TheHyperTechie

You're absolutely right, this is a mess. I completely agree with everything you've said. I actually had to set up Kindle Fire tablets once before, for a smaller group of around 20, and even that was a nightmare. There aren't any good Mobile Device Management (MDM) options for them, and they definitely should have consulted with IT before making this purchase. In this situation, (if it was me) I'd recommend collecting all the tablets and refusing to distribute them again until a secure and reliable management system is implemented. If anyone complains, I'd suggest bringing it to your union representative. This kind of situation is exactly why we have them – to advocate for our safety and ability to do our jobs effectively. EDIT - The few devices I set up were password-protected and had a single Amazon account with purchasing disabled (after installing the desired apps). Additionally, a proxy was enabled for student filtering.

Can't comment on their lockers, but I have a couple of their 32 bay chromebook trolleys, highly recommend!

These look good, thanks. Do you have to commit to the payment every month with these then? or are you able to top up when needed?

I like your thinking, but it would actually cost us more to have a contract. If you also add in the holidays throughout the year, roughly ~12 weeks the phone(s) will not be used so essentially its just wasted.

Hi All, Looking for some advice on the best PAYG sim providers. We have three 'trip' phones that get topped up throughout the year. We use EE currently, but was recently told I can only manage 2 PAYG sims on the dashboard, which means I had to create a second account and manage the 3rd sim through this. Not ideal. We don't want any contracts, as the phones don't get used enough to warrant it. I am mainly looking for something with a central management dashboard where I can add unlimited PAYG sims and top them up easily. Thanks!

No problem, if you are investing more into Google as a school it is definitely something to look at. I use a lot of the added features, (mainly security focused). I don't think i could go back to fundamentals now.

I have standard licensing issued across all users on my domain(s) (The only option is to license the whole tenant unfortunately) We pay £2 per user license a year.

According to Google, context aware is only available for Education standard, and Plus. Which is a shame!

As far as I am aware, you can't stop this without utilising a higher tier of Google Workspace (Standard, Plus) and using context aware to set up conditional access rules. (Please correct me if I am wrong!) You sound like you have done the most you can do, by blocking external access etc.

This looks like a great opportunity!

Personally, I think an internal IT team would be the best route. However... MSP wise, I would recommend iCT4 (https://www.ict4.co.uk/) they look after a large number of schools/mats around the UK. I have dealt with them before and can't fault them to be honest.

Thanks, this is really helpful information. I will need to check with their current support provider (external MSP) to see what the setup is like at each new school. As I believe most of them have gone down the serveless route.

Thanks for your reply. To be fair, this my initial response also, just add each domain to our Google console and then I can manage the Google Users for each school. The only issue I can see with this, is that the staff at the new MAT will now have two areas to access in order to collaborate. Although, they could setup federation for Google with O365 so they only need to know one set of details...?

Hi all, So at some point this year, our small MAT will be joining a larger Trust. The Trust we are moving to, are heavily Microsoft, using sharepoint, office, intune etc. However, we are very heavy on Google with nearly 500 chromebooks, all drives/shared drives stored in Google Drive and we use all of the Google work apps. Anyway... My current Trust do not want to move away from Google, as it just wouldn't be feasible considering we are so invested in it. I would like to know if any schools/Trusts have been in a similar situation before, and managed to still collaborate effectively with other schools and the MAT. If you have, what did you implement to allow this to happen? Thanks!

Also interested in finding this out. I applied for a demo a couple of weeks ago, and a representative spoke to me. It seemed promising at first, but then they said they couldn't continue with giving me the trial because I needed to provide our budget figures and an exact purchase date. This slightly put me off. Would still like to know the pricing though.

+1 Sophos Easy to manage, easy to deploy, works well, pricing is good (through LGFL)

Thanks everyone, we use Sophos AV, so decided to set up a free trial of their Phish Threat. It worked very well....!

I would get in touch with superfast schools (Part of iCT4 if you have ever heard of them https://www.superfastschools.co.uk/) I recently got a quote for our large primary school, came out to about half of what you're paying currently, (same speeds) with content filtering included. They also bundle in senso safeguarding for devices, so you can get notified if a student searches a flagged word. Their service is great. I have another school moving to them next month. They have technicians all over the south west and even further up the line so response times and resolutions are quick.

Hi all, Just wondering if anyone can recommend a piece of software to carry out a phishing test through Google Workspace (Gmail) I have heard good things about Knowbe4. Thanks.

Our system is very old, and is starting to show signs of 'giving up' also. Do you mind sharing how much it costs to rent a system as you mentioned?

Hi all, I have recently configured some iPads in Mosyle, and they work great. However I have found that with a proxy pushed to the device (via RM) the profiles etc don't seem to install. Is this a simple case of needing to allow the following? https://support.apple.com/en-gb/102266 Do I need to open any ports, or add any additional firewall rules etc? Thanks!

Have ordered all the equipment for this... six cable management bars, a UniFi cloud key rack mount kit, a shelf for the firewall and some patch leads. The school is open for a day over half term, so was thinking about doing it then. However... could be risky. Might just wait until summer Thanks everyone!

I am thinking of doing this with our remaining windows devices (~42) to license them all I would be looking at about £1150 (one off payment).... We pay more than that currently every year to have them in Google's MDM. It's just getting staff to agree!

Can Ninja perform as an actual MDM for windows? e.g locking devices down (similar to intune etc) Thanks.

I have sent you a PM