craigw

If the users are in 1 OU and the OU contains only leavers then in Exchange Mgt Console -just filter Mailboxes based on OU (or even easier - sort by OU column) and the select all or shift select, right click, properties and change Attribute. If the OU contains other users as well - then if working from a known list of usernames - yes powershell is easier. 1 other method we have used; as part of the leaving process we change 1 of the custom attributes of the user to "leaver" and then again in Exchg Mgt console you can create a filter and get only those mail boxes with CustomAttributeX = leaver and again select all and edit properties.

Hi there Film studies continues to grow in the school and we are now at a point where we are beyond having students edit video projects locally on the iMacs. We need a solution that will allow video to be stored centrally and ideally have students from multiple machines edit different scenes in a project etc. I know this will not be cheap - but any advice on what other school may be doing? Obviously speed is the issue. A direct connected Thunderbolt Raid systems such as the ones from Pegasus are great, but looking for something that will allow multiple student access as the same time from a few machines is the holy grail. Worst case we could break it down and have 6 groups of 4 workstations working from their own central repository maybe? Any one got something up and running? Cheers Wally

We are rolling out the OneNote Class Notebook App in Office 365 and are seeing issues when trying to A) Create a new notebook B) get notebook Links In summary we can log onto Classnotebook site but not do anything with the notebooks. Teachers are able to sign in no issues - but Clicking on get notebook links for example - leads to the infamous - Oops something went wrong - please refresh the page. This just tries again and gives the same error. Frustrating thing is it not consistent. Same teacher on 2 different machines from same PC image - 1 works - 1 doesn't. Reference Number tends to change each time - but 1 example is 9cacf5e5-47a2-4295-917e-919de7da7c9b Things I have tested: IE 11 and Chrome - same error. Teacher has full control of SharePoint Site One Note App installed into site is latest version Has anyone got any idea where to troubleshoot or seen anything similar? Cheers Craig

Anyone seeing or hearing of issues with iOS8.4 and Family sharing of Apps breaking. We are starting to get calls from students saying that under 8.4 - previously shared Apps are no longer shared and must be bought from the Apps store. Starting to dig, but certainly seems like something has gone awry. Wally

Here is the setup: Office 365 setup but not Exchange Online. At present all the Exchange infrastructure is on prem - mx records etc all point to local. Everything works fine except.. When invitations are sent from services such as sharing a Onenote Class Notebook - the following is happening. Sign is as [email protected] - invite user [email protected] Greg gets an invite from Joe - but as Greg and Joe are on different domains - invite actually comes from an MS email address on behalf of Joe and works fine. When Joe invites another internal user - [email protected] - Office 365 sends the email as [email protected] because it sees Alice and Joe on the same domain (and I assume) assumes that Exchange is either online or hybrid at a minimum. On prem exchange see the email FROM [email protected] and says "no way did that originate from me" and rejects as spoofed message - as it should! So - 1 solution is to add the Exchange Office 365 IP list of 40 or so IP's and subnets to the Allowed IP list on the Exchange on prem boxes. This should work - but will obviously whitelist the WHOLE office 365 system to mail relay through the on prem. Not ideal. Anyone else got this setup and found a way to get these invites working. Wally

Can the problem iPad reach any part of the network at all - or just not the proxy? What wireless network are you using? Do you use any type of firewall or access control lists on the wireless controllers? Do you push SSL certs for any reason? The two things I have seen on our network is a student not being in the correct group for profiling so that when they connect to the network - they may well connect but they are then denied access by the ACL's on the wireless controller (so they never reach the proxy). Secondly - we have seen strange ones where the time and date on the iPad was incorrect and this messed up the SSL certs and even though a student was in the correct groups and had the correct IP they couldn't get out. Set the time correctly and bingo - student had access again. It certainly is a strange one - let us know if you get it sorted. Wally

Will hopefully do a POC with Sonicwall in a few weeks to test their authentication model. One of the things they did mention that was different was how they handled users multiple AD groups. Our current Bluecoat proxy works on standard firewall top down first match scenarios. Eg a student in two groups - All Students and All Sixth Form Students - if we put the rule for all Sixth Form Students - allow Facebook - higher in the list than the All Students block Facebook - then Sixth form kids will be allowed Facebook. Sonicwall guys said this was not how they worked and that groups had no priority - only individual users in a policy override group membership. So to allow sixth formers to access facebook we would have to list them individually in the allow rule rather than by group. Would be interested if anyone can confirm this or otherwise? As an aside...We had Sophos in and were quite impressed until they cautioned us of scenarios with shared computer access...eg libraries - in that their AD authentication model was to cache the credentials of the user against the IP for 15 minutes in their tables. When pushed on this they admitted that this would mean when one student logged off and the next logged on - the database and reports would show the previous students ID. Pushed further it was not just reporting but actual access rights...so that if a teacher logged off and then a student logged on - they would get the teachers access. Obviously in a work environment with 1 to 1 computer access this probably not an issue...but for us it was an instant deal breaker. So at present we are "talking" to Sonicwall / iBoss / Websense. Cheers Wally

