TheScarfedOne

If you are a Microsoft School using Schools Agreement, Forefront for Exchange is cheap. Looking at going with this across our site for Clients as well (£1.70 per pc).

Another yes for Exchange here. Much better since 2007.

Ok - standard problem - managing your printers, or more to the point printing wastage!! How many times do you go to an IT Room and see a pile of wasted prints. :confused:If you are lucky - they might have tried to hide them in the bin - but most of the time they are just scattered all around the printer. So - we used to be an RM system (some people will have seen my posts on "How to move away from RM..."), which had a built in Print Credit system. It was ok - but flaky sometimes though. I used to work on a RangerSuite system years back - version 3 or something! Yes - I know RM have "interests" there now too - but its still a separate product range with separate developers. I've gone off track.... Anyway - that reminded me of Ranger Printer Manager. More lightweight than Print Manager Plus, and having looked at PCounter - got a bit scared!! RPM - well worth a look, especially as V4 has automatic import/sync with AD to pick up new users. Doing a bit of blatent advertising (and no I dont get an income for it) but Printware sorted this, and the trial of the various products out for us. As usual, PM if you want to know more. I've done a Remote Desktop before to show it in use.

Try doing a GP Results against the machines after logging on to them and see what is/isnt bwing applied. This will also show any errors.

Ok - following this mornings post, Ive had a couple of questions about some of the webparts and solutions you can see in the screenies. People have also been asking what others I recommend. Here we go, and of course - thanks go out to the people who write these... 1. My Documents (Salamander) 2. My Sites (Salamander) 3. SmartTools (CodePlex) - What's New - Enhanced Site Actions - Copy Paste Action - Dock Navigation - Charts 4. PKS (CodePlex) 5. Tool Basket (CodePlex) - Document Rating - Scripts - Forms Designer 6. Active Directory Tools for Sharepoint (CodePlex) 7. Sharepoint 2007 Features (CodePlex) - Print List - Toolbar Manager - Window Links 8. Sharepoint Video Library (Bamboo) I will update this with the links when I get them all together - but that should give you enough to run with!

Thanks to the guys who PM'd me and commented on my last entry about our use of Sharepoint. Yes, I know I didnt post any screenies of it - and I will now be putting that right. There was a method in the madness though - I was in the middle of re-branding. Playing with the Master Pages and CSS to "de-Sharepoint" it a bit is fun! No really... it is! Right... down to business, and to answer a few of the questions I have recieved in a general way. 1. Layout: PORTAL > Staff ....Curriculum Departments ....Support Departments ....Staff Teams (eg HOY, HOD etc) > Student ....Curriculum Departments ....Year Teams > Visitors ....External users (eg MFL Link Schools etc) > Documents > Communicate > Booking Right, I know what you are thinking, what is in Documents, Communicate and Booking? And how are the Departments organised? Departments mirror our AD groups. For example, Dept-ICT for ICT department. There is a list of sites for each one. The same applies to year groups and staff teams, and non-teaching staff groups. Documents is simply an empty site, with a single webpart page containing the My Documents webpart, and a Content Editor Webpart with help and download links for file viewers (eg Word). Communicate is the same as Documents, except the webparts are the OWA ones. Using separate sites made it easier to security trim (as we dont want externals (ie the Visitor groups) going into Docs/Comms, and also dont want the students in Comms. In the long run, these two will be merged into a new area called "My Portal", which will also contain the My Sites webpart, which security trims the list of user sites. We want this as we will have a site for each user under "My Portal", since this way we can better control the environment rather than use the built in "MySite" function of Sharepoint. 2. What it looks like: Attached are two screenies, one of the new version of our Staff Portal which will go live in a week or so, the other of our department site (which gives an idea of what these look like). The funky annimation on the site is part of the SmartTools set of sharepoint solutions from Codeplex. Loads of good stuff on there - do a search for Sharepoint on there and you will get some right gems! If you want more info on any Sharepoint-y stuff - PM me, or comment and I will post some more!

Yep - this is exactly what we do too, damn pain though. I will add this to my "to-do" list for my blog, showing how we did it (including moving everyones existing favs). If I've not posted it by the end of the week - PM me to remind me and I will send it across. Stuart

Ok - for those on the forums that have seen my discussions on Sharepoint, you will know I am a bit of a fan. Alright... more than a fan! We started using Sharepoint 3 years ago - and frankly, couldnt live without it. Our basic layout... top level "landing site" for general news, information etc for all users. Below that, Staff, Students and Visitors (we use this for our primary schools - Year 6 coming into Year 7, as well as our MFL links). Inside Staff and Students are department sites, which mirrors our AD setup for department groups. Now, with some help from Richard Willis (name dropping for Salamander Software - great software too, many thanks ) we hope to next add a new area "Classes" which will contain a site for every class (yep - I hear you already, thats a lot of sites!). Richard's tool will enable us to get the info from our MIS and create the site, and permissions automatically. Using his version of the "My Sites" webpart, we can then filter this to the user logged on. Linking this into SLK later to provide the online assessment side of things will give us the first version of a full blown VLE. As we are a SIMS school - we are also looking at Sims Learning Gateway (the worst named product ever - it is NOT a Learning Gateway!!!)... Ideally, we want to add the SLG webparts to our exising environment... and that will be in the next blog post!

