itskdog

Never had issues myself, but our partner/MFD manufacturer (RISO) did all the configuration for us alongside RM, who configured our server for us and deployed the printers via Group Policy. However, RISO have a custom integration in the MFD's OS, rather than an app that is installed like other manufacturers. However, we'll be having to move away from PaperCut soon as we want to remove our server if we can, and they don't support print credits on copying on PaperCut Hive (PaperCut's their cloud-based solution) but will be on DirectPrint.io in a year or so. Sounds like you're already in touch with support, good luck and here's to it getting working!

@Sylv3r It's also possible to auto-sync sites set by the admin, too, similar to clicking the "Sync" button on the web UI, rather than making every user add shortcuts. Unfortunately that's somewhat restrictive in some situations, as you can only sync 300,000 files before it starts glitching, and at least in our case our SharePoint sites are mapped drives from our server that were migrated, and hold data back to the early 2010s. The sync client in our situation is unsuitable to be auto-mapping all the SharePoint sites that staff need due to that limitation. Good for OneDrive (and enables offline working in that case), but not for any shared areas.

I'm trialling the CDM v3 beta on my own machine, but still using v2 until we do our migration to Intune in the summer. The only thing to be aware of compared to v2 is that file/folder listings update every 5 minutes by default (configurable down to 2 mins), so if one person saves something, it usually won't be visible immediately, when the WebDAV used in v2 was live with the changes on SharePoint/OneDrive. The pros definitely outweigh the cons though, can upload files >4GB (Windows treats all WebDAV servers as FAT) and applications don't go "Not Responding" while the file is uploading. You can turn on a popup to let users know the upload progress so they are less likely to save a file then immediately log off, preventing the upload from completing. The version history issue with ActivInspire (where saving writes a temp file, deletes the existing file, then renames the new version) is still there though (so you'll still be restoring older versions of flipcharts from the recycle bin when they get corrupted), but I do have a feature request open to try and get that resolved.

Windows has a built-in speech recognition (and I'm not talking about the legacy Windows Vista/7 one, but a more modern cloud/AI based one that doesn't need 30 minutes to train it to your voice first). Just press Win+H and it starts right up.

How do you get ActivInspire (or Smart Notebook, or whatever) working on the Chromebook for them to do their work for planning their next lesson? I know they support Linux apps in developer mode, but that's in a Debian VM, and at least for us as a Promethean school, ActivInspire only works on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

This is the big thing. Always ensure SLT will be on board with the policy, or you've got nobody to back you up if someone challenges it.

Surely "shut down every night" would be better, given how buggy windows gets when you just close the lid all the time and end up with over a month of uptime (especially as nobody wants to restart to install updates) Is the school paying the teachers extra for the extra electric bill if it's both going home and having to stay switched on and plugged in?

Summarised version of our agreement form: 1. The laptop remains property of the school 2. While in your care you are responsible for it. Your household contents policy should protect you from the standard risks. 3. Do not install or use any software without authorisation from IT 4. AV and Windows updates should be installed and restarts done when prompted 5. Let IT know ASAP for any faults so we can repair it. Don't try repairing the device yourself. 6. Training in use of the laptop and school network/email will be provided by IT 7. School is not responsible for charges to your home internet 8. Laptop must be returned when requested by IT 9. You lose/damage it, you may have to pay for it, up to a maximum of £___, at the headteacher's discretion 10. School policies, including AUP, must be adhered to at all times.

We're heading into the USB-C one-port-to-rule-them-all future, with the EU's USB-C requirement extending to laptops from April, and Microsoft's new device certification rules requiring all USB-C ports on laptops to be able to use power, data, and video. I'm willing to bet that there won't be a way to avoid it in 5-10 years' time, as manufacturers start deciding to abandon their proprietary chargers to reduce costs from having two charging ports.

