sites to begin doing the same over the coming weeks

Anyone know of any problems with adobe cc. We have had several education customers whose adobe cc have stopped working over the course of the last week Can anyone shed any light

I second senso broadcast useless. Having support 2 schools with it. Both report the same symptoms. Senso respond with not having any issues relating to lag. Thought the lag was proxy related. Remove the proxy out the equation and still experience lag with class related instructions like broadcast.

While the terms would be open to interpretations as technically when I child is at school they are under guardianship of the teachers. However I would question the use of chat gpt as it is being blocked at secondary level above to minimise plagiarism claims. I can see the benefits but long term consequences of its use. To me this is an SLT call

Not sure what proxy you have but We have smoothwall and implements office 365 rule above blocking anyone in banned users list Add the user to a security group which is linked to the internal banned user group and hey presto.

Not that I know of but I think that translates to I forgot my password. Or another thought is ess release complex passwords in its versions releases. Maybe it’s a symptom if the password doesn’t meet minimum requirement it just locks you out.