Sylv3r

Interesting that they aren't creating some sort of convertor to open publisher files in word. The whole convert the .Pubx to PDF then to Word seems a bit convoluted

It's not our main filtering product, but we also use SENSO for devices taken off site - which I admit isn't a fully blown filtering product, it ticks a box.

The central IT staff all come from the 5% school contributions to the MAT. Which also includes the HR, Finance, Governance teams etc. This team consists of a CTO, IT Director, IT Services Manager, Web Designer and MIS Lead. All secondaries have both an IT Lead and Technician which come from their own school budget. We have 3 technicians that support the primaries. We charge all primaries a flat fee of £2,250.00 per school. Then any licences etc for SENSO, Microsoft are charged to each school based on their staffing numbers for both secondary and primaries.

17 admins

We purchased directly via Freshworks. However, I was told or picked up in that post that they were on G Cloud and their costs were significantly cheaper - we certainly aren't paying the RRP after lengthy discussions about costs.

SafeID dongles for all staff ~2,000. We would rather staff didn't use their personal devices - phones etc. Even inside of school, we've not setup conditional access so they are prompted for the code - would much rather a member of staff get their trust provided MFA device out then their personal mobile phone. It's been an expensive journey, but I think worth it. However, we will no doubt come to a point in time when all the batteries run-out at the same time - then we may have to have a rethink.

We've got one school who sent their cancellation via Recorded delivery and never received a reply to confirm that they have been cancelled so good look when trying !

I don't have anything in writing - it was just what a member of the team had told me after speaking to someone over the phone I think.

Has anybody come across this over the last couple of days where when attempting to open Office documents a SENSO error appears on screen about SensoH64.dll not designed to be run on Windows. If you click OK - it continues to load fine. We've seen this on a number of schools across our trust but not in huge numbers so it's not impacting everybody. SENSO support have identified an issue with Windows 24H2 but these devices all appear to be on 22H2 that we have seen so far. Senso are recomemnding disabling Application Inspection but isn't that a fundamental part of the solution we are paying for? Thanks Andrew

We are a O365 trust - however, we do have some Chromebooks in some of our schools so we do utilise Google for the management and security of those devices and I actually think through having SSO setup etc - that they do work well, even with our O365 tenancy. I think purely from an administration point of view O365 gives us so much more, yes there's an additonal licence cost to most of the security features I think these are light years ahead in terms of the google offering. We use InTune as our MDM for all of our trust devices (other than the chromebooks above) - so we are managing, Windows, IOS and Android devices this way. All communication is done via O365 whether that's e-mail, Teams, Sharepoint etc. All Teaching and Learning is done via O365 - Online Office, Teams, Reading Coach etc

I have been thinking about this a bit more. The SCA funding can also be used for school building extensions, new roofs etc. You would have thought they'll be things like Asbestos checks that would need to be done in advance of any works that take place - also an architect would be required to produce plans before any work can commence - seems a bit unfair from an IT perspective that similar checks can not be done - I am sure the above would normally be covered under the SCA funding.

Yes, we have that same issue in one of our schools today too. I understand, Smoothwall are aware and are looking at resolving it.

This links to this thread - /forums/internet-related-filtering-firewall/241086-smoothwall-cloud-filter-blocking-pdfs.html Smoothwall are apparently aware and are looking at resolving it ASAP.

When we've put wireless in (not via SCA) just using school funds, the companies have generally done the survey free of charge - I imagine, they'll hide any costs in the overall figure at the end. I guess no different to a decorator, carpet fitter or double-glazing company who do free estimates. Not trying to cook the books - but is that an option

Jus thinking non-technical but it isn't something silly like a student has a logon and is deleting the positives of other students on a weekend? I have a feeling when I used ClassCharts a long time ago anything deleted in ClassCharts post sync - also had to be deleted in SIMS (at the time!) manually.

We looked at both for our O365 backups and stuck with Barracuda - it just seemed a better polished product although as Redstor was relatively new, I am sure there's further work to be done to mature the product more. If we had nothing to compare Redstor with however, we wouldn't have had any issues going with them.

We pay direct with Freshdesk via invoice in GBP too.

It reminds me of the time when the paper notes all moved to the new plastic variation - there was a call out charge for CRB engineer to come out and swap the notes readers out - I think essentially it was a firmware upgrade. I get they had to send someone to site - but you had 3 or 4 revals there was a cost for each or just replace / upgrade them the next time you were on site for another call out !

We are on A3 plus EMS A5.

Thanks Steve As you say, just based on reseller recommendations. I'll take a look at EES - as that may well be a better option for us as when I looked at NCE it didn't really say it was for education.

We are currently on a CSP license model for all of our 48 schools and are using Office 365 A3 and EMS A5 for all of our staff users. I understand that CSP will not be available as per our next renewal and the next best option is to move to NCE. Does anybody know what the difference is between CSP and NCE and if there's additional benefits it brings, also is their a massive difference in terms of cost - I've already budgeted for CSP based on the costs we currently pay and if there's a premium for just changing the licensing name that's going to cause issues from our budget projections for financial year 2023 - 24. Thanks Andrew

I actually don't mind the new Outlook. Haven't really had any problems with it, or the features that it doesn't include currently doesn't impact on my ways of working currently.

I tend to agree about the Geobooks and their quality, but the intention was a short term fix to use the devices for familes without the technology to access remote learning from home for what may have been ultimately a short period of time. What hasn't helped is once the pandemic was over, that all schools thought they could add the devices onto their networks to save having to spend additonal funds on IT refresh. A basic device allowing access to work from home with access to little other than a browser was fine, schools wanting to teach the curriculum on a domained joined PC in a school with very little WiFi coverage to start with - not fine !

Nothing rumoured, although I imagine if something was imminent it would have been mentioned in the budget last week. I think the DfE are still playing catch-up financially from COVID and RAAC so they'll not be any such projects for a long time if ever.

I know you've already mentioned them but no issues with Deepnet here. Probably purchased around 2,500 devices from them.