Strawdog

Will PM you

Same here - some staff have reported being able to login with some browsers but not others but it generally seems pretty wonky.

Lancashire (EDS) are testing the patch inhouse before releasing it to schools - I'm pleasantly surprised that ESS patched it that quick.

Lancashire have an existing mail relay they are offering schools use of - you have to send them a list of IPs for the machines you want to use it but all our core admin desktops have static IPs already from using Sun Global Desktop over lockdown. That being said I've just left it with staff printing to PDF and manually emailing them

Latest update from ESS via the LA.

Here's what I did to bypass the issue: - Told the affected admin staff to print their invoices/remittance to PDF and email them as attachments (I'm only here for another month so I'd rather not leave some convoluted workaround or potential security hole for whoever picks up the reins once I've left)

Weak sauce, someone needs to send them a copy of the BOFH Excuse Board.

We got hit by it yesterday, my immediate thought was MS discontinuing support for basic auth - given the age of the underlying software I can't see ESS being able to easily shoehorn modern auth support into FMS. They could setup their own basic auth capable mail relay for schools to use but I can see a number of reasons they'd not want to go down that path (support, cost, security, liability, etc.). If it is basic auth ESS have only had 12+ months to put a fix in place... :\

Each school/MAT's databases should be siloed so scaling shouldn't be an issue if they've enough grunt to handle the processing and we've never previously had such poor performance as we've had on and off ever since September - for me it seems they've either fundamentally broken something, aren't managing/policing load appropriately (blocking/terminating malformed reports or queries generating excessive load) or have cheaped out on infrastructure. I take your point that systems this large and complex aren't simple to get right but schools pay lots for this service - how Bromcom make the service work isn't our concern, that it works is.

30mins on hold, made it to 4th in the queue :\

We're seeing very slow loading times when accessing student information pages this morning - assessment, staff, cover, etc. all load okay (it's not the quickest but those pages are at least usable). 7 ahead of me in the queue to get through to the helpdesk, usually indicates it's not just us suffering

We already whitelist that for staff, along with a bunch of others that Bromcom relies on (see below), but it was still slow for us this morning. *.mouseflow.com *.bromcomcloud.com *.fontawesome.com *.walkme.com *.getbeamer.com *.cloudflare.com

It's not anywhere near as bad as it has been but yes we frequently see poor performance at the start of the day, the platform seems to struggle with the mass of logons and registers all being loaded around the same time by their entire UK customer base.

We replaced our whole network a few years back with Meraki switches (MS-350/350LP and MS-425 from Cisco 2960/2960X and 3750) after running Meraki APs for a few years before - it's very good kit and although yes it's expensive the price includes the support subscription (e.g. swap outs for any failures, enterprise level support for config/troubleshooting, etc.). There's a few other options out there but I'd be looking at enterprise level stuff just for future proofing and that's all pretty expensive whichever manufacturer you go with (but it's generally only something you're going to be swapping out every 10+ years). Check out https://www.fs.com/uk for sundries (SFP modules, interconnects, etc.) too as they're generally much, much cheaper to pick up yourself compared to those an installer will include in a quote.

....and it's flaky again \o/

I can see an entry for yesterday, not sure why the platform essentially being completely unusable at the start of the day is only considered a 'minor' fault :\

Yep getting same this end, yay!

Down again this morning?

I'll PM you.

We're on inset today, good to know I've still got issues with Bromcom to look forward to tomorrow.

I get the rationale, as kit rarely gets looked after or treated appropriately, but I worked on the basis that even with some breakages we wouldn't be in the position of having to replace every display multiple times (e.g. 2.5x based on a rough price of £1250 for a 75" 'classroom grade' screen) during their expected life span so overall it would be cheaper to go for consumer grade, plus we didn't have very much demand for interactivity from most curriculum areas. On the subject of 'classroom grade' screens - we've just been quoted £1000.80 to swap out a Promethean Activpanel 75" (AP4-75) with a refurbished unit, it was bought back in 2016 (with a 5 year warranty... Sod's law) so it's not had a bad innings but it took over a month to get the quote from Promethean (I'd asked them for a repair quote as it's the lenses on the backlight that have dropped off due to the glue perishing*), if it had been a TV we'd have replaced it the same day. *Replacement backlight arrays are available (e.g. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/124432141852) or I could even glue the lenses back on but I have neither the time or inclination to strip down something that size to service it myself.

We've spent the last decade+ trying to teach staff to use this, we've had a couple of successes :\ However anyone who complains about the lack of a freeze function on the TVs has it pointed out to them again and that generally stops the complaints (even if they still don't use it).

We replaced the majority of our projectors and IWBs with Samsung consumer grade TVs (Samsung UE75TU7020 75" Crystal UHD 4K HDR Smart TV @ circa £510 each) over the last couple of years - we bought a hot swap spare to keep in a cupboard but thankfully never had to use it to replace any of the classroom displays... we did however end up using it to replace a very expensive 98" Iiyama display that we had on a mobile stand for assemblies which lasted less than a week before mysteriously killing itself whilst stored in a locked cupboard only staff have access to Every classroom already had an AppleTV (3rd Gen), which have been in place since 2012 (all teachers have MacBooks), but the Samsungs also have AirPlay 2 built in along with all the usual smart TV functions, you can also use Wireless Display to wirelessly connect from a Windows 10 laptop but we've never used that at scale so I don't know how robust it is but it works for the odd guest who comes in with a Windows machine or who needs a loaner (we also have a bunch of really long HDMI cables and display adaptors available when needed). They've been spot on so far - nice bright and crisp displays with good viewing angles (they're all on adjustable mounts - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bracket-Swivel-Max-VESA-600x400mm-Screens-black/dp/B01MS4N45A) and decent sound. My fear when we got them was either a smashed screen, due to something being lobbed across a classroom, or one being pulled clean off the wall due to someone swinging on it but our biggest headache to date has been trying to teach some staff how to use the remote "It's a TV... you know, like you have at home..." (apparently 'Source' and 'Volume' are arcane terms as uncommonly encountered as the need to turn plug sockets on at the wall). We had a couple of departments that really wanted to keep their IWBs so we still have a few in use, we bought Epson EB-X39 & EB-X49 projectors (£300-£355) for those rooms - they're nice projectors but I'd much rather have TVs throughout as they just tick so many more boxes (resolution, brightness, audio quality, features, adjustable mount, ease of replacement, ease of use, no need to mess with focus/throw distance/keystone/filters, reduced interconnections/power requirements, etc.).

Behaviour logging issue is caused by accessing it (blue silhouette with green tick icon) via the Photo register page :\ Two weeks to confirm a problem demonstrated (via a video showing the exact steps to take) right at the start. Slow again today multiple times.

We've been suffering from extremely slow access (to the point of being unusable) the past 2 days during the morning rush (8:30-9:30) - everyone else struggling too?