trekmad

@jamesrhart @kirbster73 are you willing to share your experience of migrating to iFinance with our accounts team?

Hi Slugshead. Would you be willing to share your experience of moving to iFinance with our accounts team?

Thanks All.

Hi All, Interesting query for you data protection gurus. One parent contacts a school by email to complain about the actions of some of it's other students. The parents of those students are made aware of their child's behaviour. The matter is settled and the original parent who raised the complaint is happy with the outcome. Now one of the other parents has demanded to see the email sent by the original parent under freedom of information. Do we have to supply a copy of the original complaint as this has not been generated by us but is now stored on our email system? Many thanks Trekmad

Good Afternoon, Has anyone used an external company to carry out a GDPR data audit for their Independent School? If you have would you recommend them and be willing to share their contact details? Many thanks Stuart

We have been using Bodet for a couple of years now and can recommend it. We were looking for a replacement to our old bell system which didn't reach the entire site and wanted to incorporate a lockdown system within it. Looking at the functionality that was available with Bodet and other suppliers we decided Bodet was for us. The internal bells/speakers are all PoE and they have a range of wall mount or ceiling tile mount options. There are also some external horn based bells which are powered from a fused spur or 3 pin 13amp plug. At the moment we also have a series of pre-recorded messages which are played throughout the day reminding students and staff about social distancing and washing their hands. Many thanks Stuart

Ebuyer have annoyed us so much I wanted to warn anyone who buys from them about their appalling customer service and T&C's. Before Christmas we ordered a printer and set of inks which should have been delivered next day. The nominated courier was Yodel who we have problems with as they normally try to deliver after 6pm when the school is closed. Yodel tried to deliver next day but failed as it was so late and then the school packed up for Christmas. We came back in the new year to find the printer was delivered but the inks were not. We contacted Yodel and was told they had lost the parcel. We then called Ebuyer who told us that due to their T&C's unless they are contacted within 48 hours of non delivery they would not help us. We escalated it to management at Ebuyer however were told the answer was still no. We have now contacted Yodel for compensation but they have told us we have to go through Ebuyer to get the form completed as we are not the customer. We have therefore lost a set of inks and their money value. We have closed our account with Ebuyer and want to warn everyone of this particular T&C and appalling customer service. Can anyone recommend a good supplier with a website you can order through but can also help in a bidding process for larger purchases?

Data Manager The purpose of the Data Manager is to drive a data culture forward within the school and co-ordinate and administer the efficient running of the School’s academic information management systems (ISAMS) in order to support the School’s mission statement. Attention to detail, a high level of accuracy and the ability to work independently are required. Salary: Competitive dependant on qualifications and experience Required ASAP We are seeking to appoint a full time Data Manager to manage the College’s central database and the production and analysis of data. Applicants should have strong Microsoft SQL and SQL Reporting Services experience. Previous management of a school information system would be preferable and experience of working with iSAMS is desirable. The successful candidate must be self-motivated and methodical, whilst capable of using their own initiative. They must be able to cope within a busy school environment and possess good communication skills, both written and oral. St Edmund’s College is a vibrant and exciting environment in which to work. Whilst we are proud to be England’s oldest Catholic school, we welcome applications from all colleagues who wish to be part of our special ethos. Please return your completed application pack to the HR department as soon as possible. Application pack can be viewed by clicking here Telephone: 01920 824335 Email: [email protected] APPLICATIONS TO BE RECEIVED AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. INTERVIEWS TO TAKE PLACE: AS AND WHEN APPLICATIONS ARE RECEIVED. https://www.tes.com/jobs/vacancy/data-manager-ware-532087

I have been asked if there is a way to delay any emails sent by any user via Exchange 2013 and wonder if anyone knows if this is possible. At the moment I have been asked for all messages sent after 10pm to be delayed until 6am the following day. This would be for internal and external emails. Has anyone done this? Many thanks

