mikes

yeah we only pay for server licenses - we use our free A1 education for our own domain tenancy - it seems hwb offer an A3 subscription but I've no idea how that works as I can't log in to any o365 admin portal to take advantage of any A3 features such as the better conditional access etc (I guess they handle that) - and it would only work if we signed in with Hwb which we don't tend to really use I'm guessing it doesn't cover server licenses either that or we've been paying for nothing - will check how our KMS work as that's how Hwb says it works - am sure our contractor has set us up with hwb KMS so that must be how it works - I remember them telling us about it in 2019 which is when they must have got the deal https://hwb.gov.wales/support-centre/microsoft/microsoft-365-licences

yeah tbh I've no idea how I set it up. I set up Web Application Proxy on our webserver so people can sign in from outside or as part of SSO - thing is our webserver has been without its external IP for years so it can't be doing anything. Unless it handles Single Sign On for internal users (we use the desktop o365 office apps here) But when people sign in to Office 365 off site they still get sent to sts.school.org.uk which is the server ADFS runs on, so it must still be being used. (we have a hybrid deployment) - I edited the login page parameters and they showed up so it's definitely using the ADFS I set up probably 8 years ago now! I wonder if there's an option I can set in o365 where they can sign in direct to Microsoft rather than being directed to sts.school.org.uk as part of the hybrid stuff. It's half term next term so I can shut things down and have a play about see exactly how I set it up. I only set it up originally as an experiment for our ICT teacher who wanted to use it, but now it's used for a lot more - we had a new SMT team who heavily used o365 in their old school so they use it a lot too.

yeah we use schoolcloud with Lenovos had no issues with it detecting the webcam. You tried force allowing the permissions in Chrome or a different browser?

Yours for only... £81 grand!!! It's hard to judge scale in videos just imagine what that must look like in real life! I'm still waiting for wallpaper displays - over 5 years ago I saw a demo of a reel of OLED "tape" - basically you could unfurl it and stick the strips on a wall just like wallpaper. I guess they judged there would be no market for this kind of thing - but why not make "reels" of say 14" wide OLED wallpaper then you could just stick it on a wall - with the connector being on the bottom? I guess getting pixel perfect alignment might be an issue - but you could handle that in software - perhaps height might be the main thing - how high do you make the reels? as the end user wouldn't be able to cut it to size and I guess making different heights just would be too expensive. But having my entire wall be an animated fish tank or a summer view (like the bit in Hunger Games in the hotel or the Aliens simulated forest) would be amazing and we have the tech for it already!

yeah I only have the warranty where you send it off (a courier picks it up and repairs it, then sends it back). But I wasn't sure if they were getting stricter - normally they give me the page of diagnostics (try reset pin if you have one etc, bitlocker warning) then they pick it up. But I hadn't sent any back for a while then last week went to send back a Chromebook - 1st one I'd ever sent back - this time they asked for a photo of the USB-C charging port. Not sure if it was a Chromebook specific thing or if they are getting stricter in general on user damage. I didn't think about swapping the back cover - I'll look into it but unfortunately I think the S/N is on the back cover so they might notice if that's where they check the S/N and not the BIOS. However I have had laptops with the S/N sticker has peeled off (not sent any of them back though) so I might just peel it off and they can always check the correct S/N in the BIOS. Worth a punt I suppose! It does look user damage but I've had many of these USB-C failures so still think it is a design flaw, the member of staff who did it has been here longer than I have (20+ years) and never had any problems prior USB-C

Have you upgraded SCCM to the latest version? we were also running a real old SCCM version but upgraded it via the sccm console until we got to the latest version now our 24H2 builds seem to be working fine including picking up the right name. I didn't set up the task sequence however our contractor did it so I can't say too much about how it was made - looks like they just captured a totally stock Win 11 24H2 ISO to me. getting rid of the bloat was annoying - we used a powershell script in the task sequence using e.g. "Get-AppXPackage *BingNews* | Remove-AppXPackage -AllUsers" to get rid of most of the stuff we didn't want like the mobile sync stuff. But other users say they deny access rather than remove these packages (e.g. getting rid of the game overlay/xbox package made minecraft/gamemaker throw up errors for us)

I wasn't sure doing a direct in place upgrade of a DC was considered a good idea - esp one with ADFS and other custom roles added. I think the server is still needed as if I shut it down nobody can log into o365 from off site. It's a virtual server so I could take a snapshot and try an in place upgrade but again I'm not sure if restoring a snapshot of a DC will break things. Got until summer so am doing all the reading now - it's stuff I've neglected for years in favour of gluing plastic nodules back onto chromebook keyboards which was a bit dumb really.