After messing with Betas of Vista (urgh..... shudder shudder)... the arrival of the Win7 beta DVD on my desk was put off somewhat. Well... after all the reading of the various blogs (http://www.winsupersite.com mainly - cheers Paul), I dared to give it a roll. Impressed doesnt even come close... under Vista betas, I was expecting a fight with drivers. Nope - all there! Its quick too - very quick, not just in installation - but full use. In fact, after a week, Im using it as my primary OS on my laptop rather than the Vista SP2 which Im also trialing. So... what does all this mean?? Well... I know I wont be installing Vista at work now. Why bother, when I know that a few months later - Ill have to deal with 7. Also, 7 has so far not bugged the hell out of me with UAC and application issues. The App Compat wizard in 7 seems more refined and helpful. Next stop, put this in the SCCM console which Im also playing with (see other blog posts) - which should be fine as they are kinda the same. Then I can give it a roll with some of the Network software. Right - now off to Saturday night drinking! Blog and out!

Finally got my hands on this new toy! After starting off with USB Network boot pens, some fancy scripts and an XPCD share complete with a shed load of unattend files - moved onto RIS two years back. Its been working really well, but its about time we lost the one remaining Server 2003 box. Time to look at alternative ways of getting XP out there, as we arent quite ready for Vista (in fact we will probably skip it in favour of 7). So - went on the hunt for setting up SCCM (System Center Configuration Manager 2007), which is RIS and GPO software deployment on steroids basically! Right... followed the instructions in these guides (and I mean seriously follow to the letter) and had SCCM installed and working. http://www.windows-noob.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=487 So - all installed, time to get playing! Oh - for the record, the server was a Dell SC1425 and my 2 clients one for Build/Capture, the other to deploy). Use the following walkthrough for getting a Vista Build/Capture reference image, and then deploy it to the 2nd box. http://www.windows-noob.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=521 Getting XP out is a little more involved. For a start - you will definately have driver problems! This is were I was glad Ive played with RIS for so long. All our RIS builds use Driverpacks (thanks to the great team at http://www.driverpacks.net). Download and extract all of these to a sensible folder structure. You will want them - especially the Network Card drivers! So - the walkthrough for XP is here... http://www.windows-noob.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=569 I dont take any credit for this work - but Im just an example of how you can get it working, following all the guides. Thanks to the great guys on Windows-Noob (particularly Anyweb) for the guides. Next thing to do will be get our Apps in there, and sort out the PITA that is Office 2007. I will probably put it in the base WIM - see the section in the Vista guide on installing Firefox. Finally, the other thing on my list is scripts to enable me to choose a machine name when the client is "unknown" so you dont have to pre-stage the machines in SCCM. R2 adds extra support for "unknown" machines - i.e. for bare metal deployment, but you dont want your machines called "minint..."!! When Ive tested it (got some info) and sure its working, will post it up! Laters

Weve got the SMTP feed to our Exchange 2007 box. Works ok - shed loads of spam still gets through (even with the grid SMTP filter, and Exchange's own spam filter on 6). Damn nuisance... will be investing in local spam filtering this year! Having said that, no viruses have made it through - so thats a plus. EDIT: As far as I know, there is no reporting -but I know some grid people read this so maybe they can correct me?? Its more geared for their (RMs) hosting.

Also worth a look is CourseLab (currently version 2.4) - download CourseLab - free e-Learning authoring tool. Powerpoint ish interface, our staff got on with it ok in demo. Free - which is also a plus! Also have eXe installed here too

Running the product over here at the moment (7.0.2 version I think?) - in 5 ICT suites. Make sure that you have configured the clients to only try to connect to the recognised teacher machine. Havent come across the freeezing problem - and two of my ICT suites are on the same switch stack. What other software is running on the machines at the time?

We had issues the other day - cut off all our external services. It seemed to be painfully slow browsing anything for the past few days.

Then end of an era! Make sure you come off that fence every now and then - its pointy up there! LOL All the best

Been running live with it since Jan last year, works a dream. Like above - clue up on Powershell, will save you a lot of time. So many things we now do from firing up PS rather than the GUI (eg banning student accounts!). If you need any help, or want to take a look - PM me. Stuart

Yep - its running here and publishing Exchange 2007, MOSS 2007 and Remote Desktop. Works a dream - config wise, not much different to the previous one. Wish they would make it final though! Not using it for proxying yet - would do if had time to set it up... How have you got your ISA box doing that? Stuart

YAY - good work. Going on my test network now...

This was a brilliantly written series. Cant wait til the next one... Harry's gona get the same treatment as Lucas now then!

Installed last summer as well - works rather well apart from trying to package the client components. Support are very helpful - we put it on a Server 2008 box, and it didnt play nice with IIS 7 to start wth.

Multiple logons for SIMS.net no longer applies - you can link the accounts using passthough in System Manager.

Bump for SynchronEyes here - made by the people who do SmartBoards. Works quite nicely and AD GPO deployable.

Same here - use Group Policy Redirection to give different users different start menus/desktops (Staff/Students). We have also just started dividing down again between groups of Staff Users (Library/Finance/General etc) so that they are more appropriate. Works nicely

@ Bongo - you were there then! Which School you from? Im from KEVICCS (Totnes). They did get a hard time, and will do again this time me thinks. You coming to the meeting? Might be an idea for those going to bash some ideas around before hand...

I know that Exeter schools were - if any are on here, maybe they can post what they were up to. Really???!!! Im surprised by that! Would have thought there was a conflict there.