DWilson1997

Something like Informacast which can centralise lots of different products for mass notification might be useful Mass Notification System, InformaCast - Singlewire Software

Trilby - can't go wrong for the price. We run around 80-90 players - every classroom screen is set as one and we pay the same annual fee. We have lots of different media pulling from external calendars, websites etc that auto update. Delegated access so only specific staff can add content to specific areas. It just works.

We find that selecting Reload tab by 1 person in the team fixes it for everyone. We have tabbed SharePoint libraries that also get this and once we've reloaded the files tab it all works.

If you are sharing it with a 3rd party then yes it is a breach of T&C's.

From ESS: If your SIMS and/or FMS software is currently hosted by Scomis, to continue accessing this software after 31 March 2025, you can either: • move to SIMS Connected, ParentPay Group’s secure cloud hosting solution for SIMS and FMS; or • host SIMS and/or FMS on server(s) installed at your school (“On-premise SIMS/FMS”).

This is my understanding too.

We're just moving our database back on prem (we were with SCOMIS) and the final move back is scheduled for next week. I would recommend getting your support company to do the SQL install, setting of SA passwords, SOLUS etc - we paid our SIMS support company to do this. They have allowed us to do testing to stress test it all works before the final pass. The latest technical roadmap is here We had the added complexity of having to deploy a remote desktop solution to access SIMS, which we also outsourced. Also, don't forget about things like SchoolComms, A2C which all need migrating too!

We had something similar, we don't use papercut anymore but off the top of my head I'm sure it was calling to run a script that we blocked from running. I think you can change it to run an .exe however we didn't get it to work reliably so ended up using Printix as an interim solution to deploy the follow me queue.

They are not permitted to access our systems or use their device outside of the school network. Also, if they become a medium or high risk users in entra then they will be blocked must come to us to manually resolve.

We use SIMS currently, and looking at a range including iSAMS. I know some ind schools looked at Arbour/Bromcom and then looked at 3rd party fee billing systems.

At my previous school we ran full UniFi with AP's and switches. It worked well for the scale and size of the site and rarely had issues for the price point. I did what others have said and trunked the SFP+ ports back to what was a UAG-AGG switch (I think?) at the time. For the needs of the school this worked perfectly. I think it all depends on what you need out of your network. Here, we needed something truly enterprise grade to meet our business requirements so opted for Cisco. However as Ubiquiti develop the enterprise range that could be a contender in the future.

We're paying 2.35 ex VAT per ream on a call off order of around 2,000 reams. Printing on main MFD's is 0.0019p per B&W click and 0.015p per colour click, slightly more on desktop printers.

We don't actually use it - just spoke with them a couple of weeks ago Dave

You can if the usernames are consistent for example 'ExamUser01, 02 etc' but i've not tried it. You create a new group on the left, apply the username variable then apply to policy to block access to that group.

Senso kicks in almost instantly - never seen a delay with blocking applications. It is what we are going to do for exams.

Could you enable Microsoft 365 URLs and IP address ranges - Microsoft 365 Enterprise | Microsoft Learn only on the smoothwall and block all other traffic. Then prevent the browser with something like Senso? Dave

It sounds that user authentication is not setup - take a look at this Smoothwall Filter & Firewall: Authentication Methods – Help Centre I am not sure what the best thing to use is for local AD now, as we use the cloud filter module - but IDEX is probably what you are going to want

Edulink does work with iSAMS Dave

Laptop / Surface Pro: 3-4 years Laptop / Dell Latitude: 4-5 years Desktop PC: 5 years Monitors: 3-5 years - docking monitors so tend to fail quicker Tablets: 3 years or when OS is out of security updates Mobile Phones: 3 years or when OS is out of security updates Switches (Meraki): 10 years or when OS is out of security updates or if higher performance is needed Wireless points (Meraki): 5-10 years or when OS is out of security updates or if higher performance is needed Networking wiring etc: as and when facilities develop areas of the school Printers/MFD: 5 years (outright purchase) Display Boards: 7 years

It just generates a generic upload link, so anyone with the link can upload files as does not need a domain account Create a file request - Microsoft Support

We use 'request files' in OneDrive so parents can directly upload photos, I don't think it works with SharePoint storage yet, however could setup a power automate to copy the file across.

MFD's are charged at a higher rate then desktop printers. I can't see the exact breakdown as we pay annually in one payment - but it is somewhere around £10pm per device. MFD's are slightly more expensive (maybe £12-15pm) and smaller desktop printers are (around £8pm)

Seems to be working for us here across 3 dashboards, hopefully just an isolated issue D

+1 For Uniflow. We were papercut MF in 2022, then when we migrated to InTune and used PapercutMF+Printix in 2023 as we were not Azure AD joined we couldn't get papercut SSO to working correctly and we are now on UniFlow Online. Printix was great, so easy to deploy, full single sign on for users - don't think we had an issue. Our copiers were not compatible with PrintixGo so we could not use that feature. Paying for Papercut MF for the print release/budgeting features and Printix became expensive. UniFlow has most of the functionality of papercut in a slightly more basic interface. It does all the account charging, budgets etc and it is a low monthly subscription per MFD per month. The only thing I miss from Printix is the complete SSO process which requires no user interaction - on uniflow you have to click 'Sign in' for it to work the first time you use the device, however people have picked it up quickly.

NextGen is fine for a couple of tasks teachers do, such as registers however it does not have the full feature set. With the NextGen option you would need to either host your SIMS database via SIMS Connected (like you did with SCOMIS, staff login via RDP) or host it on your own infrastructure. Whilst you could move to another MIS and finance provider, depending on your individual school, it could amount to a large project would need appropriate resourcing. Also, it is quite a short timeframe to make a decision and implement such a large change to operational systems (such as finance processes), and it is worth thinking about if a new MIS provider has the capacity to onboard you with such short notice given lots of schools will be in this position. It will all come down to the business needs of your school and the appetite for change.