itskdog

We moved all our desktop shortcuts to our browser homepage (in our case, RM Unify) when moving to Intune last year. If you don't have a custom page at the moment, make a page on SharePoint and use that. Quicker to update, no worries about waiting for an app update to be processed by IME, less clutter on the desktop.

We don't get very many, but when we last did one we verified that the email was received from the email we already had on file for the parent, the same as if they're requesting their child's password for a homework website (e.g. Mathletics, Times Tables Rock Stars, etc.)

Not had any reports here, and the official status page reports no issues: https://status.arbor-education.com/ Might be worth reaching out to support - if you're directly supported you can call on the number here: Contact us - How can I get in touch with Arbor's Support Team?

Policies should get applied shortly after login, and Microsoft are working on changes to improve the reliability, too, swapping WNS for the IC3 notification protocol used by Teams. (Announced in the first of their new Myth vs Reality segment in the monthly "What's New" blog: Speed where it matters: How Microsoft Intune helps IT prioritize time-sensitive actions) What should happen is that Windows should reach out to Intune when the PC turns on, when a user logs in, when you make a change on the Intune side (triggered by a silent push notification), and every 8 hours as a fallback in case WNS is blocked. The configuration we have puts most configuration & app deployment based on the device type (staff or student), to reduce the number of policies targeted at users. I think the only user-based policy we have is to set the correct filtering policy for staff vs students in Netsweeper, everything else is device-targeted.

Never got around to making a post in this thread. I'm an early Gen Z IT Technician in South-West London. Working in a primary school with a team of 2 alongside a network manager. As a primary, we have a number of non-technical staff (e.g. TAs, SMSAs), who don't use a computer and access everything with their phone, so any time the LA change the MFA settings on iTrent, we get many people coming for help accessing their payslips.

That's why I specified Java - even Bedrock, as a Store app, might save to WindowsApps, I'm not so familiar.

If deleting the folder, it's worth double-checking that it doesn't delete the saved games. I'm not familiar with Education Edition, but I know the regular PC Java version saves there.

Had to pick "Other" for the 2nd question as we're not thinking of moving and it wasn't optional. Just moved to Arbor at the end of last year with Integris shutting down. Feedback has been mixed, but teachers like being able to see students' photos in the register, as well as not having to remember to click "Save" once you've entered the marks. Also the ability to long-term move ParentMail, ParentPay, and Juniper Websites (parents' evening booking) into Arbor has SLT interested as a cost-cutting measure.

It was an HP ProOne 440 G6, so a little bit older now. I think Windows is meant to suspend automatically, but I'm sure there's the occasional glitch as @ITGuyNW pointed to in Microsoft's own documentation. We mainly go through Windows Update, but whenever I've used an HP Softpaq or HPIA it usually suspends itself as well. The Insyde UEFI updater even prompts for confirmation when run interactively, not sure about HP's own UEFI as I haven't had to do those interactively for a while as those devices also have HPIA & WUfB support.

Did have one today now I'm starting to manually deploy to certain machines (one or two of each model if the Microsoft Managed Opt-in didn't already show it already worked on that model), the reason given on the recovery screen was specifically "because Secure Boot policy has unexpectedly changed.", which suggests to me that the certificates changing caused a change to the Secure Boot variables, or BitLocker wasn't paused correctly during the certificate install. BIOS updates should usually pause BitLocker during the reboot for the update, but there's a chance, especially on laptops (where it might postpone the update when on battery), that the update isn't applied on the first reboot, and so BitLocker gets enabled again by Windows before the update is applied.

M365 licences are per-user and must be assigned in the M365 portal like your current A1s are, but I'm pretty sure you can add licences mid-term as monthly licences rather than annual ones. You won't need MAKs as M365 A3 comes with "Subscription activation", that will take any device that has an activated Windows Pro or Pro Education licence and upgrade it to Enterprise or Education respectively when an A3 user logs in. You can technically set up local accounts, the DfE did on their Intune image they gave out on the COVID laptops, but it's generally best to use A3-licenced accounts, especially if you want to use Microsoft Office, as that requires the user to be logged in with their Entra account with the M365 Apps licence (which is part of the A3 licence). Essentially, it looks like you're swapping the accounts in M365 that currently have the licences separately to all be on the A3 licence which has them all bundled together.

