enjay

I could do that but I am not sure if the M365 login process uses something at live.com, in the same way some logins to Google Drive go via a YouTube URL. I wonder if my filters can block the string https://onedrive.live.com/:w:/g/personal but not the overall domain...

Our email said "mid-2026". We don't have any more parents evenings this academic year, so we're assuming it will have changed by the time we next need it in October.

For safeguarding reasons, we'd like to prevent students from being able to access documents shared with them by people outside the organisation. I've done this with Google Workspace, but not been able to fully do it with M365. If you select to share the document with the student by name, it doesn't work but if you share a document "to anyone with the link", students can still access them. Does anyone know a way of stopping this, without impacting students' ability to access their school M365 account? I've noticed their school OneDrive address is https://schoolname-my.sharepoint.com/shared but a personal OneDrive begins https://onedrive.live.com/:w:/g/personal, so could I just block the onedrive.live.com domain, or would that prevent students logging in to their school account too?

And that's becoming more common, as people ask ChatGPT to "write a letter of complaint to my school" rather than just write an email saying they're unhappy.

You can request that, but not insist on it. SARs can come via any medium, including verbally.

My numbers are roughly in line with those, in that case, allowing for us being a single academy not a MAT so possibly "escaping" some of the FOIAs. As for detection, I'm confident the ones which come in to office@ etc get to me, it's the requests (more likely SARs than FOIAs) which are going directly to year teams which might not. One example I can think of is a parent who wanted more detail on their child's behaviour points because the parent portal doesn't include everything - this made it to me because the admin who received it is relatively new and didn't know how to redact the document, but otherwise it might not have done.

Only a small number (1-2 per month) of SARs and/or FOI requests make it onto my radar, but based on the number of emails I receive from companies/consultancies offering advice or assistance with SARs and FOI requests, I wonder if we're actually receiving more, and staff are handling them directly without notifying me. I don't want to make more work for myself for the sake of it, but I do want to ensure we're handling these appropriately so I'm wondering if some improved staff training is needed. This training would be in case we're missing the requests, having accidental data breaches by staff who don't understand it properly, or have staff wasting time by manually redacting documents not using the redaction software we have. So, how many requests are you receiving? To avoid this thread getting derailed, I know these aren't IT things however I am also the school's GDPR lead (DPO is external, of course).

Wouldn't that involve them sharing their personal numbers with each other? I can imagine some people saying no to that. We've created limited M365 accounts for our invigilators, so they have a mailbox but no other access.

I'm a sucker for long exposure when at a waterfall too. This is Aira Force in the Lake District.

WiFi is fine, although it has recently come to light that the switch sometimes quietly reboots itself so it is possible that was the issue...

We tried that, but the exam domain laptops would sometimes drop their mapped drives mid-exam. This was more of a problem for students saving work though, if they just need the PDF file, they could copy it locally at the start of the exam.

How do you folks manage access to digital copies of exam papers for use with screen readers? We used domain-joined laptops with exam logons and a shared folder containing the PDF of the exam paper, but login times became an issue (sometimes our accounts decide they want to take 10+ minutes to log in). We then moved to workgroup laptops with the exam paper on a share on the exams "server" PC. This worked okay but we're finding it isn't scalable to the number of students now needing this provision - the connection limitation on workgroups means we've had to create multiple shared folders, but also we find that laptops sometimes just don't fancy playing ball and need some intervention (rebooting, waiting, hitting refresh multiple times, etc.) and due to the number of laptops in use this isn't something the invigilators can manage on top of all the other exam room prep. We have also tried USB memory sticks, but again this is no longer scalable to the number of candidates in "real" exams where we can only access the paper 1 hour before the start of the exam (for internal mocks, we could prepare the USBs days or weeks in advance). Is there anything we can do to remove/reduce the number of connection issues in our workgroup set-up? Is there a different way to handle this access which would be more light-touch and scalable?

