stratisphere

Ahh, that's currently what we do with ours... although it's a bit of a messy approach. Currently we do ours like: Qualification/Subject/Class memberships go this way (all our students have their admission number stored in their user accounts in active directory) SIMS -> MyAwesomeSpecialDecoderApp -> Active Directory This ends in each qualification/subject/class having it's own group in AD with the members as appropriate. The app then auto creates the courses in moodle to match qualifications. It then enrolls the students that apply. As a last step, it also creates the class groups in each course so staff can assign things by group if they wish. This is all very well but we've found it's not very flexible. For example, some teachers are wanting to create their own courses (I.e. Y7 ICT Homework). So we're currently looking at another method by using meta courses and cohort syncing. This will basically allow us to define the cohorts available (Subjects, qualifications and classes) and then when you create a new course (be it manually or automatically) you can assign which ever cohort you choose. I'm currently working on the app which will sync all that. Ours will be doing it via AD too, but it's trivial to make it direct to Moodle. It should also involve a moodle side plugin to allow XMLRPC rather than having direct access to the DB to the server your running the syncing app from should only need https access to the moodle server.

Yeh I was aware of that but I'm not aware of anything Capita offers that actually uses SIF in SIMS? Although certainly wasnt aware of third party agents! I'll look in to them, assuming they don't charge a silly amount then that could be very useful! As you'll know various versions have been around for yonks... yet annoyingly it doesn't seem to have taken off (not from my part of the forest in the front-line anyway). I love the idea of it and as a developer it makes a stupidly massive difference in just making "it" work. Communication between all common education systems is what I'm always striving to achieve... but there always has to be hacks to get things to talk (albeit it, one way most of the time) together. I personally am using command reporter to drag the info out of SIMS in to various systems and apps as that's the only way I can do it without breaking any contracts/terms etc. However I've if the SIF agents for SIMS work out, then things will be changing pretty rapidly paulgarratt83: If these agents are cheap enough for the integration I need, then I may very well be able to help out!

Interestingly enough, I've just been looking back over the SIF specifications for the UK and the last it was updated was Nov 2011 so it still seems to be around. I wonder if we can extract any kind of response from Capita to if they are going to support it in SIMS.

Oh man, as with all things "buzzy"... it's totally died off. I put loads of work/research in to doing a C# implementation of the SIF framework only to find that I could not find anything to link in to SIMS. I know Capita do some kind of developer kit but you have to pay a ridiculous fee for it... just to link in to a number of DLLs (There are of course other technical solutions/possibilities, but I could never endorse anything that does not follow various terms of use etc). I havnt heard the SIF buzzword in aggesssss. Currently everything is one way from SIMS. I have various apps which sit on servers that run imported reports in sims (via the commandreporter.exe) and then transfered to the site for processing via HTTPS XMLRPC. Basically, read only. But without paying for developer access, I can only dream of writing to SIMS. Interestingly enough, i'm currently working on an agent to link in to Moodle FROM sims (auto creating groups/enrolments etc). What are you looking to do?

bringing this one back from the dead... they've registered yet another domain! - Jill Rose They are determined to spam, i'll give them that.

Got to give him credit for his determination though. I just nabbed the CD's when I was in school

No Gave up on remoteapps and just went with a plain TS server. Set it up so when they RDP in to it using the sonicwall box it gives them a locked down environment just like any workstation in school. Also set it so it auto launches SIMS (via GPO). Not the route I wanted but a good enough solution at the time.

We received two more last night. Coincidentally, they also use another domain (grenergie.com) from "nina".

Indeed, possibily married to Gavin Rose who was MD

Okay so we've been getting numerous e-mails from these people for a few months. At first it was just one or two a week but recently it's escalated to one a day and at one point, bounced up to about 4 or 5 in a single day. Our head decided to look in to their claims of "free solar electricity for schools" and decided that even though we would want to do this, we're not in a position to do so at the moment and left a message on their answer machine. Our front office team decided that we were getting too many e-mails from this company so after several ignored requests to remove us from their list... asked me to chase it up. 3 or 4 requests later, still getting them. So I ring them and end up having a conversation with a very rude woman who claimed was the person sending these emails. She ended up saying "Only the head teacher can request this" and hung the phone up. Finally send her an e-mail just saying because of the rude conversation and complete disregard for my request, we've added the company to our blacklist etc. To which we get this reply: As your'll see from the reply, I looked into this company and noticed that "Gavin" from NS Optimum had registered the domain (under his home address) with his work e-mail. After the massive issues we had getting off their spam lists and the totally rude and forceful sales tactics I'm now not surprised to her response. Funnily enough, later that day she sent me another e-mail "Friends?". Has anyone dealt with this company? What has been their experience. We now have no interest to go with them because of this!

Should be asking vBulletin Solutions

Well done ZH. Handled a **** situation very well!

If you're not shy, try Zenoss. Best thing is, it's all opensource and free. It can monitor pretty much anything via either agents installed on the servers or via SNMP (for switches, printers etc). Just shout if you want some links to guides/documentation.

Awesome!

