OllieC

Thanks guys, I'm pretty happy to move forward and get some second hand gear in - going to rewire them all, absolute spaghetti at the moment. Strikes me as a fun half term job (along with everything else piling up!)

Hi folks, Currently got two entrance doors with paxton compact readers on. I'd like to upgrade these and three sets of internal doors to Net2. I'm confident I can get the net2 gear cheaply enough second hand on ebay, and think I'm up to speed with wiring and installation, but I'm worried about fobs. To work with compact, we're using the packs of fobs with the shadowcards https://www.paxton-access.com/products/proximity-10-keyfob-pack-green/ Are these fobs going to be compatible with a net2 system? It says "Use with Compact and Switch2 systems" - I thought all paxton fobs were 125khz, is this comment just a common sense one as you wouldn't need shadow cards with the net2 system and vice versa with the net2 fobs, not much use for a compact/switch2 system as no shadow cards? Hoping I'm talking some sense, don't want to spend the couple of hundred on the kit to find we need to buy all new fobs! Cheers

Hi everyone, Looking at investing in some infrastructure next year. We currently only have the hosted firewall on IPS's (RM) end. I'd like to introduce our own appliance to supplement this and provide an additional element of security/control internally. The Ubiquiti Dream Machine Pro caught my eye as I'm putting in all Unifi APs and would also be able to manage these without needing to faff around with cloud management, but I've read comments here suggesting that it's not really capable of carrying itself in larger networks - or is this only in the context of using it as a network core? Maybe it's easier to list what we *don't* need an appliance to do: - Network Core - Filtering - VPN Anyone got any recommendations? This is very much new territory to me, never played with UTM/firewall appliances before. As I browse around options I'm finding licensing and cloud managed rabbit holes and it's a bit difficult to actually work out what I should be looking for. I'm thinking of throwing in an LTE backup connection, probably limiting this to keeping critical services alive (cloud MIS/365-email/onedrive) in case of an outage. Be interested if anyone's got any experience to this effect? I'm thinking £15/20 a month on a data plan is going to be less hassle than FTTC/adsl connection. Something that can handle the failover connection is a must. Cheers, Ollie

Thinking life would be easier if we just lock down off domain - nothing to expire, nothing to go wrong (e.g. change password but device tunnel not connecting leading to issues logging on etc etc).... Not sure how to effectively achieve filtering with split tunnelling either as split tunnelling only sends traffic for that network over the VPN, requests outside of the network, e.g. internet wouldn't go through the VPN tunnel. I'm looking at Netsupport DNA (already users in school) remote gateway and potentially the parental filters built in to W10. Think I've found a way to get InTune rocking as well.... things always seem a bit clearer when you're not receiving an endless stream of password reset requests!

Hi everyone, Sorry if I'm asking the obvious but I'm feeling absolutely overwhelmed at the moment, the new email noise is bringing me out in a cold sweat, so just need to mull over what others are having success with. We've got a stack of DfE laptops - they're not DfE managed unfortunately, when it came to ordering, I could either go for those naff geobooks or the semi-decent HP ones unmanaged, so went unmanaged. I *could* just build them, have them on force tunnelled VPN and have done with it, but I don't like the idea of the strain that will put on the VPN/connection as well as giving these laptops unnecessary access in to school systems when all they need is a web filter. Thinking I'll just do a quick win 10 image with office/teams installed and a .\localuser account like the DfE setup. My issue comes in with management and filtering... We're RM customers with hosted safetynet, I'm waiting for my account manager at RM to get back to me with regards to cloud filtering - is there any suggested way of doing this if they can't do it? E.g. a local filter that can be installed or a recommended route for cloud filtering that isn't going to cost an entire budget. Management... I can just set windows update settings and leave it at that, BUT I've read that SCCM now includes InTune for devices that are SCCM managed - how on earth does one go about using this? I can find no route in to being able to take advantage of this. Any input is greatly appreciated before I find a hole to jump in to.