St Edmund's College, Old Hall Green, Ware, Hertfordshire, SG11 1DS Catholic, co-educational, day and boarding school for children aged 3-18 (HMC & IAPS) Required for April 2016 We are seeking to appoint a full time Senior IT Technician to join our Technical Services Department. Applicants should have at least 2 years’ experience in a technical support role supporting Microsoft Windows servers and client operating systems. Previous experience of working within a school would be preferable and experience of working with SQL databases, iSAMS MIS, Firefly VLE and VMware virtualized servers and desktops is desirable. The successful candidate must be self-motivated and methodical, whilst capable of using their own initiative. They must be able to cope within a busy school environment and possess good communication skills, both written and oral. St Edmund’s College is a vibrant and exciting environment in which to work. Whilst we are proud to be England’s oldest Catholic school, We welcome applications from all colleagues who wish to be part of our special ethos. If you would like to apply, please visit our website in order to download an application pack. Please return your completed application pack to the HR department as soon as possible. APPLICATIONS TO BE RECEIVED AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. INTERVIEWS TO TAKE PLACE: AS AND WHEN APPLICATIONS ARE RECEIVED. NO AGENCIES PLEASE The College is committed to safeguarding the welfare of children, therefore, all candidates will be required to undergo an Enhanced DBS check. We may take up references, before short-listing has taken place, which will include questions about past disciplinary actions or allegations in relation to behaviour with children and may approach previous employers for information to verify particular experience or qualifications.

We have used iBOSS since June last year after moving away from Smoothwall and can highly recommend it. Our install was carried out by Rivanet and we were there first customer for iBOSS after almost 5 years of them supplying us with Smoothwall. I have heard from Rivanet since and they have successfully migrated over 20 schools from Smoothwall to iBOSS. The installation was easy and the removal of proxies made things so much easier to manage. We discovered that after we implemented iBOSS a lot of the rules we had in place on the smoothwall were not working as they should. We only had a couple of teething issues and these are quickly fixed by iBOSS support which has UK time support and US time support. If a site has been accidentally blocked a student can fill out a request for us to review the site and we can easily add it to an allow list. Please feel free to PM me if you have any specific queries. Trekmad

St Edmund's College is looking to recruit a Data Manager. Details and an application form are available on our website: Support Staff Vacancies Salary Range - £35-£40,000 Required for November 2015 We are seeking to appoint a full time Data Manager to manage the College’s central database and the production and analysis of data. Applicants should have strong Microsoft SQL and SQL Reporting Services experience. Previous management of a school information system would be preferable and experience of working with iSAMS is desirable. The successful candidate must be self-motivated and methodical, whilst capable of using their own initiative. They must be able to cope within a busy school environment and possess good communication skills, both written and oral. St Edmund’s College is a vibrant and exciting environment in which to work. Whilst we are proud to be England’s oldest Catholic school, we welcome applications from all colleagues who wish to be part of our special ethos. If you would like to apply please visit our website in order to download an application pack Job Opportunities Please return your completed application pack to the HR department as soon as possible. Telephone: 01920 824335 Email: [email protected] APPLICATIONS TO BE RECEIVED AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. INTERVIEWS TO TAKE PLACE: AS AND WHEN APPLICATIONS ARE RECEIVED. The College is committed to safeguarding the welfare of children, therefore, all candidates will be required to undergo an Enhanced DBS check. We may take up references, before short-listing has taken place, which will include questions about past disciplinary actions or allegations in relation to behaviour with children and may approach previous employers for information to verify particular experience or qualifications.

If you mean change the compatibility level check this out: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/bb933794(v=sql.120).aspx Many thanks Stuart

We issue all staff with a single A4 sheet containing their username, password, email address and copier code. Additionally there are the internet links to our MIS, VLE's and how to contact IT support with our opening times. We then spend about 5 mins per staff member running them through the systems which usually suffices. This year we had a morning of inset dedicated to our MIS/VLE and clickview so new and existing staff got a refresher. Hopefully we will do this every year from now on. Many thanks Stuart

Hi Wayne, Yes a standard USB A to B works fine. We rarely use the cables which come with the board as we use the cable supplied with a faceplate and a standard 1-2m cable between the faceplate and the PC. You can buy a bluetooth module for the 600 series as documented here: Extending the SMART Board 600 and D600 series interactive whiteboard USB connection (001295) - SMART Technologies Many thanks Stuart

