Max_Power

We are evaluating our aging software library as we plan a move over the coming year to Windows 11. The software individual academic depts. use varies from paid for subscriptions like Adobe Creative Suite in Art, and Sibelius in Music to free software in Physics for Data logging. A lot of software is a struggle to keep running particularly in the 1:1 environment, where there is a need for some of the older stuff to have .Net 3.5 installed. My question is what do you use in various depts. across school whether for A-level or GCSE, but in for these subjects in particular; Maths Physics Chemistry Electronics We have to start looking for alternatives; but despite the technical complications moving forward, Teachers aren't forthcoming or keen to seek alternatives as they want to "stick to what they know". Which simply isn't going to always be possible. Cheers in advance

Ours is still "running" after moving 3 years ago, but only 4 people have access. Head, Deputy Head, Admissions person, Exam Manager. We didn't migrate any data for pupils who had already left the school. Effectively it is an archive, but has been referred to once for some exam results.

Just wondered if anyone else is having issues with Excel 365 (app and online version), causing massive issues here today for everyone in school. All 1:1 devices, and workstations have the exact same issue when working with either a blank Excel sheet or a previously saved sheet (in OneDrive or SharePoint). Opening Excel you get around a 2 minute hang or a not responding greyed out screen, and then once it does start responding you type something in a cell, and it appears a good 20seconds later or goes into a not responding state again? We can replicate the issue with any user on any device - started getting the issue yesterday but its continued into today? Saw this on the service status but not sure if its inline with the issue we are seeing or not? Users can't access Excel files in Microsoft 365 services MO295728, Microsoft 365 suite, Last updated: November 2, 2021 8:55 PM Start time: November 2, 2021 3:03 PM, End time: November 2, 2021 4:09 PM

No probs.

Had this issue exact last week, cant remember what I did to get it working..... When installing I think it was trying to save something to c:\user\appdata or somewhere similar, during setup there is a tick box to change the location for the software to carry out its workings (or words to that effect), changed that to the users profile stored elsewhere and not on the physical workstation and it works are required.

We use https://www.signable.co.uk/ after evaluating alongside Docusign, Adobe and Panda Doc. Easy to use, just pay per envelope (document you want signing) or buy on bulk we get 4800 documents for around £1200+VAT Easy to use, intuitive and their support and advice when setting up has been fantastic. Doesn't offer a bulk send function in the software, but they will do a bulk send for you for a small fee.

Suddenly decide to update itself! Must be a time thing like everything else at the moment.

The CSV files have the correct information in them. For some reason SDS still thinks that SIS ID is associated with their old UPN

Wondered if anyone can help, struggling to find an answer and Microsoft aren't quick to respond. We have a number of users who have changed their name, subsequently we have changed their details in AD and AAD, including their UPN. When we now run our profile on SDS, their new UPN is present but it isn't aligning with their SIS ID as it did previously and therefore not adding them to their Teams. The error in the log shows "Student cannot be updated as no matching entry in Active Directory was found. Verify the identity matching criteria for the profile." this appears to be because the SIS ID is still registered to the users old UPN. How do I get the new UPN to align with the original SIS ID? Thanks in advance.

Looking for answers to this myself after the latest Exchange issues to plague the world. Appears I have to maintain Exchange 2016 for the mailbox management aspect as its the only "supported" method at the moment even though we've been in a hybrid for a year and have no mailboxes onsite. However I have come across this https://www.granikos.eu/en/justcantgetenough/PostId/1858/remove-the-last-exchange-server?fbclid=IwAR2bIuSo8JVB-CEL-O1abHUEyfcRCdW4Q2VJdYU3TZ3mBzdJIFPLe5BWgPQ which details how to manage Exchange Online after migrating. Sounds like you simply update the AD schema to include Exchange and enable Exchange Remote Features and you can manage everything without an Exchange Server? Has anyone done that? Or know if its legit?

Are licence partners able to offer cheaper pricing for the actual office 365 A3 licence than what is quoted on the Microsoft site? £2.85 per staff user, per month, +VAT? (£41.04 per year). That price is more expensive than what we pay for the desktop licence packs and Pro plus education licences etc.

Coming across more and more privacy statements of this type where COPPA and FERPA are both expanded upon extensively but then GDPR is either non existent or vaguely mentioned. Most are American companies which is understandable, but I am seeing more and more EU based companies too. Latest one is the GeoGebra online apps. https://www.geogebra.org/privacy Is very confusing. Do we have to abide by COPPA and FERPA, e.g. users under 13 need written parental consent or do we purely risk asses from a GDPR perspective? GeoGebra are based in Austria which is even more odd they push the COPPA and FERPA as opposed to GDPR. Ideally we want to be able to allow students to login to GeoGebra with their 365 account in order to save the graphs etc they are making.