I asked HP why we're not covered by the lifetime warranty. Their reply was: As per the warranty policy, this device holds a lifetime warranty (Standard Warranty - Wty: HPE Parts Exchange Support NBD Response / 9X5 | Ship To: GB | WTY End Date: 2112-09-04). The alternative replacements in place of the original device, due to its End of Support nature and unavailability, may differ with respect to warranty based on the alternate switch's End of Support Date. So, when our switch went EOL, they designated a different model as being its replacement. That model has also gone EOL, presumably after 2019, so this apparently means they don't have to replace our switch with anything at all. I've had a look, and they really don't sell anything similar (at least, not under the HP name but I think there's a Juniper one which is comparable) so it looks like we'll either have to stack multiple switches to achieve the same thing or go to a different manufacturer.

When we bought the switch, "lifetime" meant the lifetime of the switch (or probably, lifetime unless sold to someone else). It's now "until we decide to stop supporting it", but they didn't change the definition retrospectively, so we should still be covered by the original meaning of lifetime.

That's what they're saying, too. Our switch has 24x RJ45 ports and a module slot into which we've inserted a 16x SFP module. HP are saying they don't have any switches which can take this module, so we have to buy a new switch. I'd be a little surprised if they don't make hybrid RJ45 and SFP switches, but even if they don't, shouldn't the terms of the lifetime warranty mean they give me an RJ45 switch and an SFP switch instead?

You're right and you're wrong. HP don't make that model any more, but the lifetime warranty should mean they replace it with a functionally-equivalent alternative - like a "new for old" cover on a washing machine, to continue the domestic examples. HP are claiming there is no comparable model, which is the bit I find unlikely.

Same here. We're buying Unifi now, and are in the process of swapping out our Meraki switches for Unifi (buying new Unifi costs less than 2 years of Meraki licences, so it's an easy decision). Once I've done all those, I may well swap the HPs too for consistency, but that would cost actual money.

Ah, I didn't realise the lifetime warranty had an end date! It looks like that's only on switches purchases since 2019 though, and this is older than that. Our switch model went end-of-service a few years ago, apparently.

Our admittedly-elderly core switch has developed a hardware fault. HP have said the model is end-of-life and offered us a functionally-equivalent switch, however the model they suggested is not equivalent. I pointed this out, and they responded saying there isn't an equivalent switch in the upgrade path (whatever that means) and we will therefore have to buy a replacement which matches the spec of the current one. Has anyone else experienced this? I haven't checked but I'm sure HP sell a switch which matches the features (they're not that unusual, after all), so why aren't they providing one?

@Boredguy I think that's what we might end up doing too, although I'd be a bit twitchy about a retention period as short as 12 months. Of course, in the bygone days of tape backups, 12 months was probably the maximum most of us had, but "unlimited" storage spoils us!

Cloud-based file servers often charge based on usage too, so getting rid of all the unused files has a financial benefit too. One challenge we'll all face with something like this is getting people to use the labels (rather than complain when they're unlabelled files are purged), and use them correctly rather than label everything as 'Pensions' so it doesn't get deleted "just in case I need it...."

I wasn't meaning student photos, I was more thinking of lesson resources. Docs/PowerPoints probably aren't that old because they'll get tweaked over the years, but staff could easily have PDF or JPG resources from years ago - exam past papers, for example - which they still use (and teachers are known hoarders, so definitely will have files that old!).

I am not sure if the Redstor retention is that clever, i.e. to keep Location A for 12 months but Location B for 7 years - I'd need to delve deeper to be sure, though. File age isn't all that relevant, and I think if you deleted all files over X years, you'd find you've deleted all sorts of files which staff routinely use.

From a quick search, it looks like I can specify a data retention schedule within Redstor, but our data retention policy isn't that simple - for example, currently some documents are retained for 7 years, while others are only kept for 12 months. Some safeguarding files have to be kept for decades (and that's the law, not our internal policy). I've contacted our DPO for their input, too.

I am my school's data protection lead (but not DPO, obviously). I thought this forum was to get advice from others about their practices, which is why I posted as we're not the only school who uses Redstor and other such backups, and probably not the only school who is accidentally not following our data retention policy because of these backups.