@Roberto - Can you enlighten on that some more? We are talking to Dell at the moment and they have told us that their AD integration is based on agents running on workstations around the campus in each vlan that handle the authentication requests - I am not trying to prejudge, but it seems an unusual way of doing things. Is this what you are referring to and if so - what is the real life experience of using it? Cheers Wally

@BKGarry Have you managed to get your OU's syncing? Using GADS and selecting the org units under the general settings on the main page - and all our org units synced up accordingly - no need to create anything manually. With the launch pad you talk of - not really - but if the users sign into drive or any google app - then up in the right hand corner are 9 little squares - click on that and it drops down the box to pick from all the other apps.. we just find that as users do not have gmail - the most common link they use is drive.google.com as their starting point.

This is long overdue - but thanks - big thanks!! I now have this working from a logon script that calls the bginfo program which reads from a text file on the network. The only thing I had to do to make this stable was make sure bginfo.exe was called from the local machines - but deployed this with GPO and then no issues. On logon the desktop now shows the house points as per the text file which the teacher manages!! Also added in the machine name at the top of the list (we already rename my computer to the machine name but some users find this hard to read...) so this has helped when remote supporting staff.. All round - excellent little utility.. Cheers Wally

I would pay in an instant...the time spent managing it would be offset easily. We tried pushing the teacher videos into Clickview as this is a great platform for searching and sharing the content - but they have a very finicky(..horrible) video importer. As most of the cameras nowadays record in other formats we then have to convert to a codec that clickview is happy with first and then import again - all becomes a bit too hard for little gain. Thanks for other suggestions - Mediadrop looks interesting (even as a clickview alternative)- I guess the main problem is that for teachers the easiest thing is still to attach a USB cable to their camera or iPhone, Click next when the video / photo wizard runs and bang, all the photos are on the network for easy use. I can certainly see why they do it...

Have considered the scheduled task option - in fact this is what we do with the jpg problem using the excellent PhotoResize utility - but jpgs are less risky as there is the one file format. The problem we have with video is the multitude of file formats (mpeg, avi, mts, mov, mkv, mp4 etc etc )- often with the same extension but using different codecs. Doing this unattended could end up with some dodgy results. Maybe worth a shot though...

Hi there - looking to see if any one has any novel ideas on how they are handling the large amounts of video we are starting to see fill up our network shares. Firstly - I know storage is cheap and throwing more storage at the problem will make it go away for a while...but when you consider backups and long term storage then this is not really my ideal solution. Anyway - the problem we had 5 years ago with cameras taking larger and larger photos "by default" resulting in jpg files going from 128Kb to 8-10Mb per photo is know moved onto video. Every teacher seems to have an digital camera nowadays and "video evidence" is all the rage. The problem is the default file format on these cameras is HUGE. The worst culprit seems to be MTS video files - great quality along with huge file size. One folder I just found has a typical 4 minute video at 600Mb. I just ran this through the Anyvideo Converter with iPad MP4 as the output format and the result 27Mb....and for what they want to use it for - the quality is perfectly acceptable. Now - I have better things to do with my time - as do the teachers - than to reformat videos - but I can't see this as sustainable. I am thinking of setting a Media server that is not backed up - but getting staff to put media in one spot and lesson plans etc in another seems counter productive. Pumping all this video up to the cloud also seems a bit pointless - so any other ideas? Wally

Hi there We do exactly that but arrived at it from the other end. We have Exchange on prem and implemented GAFE without Gmail. Setup GAD and the accounts sycn each morning. Recently implemented password sync as well and it runs without any issues at all. Students and teachers make good use of GAFE and I have not seen any issues where not having a gmail account has limited the use of GAFE.(Would be keen to hear if anyone has another view). We have just implement Office 365 but for the moment are keeping Exchange on prem. Given the way we work (multi user desktops - not one to one laptops), the number of admin users etc who manage multiple mailboxes, and the familiarity with Outlook - I cannot find a business case to A) move to Gmail B) move Exchange to the cloud. The 1 reason I keep revisiting it though is the incredible amount of storage for email that I can't compete with on prem - but other than that I don't see a business case. So just this week we have AAD Sync and password sync now running for Office 365 as well which will mean the kids and staff get OneDrive - Office Web Apps - Writes Access to the iPad Office apps and most importantly Student Advantage for free (as we are licenced for Office via EES) which means they can download and install Office on up to 5 machines. Cheers Wally

Whilst this is not a multi Wan Router as such - Check out Peplink range of load balancers - Compare the Peplink Balance family. We have multiple leased lines that first come into the standard Cisco routers (provided as part of our agreement with ISP) and then into the Peplink load balancer. Then based on rules we can route traffic out different lines bases on ports or source IP etc. For example all our wired traffic and email goes out one line and then all our wireless traffic out another. The load balancer then provides redundancy in case one of the line is down and will auto route to the other. We looked at other brands and these were quite cost competitive. Wally

Hi David - I think this is what we will do as well - downside is that the kids have to go back to the same machine each time to work on their projects then...maybe the iMovie library can be copied to the network outside of the app and back down again...will need to test that and see if it works..