I've only ever used RISO as I'm new to the industry, but I've never had any major issues with them. They seem to work mainly with schools (at least near me), and have native PaperCut MF integration (though no scan to home folder, only scan to pre-set UNC path or to e-mail), and I have been told that for serverless environments, they have PaperCut Hive (print only, no copy control) and directprint.io support (closer to PaperCut MF in features) on the way. Alternatively, if you don't need print/copy control, they do secure print release natively via username/password (either local on-device or LDAP), NFC card or fob (called IC card in the software), or PIN number. You are charged for ink (yes, it's quick-drying ink, not toner) based on the number of pages you print of either black or colour, and the paper size (data is uploaded automatically to RISO's servers), and ink is delivered automatically when the cartridge gets below about 40-50% through that same connection, so no need for collecting your own meter readings or requesting delivery. When there's a breakdown, technicians are usually on-site the same day or the following day in my experience, with no charge in most cases unless it's repeated misuse (e.g. labels printed through the pull-out tray rather than the manual feeder).

Just an update after the meeting I had which cleared up what they were getting at - what they were referring to is that we would need to keep our existing OVS-ES agreement in order to continue licencing Windows Server, and the only way to do that would be to switch from the full Desktop Pack to the Core CAL Suite to keep the OVS-ES agreement as Windows Server is an additional product that's added on top of an existing agreement. When we follow up with our OVS-ES provider, we will ask them in more detail, but that's still a year away.

I thought that was the case too, but was told this by a technical lead at a major school network installer in the UK who is quoting the work for us, saying they needed to add OVS-Core CALs like we currently do as it's an on-prem server. I've got a meeting with them next week so I'll bring it up then and see what they say. I'm not the one who makes the decisions on which company we go with, unfortunately, but the Network Manager has used them lots in the past both here and at previous schools, but while the network support seems to have improved of late, the sales side seems a lot pricier than I would expect, especially for such a large company. Even just the licences for M365 are quite a bit higher than I've seen on the few companies that make their prices public, though at least that can be changed easily in the future once the install has been completed.

I work in a primary school, and we're working with our existing network support provider on getting a quote for to set us up with M365 A3 (via NCE, moving from our existing OVS-ES) & Intune/AutoPilot next year, but still need one server onsite for PaperCut (due to the pesky 20 connections max on client editions of Windows), as RISO don't support anything else right now for print management/quotas, and we don't want to be guinea pigs for their DirectPrint.io integration they're working on that may or may not be ready by September. As only staff would be printing, we were hoping that the built-in CALs in A3 would be sufficient (everything I've found so far just says "Windows Server CAL Rights"), but we have been informed that the M365 CALs only apply to servers in Azure? "Windows server CAL's are only included when deploying IAAS servers (Azure hosted)." Does anyone have experience with this, as I can't find any evidence to confirm or deny this claim, and navigating the Microsoft Terms website is impossible to locate this. If someone can point me in the right direction to where this is documented either way, that would be great.

My ticket was #611511 from back in May if you want to look at it. I didn't know what to ask for, so I just asked what your plans were as far as how to keep the device in support after next October, assuming it might be something you guys would do to keep us secure, and got told that it would be up to us to locate the download and perform the upgrade ourselves as we're out of warranty, but not to use an ISO as it would cause a full reset and require a chargeable reinstall from you guys, and to use Windows Update instead (which as you can see above, is not possible). Ultimately, we don't want to pay anything if we can help it due to budget constraints, but if the backup recovery is chargeable as I've been informed it does, we'd need to know in advance the cost to make a decision, and I can't see a price list for services on your website or Zendesk. If it were running GA we could just apply an ESU licence key, but it makes sense as to why you're using LTSB/C due to the specs and purpose of the machine, so I'm not quibbling on that front.

Alternatively, there's always the native Windows Kiosk mode that utilises Edge, which uses Chromium on the backend so has the same compatibility as Chrome. Just boots up to a URL of your choosing, and runs everything in private browsing with a button to reset the session. The wizard just creates a second user with no password, so it automatically boots into that account, but you can always Ctrl+Alt+Del to sign out and switch to your admin account.

During lockdown when we had to give out laptops to PPG families, I had to quickly put something together with what we had, and found that there's a web filter in Sophos (as we're an LGfL school so get that included in our broadband subscription), so just used local group policy to lock down the machine, and Sophos Web Control to prevent access to any non-educational websites. If you can afford a proper school-designed web filter to install on the device (e.g. LGfL HomeProtect - perhaps your existing filter provider has a similar product), then that's going to be better though with all the reporting capabilities.

