enjay

TeamSOS can do a lot of that, so I suggest you book a demo or phone call with them, as there's a lot of personalisation and workflows which you can customise.

TeamSOS sends messages to the Windows notification system, so staff would only get a little pop-up by the clock for a few seconds saying "lockdown - get under your desks", then have to click on the icon to see the message. With Notify, you get the whole-screen takeover. You can then use TeamSOS to coordinate the lockdown, send updates, communicate with staff, etc. Notify is clunky to use, but you don't interact with it at all - you just tick a box in the TeamSOS app saying you want to send a Notify message, and it does the rest.

We ditched Notify because it takes too long to send emergency messages, but bought it again because of the TeamSOS integration.

Indeed it does, and with the latest teamSOS mobile app, you can send NetSupport Notify messages from your phone.

Wow, that's impressive resurrecting of an old post - that was from 2009! I am no longer at the school with that MSI, so can't help unfortunately.

Thanks. I've tried contacting Openreach directly before, and it was a frustrating experience. I'll see if our ISP has more success.

Thanks. In that case, I'll make a proper note of the circuit number.

Even if it didn't get to 1gb, it would give something. We've got an FTTC as a reserve line, but old fibre could well be faster anyway.

Good thinking. Does that negate the above, or could we still use if we ever needed in an emergency?

What do the parents need to upload?

Or the parent app on your MIS, if you have one?

What he said. We also have Evolve, I also am not involved with it! We use it for managing all the after school clubs too.

That's what I thought, but it is always nice to have these thing confirmed. Thanks @psydii and @thebatman

And therein lies another reason I'm reasonably confident this isn't active, as our Finance Manager has been going through all the accounts trying to find recurring charges and getting people to confirm they still need the service. If there were a telco bill out there, I think she'd have found it. We have got a failover FTTC line. The router for that plugs into a "phone" socket in our server room which is directly below this cupboard. Could this be part of that? It looks like this, I'll be honest, I'm not totally sure what it should look like! Our leased line termination point is boxed in the back of a cupboard in someone's office, so I can't easily go and compare them. The black box has power and link LEDs lit, and they appear to be flashing in time with each other.

Neither. It looks a lot like where our leased line terminates, except it isn't our (current) leased line. Would that just be disappointment, or would they actually be up for telling me something? Active yes or no is all I need initially. I've ruled all of those out already, which is partly why I think it is obsolete. There are some old phone points and an ISDN2 box in the same cupboard, so I wonder if it used to be a comms room. It's by an IT Suite, so maybe way back in the mists of time, it was an Internet connection for the IT Suites before computers were a thing elsewhere in the school. Another option I wondered about is from the dark days of separate curriculum and admin LANs when the school ran one and LA ran the other.

While tracing a cable run earlier, I found a BT termination point which is almost certainly obsolete, but before I turn it off and disconnect it, is there a way to find out what it is / what's on it? I have the circuit numbers, etc. Before anyone suggests it, I am aware of the option of turning it off and see who complains, and haven't ruled that out!

Hard copies at Parents Evening is definitely the easiest method, assuming your parent portal doesn't have a way of displaying the information to parents. Alternatively, a Google/Microsoft Form in which you ask parents either for all their details or just for those which they think have changed in the last few years - that could be a big job depending on your school size though.

Ah okay. Just re-take photos for anyone whose hair style / colour has changed (or the staff member who has been there for 27 years and still has the original photo on their ID, as we have here!).

Ooh, interesting. I didn't know you could rename the tenancy so easily. So, a bit of inconvenience for lots of people in order to solve a problem for a few, and a potential problem for everyone. Maybe one for the summer break, and then just tell people in September. Of course, this is where we find some people have even longer file names, and pulling the 46 characters back doesn't actually help!

One potential issue is if you said we need to take a photo for you ID badge" and are now using it elsewhere. I'm not sure if you need to inform everyone of the change in purpose (this is why you need a DPO!). We have found it easier to get the person who takes the ID photos to take new news if someone wants to update their badge - much easier than all the back and forth as people take their own unsuitable ones! I was also thinking since the transition pack is a "get to know you " thing, the staff member might want a more personal photo than their ID mug shot, maybe with their horse/cat/bike/sports car.

I can definitely see the reasons for doing this. I would go with public task, but notify staff it is being done and give them an opportunity to raise any concerns they might have. Ultimately, the parent and child will learn the teacher's name and see their face in September anyway so I would be surprised if people have privacy concerns, so long as the information is being given directly to parents not posted on your website. Also, they might want to provide a different photo, especially if their appearance has changed since their ID photo was taken.

We haven't hit the problem in SharePoint (although I'm sure Geography will give it a go!). Our issue is where staff have the OneDrive sync app, which puts the files in "C:\Users\Name\OneDrive - School Name" which for us is a 55-character prefix!

Thanks. There's very little point making the change, then!

Since moving to SharePoint/OneDrive, we're seeing people fall into filename length problems because of the enormous string at the start of a filename when it is in your synced OneDrive. Has anyone tried removing the 260-character limit (https://www.backupery.com/how-to-enable-ntfs-long-paths-in-windows/) and were there any ill effects?

If that's the only reason you're keeping them, you can ditch them quicker - the appeals deadline in the autumn of the exam year, possibly as early as September. Do you keep their Google Drive / OneDrive as well, and if so, for how long?