JBoyd

Just changed to a Nokia Windows phone 535 and it cost me £20 with a small monthly contract £7.50, got it in Carphone Warehouse. Early days but happy with it so far even the transfer of my old number from T-Mobile went OK but I had to transfer my contacts manually - to be honest it was quicker than setting up some automatic method. It is a bit more power hungry than the old phone but I think if I turn some stuff off it will extend the battery life. But good screen (One of the reasons for change) and front and rear camera if you are into selfies!!!! Tres bon!

I am looking to enable cloud services on our school network and these seem to be the main players. I am inclined to opt for Office 365 on the pure basis that it will be more familiar and compatible with network data. However, our governors and some teachers swear by Google docs and apps - I am not so sure as we had issues with these in the past (Students could use the 'splash' page to access unsuitable material) and the head said that they should be blocked. I am sure that the education version will be 'focussed' away from this material and filtered for content so I really want some views on both applications and how or if they differ. I wouild also be intererested in experience with compatibility on the network or other data sources using alternative products. Ease of set up and overheads on your time administering them would also be welcome. Thanks.

Thanks for your comments and advice we have had two technicians in to take a look and survey the network from which some useful info has been gathered. I should reply to the comment about LAN3, who I am sure are a good company by saying that AIT have given us every assistance to try to resolve the problems and continue to do so. I am sure we on the final furlong.

When the school wanted me to install a wireless network I checked out 4 or 5 companies and eventually settled on Aerohive having seen it working in a local school. To be fair it was a close call between it and Ruckus after testing. That was 3 years ago and it has been such a nightmare (For us anyway) and our installers, AIT, do not seem to be able to make it work reliably. I have asked them if our network set up is any different to other schools because I cannot think that they would also put up with such shenannigans. We have two SSIDs Guest and School Portal, the Guest is accessed using a PSK which is renewed weekly and bypasses our filters so people visiting the school can use the wi-fi. All AD users connect through the School Portal and we have two groups, Staff and Students, on two different WLANs that use different DHCP scopes. We have problems with roaming connections not being passed on and users being disconnected at any time even though the DHCP licence expiry time is set quite high (8 hours). Users are also being issued licences from the wrong DHCP scope or pickling one up from one scope and being re-allocated another when they log on to the wireless (Which means the previous licence is held until its expiry. I admit I was sceptical about wireless but thought I had made the correct decision given my reservations, but the wireless is a bit of a running joke in the school and we cannot expand our BYOD plans till it is reliable. So if anyone would be willing to discuss this with me or chat about their school set up post here and I will respond.

I was going to implement the Quotas on this resource at the last summer holidays but did not because of various reasons. However, I would like to restrict the size of files users can save to a 'share' and have looked in the File Screening and Quotas but can't seem to find a way to implement this - I can restrict the file types but this is not really what I want to do. Anyone else tried to do this?

I just love software that doesn't work I can then spend so much time fixing it!!!!! I am not sure this is worth the effort we have just recently given users access to their Recycle bin and I think it would maybe a retrograde step to remove it again. We do have a program that scans drives for file space we run periodically and just disable their accounts till they come to see us. Thanks anyway.

Hmm, I will take a look at this but I can see the logic. I know you can exclude file types from the quota, do you know if you could exclude folders? Do you use FSRM?

I am hoping to implement quotas for students and have set up File Server Resource Manager and had a test run on a small group. I have a couple of issues and have raised them on the TechNet forums but have had no joy/replies. I have created a test quota based on an existing template and applied it to the group and it works OK when adding files (It tots up the quota fine). The problem comes when the files are deleted to create space, it doesn't seem to apply the full amount of space the deleted file used. I had one of the users up to 99% on a 10Mb template and removed a 5Mb file but it only dropped a fraction of this and certainly not the full amount - it showed 99% still. Even when I removed all the users files it was still showing as only 85% free. We run a Distributed File System on the network and I was wondering if this was the issue but there doesn't seem to be anything on TechNet to say it shouldn't so I am a bit mystified and would like to get this working by Monday when school opens. Honestly I haven't left it to the last minute we have just been so busy I just got round to it this week. Any tips or similar experiences would ease my mind a bit!!

Not exactly SWGfL but I was wondering if anyone in the grid had Tripleplay IPTV systems installed in their school. We had it installed a few years ago at a time when we were extremely busy and did not really get much training - also it was some time ago. I was hoping to arrange a visit to any school to have a chat and look at how it is being used as I know we are not getting the most from the system. Also our AV technician, who is responsible for the data input is leaving and I will probably end up trying to train the replacement if I can't get someone in from the company to go through the ins and outs!

The school wants to set up a partnership with our feeder primary schools and I was hoping tthat someone had already gone down this route successfully. The starting point was creating them each a site on our VLE but every time we asked our IT provider they said we would need a Sharepoint Internet licence because they were not in our Active Directory - these cost £10K. Clearly this is beyond the finances of any primary so the cost would fall on us - unless some sponsor could be found. I also pointed out that this would only give them access to anything that was on their site, I think they were labouring under the idea that this would allow them access to their school account through our network. The school has reserved a URL for the partnership but I have said that this would require someone to monitor and moderate the site and there would be problems with who was allowed to change and upload content on such an open platform as the Internet. My experience of 'extranets' is very limited but is anything I have said wrong or am I making something more complicated than it needs be? The success of this would accrue countless smartie points but I'm not counting them just yet.

I didn't know Impero could do this, or are you remoting in to each computer to install?

It seems to have been very patchy over the past month. I believe there was an attempted DOS attack on their servers a couple of weeks ago haven't heard anything since.

We are using Symantec Altiris management console on our network since moving into the new school and have been very happy with how it works - up to a point. I also use Impero and ran their Usage report to check on savings we could achieve, it was quite an eye opener, and reckoned we could save £1.5K for that particular month. We use Altiris to shutdown the computers but, because of some resistance, have had to set them quite late as we cannot find any way to allow the user to cancel it if they are in the middle of something - it just boots them off!! I cannot believe this is not possible with Altiris but, as we have had no training with the product, we are scratching our heads to find if this is the case. If this option were available we could schedule the shutdowns earlier and the users could then cancel if necessary, so is there anyone out there who has used this application and can help - we are using the up to date version 7.1 afaik?

Can someone answer a question about this product please? I understand what it does and how it does it but every time I mention it to our IT supplier they tell me that for anyone outside AD to access SLG through our VLE will require an Internet Connector licence - these cost around £10K for our site. Now I know Capita aren't averse to making a bit more money but I cannot believe they would sell a product that no-one can use without paying extra to do so?

We have a Cisco VoIP phone system installed as part of our new build and, while it has some good features, it was very expensive and the administration of even the smallest change is best left to someone who knows what they are doing. I did a days course on it and, even after this I was none the wiser!!! It looked to me like you had about 3 or 4 steps just to change a user's extension and god help you if you do it in the wrong order! Don't even mention it to our Business Manager unless wearing full kevlar body armour