Achandler

Reply to the email, with a proof of delivery receipt. I wouldn't be filling out any web forms that a random email from essientially a stranger is requesting. Then wait 6 months to see a report published of how schools are not completing their duties and treating both parents fairly, this will be backed up with figures showing more staff are female and this is why they have a preference to have the mother's details...

The feees mentioned here are accurate, however don't bother asking for an install to create your new users as they won't be able to. I tried in June to get Salamander installed over the summer and they told me the next dates they could manage was late September. Not particularly useful. When questioned the response but it will be ready for 2018... while true but when you want timetables syncing with calendars and new users created, installing something on annual subscription that won't see the huge benefit until 11 months into a 12 months agreement seemed a waste of time. As msot of us know, it something that can be used from the start of term is more liekly to be used and succeed then something from halfway through.

The Wileyfox range is fine for build quality in my opinion. I have a Swift and my other half a Swift 2, she is well pleased with it for £150. However, I would rule it out on the camera though, if you want a decent one then look elsewhere as its rubbish!

I am assuming that given the suppliers aren't bust, they trade all year with businesses as well.

My last summer in Education, so far I have successfully been let down by delivering that would appear to never be coming for some PCs, new 2-way radios, and incorrect whiteboards being sent. I have had issues with transition backs and our parental contact supplier. I have Cunninghams in tomorrow! What could possibility go wrong. The only benefit is I won't be here in September having to explain why computers and radios ordered at the start of July couldn't get to the school in time. Needless to say, I think we are going to cross a couple of well known suppliers off our list of people we order from. This probably one of the worse summers I have had for let downs by suppliers, everything ordered well in advance and to have so many different suppliers fail to deliver is unheard of for me.

Our new tills are being put in place on 8th, so I can check then if you want. I'll ask the technician as well if you want me to? no harm in asking the question.

For anyone interested the niche way we were trying to use the product, was the way I was advised to in writing via Groupcall and I have passed all the information across to Graham. I was ultimately advised to do a manual upload to Messenger, using the CSV format which we did and the group appears within the Messenger service correctly. Then can they ultimately be contacted via Messenger, the issue stems from the way Messenger then sync those groups with Parent Paperwork, and the required fields to sync the groups across. Therefore the group doesn't sync and cannot be used, so if using Parent Paperwork, be advised you cannot use any manually uploaded contacts/ parents/ groups. CMIS, adds to the issues as opposes to being the cause. Pre-admissions students within the MIS system not be preloaded into Groupcall is because of the way Groupcall accesses the data (Cunninghams export the pre-admissions successfully, so it isn't entirely a CMIS issue).

I think it is only fair to put a followup on this. I appreciate Graham has contacted me and attempted to resolve the issues, and we have agreed on several of the highlighted issues and failing and I trust he will take action as he has promised. The outcome of the trial has been a failure, sadly the product couldn't do as we were told explicitly it could, though most likely through lack of knowledge of the product as oppose overselling it. However, that doesn't help us as a school and 8 days after trying to move forwards with electronically signed documents, tomorrow morning I have to come up with an alternative plan or revert back to be posting 200 sets of the documentation out, as I don't have time to try other new methods now. Personally I wouldn't recommend the Parent Paperwork at the moment, the product works for the basic and if everything within Groupcall is perfect, but as soon as you go off the exact path you run into problems. I won't comment further on Groupcall technical support, as I have made my opinion of them clear already and things are unchanged.

I'll try to be as honest as possible. Bearing in the mind that I am finding dealing with groupcall extremely frustrating and have given up ringing your support line. Someone from Groupcall telling me how good a product is and how it can do this and that is not a real life view of how the product works, we have all seen demos of software before and then when you come to use it is tedious to use. With regards to the slow sends, the form was done at 10:20, scheduled to send at 10:30, and then took till 11am to arrive. So it isn't to do with waiting for the bulk upload process, asfterall you just told me it is unlikely a lot of your customers (100 or so) were. There appears to be an inherent slowness somewhere along the way. I agree with it being a little odd, but it definitely happened, the 2nd send of the a slightly different form actually linked the identical documentation. Here is the message you get for files, just needs "a maximum of 3 per slip" adding. It is jsut frustrating when you split up a document to make it easier, then when you upload it, it doesn't work and it could have been avoided. "Files to include on the Slip The file(s) will be displayed to the parent on their online form. Maximum size 3Mb, must be PDF." In Addition, might be another bug: This morning, I have an yet another on going issue with a group that is within messenger not appearing as an option to send slips to. I was told to wait overnight, which we have done, the issue continues, so I've lost another 24 hours. Today apparently support doesn't open till 9am, although this opening time seems to vary with who you speak to, so I have no actual idea what time they work. I don't actually think your support staff know enough about the product either, I know its a 3rd party addon, but when out only option is to call Groupcall then they need to know and not just make up an answer which is what it feels like, hence the wait 24 hours solution given yesterday. For the costs of the product, if it actually worked properly, you could accept the annoyances with slow uploads and limits to files but at the moment the overall package just isn't good enough.

