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Recently had Sims inTouch installed, it was working fine on the two accounts i tested but when i have come to test anyone who has a just the class teacher role i get "the remote server returned an error (401) unauthorised. According to Sims permissions and the matrix (the sims permissions one) they should have access to almost everything apart from SMS and a few other features. Sending a email to staff and students shouldn't be an issue. Before you ask i have checked support net and have a logged a call to Capita but i though post it on here as well as it might be a little quicker. If anyone has had the same issues let me know, We don't use a proxy so it doesn't need adding into the exceptions list and ive added the sims server into the trusted sites for IE (two things mentioned in Support net). Cheers in advance

Just thought id let you know what we did, Seems to work well and keeps us in control of Java which is increasingly becoming a nightmare! We created two files in c:\windows\sun\java\deployments deployment.properties exception.sites In deployment properties we pointed the exception sites at the one listed above, once we had the files we needed we used gpo to create a folder like the above path in c:\windows and then setup a share which would copy the two files at each machine restart (se we could update the files in the share and then the machines would pickup the new settings and exceptions once a day).. Details of the deployment file #deployment.properties #Wed Oct 08 10:40:29 BST 2014 deployment.modified.timestamp=1412761229518 deployment.javaws.appicon.index=C\:\\Users\\username\\AppData\\LocalLow\\Sun\\Java\\Deployment\\cache\\6.0\\appIcon\\appIcon.xml deployment.javaws.splash.index=C\:\\Users\\username\\AppData\\LocalLow\\Sun\\Java\\Deployment\\cache\\6.0\\splash\\splash.xml deployment.version=7.21 install.disable.sponsor.offers=false deployment.browser.path=C\:\\Program Files\\Internet Explorer\\iexplore.exe #Java Deployment jre's #Wed Oct 08 10:40:29 BST 2014 deployment.security.level=High deployment.user.security.exception.sites=C\:\\Windows\\Sun\\Java\\Deployment\\exception.sites deployment.javaws.jre.0.registered=true deployment.javaws.jre.0.platform=1.7 deployment.javaws.jre.0.osname=Windows deployment.javaws.jre.0.path=C\:\\Program Files (x86)\\Java\\jre7\\bin\\javaw.exe deployment.javaws.jre.0.product=1.7.0_67 deployment.javaws.jre.0.osarch=x86 deployment.javaws.jre.0.location=http\://java.sun.com/products/autodl/j2se deployment.javaws.jre.0.enabled=true deployment.javaws.jre.0.args= The exceptions file is just then url's or ip's This way we can keep the security on high but allow sites we trust fairly easily. Files are copied using robocopy as a start up script, ive pasted the line below 'Sync the local machine with the redirection share on the file and print server Set objShell = CreateObject("Wscript.Shell") objCommand = "RoboCopy.Exe " & Chr(34) & "\\servername\Redirection$" & Chr(34) & " " & Chr(34) & "C:\windows\sun\java\deployments" & Chr(34) & " /MIR /r:0 /w:0 " objShell.Run(objCommand)

Just thought id post this in case anyone else has any issues. We run Smart 14 on our CTouch screens in school (yes its licensed), and had a few issues with jumping and sticking when the teachers were trying to draw and write. The solution is very simple, go into the CTouch config tool and turn off multi touch, set it to mouse and all the problems go away. It does stop a few giant table style features from working but staff find this a lot better and much more reliable (staff say it is better than the normal Smart Board).

We have done this recently but went CTouch as their screens are anti reflective and much slimmer than the Cleve Touch ones. We have Smart (paid for) on 9 Maths machines, the jumping round the board was to do with response time, Smart support were useless and gave us fixes for everything apart from what the issue was, basically we reduced the response time of the board from 400ms to 600ms and this stopped the issue (it is something to do with Gesture control and 6 taps on the boards), standard whiteboards are much slower than the CTouch screens so it works fine on them. All other software, the CTools which comes with them and RM Easy Teach don't have any problems and work fine, you can also reduce the sensitivity of them so that a pen has to be physically touching the board. - - - Updated - - - One thing on Windows 8, most LED/LCD displays have a bezel, this doesn't work with Windows 8 swipe features!