Mind sharing what that looks like on your agreement? Struggling to find a way currently

Sorry to bump an old thread but I'm struggling with intune licensing; How does the SCCM benefit work? I can find no way to ues it - also I'm repeatedly being told there's no way to do it based on FTE for the full licenses from our Microsoft supplier? Cheers

Goes without saying this is just me starting the process - to put anyone's mind at rest, of course I'm investigating and sourcing multiple solutions and pricing options before even allocating this to a budget!

Unifi sounds perfect! Just frustrating I've got to wait for next year's budget now.

Thanks guys, really appreciate the input - will start getting prices on Unify kit. Any recommendations for specific models? I've got a handful of high density use areas (laptop trolleys, halls, sixth form, etc.) Also - re controller; there's talk of hosting ourselves on a VM or buying a "unifi key" - what's the pricing model for this? Is there a yearly cost, per AP, etc? Thanks

Ubiquity seems to be the way to go by the sounds of it; one for next year's budget I imagine.

Hi folks, Currently got a fairly antique Trapeze (Juniper) MX-200R controller with 66x WLA322-WW and 26x MP-422B APs. The WLA322-WW APs aren't *that* old; they do N/G... Do I look at getting a new controller and replacing the older APs or go down the route of complete replacement? I'm not really clued up on what the best options are for managed wireless these days - any recommendations if you wouldn't go down the upgrade route? Cheers

It's a definite possibility! The more commercial end of these displays aren't ridiculously expensive and look the job. My only concerns is how easily broken they'd be. I agree about interactivity being largely a gimmick, the 30 replacement SMART Boards are basically meeting the whole school's demand for interactivity. I'd even go as far to provide an alternative like a wacom tablet on request where people want some kind of pen input to the board. (Had to keep promethean or smart in areas that were heavily invested because of teachers with decades of stuff in activinspire format... can turn that in to smart notebook and provide basically the same functionality without needing to fork out for licenses).

£1bn with an overall £9.6bn estimated repair and renewal cost over the UK, we might get enough for a pot of polyfilla if we're lucky! Best I'm hoping for (and actively trying) is to leverage savings on capital expenditure if we *ever* see a successful CIF bid.

Yeah there's just no money to go towards a project of this cost any time soon, especially when projectors can be made to work at a third of the cost per room; I work with the estates management as well and every spare penny is going towards keeping the buildings standing. I can live with the plywood mountings as I check and confirm that they're appropriately secured, my biggest bugbear at the moment is the cabling.

In an ideal world I'd just be putting up panels in each room, I'm even quite happy installing them myself to just knock that bit off the cost, but I just don't have the money to do more than 2 or 3 a year... my strategy thus far has been replace projectors with lampless Casios (~£500 ea.) and the bodge mounts with proper ones (~£50 ea.). I managed to score 30 Smart SB680s for under a grand (which I could only afford from savings elsewhere!) which has covered the urgent TDS replacements needed in the 3 departments that are really heavily invested in them. My business manager is really open with the IT budget, I know that what I get to allocate is literally what there is, so there's no chance of asking for enough to redo even a percentage of rooms at £2.5k a room and the budget alone won't stretch considering other commitments like replacing machines around the school and upcoming projects like refreshing wireless and CCTV. I'm usually able to buy 10 projectors a year, which is *just* about keeping up with demand, so there's absolutely no scope for stopping this rolling replacement to just put in 2-3 panels a year. In other schools I've worked at there's been local area charitable grants etc that can pump sums upwards of £50k in for projects like this when needed - there is absolutely nothing like that available to me here. The closest I could get would be a Salix loan on the grounds of energy saving, but that's still a loan. Sigh!