I'd seen that page before, but it only talked about LTSC to GA, not LTSC to a later LTSC, which is why I wasn't sure if that was possible.

Avoiding unnecessary cost (which a reinstall would be) would be preferable. We just want to keep security updates going until the EOL of the hardware when Microsoft stop supporting Windows 10 altogether. Budgets are tight so all POs are being scrutinised for necessity, and we're still working on bringing the quote for the Intune migration down while reducing how much we need to do, so that we have less worries about things going wrong in September. If we're not to use an ISO, per the support agent's instructions (as that would wipe the system), how else do you do that in-place-upgrade you mentioned? I've only ever manually done them on SAC/GA Windows 10, which uses the regular ISO from the Microsoft Website or VLSC, or is there a way through Windows Update on the machine that I hadn't spotted?

Not had any issues in my experience, but we haven't needed to update to that version for many staff as we only have 1 AP-Elements that was put in when they ran out of AP6s for warranty replacements. They have an MSI, so if you use that instead of the EXE, you should be able to use the regular /qn switch with that in msiexec - we have it preinstalled in our OS image, so I'm not familiar with that so much myself.

Hi all, We have an InVentry V4 machine that, despite receiving in 2019, was supplied with LTSB 2015, even though both 2016 and 2018 were out by then. 🤷♂️🤷♂️ I reached out to InVentry a while back to find out what would be needed to update to a newer version due to the end of security updates, and they basically said "you're on your own" as they can't do it remotely over TeamViewer. While we still have our OVS-ES subscription for another year (and therefore still have keys and downloads for LTSC versions) before we move to M365 A3 and ditching AD in the summer, we want to get the OS upgraded to LTSC 2018 (as 2021 ends support earlier as we don't seem to have the IoT variant available), but not being familiar with the LTSC versions, we're not sure the process to perform the upgrade. InVentry seemed to suggest it should be possible via Windows Update ("The update can be done via Windows Updates, or by download[sic.] the latest version (22H2) directly from Microsoft."), and sent us the link on their Zendesk for moving Windows 7 systems to Windows 10. Does anyone have any experience doing this on their site, or would it be recommended to engage our second-line support company rather that risking issues doing this ourselves and requiring the InVentry software to be reinstalled at cost (the consequence provided for using an ISO after my question)

I've contacted our reseller to find out what they think as well, and they said that the LX is more competing with the entry level touch screens and doesn't have a wall mount or an ActivInspire licence, the latter of which is probably the biggest cost difference now I think of it. Promethean are sneaky on their website as they say "1 Personal single user" (which is just the free version anyone can download without needing a board) and just have a tick on the AP9 page in the same row. We're going to go with the ActivPanel 9 in that case but given there's very little information out there publicly I'd recommend anyone with experience with the current generations to post a reply so there's more than just advertising showing up on the Google results.

Hi everyone, Long time Google-searcher, first time poster. We're in need of some new IWBs to replace a faulty AP6 from 2018 (of course we get a breakdown just after the warranty expired!) with OPS-G and some new classrooms that have been split in half. It seems promethean have 3 models right now, the AP9, AP9 Premium, and the APLX. Our current quotes are for the AP9 but with the notably lower price on the APLX (over £1,000 less!) I'm wondering if it's any good, given the functionality seems similar to that of the AP6, especially once you add on the OPS-A to get Android. We're a primary school, so we don't need tons of special features as most of the time the IWBs are connected to a PC with ActivInspire, but having access to Google Play on the OPS-G allows for teachers to install games/YouTube/Netflix for wet play and parties, and with the AP9 series just saying "ActivPanel OS", it's unclear if they're running Android and can have GMS enabled through the Panel Management or if they aren't as smart as the Elements series were, with just the whiteboard/timer/spinner apps that are on the OPS-A anyway. The only issue when researching is that there's no public information that isn't either selling the product or advertising from Promethean. Has anyone used the APLX in their school and have opinions to share?