Sylv3r

Never really seen the point of vlaning our curriculum / admin network (it is as one). We don't have any issues with speeds and the permissions are pretty secure. We do however have seperate VLAN's for our CCTV, Wireless, Cashless catering to try and keep the traffic down as little as possible.

We use both IE9 and Google Chrome with no issues for either. If you have an account on the RM communities website, theres a forum post with the details on how to create the google chrome package, but as @webman pointed out, google chrome is now available in .msi format so should be much easier although you will still need to add the .adm template to the management console to help you configure and lock it down sufficiently.

In short. On the server. Start > All Programs > SIMS > dbupgrade Browse to the location where the patch is found, enter your server details, enter username and password. It will then backup your SIMS and install the patch. I would 100% recommend you have everybody out of SIMS before you even attempt it.

No issues with Kaspersky here on our CC4.3 network.

Nope, no access to Staff not even the head teacher (if she wanted) to facebook.

Not possible via the Management Console. You need to setup a seperate GPO I think. If im honest, I would't bother. Once you add one icon to the desktop then you will end up with hundreds of requests.

No issues with KeepKidsSafe this morning, infact a lot of positive replies on our Facebook page that we managed to get the message out so quickly.

Ah, Kayako Fusion

We use the latest version currently (4 I believe) but used it when it was version 3 and carried out an in-place upgrade with no issues.

We've used Kayako for around 5 or 6 years now and never had any issues with it. Love all the feature rich modules and utilise things like the live chat and the remote desktop connection for issues with parents, staff and students at home. We've put through thousands of tickets over the years and have nothing but compliments to say about the product. Every couple of months an update is released to get rid of any reported bugs and the wiki and forums are often updated and customer opinion certainly accounts and feature requests are also added to the product on a regular basis. It's certainly not the cheapest helpdesk available on the market considering some are free and a lot of Edugeek members are using things like Spiceworks and Liberum without any problems but I don't think I would choose to move away from Kayako.

We went with: SoundBooth is a modern software-based language lab Our MFL staff have had one training session, but didn't pick up the use of the system as quickly as I would have hoped so have another training session scheduled for February.

We use CRB (northern version of Cunninghams). Had a few issues with slow support over the last 6 months but the product itself is OK - it's the nature of the hardware that effectively lets the system down. We are for ever having to restart the revalv machines etc before we manage to get them to work and accept peoples biometric details.

We've always noticed ACTIVInspire taking a while to move on from the splash screen but soon speeds up to normal once this disappears whether we have the impero client installed or not. Im interested in reading about the redirecting the Appdata folder - so will give that a try, Thanks.

Cannot build machines keeps failing at (installing additional packages) We had this exact issue just before christmas but none of the other issues you mention - ours had something to do with a corrupt password on the system account connected to the DB. RM 3rd line support dialled in and resolved the issue after a couple of days tinkering and going round in circles with the 1st line support team.

Can't knock Insight as it's a great product, but we are a hosted SLG school and have very little if any problems. We have one server which hosts our Sharepoint SQL Database, one server which hosts our Sharepoint site and associated SLG provissioning tools and another server for SIMS. The spec if pretty much average and is nothing majorly over the top - we have 1,500 students and all of our parents have access and reguarly logon to our SLG site to view their Son / Daughter details - we don't print any tracking or school reports now and make them all available online other than 12 families who opted out of electronic correspondance.

We've got a Iris Connect which we have loaned for the foreseeable future from a local teacher training centre - we haven't quite managed to work out how it works yet - after sending one back for repair due to the issue with the internal microphone and terrible feedback. For the cost I believe they are too be, it certainly doesn't seem value for money from our experiences up to now. Within the next week or two, we are going to give it another go and I may have something a little more positive to add.

They should work OK with SIMS - don't use SQL 2012 if your wanting to use things like SLG, FMS, Discover etc.

Generally you don't need an updated package from RM. Export the packages from your server, update the .exe file within with the latest version. Increase the version number of the .ini file and reimport and allocate the packages accordingly. We have since moved to SOLUS3.0 and rolled out successfully both Discover and the Autumn 2012 release of SIMS perfectly.

we have a main school twitter account which is used quite extensively alongside our school Facebook page. Departments such as PE, RE, ICT and Science are using twitter more so than the others and for those relevant bits of information from our twitter accounts we retweet them on our school account. Both the twitter and Facebook pages are managed by me (not department) and I would say they are quite light touch and don't add too much to a workload that is busy enough!

We were a happy a customer of Schoolcomms for 3 or 4 years but we started to look at competitor products on the market due to the cost of schoolcomms. They are happy to keep custom, and will generally look to offer you a good deal if you speak to them directly, also if you sign up for a longer term deal such as 3 years their is more flexibility in the cost also.

Our sixth form has a roll of around 340. We have a dedicated Sixth Form Study area of around 50 PC's and other associated IT Suites that are shared with KS3 and KS4 students as well as the sixth form. All sixth form students do not currently have a device each, although this is something that we have contemplated in the past and ran smaller leasing schemes for parents to 100% contribute towards. Students are more than welcome to bring their own devices into school and attach them to our school wireless although we don't support them in anyway. We have a whole school roll of around 1,460 and theres only 2 of us supporting a network of over 1,400 clients. We cope, but certainly an extra pair of hands or two would be useful but I wouldn't necessarily say the demands of a sixth form will increase your workload other than the additional devices you would need to support.

Checked today and we've got WordWall 2.3 and i've just got it installed on a shared drive with a shortcut pointing to the .exe, no extra permissions in place and it just seems to work. Noticed version 3 is out now so will give that a go.

We have it installed on a shared drive and it just works. This was around a year or two ago when I set it up, so not sure when the new software was released that is mentioned above. We've also got a set of voting pads but they tend to just use the software without the voting pads - to make wordsearches mostly!

Ours appear to roll out succesfully on our workstations and server upgrade, but I must admit the 'service has stopped' message did keep appearing for me but never did appear to stop.

Yep another happy Impero school here. We use it predominantly as a Network Management tool than a classroom management tool but it certainly has the features that your average and advanced member of teaching staff would want to use.