I have spoke to someone who has helped me, I was hoping to get a response as to what I could actually use the parent paperwork for as oppose to the service level. We have battled through using the product this morning after a few more phonecalls to get it working. So we have we think go to the point we cna use it. One thing I must say for anyone who intends to use this product, it is slow going getting the forms created and then also slow in sending them out. E.G. one form (literally to 1 person) due to send at 10:30am didnt get sent till nearly 11am. I also have sent the same form (different actually message and spelling corrected) to the same person twice for testing and it just relaods the first one everytime, so we can't refill it, making testing difficult. Apart from that there is no options for graphics which is a little disapointing but understandable, there is a limit of 3MB of attachments which is made clear. But there is also a limit to 3 attachments on the form this isn't make clear at all until you try to upload more then 3.

Might as well delete this thread as it appears noone uses it.

Hi All Since Groupcall are consistantly incapable of helping me... I asked for a trial which would be setup in 2 days, 3 days maximum but it has been 4 working days now since I asked for it. The 3 people at their end that were organising it are now all on annual leave according to their email, customer service at its finest. I have rung them this morning and they couldn't help me, and their livechat which claims to be online doesn't work either... So does anyone use the Parent Paperwork addon module within Groupcall, if so is it actually any good with what you can design with it. We looked at Adobe Echosign which looks great except is limited to 300 bits of paperwork per account, so becomes prohibitively expensive. We wanted originally to use a fillable PDF, so obivously it had nice graphics in etc and we want to re-create this. Is the Parent Paperwork module capable of recreating the PDFs with a bit of work or is it really basic? Or is creating forms one of those tedious jobs that really doesn't feel worth it?

Depedning on your MIS as well, CMIS has the added extar spice of StaffIDs and LectureIDs, these don't have to be the same and often aren't. Some systems use one and others use the other causing lots of fun and games, ParentPay to Cunninghams was a fun one for us.

If they tell me they are sending me NINO II and I get Aures then I will tell them that isn't what they quoted me for and ask them to prove they are better or equivalent in price and spec. I'm not paying for one model and having it changed for their convenience.

That's the exact sheet we were sent yes.

We are replacing 4 this year, tell them to send you a tech spec and them usually do. We got sent a spec for "NINO II" machines apparently

In Network, then Firewall Rules, you can add the source IP, desitnation IP then allow all ports. That should bypass the firewall completely, if nothing else it will prove or disprove what is causing the issue for you.

I assume this is going out of the school to the council one and not coming back in. Our setup defintiely allows conencting eternally to our RDS box (2016 though), as I was on it 2 nights a go. I have also tested my friends RDS boxes from my PC, not sure what version of RDS they were usign though.

You do reliase locking down devices like they are school owned but yet expecting parents to pay the lease for a device is a little bit wrong. Personally im against any form of parent shaving to contribute to projects like this, it seems harsh to expect people to pay even more for education because of what school there child goes to. I know that's another debate though.

We use extended desktop on them for this very reason, teacher need to learn that extended desktop is by far the best way to achieve what they want, you get a better resolution on the device, and you get all the privacy you need.

Yes we do and they have been fine.

Many thanks for your input, don't we all love grey areas.

Hi All As times move on, the laws are obviosuly to slow to keep up! However, we can now accept electronic consent for trips, agreement to AUPs, detention notification etc which is great! However, there is one policy which I'm not fully sure on whether we stll need to get physical signatures off people, that is biometrics. We currently give out, as i'm sure many people do, a letter that requires a parental signature as part of the biometric fingerprint collection, then obviously people who don't sign or who refuse aren't taken and an alternative provided, simple stuff. However, we are looking at whether we can get this consent electronically as well, and the only thing that is putting me off saying yes is this, contained within (https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/268649/biometrics_advice_revised_12_12_2012.pdf): Is an electronic consent considered the same as written consent in this instance, as it is would normally be accepted for legal agreements/ contracts. Obviously we would be keeping copies of electronic consent given it, we want to send our PDFs that can be filled and returned and then use Groupcall to catch any people who haven't replied. What's to consensus on this? Personally I think it would be reasonable to accept it, but what's reasonable and what is legal when the act specifies written imay be different, I did try to find proof that electronic consent is the same as written but couldnt see anything obvious (although not fully sure what to Google for that one!).

The switches basically don't like them, they are temperamentalat best. You are better off buying extra SFPs and fibre, more reliable at the moment and theya ren't expensive enough not to choose this option

This is where the FOI requests have become a farce. Telecoms companies do it, support companies do it, every sales company now does it. Constant requests for information purely so that they can attempt to get business in the future. Each request might only take an hour to complete but when schools are recieving upto 10 a week it takes up huge amounts of time dealing with them, that inevitably only result in more unwanted and unsolicated mail/ emails and phone calls. Not really what the FOI was set up for. For example, who provides your support, how much is it. Totally legitimate questions, and the information should be freely available. The other two questions are purely for a commerical interest. But sadly yes, you have to reply to them, you have a set time scale, normally 20 working days. Notice thats 20 working days, we have had people (aka businesses) claiming we haven't replied in time to them because it has been 3 weeks and there hasn't been a reply. It is quite amusing to send a reply saying we have 20 working days, not 20 days.