actually I think I read about this in Slashdot but for a US centric audience - even though they said they were hosting e.g. medical data on servers in the USA, it turned out they were hosting it in India and in Eastern Europe. Thanks for the PDF will have a scan through it - do you know of anything similar with Google as I haven't heard anything on Slashdot or El Reg about Google doing something similar?

yeah our main hall has the electric pull down with the projector, but the TV's are used in multiple locations - I've found the 75" newline is very easy for teachers to use by themselves - we leave the HDMI and power plugged in and they are happy to drag it to where it is needed (usually just kept in the gym) - and they are happy to plug their laptop into it and it gets autodetected - I barely ever need to touch it. The hisense one is mainly a backup one as they'll book 2 things on at the same time both needing it. Our alternative was a projector on a wheeled stand and a rollable mobile projector screen - which the teachers couldn't set up so I had to mess with it a lot more - so the TV's make much more sense to me if they are to be used in multiple locations. I had to move 2 things before myself now I barely touch it. I can see a 86" fit through the doors just our 75" is a tight fit - we have to lower the motorized stand. I guess you'd have 2 people and just push the 86" one through horizontally. But that wouldn't fit in the lifts we have here

I have a laptop under warranty that no longer charges via the USB-C port - unfortunately this is the state of the charging port Last time I returned a Chromebook with a battery fault they wanted a photo of the USB-C port (that chromebooks port looked fine however) Before I go to the hassle of sending it off and potentially being billed for shipping - anyone know my chances of them accepting this as a warranty job?

yeah we have a 75" Newline on a motorized stand, interactive with wireless dongle, works a treat, works much better and much easier to set up than the old rickety projector and stand we had. Much brighter, easier to see, easier to move, big enough for large halls like the Gym. An 85" would be huge maybe a bit difficult to get through doors/into lifts if needed - our 75" newline barely fits into our lift! But for main hall use 86" would be better - 75" is a lil bit too small. We also bought a 65" Hisense TV for around £400 and put it on a cheap Amazon £50 trolley mount, it's a lot flimsier and non interactive but it works just as well in smaller areas like the canteen and classrooms.

Our timetabling person is using Timetabler as well - no idea what version or what they make of it sorry. Seemed easy to install, just installed as admin and allowed via applocker

Our LEA is moving every school in our county from SIMS to Arbor, they are doing a dummy migration over next week (half term) where we will have time to see what worked and what didn't. Then the main issue will be the main migration - it will happen over Friday 28th April to Mon March 31st - but apparently we will be without an MIS for 2 days - that will be the main test. We have had access to a training portal but it's basically like dummy youtube tutorials "To add a new staff member, click staff, then click add..." I hope that all of our staff will use their time to use the dummy system after half term and get familiar with it, so that the live migration won't be so much of a shock. Anyway, we had a day "off" yesterday to go through Abor's training materials, only I had to come in to sort out external speakers and CCTV installs instead so I didn't do it. So I am using that as my excuse - anyone comes to me with arbor help, sorry, I didn't have the training day, go see someone else. Thing is I don't really need the training as an MIS is a MIS, it's all in English, but of course most staff seem to learn things by rote rather than actually thinking, so if a menu is different they panic. That is my main worry, instead of reading training manuals they find it easier to bother me instead. The main issue will be for exams/data staff as a lot of the things they do (exams, timetabling) won't autosync over. I must confess I worry about security too - with SIMS you need a domain joined laptop and an additional U/P to get in. With web based arbor, what is the security like, is there 2FA/IP restrictions? I will update after half term how our dummy migration goes! Also we have a meeting with Wonde about sorting out third party software that goes through SIMS. That should be interesting but a lot of it is done by the LEA so I'm not carrying the can fortunately!

Didn't a great part of "celebgate" where intimate photos of celebrities got leaked, happened because some technicians who worked at Apple accessed these celebrities accounts and took the images (that the celeb in question had no idea was being auto backed up to the cloud) ? I know some were phishing victims / password reset victims (i.e. using public data such as their middle name as reset password questions) - but I am sure I read internal tech support people at Apple in one of their outsourced depts had full access to the icloud storage and stole the intimate data, and they were trading it internally for years before someone decided to sell it (which upset another user who leaked it for free to stop the other guy profiting) Now with the politics going on in the USA - at the moment our o365 data is being held either in the UK or the EU (can't remember but it complies with GDPR) - but who knows what might happen, Trump and Elon might decide all this data law is a waste of time and things could change next week. Almost makes me think maybe running our own mailserver wasn't such a bad thing after all (actually it was a mare with all the attacks and running your own spamfilter etc)

