msi_school

I have always found that for art work the best option is to send it out, the quality is far better than you can get from a laser printer and cheaper than an ink jet plus you can get fancy paper, mounting and large sizes that are not possible in a school.

I have one of these which I purchased in 2020 that is still going strong. https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07PLJ7RF4/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1

The issue I found with this is that some users will not set up 2FA and then be locked out, and I have even had users who had done this twice, Microsoft 2FA asks users until the end of the grace period and then forces them to set it up rather than just not letting them log on which I feel is better.

Google 2FA is a git, as you say it goes from wanted but not needed to required with out ever forcing the user to set up. We just had to live with this when we moved the school to 2FA. We already had a touch point with new users and now we just make them set up the MFA before they leave the office.

I believe the biggest issues for high throughput on an AP are congestion and distance between the AP and the device, which means you are generally looking to increase the AP density before the wired up link from the AP becomes an issue. 48 of any device type squeezing through a 1Gb uplink let alone 48 APs will be an issue however, my biggest bottle neck with the cloud is the providers up/download speed.

I created separate shares for these departments and set a storage quota, to prevent them from bringing everyone to a half when they fill the drive. However this did not resolve the size or retention questions. Generally I founds the best answer was to tell SLT XYZ department want more space and it will cost £ABC or they can delete some work and let it work itself out. The best answer for me was to move to the cloud but with Google and Microsoft setting storage limits this might not be so good going forwards.

The schools I have been involved with who don't want to move from SIMS are in that position because they don't want to change any of their ways of working. I have had conversations with SLT who tell me all the things about a new MIS that are better but then say something about assessment or timetabling is holding them back. I also agree that Cloud based is a very double edged sword, changes are made to the system outside of your control and you are reliant on the internet, these are issues that can be seen and pointed at by any member of staff where as the fact it is saving hours of IT time and you have not replaced a SQL server is invisible to the users. I have also found cloud based systems do tend to slow down at registration times and during popular report windows and I could throw hard ware at these issues on prem but cant in the cloud. Infact if any Cloud MIS people are reading this you are missing a trick by not selling different tiers of server power/contention.

Our office is long and thin and the bare walls make it very difficult to have more than one conversation at a time.

Don't lie about stock levels and delivery dates, if you don't have it in stock that not a big problem for me but if you lie about it and I then land on a six week back order list I will be livid.

Where I work there is a clear divide between Data and IT so I am not as in the know as I was about different MISs as I have been. Arbour is the MIS used in the trust and it looks better than SIMS but as it is in the cloud I am very much in two minds about its uptime and responsiveness. On one had it's in the cloud if the internet is working any slowness or downtimes is not an IT issue however, it can make my fingers itch when I cant try any thing to resolve the issue.

I had a sales contact at Insight who used to do some of the leg work for me, I would describe what I was looking for and they would go away and come back with prices. They also never cold called by except on call each November in which they where up front in asking if I could make an order now to help their Xmas bonus and where always happy when I said no. When they where replaced with a new contact who did all the normal things I stopped buying from them.

@enjay is correct you can go too far in splitting services per VM but what I was asking was what is considered best practice now if this isn't. I would generally split things by importance, user and task so I would for instance have the following servers: Student data Staff data SIMS Cashless Catering Print Server MDT Sync Services (Locker, Wonde, Go4School, Azure AD sync, Google sync, ParentMail, SchoolCloud, Admissions+) This separates roles and services between things that need to be up all the time form others that can be a bit more flexible.

Niche systems are always poor and systems with a monopoly position such as SIMS still believe they have are worse.

Sorry could you expand on this, what is a better option than one VM per service? I realise that it is wasteful to have computing power that is not used and that each VM takes a percentage of the available power to run the OS however, I always assume that this overhead is minimal and the flexibility that this gives with uptime and servicing is worth the cost.

I always love these conversations, once when I am in the wrong for wanting redundancy because it "never goes wrong and we don't need it" and then once when I am in the wrong for being cavalier because "it always goes wrong and its essential" and both times it's too expensive.

Have you used SIMS?

This is a massive safeguarding issue for the member of staff, if they don't turn this off after the trip they can be tracked. My personal advice would be to get the trip[ leader to report in on a schedule and report that info but if you have to have a tracker make it stand alone.

That's not the Microsoft or Windows we know and love though however, after a couple of years of cyber essentials we wont need all the old software to work.

I remember crashing lots of games by pressing the brand new Windows Key back in the day what is an AI key going to do to my game?

To be honest this is the schools network, I would make sure the SLT and DPO are aware of my concerns, ask them to put this in the risk register update the Disaster recovery plan and then do as they ask. It is a big security hole and it would concern me as it does you however, it looks like you will not win this and you are in danger of alienating the teaching staff making your life much harder in future when they go looking for shadow IT.

We have had a couple of Wireless issues this week during mock exams and this process works very well it takes a couple of minutes after the network is reconnected for it to realise which is a littel annoying if you are trying to get a print out but the exams are not being lost.

I got one last week for testing and its great, just doesn't work for GCPW no USB based solution will.

I have just been sent this form our central team Official update from Google: Your Case # for Chrome has been updated. Case Subject: Getting error 400 when logging on to a ChromeOS device Case Comment : After reviewing the information you provided, we believe that you may be affected by an issue we've become aware of: Error 400 when signing in to Chromebooks. This is a high priority issue that we're working to resolve as soon as possible. Here are some details about the issue: Status: Investigating Description: Multiple customers are reporting that they are unable to sign in to Chromebooks and get the error ""400. That's an error. The server cannot process the request because it is malformed. It should not be retried. That's all we know." How to diagnose: 1.User tries to login using their username and password 2. Gets the error "400. That's an error. The server cannot process the request because it is malformed. It should not be retried. That's all we know." Workaround: There's no workaround available at this time, but we'll let you know if we learn of one. Current update: At 2023-12-14 13:04 UTC (just now): We are investigating the issue. Meanwhile could you allow list http://www.gstatic.com as mentioned here https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/6334001?hl=en and let us know if it helps to resolve the issue. Please review your case and take any actions as requested. If you have any questions or require immediate assistance, please reply to this email to contact Google Workspace Support. You can also view and comment on your case by logging into our support portal Thanks for choosing Google Workspace. —The Google Team

I used to have an Aerohive network and staff where issued a PPSK with only two concurrent devices allowed this resolved the staff sharing the password issue. Its a bit of in investment though so you might need another solution :-)

This is the way