I'm a bit confused (I always am when it comes to MS licencing)...I have been on various forms of Campus / School agreement / EES for the last 12 years and have always had to licence the actual server separately? The CALS required for the clients came under the desktop CAL as part of EES - but the server licence was separate (but dirt cheap - about uS$50 per standard Wins server per year - exchange around US$350). Am I on the same page or are you talking about something else entirely? What has changed this year is the move in SQL licencing from per server to per core which has been a big increase...but that is another story.. Wally

It appears from testing and reading that iMovie (10.0.6 for us) no longer supports the iMovie library being on a network drive - see related posts here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5467989?tstart=0 The trick mentioned in this post "defaults write -app iMovie allowNV -bool true" does not seem to work on 10.0.6 and as such - kids using the macs are not able to create their iMovie libraries on their network home folders (like they did with pre version 10 - no issues with home drives on Windows 2008 R2 file server over SMB). Anyone else experiences this? I guess Apple logic is that it doesn't want iMovie libraries being pushed across the wire? Only work around I have at present is to Disable the network home folder completely and all the kids works sits on the local drive (no backups - kids have to go to the same machine each time - etc etc) Have a network home folder but create a movie folder in the users/shared area for iMovie libraries on each machine. Again kids would have to go to a specific machine each time and other kids could delete their work etc etc Anyone got any other ideas or tricks they know work? Wally

Not sure if this is related but I was just about to post a question on the new iMovie (10.0.6) as we are having issues with network home folders. Have you tried getting it to work with a network accounts that has a local home folder (not on the server) - I'll post another question in the mac forum explaining my issues in case this is not applicable to your question.. Wally

Testing out Sophos on a new mac lab and so far no issues...this on OSX10 - using enterprise console for monitoring and updating..

Hi there Mike For the iPads in question we use Transparent mode. No proxy is set on the ipads and we do not authenticate the users on the iPad IP range. Tested again this morning and still working OK. Happy to share any more info it helps (sorry for the delay getting back to you). Craig

Hi there, trying to get someone who has real life experience doing this rather than linking to documents on the theory... Scenario 100 school owned iPads iOS8 1 apple ID used on all iPads iPads in Supervised mode with Apple Configurator Meraki MDM Solution VPP program signed up Link VPP to Meraki. All restrictions removed on the iPads (not only allowed - but restrictions NOT turned on in Meraki profile). Objective: Deploy PAID apps silently to the 100 iPads over wireless (without prompting for user ID and password) Testing so far: Using redemption codes this does not appear to work - apps pop up when pushed but require Apple ID and password to be entered. Auto download turned on or off / no difference. I have not tried with User Assignment as with 1 Apple ID not sure how this would work. Lots of posts with people saying this worked in iOS7 but no longer in iOS8? Anyone actually got this working? Many thanks Wally

Looking at the same thing at present... One thing we do a LOT of is to have staff manage multiple "public or generic" inboxes in exchange whereby the office staff for example will have 3 mailboxes in Outlook - their personal one, CCA's and maybe Sports. In outlook they can have all three of these open in the same screen and keep an eye on them. Can this be done in GMAIL - or will users have to log in and out of mailboxes / switch accounts to monitor them? I have seen this article (Manage Multiple Email Accounts From one Gmail Account) but am concerned that it talks about forwarding mail to your primary account and then using labels to manage....seems a bit convoluted. Lastly - even if you do the above - can you have more than 1 person managing these generic accounts? Eg - we have 3 office staff with access to the sports mail box that would all need access. I realise sometimes processes can't stay the same if we change technologies - but just trying to work out what is possible. Cheers Wally

Hi Mike Sure - log into BC gui- go to Configuration, Services, Proxy Services. Go to Static Bypass tab We then added in three entries: Client IP Address / ALL - Server IP Address - 216.218.220.0/27 Client IP Address / ALL - Server IP Address - 107.178.36.0/24 Client IP Address / ALL - Server IP Address - 54.241.21.123.32/32 These ranges were found from the page Puffin Academy FAQ Tested this morning and still working OK. Hope that helps...let me know. Wally

Hi there, I stand corrected - it looks like there are two options to EES: (From the MS website) You can obtain EES subscription licenses one of two ways, depending on the size of your organization. Customers with as few as five (5) full-time equivalent (FTE) employees or students can license through an Authorized Education Reseller (AER) by signing the simplified Open Value Subscription Agreement for Education Solutions (OVS-ES), online e-agreement.  Larger customers with a minimum of 1,000 FTE employees or students can also license through a Licensing Solution Provider (LSP) (formerly referred to as Large Account Reseller [LAR]) by signing the Campus and School Agreement and the Enrollment for Education Solutions (CASA+EES). We are under the CASA+EES - hence the 1,000 minimum I mentioned. Sorry for the confusion. Wally