Hi guys anyone know anything about how Hwb handles Windows licenses? We have bought server licenses from our contractor but they tell us our Windows licenses go through the Hwb - I am not sure how to find out how - We image our machines with Windows 11 Education and it works fine. However for DirectAccess support only Win 11 Enterprise works, it's not supported in Win 11 EDU unlike Windows 10 EDU where it is supported. I upgraded a laptop to Win 11 Enterprise using the generic key and it worked fine - accepted the key, no issues, but I remember in the day we had 50 or 100 MAK/KMS keys or whatever and I don't want to either a) run out or b) find out I just put that Win 11 Enterprise machine into a trial mode and in 60 days it goes into demo mode. I only need to upgrade a few laptops in the Summer so it's not an urgent thing (until I can get AlwaysOnVPN set up) as our 50 keys should be enough

It's been a while since I've set it up so I need to do some re-reading. Entra Connect "Azure AD Sync" I've moved off and onto its own dedicated server when I updated it. That syncs our AD information. But our STS.school.org.uk which is the external sign in page points to our DC-02 so I presumed it was the ADFS that handled it as well as remembering it being responsible for SSO on domain joined machines. (though reading up it might be Entra handling that?) On our ADFS service event logs I can see logins (including failed brute forces for non existent account such as sales and info but not as many as I'd have thought) and I'll occasionally get a call from a sixth former who can't log on off site and a reboot of that server fixes it. Think I need to look at modernising it as apart from AD sync I haven't touched it in a good 7+ years now, it went from an experiment so something some people use quite a lot (though we are still mainly a Google school)

I have two old 2012 R2 DC's but one of them runs the Certificate Authority for our DA. They also do DNS/DHCP (which I can easily move) - Not sure if I can move DHCP/DNS from our old DC's to our new 2022 DC's, demote the old DC's and get rid of them, then rename the new DC's to the same name as the old DC's so Certificate Authority is happy? (apparently Certificate Authority goes mad if the server name is different) Unfortunately on one of our old 2012 R2 DC's I also set up federated services for o365 SSO so I need to remember how to move that too :-(

User def has permissions? a manual map should show that

Oh right, I guess any company selling 8th/9th gen PC's won't be able to put a sticker on them saying "Works well with Windows 11" kind of thing? and can't sell them with Win 11 pre-loaded. Something they probably learned their lesson with Vista - certifying woefully underspecced computers as "Vista compatibile" did not do Vista's reputation any good at all. We still buy 9th/10th gen Intel's from time to time but they are £90 refurbs which we have our own build/license for anyway. DT binned all their old cutters/CNC stuff that had to have a standalone Windows XP laptop because that was the latest driver you could get so that's a relief for me at least

yeah we don't have any computer specific lockdown software here, apart from the net2 system which I believe plays a special bell sound and locks all doors? (could be wrong about it locking all doors that might just be a manual procedure they recommended). But the special bell is hearable all over the school and is unmistakable, I'm not sure a popup on a computer would add that much to it

First week usually involved people asking me questions I had no idea of the answer to - "it's my first day" being the answer - in fairness they were usually cool about it. A lot of googling and looking around to see what the setup was as I had no documentation at all. TBH forget "first week" try more like first month, it took me months to understand all the little bits of software and procedures they had here (in Wales we share a big network with our LEA so it's not a standalone thing here). But I was a fresh ICT tech not an experienced NM. My first week the state of the school was a little neglected - half the power buttons had broken off the old RM computers with the front fascia so I was having kids come to my office to ask me to remote restart classrooms so they could use the computers... so I did more gluing than admining for a while!

I'll have a deeper look into our gpresult tomorrow but I remember having a nightmare getting it to work myself. Added a power plan, screensaver, interactivity, but you are def sure that if you do a group policy model for that user/computer it shows the correct gpo settings applied? I can't remember what else I did other than those 3 options.

yeah I guess it means if you contact MS Paid Support (which I've never ever used) they will just tell you your device is unsupported? I've installed Windows 24H2 on an 8th gen i3 8145u and it seems to work just fine? will it suddenly pop up an "unsupported" message knowing MS?

Funny because our repro department is always having support calls for our big Repro mfp's - an engineer is out every week from Ricoh to fix the things. The smaller MFP's (classroom based) we've had very little issues with but the big ones seem to fail on us every week (the ones that do stapled booklets etc)

24" here too because they were a decent size/price ratio. I've noticed now that 27" displays have fallen into that price range now so if I were starting from scratch I'd go 27" - the only problem is, they smash a lot easier - a combination of them being bigger "targets" but also more fragile - e.g. misbehaving kid throws a pritt stick and smashes one (or even accidents - in music a girl plugged a guitar in to record, she's playing it, swings around hits the screen and it smashes) - so we get much more smashed screens with 24" than we did with 19" - - so with 27" I'd expect even more broken ones. 27" might be a bit too big as well to fit bunched together with our large class sizes - we have a class with 35 and 22" barely fit together. It's a shame, I have a 32" and a 29" for my office, I'd prefer even bigger, a nice big 4K screen. Maybe next year!