DDR5

Hi all, we have around 20 Promethean AP6 panels, way out of warranty but mostly working well. We have one, now two, where it looks like one of the speakers has blown and seems a shame to replace the panel just for this...especially as money is tight. External speakers maybe the best choice but I was wondering if anyone knows of any Promethean repair companies out there? Thanks.

Do you know how it's setup? Is the database completely off the schools server? I heard that SIMS Connected was quote poor performance wise - almost like connecting to the database over RDP. Would be great to know a little more about it. Thanks.

Has anyone had any experience with this? If it were up to me I'd get all the schools I support to ditch SIMS and FMS but unfortunately it's not up to me. I get very jealous when I speak to other techs that have long since binned SIMS/FMS off. Anyway, I've not had any info about FMS Cloud but have been asked about it from a school that has had a sales pitch. Is it based on the same platform as SIMS Connected? I heard bad things about that too! Any info would be brill. Thanks all

From what I have read, I need to put in the controllers IP and the VLAN gateway into Unifi's 'Pre Authorization Allowances' - this, by all accounts, will allow access to the portal, and from there I should be able to authenticate and get on...will see how it goes tomorrow...

Yeah, the VLAN is working perfectly. If I disable the Unifi Portal and just connect with a password, I get online without issue with the correct IP etc. Everything works. With the Portal enabled, I can see the device in Smoothwalls DHCP with the correct IP and I can even see it connected to the AP in Unifi, I just cannot get to the portal page to verify the connection. I'm guessing that the VLAN needs to be able to communicate with the VM that hosts the Unifi software, but even with a firewall rule allowing it, I can't even ping it. However, from the VM I can ping the VLAN gateway

Managed to get hold of Apple support today. I was on holiday when they tried contacting me, but they left an email saying they've had 'developments' and said they'd explain over the phone. Weird. Anyway, nobody called back so I called them and after having to explain the issue again, they found an article from Jamf highlighting the same issue and that Jamf had heard reports of this issue from other MDM's. Article here: https://community.jamf.com/general-discussions-2/failed-to-retrieve-configuration-on-ipados-v15-8-4-48978 So it looks like Apple are indeed aware of it which is why they wanted to speak to me over the phone and not actually put it in an email. The bulk of the devices I'm having issues with are on iOS 15.8 and she did say that it seemed to be this version and some others, but she couldn't say for sure. To test, I've just been onsite and wiped an iPad that's running iOS 17 and it enrols without issue. Hoping they sort it out soon, but I'll keep chasing.

Hey all, I've eventually got around to setting up a VLAN specifically for Guest WiFi, but I'm having issues with the captive portal. If I disable the portal and just have a password for authentication, it works fine. As soon as I enable the portal, I can't get online. I cannot ping the controller and the browser won't load the portal. I've looked at firewall rules on Smoothwall and thought that by creating a rule would help, but it doesn't. I wanted to use the voucher system and it worked fine before I setup the VLAN. What am I missing? So frustrating!

The messages you're getting are different - I just get 'Failed to retrieve configuration' It's not Meraki as I also use Mosyle and get exactly the same issue with that. The iPads I have are iPads Air 2's running iOS 15.8.3 Did Apple actually say there was an issue? Knowing Apple, they've probably done this to stop customers using older equipment - it's causing me a huge headache though as, like you, I like to get them wiped ready for September :(

I'm wondering if this is related to an issue I'm having. We bought around 80 iPads years ago direct from Apple and most are still in use(!) but at the time we didn't have DEP setup, so once it was all setup I have, over time, manually enrolled them into DEP/ASM via Apple Configurator. We use Meraki for the MDM and all has been working fine. I usually erase them via Meraki ready for the new year and they take minutes to set back up. We then bought some more iPads last month, again from Apple, and I asked for them to be enrolled into the schools ASM. They said they had to re-activate our account and when I checked a few days later, they were all in ASM, and I all was good. However, I also noticed that some of the original iPads that had been either damaged or taken out of circulation were also showing in ASM as unassigned. So I guessed that whatever Apple had done had bought every device into ASM. Anyhow, the issue I now have is that if I wipe an old iPad, I can no longer get it to install the MDM config. It just says 'Failed to retrieve configuration' If I release it from ASM and try and enrol manually via Configurator, I get an error too. The only way I can now get these iPads back into Meraki, is to release from ASM, erase and enrol into Meraki without DEP. Have logged this with Apple but not getting very far. It's as if the records have somehow been screwed over.

How did you get on with this, as I'm in the same boat? I have configured it so that Google is the idP, so with SSO/SAML their Google account signs them into their 365 account using A1 licensing. I am hoping that this will give them the best of both worlds.

Just to add to this, it does seem to work well so far. The school now has Google Workspace and 365 (A1) using the same account. Is there any reason this wouldn't work with other schools in the Trust that are solely 365?

