CHiLL

I didn't even know that was an option and I certainly don't have it set, yet our users aren't prompted to upgrade to a newer OS (which has been the same since we resdesigned the network back in 2015).

We have Salamander to only deactivate the user's account 7 days after their official leaving date. This is because we've had several occasions where HR has added the wrong leaving date, before the user actually leaves, or a user has left and come back to employment within a short space of time. For leavers that we are aware of, we change their password manually and deactivate their staff pass to prevent unathorised access to the systems. As for the mailboxes, we have Salamander convert them to shared mailboxes, which keeps the mailbox intact and can be accessed again at any time, regardless of account status. For example, we recently had to go into a mailbox of a member of staff who left 4 years ago.

To me, it sounds to me like your Windows Update policies need tightening up, as devices in domain environments don't generally go directly through the Internet to get updates, they use WSUS/SCCM, etc. For example, we're using SCCM and it's configured so that updates point back to the SCCM server and cannot default/failover to the Internet if the server is unuavailable. Pressing check updates just brings an error message saying it can't contact the server. I haven't tried running the setup/upgrade program manually as a regular member of staff, but I don't think it'd work as a regular user. Although, I don't know if it actually needs admin permissions or not...so I might try that out at some point. If it doesn't require elevated permissions and your update policies are correct - I can only assume that the users have clicked on an Edge/Bing banner/advert to upgrade, where it's downloaded the upgrade tool and they've followed the instructions.

Another vote for Salamander. It won't complete eradicate issues if HR forgot to add start/end dates into employee records...but it really does make life a lot easier.

I'd set up another shared mailbox and delegate access to allow the head to access it. The manual way is to copy and paste the external email addresses into the BCC field (I believe there's a max limit of 500 recipients to limit spam emails, so you may need to send a few emails, depending on your cohort size). The head can then just access that mailbox to view and respond to replies. For our newsletter, we took it one step further by using SalamanderAD. It creates basic AD accounts, named with their unique ID number (which corresponds with how they match SIMS details to AD accounts). Salamander populates this AD account with the parent's email address in the email address field, the corresponding student's name in the description for ease and is also a member of an AD security group called newsletter. This security group also has an email address of [email protected] and we use that group to send the newsletter to. So the person that sends the weekly newsletter only needs to BCC in [email protected] and it will send to all parental emails within that group. I hope that makes sense?

Living alone on a low income has meant I've always kept a close eye on my spending, but always had enough disposable to enjoy life a little. However, with the current cost of living and the fact I've recently started dating someone - it does get to me a little that I have to really consider what we do, where we eat, etc, given I can't afford to spend loads or do it regularly. I'd also like to adopt a cat again, since my previous cat died last year - but I honestly can't justify the costs. I can adopt a cat any time, so it'll be when I can financially commit to looking after it correctly, in terms of quality food, insurance, enrichment, etc.

I've just chatted with my colleague about this, since we also have Xerox Altalink C8035 machines. One of our teachers experienced this, though it was before Christmas and it's not a frequent job our staff to perform, so I don't know if it's still an issue (I presume it is, since we're still using the same drivers (Xerox GPD PCL6 V5.810.8.0). We did raise this with our print provider, but they never got back to us. Further testing found that if you print the workbook to PDF and then print the PDF single sided, it prints as you expect it to. The member of staff was happy with that workaround and we left it there.

You only need M365 A1 for the desktop apps.

@ass17 I'm sorry, but it has magically cured itself. I honestly don't know what's going on. I took a copy of the shared folder to make the debug changes - set the value to 1 and closed it (forgot to save it, so debug was still disabled without realising). I opened the problematic document from this morning in the EWP copy and the print preview came up and printed, to the same printer. I double checked the config and saw debug was still disabled - which means it was working as you would expect. I then tried the same document I the non-modified original copy of EWP and it also is showing the print preview and printing. I have not made any modifications to my machine in the time since this morning, nor restarted or anything. While it's good that it's working - it's one of those terrible scenarios for troubleshooting, where it just appears to resolve itself and I can't replicate it.

Yeah, it's just a basic network attached HP 2055, with only an A4 tray. I only used 4.8 to print this quickly, I'm hoping I won't have to rely on it.

I don't think you need A3 to use the desktop office apps. For example, we only have A1 licenses. Office 365 for faculty/students for the online stuff and Microsoft 365 Apps for faculty/students for the desktop apps. We only purchased the FTE (or whatever they call it these days) count anmd the student licenses were provided free.

It is the Religious Studies exam, but with EDUQAS. My colleague was able to print it using an older version of EWP 4.8.0.0. I've just tested it and I can also print it via 4.8.0.0. Edit: I wonder if it is our config. I've been informed that the student's didn't have the info pre-filled via the config file, so I've just re-imported it again. I'm 99% sure I did import the settings originally, but maybe I missed something, or didn't press save or something stupid. I presume if I don't specify exam boards, it lets the user type it in themselves? Maybe that's the cause of the issue?

I've come across a printing issue on the latest versions of EWP, though I'm not sure if it's a bug or an issue on my end. When I try and print a document (with text in it), I get an error message stating "You cannot print because you have no printers installed" (despite I do and one set as default), and the print preview pane is blank. I'm getting the same issue on versions; 22.1.13.1907, 22.05.09.1455 and 22.05.11.1525 (latest).

I don't know if it's related to your issue, but I had issues when I upgraded our NPS server to 2022. I had to restore the server back to it's pre-upgrade state. As soon as I did, NPS and therefore the VPN started working straight away. If your NPS is on Server 2022, consider rolling it back. If it's not on Server 2022, then it might not be this issue.