We swapped from a virtual smoothwall which was our firewall and proxy. In the past we had a UTM but we decided to swap to a virtual appliance but the virtual disk kept corrupting leading to a reinstall. We had come to the conclusion that we needed layer 7 monitoring and blocking ability last year when we started receiving emails from our ISP regarding copyright infringement and whatever we did with smoothwall we seemed unable to stop the traffic without blocking legitimate applications through. We looked at a couple of other solutions but due to their high price we had to rule them out. For the price what iboss offer is fantastic and our issues were solved instantly. By blocking all of the VPN and proxy bypass traffic such as ultrasurf, TOR, hotspot shield etc our internet bandwidth has dropped considerably and we are no longer getting complaints that the internet is too slow. We are using the smoothwall only as a firewall at the moment while we choose a suitable replacement but as we have until October when our renewal comes around there is no rush for this.

Just finalised the costings with Rivanet (our supplier). Unit should be swapped out next week. Thanks @rpmoore for your assistance with this project.

We have had an onsite demo of iBOSS since Wednesday last week and it is so much better than Smoothwall. We are so happy with it we have decided to buy it straight away and not go back to our Smoothwall and hopefully we will be up and running on our own box next week. We had been a Smoothwall customer since 2008 and we are a day/boarding school in the UK. Reasons are: 1. The responsiveness of the event logs and reporting is amazing compared to Smoothwall where you would run a report and go a watch a film in the time it would take to generate. 2. We were regularly getting emails from our ISP informing us that there were complaints from movie distribution companies that students were sharing movies from our network and the minute iBOSS was installed we had a load of disgruntled boarding students complaining that all of their VPN and proxy bypass programs were now blocked. 3. We were getting complaints from our boarders who were legitimately trying to use the internet for Skype to contact their families in other countries that they were unable to do so because the internet was too slow. This problem has ceased the minute iBOSS went in. We get daily internet bandwidth statistics from our ISP and previously we were peaking at 93MB of our 100MB leased line and now our highest peak is 71MB. 4. Finally the interface is so much easier to use and setting timers on website allow lists and website categories is much quicker and easier than it was on the Smoothwall. If anyone has any specific question please feel free to PM me.

We are looking to buy some android tablets for our music department who would like to be able to issue them to students for certain lessons. Are there any particular apps for Android that anyone recommends. We are looking for some notations apps, piano/keyboard apps and music theory apps. There are loads out there but I wondered if there are any that schools are using and would recommend. Many thanks Stuart

Strongly recommend Kaspersky and also recommend you avoid Sophos. We had Sophos for a year and constantly had users bring their virus infected machines into us. Swapped to Kaspersky and we haven't had a laptop go down due to malware for almost 18 months now.

We use the following which are great. Come with wall mount clips and an inline remote. We used to use 2.1 speakers systems in our classrooms but find these work and look much better. 1050005 - SAHARA - SPEAKERS, 30W WITH REMOTE VOLUME | CPC

Hi everyone, I am new to XIBO but am enjoying playing with it so far. I was wondering what the best way is to create an image slideshow. I am aware we can create one in PowerPoint but wondered if there was an easier way for end users. Many thanks

We use NetSupport School for this and have done for over 10 years (although we initially used the rebranded version as part of RangerSuite).

Hi Austen, We have used it for several years and it works fine for us. We have it installed on all of our student machines and it catches a few screenshots every now and again. Overall our students are pretty well behaved and they know we have this software as it is in the student ICT AUP. If you have any specific queries feel free to PM me. Many thanks Stuart

We have 55 Ruckus APs for around 200 staff and 830 students. We tap into the web interface of the Ruckus regularly and the maximum number of devices which are connected at any one time is around the 400 mark. Our building is old with some walls which are about 1m thick where new building have been built up to the existing and some sections with a large amount of metal framework. We are also a boarding school and have a large campus. We have 99% coverage and no issues with slow connections. I assume you have a wireless controller and should be able to monitor the number of connections throughout the day and look at the loading history of each AP. You may find that you can lose an AP in certain areas and relocate to other heavily used areas.