Completely the opposite, im fine with the way Sims works in the school and since Solus 3 and the removal of the S drive it has been much easier to manage. Im looking at it from a completely admin/teacher related task point of view and the amount of time that is spent taking registers and the speed of load (Capita say our system is as fast as Sims will get), simple tasks in Sims seem to take a long time to complete and although the backend reporting features are very powerful they haven't done much (apart from discover) to leverage this for the Teacher end user. Don't get me wrong, we will be meeting with Progresso as a full team representing every aspect of the school day to ensure that it is a comparable product but in our new school with every mod con Sims has become the most complained about aspect of the system. The comment about the 3rd parties is shared by staff, they need to use multiple platforms to get the job done, so we have Groupcall Emerge for iPads, SalamderSoft for extracting timetable info into staff calendars, pay a lot of money for local LA Sims support (this is included in Progresso), have a Frog parent portal,Keep Kids Safe for SMS, run a large remote access solution so staff can get access to Sims (Progresso is online and does all of these things and we have a clouded file system so staff can edit files directly (Frog Learn network folders). It really is all about making the teaching day as simple as possible, we estimate that 10% of a standard classroom day is taken up at the start of the lesson, this is cut much shorter when using Groupcall. As we have short lesson times (50 mins) then this impacts quite a lot. So all in all this is a observation based on end user feedback, not a technical view, although the technical benefits will also be good. We have a lot of redundancy on the network, ha firewalls, backup internet connections etc so the other thing im interested in is the uptime of Progresso from Progresso schools. Thanks for the feed back.

We have started to investigate other msi systems as we find Sims has just got to the point of being bloated and not very well developed, a lot of catch up ideas and everything is an added extra. One I have seen and been on is Progresso, it was fast, clean and I couldn't find anything which sims does (able it with 10 add ons). It's more expensive but if we went for this we would save 14-18k just on removing add ons such as groupcall. If anyone has it and even better has been through a sims to Progresso conversion please could you give me your thoughts. And before I get a your in the wrong place it's Mis, Progresso is a cloud biased Mis!

Siemens do a really cheap open scape product but if you have a stable line then sip via a provider such as Lloyd's would be much cheaper.

Really depends in use and number of disks, for your need 6 would be fine. I run an san which is capable of running raid 10 and 6, it runs over 24 drives and the performance in 10 although faster isn't required so we run it in production in raid 6, still have plenty of iops headroom based on this. Storage is a tricky one, and is something that needs planning for the actual use, there simply isn't an answer to 10 or 6 as they both have merits, one should be used for this or that, you need to calculate your space requirements now and what they will be in 5 years time against budget, then calculate the iops that will be required now and also in 5 years time, allowing for spikes in performance (such as backup is all write). Then work out can the system support you in allowing for what you need now and your plans within the budget, sometimes it is better to load across more devices opposed to faster devices, spread load also = speed. Long story short, a bit of time with a pen and paper and a calculator can save a lot of money and a load of time in the future.

Zen, Sky, Plus net all good reps, plus net have got some good deals on at the minute. Our leased line is Zen and never has issues, you do pay a little more for the service though but it is good.

I currently use sky, unlimited fibre at 40mb for £15 PCM as I agreed to go with them for 2 years. I hammer the usage, almost everything is streamed in our house on multiple devices, iTunes Match also on 5 devices, now tv, netflix, iplayer etc. Sky don't limit and the one time I had an issue with the line (BT bloke stud outside cab on road) I complained on their forum, they got back to me in seconds and had BT back out and the issue fixed in 2 hours. They even issued me a credit for the problem. We also have a few people on our street so I know the contention is high but the lowest speed I've ever clocked is about 28mbps which is more than enough, I live quite far from the exchange so I if I weren't on fibre I'd be on 512kbps. All I can say is there very good, I do have experience with BT at work and that has no issues on their 80mbps product, but when I have issues with that I dread the phone call and the following scripts for half an hour until they acknowledge there is an issue.

We have purchased a number of Smart Notebook licenses for use in our Maths department with CTouch interactive screens. The screens some times seem to grab the text which has just written and then drop it onto another area of the page. This seems to be related to the CTouch sensitivity (the pen is much more sensitive and can interact with the board just before it touches the glass).. When this happens a Blue dotted box (with a green mouse point at the top) appears as to outline the text you have just written. This happens so fast it took a lot of testing just to see the blue box but it is causing issues with our Maths dept, ideally I need to either adjust the sensitivity of the CTouch screen or if possible disable this feature in Notebook. If anyone has any info please could you let me know. I have attached a picture of the blue box fyi.

Used to have a Kona Kula Deluxe as well, it was 12 years old before I decided to get a new bike but it's still running as my mates bike, Kona bike are well built!

Yep, Ride a Felt Virtu Pro and ride home via our local mega hill called Rooley Moor Road followed by a trip round Lee MTB quarry most days of the week.

Just started on my Frog Learn and since the last few updates it has come on leaps and bounds, as now works between systems, it's now much faster and has planet estream, encyclopaedia britannica integration and I am learning integration. The apps Frog Drive and Frog Snap allow users to access files and folders on their ios devices and take pictures directly into the platform. Our staff are starting to use it and since we have put in system wide ios printing and group call emerge some now don't even touch their pcs. Given it's only a few but it is all going the correct way and working, a little slow in dev but when it comes out it works and that used to be a big issue with frog 3. I'm just hoping they keep this up as it is going to be an excellent product but they need to concentrate on the core and allow a lot of 3rd party integration, we use our vle for lots of Sso and a core set of functions, frog 3 I think was over developed and this is what lead to some schools becoming unhappy as you started to need a dedicated tech.