I spent a while getting my head around SSO/SAML and I think this may be a solution (for now) - it just enables the school to carry on working exactly as they are now but with the benefit of having access to 365 apps under the A1 license. Seems to work well - just need to get my head around administering 365 which is probably a good thing as I dare say I'll be using it a lot more in the near future.

Ah, thank you that now works. I was just wanting to test on a wired connection.

I've just been revisiting this as Smoothwall support assisted me. I haven't delved into VLANs before but slowly getting my head around it. In school, port 1 on Smoothwall is the basic interface for our LAN. Then we have port 4 for external which is for the Internet. Smoothwall configured port 1 so the new VLAN sits on that and they confirmed all is setup as it should be. My problem still remains though and I can't figure it out. I've created a VLAN (VLAN 9) on the switch that Smoothwall is connected to, and configured the port so it is untagged for VLAN 1 traffic and tagged for VLAN 9 traffic, and I then connected my laptop to port 2 on the switch and untagged it for VLAN 9 and removed it so it's not a member of VLAN 1. In my head, that should work??

After a little help if poss. I'm wanting to get a guest WiFI onto it's own VLAN and want to use Smoothwall to do this. I've created a new interface and given it an IP and the 'parent' is port 3 on the Smoothwall and have tagged it. I've created the DHCP scope and enabled it and I assumed that if I connect a laptop straight into port 3, I'd get a DHCP address from Smoothwall, but I'm not. I can't even ping the gateway when putting a static IP in. I untagged the interface and still get nothing. Anything stupid/obvious I'm missing? Thanks

Nobody really understands the reason to join this academy - I'm sure the SLT have their reasons... Nothing has been decided yet but I know that all other schools, including the school where the 'head office', all use 365. I don't want to move but I'm guessing we won't have a choice. I'm just trying to get my head around what would need to be done if it does happen.

Sorry if this has been posted about before - I dare say it has! I support a primary school that have been using Google Workspace for years - in fact all schools that I support use Google Workspace - but this one use it well. They have around 300 Chromebooks for pupils, Staff use Shared Drives, Google Classroom for lessons and they really like it. The school have a fairly basic network - on-prem/Virtual servers for AD, GPO, SIMS.net/FMS etc and all works well. We have Smoothwall on prem that authenticates AD and Cloud that is linked the their Google domain. They have recently joined an academy (for reasons nobody really knows) and the other 8 schools look to be 365 schools. I'm pretty sure that once we're fully in, they'll want us to move to 365 too. So, if this does happen, from my point of having not much experience with 365, what would the migration look like? Can we keep everything on-prem but just use 365 for email/sharepoint etc? What licenses would we need for that? Could we keep using the Chromebooks? Like I say, I don't have much experience with 365 as never had to, so just wondering what the steps would be and how it would work! At the moment they pay nothing for Google Workspace, would they need to pay for licenses, and if so what and how many etc. Thanks

I need to replace a failing APC UPS 1500. The Host server has Powerchute software installed which manages the settings etc. If I replace with a new 1500, will Powerchute just recognise it, or will I need to re-configure? Thanks.

Of course not. Just in our position we have around 120 Chromebooks that have apps installed. We just had to make sure that users knew that the Flex devices wouldn't operate in the same way as the Chromebooks. Often, people aren't aware of this and expect Flex devices to work in exactly the same way, yet they don't.

Flex does work good on older equipment but we had to be a little careful with staff expectations, as they do not have the same functionality as Chromebooks. Generally they work fine, but you can't deploy apps from the Play Store to them as we can our Chromebooks, so while they are a good alternative to the scrap man, they are slightly limited and cannot be used in exactly the same way.

Hi, we need to replace a couple of very old Promethean 78" ActivBoards - to be honest they still work great - the only negative being maintaining the projectors. The school replaced the majority (around 20 classrooms) a few years ago with Promethean ActivPanels v6's with the OPS add-on, and we've had a lot of issues with them. Over the years we have had No Signal issues, issues with the OPS, interactivity etc and it's made us think twice about just going with Promethean as default. We could go down the LX route, and just use as a glorified second monitor, but ideally we'd like the AP9 as it has OS built in so teaching staff can use the built in Annotation tools etc. Staff mainly just use ActivInspire on their PC's, but some have started using Google Slides now. Having only used Promethean in all the schools I've supported in the past, would anyone have any other recommendations that I can look into? Many thanks.

Yep, did the same. The standard right click menu has to be the most ridiculous change ever - why they did this I'll never know.

Thanks for this post, as I was about to start one myself! I built a 23H2 image a while ago just to test and it captured/deployed fine. I've been waiting for 24H2 though and built an image as normal, and have spent the last few hours trying to figure this out, without success...

Thanks all for the replies. With regards to the DC, I think the reason there are two was for replication and redundancy should one go belly up.

Interesting! All the schools I've worked in have had the HOST joined to the domain. I'll certainly look into it.