Teachers are just using their iPads to take photos here.

If they don't already have NFC fobs, a PIN is probably the easier route, and still quicker than entering their AD/Entra username & password on a touchscreen. If you roll out access control or fire register with key fobs or ID badges, you could easily add that later.

Says "Box UK" for me: Ignore where it says "Visit the HP Store" at the top, that's just a link to all listings for that manufacturer on Amazon. To see the seller & shipping details, you have to check the right-hand sidebar. Kinda misleading, but that's modern Amazon for you.

Are you buying direct from HP? Many years ago we switched from buying direct to going through a reseller, as it seems the academic discounts don't appear to be available direct, and certainly you don't get the Brighter Futures cashback, either.

We have a dedicated member of staff who buys all the stationary in the school, and staff contact them for whatever they need from the stationary cupboard. Class teachers get a book to fill in, admin staff contact directly as it's usually smaller requests. When stock is low in the stationary cupboard, the person responsible places an order for more through the school office.

Had the same with Secure Boot on ours. Maybe it's because we used VLSC media rather than the regular ISO on the Microsoft website? AFAIK, the checks are just part of setup.exe on the ISO, so manually installing with DISM (e.g. MDT, OSDCloud, FFU) bypasses that entirely and the checks will take effect on the next Feature Update.

KB number translation - April 2026 Cumulative Update for Windows 11 client machines

You have a tag set on that settings list, so it will only apply the settings to devices also tagged with "com.smoothwall.browser.plist". Remove the tag and it will apply to all devices.

Just saw this message on my M365 message centre: https://admin.cloud.microsoft/?ref=MessageCenter/:/messages/MC1294528 Requirements are as follows: (Most notable parts on the sync app config that people might not have in place, is enabling KFM, syncing SharePoint only through shortcuts, and setting up OneDrive sync reports on config.office.com) Looks good, will apply to most of our devices, just not the DfE laptops from COVID and some older devices that are still on 8GB RAM. I do wonder if this also makes for a faster sync time, or if it will take even longer to sync 1,000,000 files if you have them.

Are you using any of the Shared PC settings or just leaving it without a primary user? (Both are termed "Shared PC" in the docs, confusingly) If you're using a Shared PC policy, note that there are 2 shared PC modes, you'll want EnableSharedPCModeWithOneDriveSync to make OneDrive work. (Not sure if that's in settings catalog or not as we don't use it). Alternatively you could leave OneDrive off due to sync times and use Cloud Drive Mapper to do the folder redirection. Is Office activating with Shared Computer Activation? If not, it will eat into the user's limit of 5 devices. Here we just have PCs with no primary user, Office installs with Shared Computer Activation, and policies are targeted to the device rather than the user.

Are these in regular mode or Shared iPad mode? You can federate ASM with Google and get SSO for the students' logins on the iPads in Shared iPad mode. https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/apple-school-manager/axmaef1a0154/1/web/1

We've been using Civica Education Operations (formerly Parago) since before I started here, as the MSP we had before the school grew big enough to need IT on-site every day used it, and the MSP still do our annual audit in the summer and provide laminated asset labels. Works well through the website, though they recently redid the mobile app and it's still missing features and it quite buggy compared to the previous native app (which they've removed from the app stores - I keep the APK around so I can still use it). Their roadmap page suggests they're aware of the issues with the new app and are planning on fixing them, at least. It's a whole premises management tool, with a helpdesk, contract manager, licence manager, etc. as well, but individual modules can be added/removed to cut costs. Works well for our needs, their support team have been friendly every time I've contacted them.

The projector in our hall is an NEC laser - been there for 7 years now and all we've had to do is get someone to come in on a tall ladder to clean it when it overheats during really hot summers (though hopefully that's going to be less of an issue now that our AHUs are working in there again) as it's in direct sunlight unfortunately.

Are you using the regular setup ISO from Microsoft? Try using rbalsleyMSFT/FFU on GitHub instead. Installs the latest Windows Updates to the image, and can download the drivers to the USB and install them to the OS before the reboot, and as it's an FFU rather than a WIM, it's quicker to deploy due to being sector-based. Alternatively, if you have a large variety of devices, OSDCloud can download the drivers on the machine itself during the install process, provided the ethernet NIC works during WinPE.