Jobos

Both of my schools use Capital Bytes but it's not without its faults but on the whole it is far better than Capita’s filter. We have local control and find it easier to block or more frequently unblock sites. Local control also allows us to get a list of blocked sites that have been accessed which is useful when fault finding why some sites or iPad apps don’t work as expected. Staff love being able to get on Youtube without logging in to the filter every 30 minutes yet it’s still blocked for students. We had many problems with Capita before but Capital Bytes makes things a lot easier. That said this term we have seen a slowdown of the filter as I suspect more and more schools are using them and producing a bottleneck. What I would like is a local box to run the filtering something like smoothwall but that's out of our budget.

What sort of cost is it say for a 450 pupil primary school?

I've signed up to 365, validated the domain and purchased the accounts. Email is still held on our Exchange 2010 server and my intention is to use AzureADConnect to sync the users passwords and use 365 remote move migration tool to move the mailboxes. In which order do I run the tools? Does Azure create the users if they don't exist in 365 or do I make the users first then sync the passwords after with Azure?

We use the Sims quick letter and GP copies the template to the SIMS .net folder at machine startup ensuring any changes we make get replicated. This works well but now the school has bought a cursive writing font and want to use it with the quick letter. The cursive writing font comes with a word add-in that joins-up the text when using the cursive font but when using the quick letter via sims the quick letter macro disables the cursive add-in so the text cannot be joined up. If I go into word options / add-ins I find the cursive addin under the inactive section. The add-in can be enabled but what I would like is for the quick letter not to disable it in the first place. Any ideas?

@john I know what you mean about DIY and it's not something I fancy doing unless someone is on hand to answer any questions. As it stands I feel like I'm swimming through treacle. We have had a quote in so I wanted to see how they planned to do it but so far I've not been able to get my hands on the quote and I can't get a figure on what the budget is either. I was impressed with 3CX but as our server is on it's last legs and no money to replace it till next year running 3CX on a VM is out for this year at least. Half the problem is they want the system fitting ASAP and I've not had time to physically look at how other city schools have done it an as the saying goes 'Fail to plan, plan to fail!' which sums it up really

The school has had a quote for VoIP but it's came back very expensive so I've been asked to put some prices together for an in-house system. As I know next to nothing about VoIP I've spent the morning reading through the forum and 3CX pops up time and time again. The 3CX website looks good and I like the how it can be managed using a GUI which always helps someone like me! So at the moment we have 15 NTL/Virgin Centrex lines, 9 of which see very little use. My brief is to price up a system which had auto attendant and will also reduce costs from the current Centrex system. I'm still not quite sure what SIP trunks are and if we need them at all as others have said they use a separate broadband provider or even use the spare capacity on their current broadband. We use KCom here if that helps. If we were to go down the 3CX route and run the software on a VM we would need the numbers porting over. Who would we contact for that, and how would the VM connect to the outside world? Is it just a matter of connecting the VM to the network via the Ethernet? I expect these questions are very basic and I will probably laugh about them this time next year but as said I know nothing about the subject!

Yes I expected to just download a new kernel then I found the options in fog setting but after changing those it still didn't work. This link helped https://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/1951-change-the-kernel-that-fog-clients-use-for-pxe-boot and changing the 'default' file within pxelinux.cfg did the trick.

I've got a 32 laptops to image using my trusty Fog server but the laptops don't like the kernel. I download the latest kernel which is 3.19.3 TomElliottUSB and changed Fog under Other Information / Fog Settings / FOG_TFTP_PXE_KERNEL to point to the new kernel but on booting the laptop again it still shows it is loading bzImage. Is there other setting I need to change? I haven't got the laptops listed yet so I can't see it under host management. Thanks.

Isn't this because snapshots slowdown the vm? I take a snapshot before updating and delete it after checking everything is ok.

Funny you should say that as I was thinking along the same lines. I know another local school who has installed PCE on the teacher laptops but I would rather not myself but it's the HTs call. Personally if I had a school laptop with PCE on it I just wouldn't use it but that's just me! Edit: just had a new quote from impero and apart from the first year cost it compares favourably with PCE for year 2 and after.

Can impero take captures from staff laptops at home? I ask because that is something the HT wants to do with PCE.

Yes it was those options I was looking for but found it now as it was in the 3 vertical dots which I assume is a menu

The school a got a couple of Vodafone Smart Ultra 6 phones and I want to get the photos off it. I've connected the usb cable to the pc but device manager sees it as a handset diagnostic interface and I can't see a way to get to the files. Not being familiar with android phones I'm now stuck! Any help appreciated

Had the quote back from Impero and it's not cheap! £15 each machine plus £6 each machine support after the first year so can't see the HT buying it at that price

I like the idea of the patch management, that would save so much time!

We have PCE running here on 150 machines but very unhappy on it's reliability. Previously it was bad but for some reason seems to have gotten worse since changing their name to Future Digital. I often see posts about Impero and their site looks good but how does it work? I'm assuming the client runs on the workstation and the server collects the info. Is the server in the cloud or a machine in the school? What else can Impero do what PCE can't? At the moment all we're after is to monitor computer usage and capture any misuses so any info on the joys of Impero would be welcome and also how does it compare in costs against PCE? Thanks.

We moved to Vidahost earlier this year and now pay a fraction of the cost Capita were charging. Should have moved years ago! Now the only thing left with Capita is email forwarding which will be moved to 365 when I get time.

Friday was the last time I received external email.

Thanks guys. I've used the sliders and set it to the maximum size so will wait and see if it's large enough.

We've got a student with sight impairment that uses an ipad. What I'm looking for is an app say something like Notes that can increase the text size of the typed text. It doesn't need to do anything fancy just make the text larger as they type. Thanks.

I can't get it to download either. Look's like a bad link

For my sins I'm with Talkmobile and the email is rather confusing.

They have very attractive pricing but not started it, just too busy in the holidays so I'm going to save it till autumn term when the dust has settled.

When was the update released and is the client interface the same as v2.3?

Thanks. It looks like a totally new version but strange School Cash Office haven't told us it's available.