I inherited AV hell at my school and sorting it out is turning in to a loooong-term investment issue. (some background for just how big the problem is: - No fixed classroom speakers in most rooms - Unicol ceiling plates screwed into plywood wedged between some strutting in the ceilings rather than the proper purlin clamps in all upstairs rooms - VGA over cat5 baluns (unpowered, so it's shadow and flicker city) - TDS boards, which are now unusable due to Intel chipset drivers and diminishing Windows 10 support - Incompatible projector brackets so lots of bodge sheets of metal and wood bolted between the bracket and projectors.) My biggest issue currently is the fact we're running VGA over UTP with unpowered baluns. The picture quality can be absolutely awful in places. At my last school (where I was only teaching, so didn't pay as much attention), cat5 was used for the projectors but there was some kind of USB powered adapter that carried both VGA and audio to it, and I remember them working fantastically. I've really struggled to find these online, outside of the really expensive higher-end video over Cat5 distribution stuff, does anyone have any information? Alternative to this I'll have to run proper cabling - for the sake of futureproofing, DVI would be most appropriate as I put new projectors in that support DVI (probably half and half currently), but that introduces more adapter issues as the PCs have a combination of VGA or DVI and staff laptops have VGA and display port. Any information on those mysterious adapters or any thoughts on the above? Cheers

Not really. Miradore won't do app management with the free one, they do educational pricing and £1/device/month but I can't stand the idea of having to pay to effectively use the devices. Think I'm going to end up just sticking with the abhorrent G-Suite (it's rank, how do people use this to manage their whole schools?!) stuff. Bleh!

No sign of the registration/ordering link yet, but we have picked up a load of the Windows laptops through the LEA on Friday - I'm leaving them as-is. Don't have any cloud filtering solution and don't fancy adding force-tunnel load of these to the VPN (plus, it's something else for someone to have a problem with and need support with). As long as the kids have them I'm not precious about how exactly they're set up as long as I know there's the filtering safeguards on there. I had a rare trip in to school yesterday, brought one back with me to work out any quirks (like installing 365) to adapt documentation to our requirements; then just need to write a loan agreement then someone can slap asset stickers on them and hand them out. I imagine that by October 2020, we'll be taking them back off them for use in school, at which point I can just nuke and set up as per normal school devices (maybe I'm being optimistic.. who knows!).

After some more research, have found this https://www.miradore.com/ Seems to have a fairly generous free offering, including organisation ownership of devices. Bit more reading up on this and I might have to have a go.

Hi folks, There's a few similar threads that I've gone through, but not feeling much closer to an answer. We've got a few android tablets for staff use, purchased a few for use by students in the library and I'm at a point of needing to replace four of our old SLT iphones and will likely replace these with Android because the cost of Apple is eyewatering for something with such basic requirements. Anyway! I've played with the MDM that comes with g-suite for education and... it's rank (as is the admin console itself ). Fiddly work profiles and bizarre (to the end user) disparity between apps and data on the devices when implemented, no "company owned device" option without paying for enterprise (and no, I won't pay for it). Is there anyone out there that's had any success at making Android devices even slightly suitable for school use, at a staff and/or student level? I don't really want to have to pay for anything, but worst case scenario, I could stretch to a small amount.. so it'd be useful to know what kind of ballpark figures people have been dealing with. Thanks

Magic!!! Thanks

My next job is to verify the email addresses and get the necessary permissions to use the email addresses (I need to comb the AUP, but I'm fairly sure that we don't have permission to share their email addresses with a third party, which we'd be doing for the free school meal vouchers). Need to work out a system that can email them a verification link, where they can also agree the usage.

Managed to work out custom variables in Groupcall - gave all of the relevant students a random four digit code, texted that to the parents with the forms link and used that code as the key to add their email to the spreadsheet with power automate. Had a hundred returned within half an hour!

I think I've cracked a workable solution to the initial issue of those kids without *any* email address.. Whittled data down to those 300 without an email address for the priority 1 contact - got that in a spreadsheet, form and a power automate. Having to use the student exam number as the key, but it works! After this, I'll get parent app lite out there to collect email addresses for any none priority 1 contacts! Thanks for the input, guys