Sylv3r

We use Kayako here, primary school staff e-mail our support direct and the system allocates them to the particular school based on their domain. Any tickets we carry out for staff on site are also logged as that member of staff for full reporting i.e. to show what each school is getting for their money on an annual basis - number of jobs closed etc. It also helps me monitor whether there's a training need required or an issue with a particular piece of hardware that may need replaced / kicking.

We love the product too, but get back very little feedback from suggestions we have added to the wishlist also.

If this is the case - why are all school inspection reports uploaded as PDF's to their website. Perhaps they need to practice what they preach !

We are a school comms user but only a limited number of users have School COMMS logons. I don't really like the idea of all staff having a logon as literally some parents may end up getting bombarded with messages on a weekly basis.

I had a demo Connectwise Manage and Automate (LabTech) last week, it's possible to buy as a non-MSP, but the agents become expensive unless your looking to purchase a fairly large number. I do agree the product is excellent and makes things a lot more proactive than reactive.

We use Cunninghams CRB from their scotland office and have had no issues, guy that comes on site is great too.

I must admit, we put info on both but 99% of the time if we want people to see something urgently it's read on SM. Nobody really bothers with the website these days unless looking for something specific. It's not on parents / students list of priorities to check the school site each day whereas they probably sit on facebook for hours.

Personally I prefer a website which is mobile aware rather than a specific app - it's one less thing to worry about and maintain.

We originally had self-hosted SIMS Learning Gateway which would allow staff to SSO into a browser to access registers etc, as we no longer use that day-to-day I setup our SIMS.net client to automatically logon using the AD credentials as it's no less secure than what we already had. I agree, it's possibly not the best way of doing it, but as staff are asked to do so much in the initial stages of a lesson etc, one less password was the best way of giving them a little more time.

We are also slowly removing our Interactive Whiteboards and replacing them with standard projectors and dry-wipe boards. Teachers on the whole are delighted.

We do the same as @foofighterjim

We've added our printers to our MDF contract with Canon direct. In the two years we've literally had one callout to replace a faulty drum unit - can't fault them.

We've stuck to Epson, we've had a mixture and the Epson appear to be best - robust, good quality and are software driven so just requires a USB cable into the PC rather than teachers having to mess about with VGA cables.

Depends how big your common room is, ours is a fair size and we use one of these that works well. Only requires one power plug or you could if necessary use the audio out to plug into your existing sound system.

Our primaries are using CPOMS, we are going to start using https://www.provisionmap.co.uk/safeguard-my-school/ but we've already got the provision map software. Not sure if you can have it as a one off or if it's part of the same product.

Our older boards don't play nicely with the latest drivers. We go back to 5.7 I think and everything works fine.

I'm not sure if SIMS InTouch has this functionality. We don't use it so can't comment. SIMS InTouch | Capita SIMS

It synched fine and the user was created but we had to go to each user manually and generate the sQuid ID. It may have been resolved by now, we've not used sQuid since Easter.

We used it no problems, there was a couple of quirks to it i.e. having to manually create squid ID's each time a new user is added - they can do it on mass for new year groups, but for adding the odd student it was something we had to remember to do. We moved to schoolcomms in the end, no criticism of the product, it just made sense for us as we could give the parents one logon for all of their children, for messaging, timetables, behaviour, assessment and payments rather than multiple systems.

We are pretty much done which is quite remarkable considering how much of a building site the school has been these 6 weeks - thats what a million pound bid for a new heating system does. The place is still thick with dust and i've been round the school and plugged everything back in for the third time ! All being well, it will be quiet on Monday when the staff all turn in. Due to the building work, we told staff not to come in so it has been relatively quiet which is the only saving grace !

Congrats Tony Won't be long until we are all experts in the art of GDPR and you'll have nothing to do.

Salamander looks a good product and we will probably look at getting in next year when we refresh our network (it's probably what put me off doing it this year), but we also use RBS and think it's a great product. We also trialled their sister product for parents evening recently and will probably be purchasing that too.

Newcastle season ticket holder - I'll take 17th place now !

What MFD's are you using? I couldn't get our Canon machines up and running with Office365 so setup a gmail account just for our MFD's for staff to scan to e-mail.

Pretty straight forward. I setup 40 AP's and around 12 switches with no training which includes VLAN's, routing etc and everything was pretty straight forward. The company I bought the kit from specced up 2 days consultancy for around £1,000.00 but I thought I would give it a go first and if it proved too difficult to get them involved - it wasn't necessary in the end.