Id create two new vlans, and have the new wireless networks drop onto those vlans, you can then apply a filter policy to those subnets (so filter by location). We do this with our ipads for students and have them use proxy authentication (so whn they access the net a little popup asks them for their username and password with a session cookie), for the chrome books on the chrome management console we have them access two networks, as the chrome book requires transparent filtering to even log you in we have it connect to the same network (ssid) this initally is transparent and allows the chrome book to get to google authentication, when the user logs in we have a proxy specified on the chrome management console for users, this directs them to a dedicated proxy url for the chrome books which again promps them for the proxy authentication, you have to do it this way to allow the chrome book to login but then record who is using the chrome book. For staff devices we have set infinate leases (server 2012dhcp) for the staff ipads and just have their network set to be on transparent authentication, this way if something did crop up we could trace the ipad by the ip address, quick nslookup would tell us whos ipad it is. You could do the same with the staff network for the chrome books. We have recently set this up and the configuration is working really well, used in lots of maths lessons and is stable, we get all users to login to the chrome books as a standard school user (generic) and the homepage is set to the vle, to get onto the internet is their username and password, when they log off all settings from that session are dropped, the vle also has google sso so they can access their gmail etc

We use parentpay and it is used ontop of cunninghams cashless and for paying for trips etc, never had an issue since the install, letters were very easy to setup and they manage most of it, can reccomend them

Sorry that was a typo, its 5.1

We have an issue with our Dell 4110x SAN, (Esxi 4.1) In VM Environment, 5 hosts all with plenty of ram processing etc, iscsi connections 2x10Gb, dual Cisco 4500x switches and Dell has dual controllers. 24x900 10k drives in RAID 6, iops calculated at 3800. When copying a large file from one host to another there is a initial burst of speed followed by a complete drop off of speed followed by a burst and so on, this goes from 150mpps + to 0 and back every 2-3 seconds. If I set the c drive local to the server the issue goes away, then put it back onto the SAN it starts again. The system isn't operating at full capacity and there isn't anything that appears to be wrong when you take the SAN out of the equation. We have VMware endpoint with Kaspersky on but this has been disabled and the issue persists. Any ideas

We have a large number of Sunray thin clients which are in need of a new home. Initially 70 Sunray 2's and then in December an additional 70 2's and 80 270's, All enquires welcome otherwise we will have to bin them.

Been running the test site (latest version) and had our ICT department create a load of resources, the site thing doesn make sense once you get your head arround it but i agree a quick homework aspect is needed as well. We have some homework which isnt on Frog and is a link such as, your homework is on mymaths, this is currently done in 2 clicks. We have kiosk moded some chrome books and sso with google apps, this is excellent, a good way to get staff using Frog more and limits the management of laptops. In tests nothing we have tried in Frog Os hasnt worked on them, 3 seconds boot time and 7 hours of bettery. 200 quid each, sccrom works, google apps, browsing (only pain is impero doesnt but we can manage that on smoothwall).

A bit off there, it is the new version of Frog and is nothing like the previous. Went to the launch on Friday and was impressed, very impressed. It is the same price as Frog 3 I think but miles ahead of anything I have seen out there. It will have Sims write back soon as well. Also AD SSO, Google Apps, 365 etc

Most do but fall very short of what is required under the law these days

We are just about to move into a new school, we have gone for 65" CTouch after months of testing etc, the clarity and longevity not to mention the power savings, no calibration etc make 3000 for one of these a no brainier these days. The only issue is the software, if like in our school the IWBs are just PowerPoint presenters you have no issues, but Prometheus and smart require you have their board if you are going to use their software.

They all use 3rd party systems, so the off the shelf way would probably be best, the big ones such as McDonald's use ones that Bt provide, I know some ISPs do this such as Sky and as part of the deal your businesslike becomes one of their hot spots, you would need to find out who will provide operator independent facilites. http://www.wififoundation.org/legal for the legal

You need to be clearer on the location. If this is a school then you have a duty of care to provide a safe environment, this includes web filtering and within this you should also be recording use. If it is for something else then the rules follow, it depends on what you are providing and where. Within this you also need to make sure you have setup the terms and conditions of the use of service and you must log everything. If someone decided to pop in and go on something such as a torrent site or something worse the letter or police would turn up to the address the system is registered to. I think under UK law you do have to provide at least minimal baseline filtering, so child porn, terrorism, etc, there are lots of ways to do this without buying expensive systems that schools need such as Internet Security or DNS Service for your Business or Home - OpenDNS, there are also off the shelf versions of this where you get your connection and then use their router, this does all of the checking, loggins, filtering etc to give you some sense of security.