I've been doing it this way for a few years now and I haven't had any issue like that. EWP can be opened from the same location (as long as it's on a server network share - not a workstation - for concurrent connection limits) and I've forced it to force the user to save the document immediately to their home folder before starting the exam, meaning the file they're editing it not accessible to anyone else.

Are they specific laptops used only for exams? If so, you could look at possibly denying certain user groups from logging onto the laptops, such as "All Students" or "Intake 2021", (or whatever you've called your groups) etc. That way they can't use their regular domain accounts. I haven't done this myself and now I've thought about it, I might look at implementing that. Since I haven't done it yet, I don't know exactly how to go about it, but I'm sure it would be possible.

The main reason I can think if is that when installing via CMD, it's running in the context of the logged on user and authenticates to the web as that user. However SCCM uses the SYSTEM account to install, which cannot authenticate to the web like a user can. I think when I configured my Office 2019 setup, I used SCCM's built-in option to create the package: Software Library > Office 365 Client Management > Office 365 Installer. I followed the wizard and created the settings via the "Go to the Office Customization Tool". Once the app was created, I made some basic modifications, like rename, icon, move the app to a subfolder in Application Management, installation timeouts, etc. Then I deployed it.

We've thought about that, but we never implemented it, mainly down to convenience when looking through AD, MECM or something. As for asset numbers, we don't utilise asset numbers on devices. The main reason I like using numbers for machine names in IT suites, is that I can more easily identify say RM02-17, because I know it's the 17th student machine in the room (given I know the numbering order direction). The only other downside that I can think of is when re-imaging the room and naming machines. I can easily name the machines based on numbers in a short amount of time. But if I have to find the asset ID and type that in, it'll be more time consuming (not a lot though).

For classrooms, we try and go off the name from the timetable. The teacher machine is just the room name and student machines are amended with the PC number. So RM02, RM02-01, RM02-02, etc. For offices, we either go off the use of the office or the name of the person who's in there. So REC-01 for reception, Office-01 for the admin office. Staff like SLT with offices, they just get named with their three letter code. It's not perfect and can be a pain to learn what's where at the start, but once you've been here a while, it sinks in.

My deployment lives in the Apps folder on the SCCM server. Within the Office 2019 folder lives my config.xml and setup.exe. There is also a sub folder called "office", which is where it downloaded the install files to. Here's a slightly modified version of my config.xml: My app deployment has the content location defined as the folder that has setup.exe and config.xml and the install is defined as: setup.exe /configure config.xml I hope that helps.

I really, really enjoyed Horizon: Zero Dawn when I played it on PC last year. One of the best open world RPGs I've played in a good while. I really hope Horizon: Forbidden West comes to PC. I have God of War on my list to play next, so I'll probably buy it on Steam this weekend.

Same here, and our PDC at that too. Restoring it from VEEAM kind of messed up. VEEAM is meant to do a non-authorative restore by default, but after the restore, it wasn't able to communicate with our other DC and I was getting authentication issues. I had to resort to logging onto the problematic PDC, resetting the password for the other DC, then do a repadmin to update the PDC with info from the functional DC. It's been a day. I have no idea regarding the certificates, because I can't wrap my head around why it was working on one device and not the other, despite being the same user, running the same OS (Win10 21H2 and with the same updates installed).

Just be aware for those upgrading to Server 2022, the Windows Server SMTP Relay using IIS 6.0 doesn't work on Server 2022. The SMTP service won't start automatically and will keep stopping, plus emails are not relayed through. I've had to resort to using hMailServer instead. https://serverfault.com/questions/1088555/server-2022-smtp-server-issue

Over Easter, I tested and in-place upgraded our production servers to Server 2022 (apart from our Always-On VPN server, which I attempted the upgrade on, but it would fail and revert the changes and go back to Server 2019). I had tested the VPN after the upgrades and it worked fine on the devices I tested with, with multiple accounts. However, once we came back after the Easter break, I was slowly getting reports that the VPN wasn't working for some users. So after some investigating...I found an issue that baffled me. I had a user and their laptop which wasn't working on the VPN and I could replicate the issue every time. I also logged on as another user that I know can access the VPN and it also didn't work. As a test, I got another laptop and logged on as both users, using the same 4G hotspot to connect...and they worked on this laptop! The config is exactly the same, deployed the same way (Powershell and XML via SCCM) and there are no hardware requirements causing the issue. Since the VPN uses certificates to authenticate (with both users on both devices having ALL the correct certificates installed), I was completely baffled as to why they'd connect on one device, but not the other. The client reported the following error while trying to establish the connection: Checking the VPN server Event Viewer, the following pairs of errors were being logged: I checked, double checked and tripple checked the VPN config, both on the VPN server and NPS server and they were correct when compared against the online installation guides and notes I made during deployment. After a couple of days of getting nowhere, I resorted to restoring the VPN server from a restore point prior to the upgrade. Alas, that didn't resolve the issue. All the evidence was pointing to an issue with the NPS server, though I couldn't pinpoint exactly what. So I ended up restoring the NPS server, also to a point prior to the Server 2022 upgrade. Once it came back, I tested the VPN and it worked straight away. I still don't understand why I could get the user to connect on one device and not the other, despite the exact same config, but so far this morning, it appears to be working as expected. TLDR: There seems to be some issues with NPS on Server 2022 that was causing authentication issues with some of our VPN connections. So maybe hold off that Server 2022 upgrade on an NPS server, if you had it planned.

OVS isn't a type of Office, it's a type of licensing model. The school is only entitled to it if they have <1000 users. You'd most likely want to look at the non-Office 365/Microsoft 365 apps, such as Office Professional Plus 2019 or 2021. They are your more traditional deployments of Office, where you're stuck on that version (you still get security updates) until you deploy the next (whereas O/M365 apps are updated monthly with new features).