Using Intune here to manage over 1500+ devices all being used by staff and students offsite and onsite. Works really well from a management point of view - Auto Pilot deployment was impressive as well as the Company Portal for software rollout to specific groups of students and staff. Kept it all separate from SCCM and all onsite desktops / laptops with a view to perhaps decommissioning in future.

Had this / similar issue on Surface Pro 7's recently. Uninstalling camera drivers and reinstalling resolved for us.

Morning, Got the basic report for bandwidth usage via Reports-> Reports -> Summary and then clicked on an interface in order to see the graphics specific to it. The figures quoted on the graphics greatly differ to those on the real time Traffic Graph (Reports -> Realtime -> Traffic Graph). Generally in the day time especially at the moment while hybrid learning is in place, the real time traffic graph rarely drops below 200mb. Already now this morning its at 150mb. How is the data within the summary page calculated? Is it an average over the entire 24 hour period, so during the night when there is no activity it accounts for the big drop thus giving me a low figure in the daily chart? Is there another way to see traffic over a period of time during the working day? so 8am - 4pm for an entire month? Thanks in advance?

Meraki here - 120 AP's across a large secondary - all good, no complaints.

Is anyone able to test for me please whether they can do a parents evening by School Cloud with a front facing camera on a device with the newly available Chrome on Windows 85.0.4183.121 released 2020-09-21 Had nothing but problems with our first parents evening of the year, and the only resolution was to quickly make available FireFox at the 11th hour. Sadly some parents had the same issue so I don't think the issue was device orientated, but the new version of Chrome. When clicking start appointment only the rear camera was visible and it was strangely mirrored. The front camera was simply not selectable, despite changing privacy settings, resetting Chrome, uninstalling the cameras as an admin and reinstalling, changing drivers etc. Launching the Camera App and other software proved the front facing camera was working its just parents evening page couldn't detect it. Anyone able to check, or advise if they've had the same issue since the latest version of Chrome was released? Cheers

Anyone know where I report to Microsoft about a possibly compromised activation key which is available through our Microsoft Agreement? Searched net and edugeek and all I can find are American phone numbers and out of date knowledge base articles on Microsoft own site. Thanks in advance.

After contacting my re-seller this is what they have told me as well. You have to be on EES agreement not OVSES. Get EDU A1 and office 365 apps for students and staff to install at home on their own devices, but its not available to the school to install on their devices as part of OVSES. Upgrade to 2019 Pro Plus looks like the way we will go from 2016 Pro Plus.

Cheers, just reading about it now; didn't realise it can be obtained on a device basis for school owned devices for free as part of EES - why don't they just make it available in the licenses section of 365 instead of having to mess about going to your provider.

Sorry to hijack, but is Office 365 (desktop apps version that you install), included as part of annual EES / OVS agreement? I thought it was only part of the A3 and A5 365 subscriptions? But.... as part of the Office 365 A1, faculty and students can download and use desktop apps on their own personal devices?

We were SIMS 7 for 12 years. Then we evaluated MIS's in 2016/17 and saw SIMS 8 back in late 2016 when the rumour was it was being tested in small schools in Ireland, and it was scheduled for 2018 release. We didn't wait to find out and jumped ship.

Citrix pulled their educational site licence pricing about 12-18 months ago, with a new pricing structure being released around April 2019 until then it was a bit limbo. New pricing was never set in stone though. Our costs for a site licence covering all FTE staff went from around £22k, to the new model of licencing every single user which is around 2000 and the cost jumped to £80K! (eighty thousand) per year!!!! Not renewed at that pricing and stuck with old concurrent perpetual licence model instead for the time being and delayed the full site roll out. Communicated with Citrix directly back and forth throughout the year, and they are again in the process of changing the model because they are losing business in the education sector rapidly (or at least thats what Citrix person is relaying to us). With the old licencing model it was more than worth rolling out site wide (in our case) instead of replacing workstations on a cycle, but with the new licence model it defeats the object and there wasn't really a cost saving so held back for the time being.

Got the new Surface laptop 3 a couple of weeks ago, after upgrading from a Surface Pro 2016 (battery life was dwindling fast). Went into John Lewis (i think it was), and had a play with surface, surface laptop and surface book before deciding which to get. Opted for the Laptop. So much better in every way, keyboard is solid, and no stand to mess about with at the back. Sits nicely on your lap for those moments your sat in a tight space. Rarely used the surface on its own as a tablet, and didn't end up writing on it either so opted for the laptop instead this time around. Increase in screen size is a big plus as well, only when you start using it compared to the old surface do you appreciate those extra inches. Super slim, and light weight. Biggest difference though - Battery life!!!! Have the usual power save modes turned on etc. for while i'm away from the screen to do whatever and I got two days out of it without a charge. (probably 10 hours actual usage typing etc).

Often wondered if I could make some sort of a video wall out of our really old ones.