Or you could check the uptime? Each check, log the time it ran and the uptime, then next time it ran use the two plus the new time and new uptime and some logic to see if the uptime is less than the time difference between time last checked and current time.

Hi All, Just a curious thought. We've got the Schools agreement and a number of our staff already use the "Home Use" feature... very useful for getting everyone up to date. Are our governors covered under it aswell? While they arnt paid, they are accountable to the school and also have to submit to CRB checks etc aswell.

Still very much in development I'm afraid. While I've tried to write it as modular and as separated from our network as possible, there's no front end for configuring it for a new environment so it would all have to be physically editing the database entries. I'm kinda hoping if there's enough interest in it, it'll kick me into gear to do the setup wizard front end I have no idea how it'll perform/work on Windows 7... never tried it (though I plan to)! I think I did try once (long ago) and it had to be launched as an Administrator due to part of it (I think it's the USB Devices monitoring system that requires that...). Still, if people would like it, please let me know... the more I know it's wanted the more likely I'll sort it out so it's usable outside of our network.

I'm afraid I've got no videos to show as we've been busy as hell this week... however i've got some screen shots of a very new system I've just implemented. We've had the issue of students (and staff!) connecting unauthorised laptops/kit to our network, in an attempt to stop this (or at least detect it) I've tackled it in two half's. (P.s. yes I know about port security/mac security etc... I love it, but it means it's a pain if we want to move kit around) 1) Imperium has a built in DHCP listener when run as an admin. This listens in to all sides of the DHCP exchange and tracks hardware that asks, and the server's that reply. All of this data is logged. This forms the first side where it detects *if* someone connects their kit to the network. (I'm aware if they set a static IP that wont pick it up... that's the next plan of attack!!). If the MAC is flagged as unauthorised (or rather, isnt found as an authorised MAC) then admins are notified. 2) Imperium now includes a MAC Trace system. Basically, when set-up correctly, it knows the layout of your network. It then allows you to perform a MAC trace by searching the MAC tables of all of the switches looking for port's that MAC has been seen on. It then discounts the ports which are switch to switch uplinks... hopefully leaving the one that they have been/are connected to! I've been testing it for the last few hours and seems to work. It's all done via SNMP though so hardware which doesn't stick to OID standards wont prob work. Of course it also relies on the fact that the switches are managed. Not a perfect system by any means, but works here The screen shot for the MAC Trace Results dont show the uplink ports discounted as I dont have all of the links detected yet. I've also got plans to adapt this for our wireless network so it can scan our AP's and find out if it's local to any AP's. I know how to do this with our colubris network but i'm not sure if it would apply to any others.

Weird... :s

I lie, I've found some, they are from version 2.6 though and we're currently on 2.9 so a little out of date. They dont show off the really cool features though... will get to that soon. Brain Thee Brain Thee Brain Thee Brain Thee

Will do, i've done various screenshots (which are at work afaik) but did do some videos... however all of these were done in a live environment so they will either have to be edited or i'll get a demo up and running with sample users... eitherway, i'll get something for you for Tuesday

Some of you may remember a thread I did almost two years ago (wow) on a system i've been developing to help manage our network. Our network is a plain vanila windows network so no real useful *single* suite of tools to help us out in an educational environment... Sure there are various tools out there and various suites, but with no money at the time and some rather unique systems and needs, a custom solution seemed right! It's matured alot since my first thread about it, various systems have been cut, various systems have been finished and new ones have been added. I've always developed it with an aim to be used in other schools, but always been unsure if the best way would be free, opensource or commercial. Still undecided and with no reply from a possible channel, i've decided to make parts of it opensource which perhaps will lead to all of it being opensource. The main UI is based on the Office 2007 ribbon bar so i've decided to release the project which handles that. This is mainly for developers so they can put their own projects into the style of the ribbon bar but hopefully may attract some attention http://www.brain-thee.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Imperium-Designer-MainForm-Admin1.png The project is hosted on Github:- brainthee's Imperium-OS at master - GitHub Feel free to download and use. If you do use it in any of your projects, either a mention or a simple e-mail to let me know would be nice

Nice I had this issue a while back (the network plug being unplugged etc), kids were doing it after login to stop us remoting in etc. I found that the .Net framework as an event which is triggered when the network availability has changed: System.Net.NetworkInformation.NetworkChange.NetworkAvailabilityChanged += new System.Net.NetworkInformation.NetworkAvailabilityChangedEventHandler(NetworkChange_NetworkAvailabilityChanged); void NetworkChange_NetworkAvailabilityChanged(object sender, System.Net.NetworkInformation.NetworkAvailabilityEventArgs e) { if (e.IsAvailable) { // We're back on... onNetworkConnected(); } else { // We've been unplugged... logout... onNetworkDisconnected(); } } I'll post a full C# example later which will sit in the background and watch if wanted?

maybe update the front page to ignore general chat forums? Or have a separate box for the threads from those boards?

facebook = social networking edugeek = forums (technical forums at that)... have you noticed that these posts everyone is referring to have all happened in "General Chat"? Cant really get any more general than what's been going on. Sure the posts in general chat are getting alot of attention... but so are the x number of technical threads too.