networkmanager

Hi All, We are looking to adopt ChatGPT for use by selected staff members, however I'm thinking of this from a GDPR point of view. Happy to pay for any of the suitable premium subscriptions - Plus, Pro, Team or Enterprise. Just checking to see if anyone has managed to set this up for selected users in a school or Trust - such that there's a dashboard overview of activities that has or currently taking place within the ChatGPT tenant? The idea is that if there's a likely breach, the system notifies the tenant admin or the admin can look at the logs to identify possible breaches and the user. Or is it just a case of creating individual accounts (using the school's or Trust's email address) with no centralised view of activities? I'm happy for suggestions of alternative AI products (general purpose preferred) that could offer the above. Thanks in anticipation.

Hi Mako, Thank you for your comments. Happy to know you are also looking to do more or less the same thing. To avoid paying twice for some agreements, we've nominated the school agreement that will lapse at the end of the month to be the Master Agreement. The vendor will then rename this to the MAT's name. In the future, we can add other schools as and when their agreements lapse. Fortunately for us, this will be from September onwards. Will check with our vendor that the Master Agreement will be tied to the MAT's tenancy. Thanks again.

Hi Boredguy, Yes, that's correct. All schools are under a single 365 tenancy with each school having their email domains within it. Glad to know consolidating the agreements won't break anything. Thank you.

Hello, I wonder if someone is able to advise please. We are looking to consolidate and therefore align the Microsoft Volume Licensing Agreements for all the schools within our MAT into a single agreement. To this end, our vendor advised that this can be done by nominating one of the agreements as the Master Agreement and then adding the others as and when they are due. However, they have also mentioned that we need to be renewing the Office365 for each of the schools annually so that each school can keep their email domains in Office365, as they do now. Otherwise Microsoft will only allow the use of a single email domain for all the schools within our O365 tenancy. This is where I got confused as to what this meant. In this regard, I have contacted Microsoft today to advise, but still awaiting a response. So I thought to see if anyone here has done the same thing, if there were any issues and how they went about this. It is a scary thought for all our schools to lose access to their email domains in O365 overnight. Just in case, all our schools are under our MAT's O365 tenancy, but each school have their email domains registered there. Thank you in anticipation.

Unlike Tuesday and Wednesday, thankfully we didn’t experience intermittent issues with Teams today. Hoping the fix is a permanent one.

We have also been having some issues with Teams since yesterday; intermittent drop outs every now and again. It seems to happen around peak periods in the mornings or mid day.

Hi Matthew, Thank you. Will have a look at Sage HR.

Hi DMurray, All our schools are running SIMS. Cheers!

Thank you, Simon. I actually read the review for this on software advice website last week. Good to see that you have deployed and using it. Will add them to the list.

Thank you. I was at BETT last Friday and visited Civica's stand to have a chat. The product seem to tick the boxes. Will arrange an onsite meeting/demo with them soon. Cheers!

Hello, Our MAT is looking to adopt a HR software. Just checking to see what other schools, Academies and Trusts are using out there. I have looked at Civica HR for Schools on their website, it seems to tick some of the boxes for employee self-service, absence management and reporting and analytics. So, it would be nice to hear from schools, Academies or Trusts that have actually deployed and are using this or any other solution. Thank you in anticipation.

I can imagine. The costs can easily mount up, especially for bigger MATs. Hopefully you get the best company for it. Thanks.

Wow, how many schools are you looking to migrate?

Good to know it went well for you; including the after support. I have actually dealt with them in the past with regards to installing our WiFi network some years ago. I didn't realise they are now into migration projects. Will definitely get in touch. Thanks. - - - Updated - - - Thank you Karldenton. Will get in touch.

Morning all, Our MAT is looking to migrate all the existing AD domains in its schools to the central MAT's Active Directory forest. To this end, I am after an experienced company/consultant that we can work with in order to achieve this. I would appreciate if anyone can recommend a suitable company/consultant. We would prefer a company/consultant that can provide us with reference sites that can be contacted. Just in case, we are based in the West Midlands. Thank you in anticipation. NM

Hello, I wonder if someone can help please. We are currently looking to move all our user accounts from our local Active Directory to the consolidated AD forest of our Academy Trust, however I have been told that WMI Filtering would not work in the consolidated forest. To test this, we migrated a test user across and indeed WMI filtering wasn't working, even though we have configured it similar to how it was on the local domain. Presently, we are running both Windows 7 and 10 machines on our local domain, and WMI filtering has made our lives easier. Therefore, can someone please let me know if they have WMI filtering working within their consolidated AD forest? A quick search online didn't yield much results. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

Thank you all for your suggestions. Much appreciated. I have used WMI filters on the existing and new policies as @FN-GM suggested. Works a treat. Cheers!

Hello, Hope someone can help with this. Following tests and configuration, in order to kick off our phased migration, we are now looking to roll out our Windows 10 1709 image to one of our IT suites during February half-term break. This would mean we would have a mixture of existing Windows 7 and newly imaged Windows 10 machines until the whole school is migrated, which might be during the summer holidays. My question is, what is the best or most effective way to implement the GPOs for Windows 10? Such that when a user moves from a Win 7 IT room to a Win 10 IT room (and vice-versa), all the relevant computer and user policies will be applied without fail. Two ideas came to mind. Firstly, create new Computer and User OUs (for Windows 10) and attach the relevant Windows 10 GPOs. Secondly, leave my AD structure as it is but configure Windows 10 policies within the existing Windows 7 policies. Your thoughts will be appreciated. Thank you in advance.

Hi AlanD, Agree, TMG is old technology now. Thankfully, we have a Smoothwall box on-standy that would replace the TMG over the Christmas break. With regards the issue I was having, TMG wasn't routing my traffic correctly even though I had specified the static routes and included the IP range for the new VLAN within its Internal network properties. Reading through the TechNet forums earlier on, I found out that the supported configuration for routing VLANs through the TMG is for the clients to use the ip address of their respective VLANs as their default gateway address. This would explain the reason my test PC worked when I changed its default gateway address to VLAN 1's ip address. For now, we will do that until we decommission the TMG in a few weeks time. Thanks.

Hello, I have recently been asked to setup an MPLS link to our internal network. To this end, on our core switch, HP E5412zl, I have created a VLAN 20, assigned a static IP to it, and then added a port to the VLAN. This port plugs into the interface of MPLS switch. Additionally, I have added the relevant static routes to the HP switch knows how to reach our other MPLS subnets. So far, from the HP switch, I can successfully ping our other MPLS subnets including the interface of our MPLS switch. Here's the problem. We have Microsoft Threat Management Gateway (TMG) 2010 server configured as our default and internet gateway server for all devices. Meanwhile, all our PCs and Servers are on VLAN 10. So, when I tried to see if I can ping our other subnets from a PC, I noticed that the packets were being routed to the TMG server instead of the MPLS interface. To this end, I have configured the same static route on the TMG server as I have on the HP switch, however I have used the IP address that I assigned to the VLAN 20, as its next-hop address. Additionally, I have added the IP range (containing the IP addresses assigned to the VLAN and MPLS switch) to the Internal IP address on the TMG (Under Networking). So in theory, TMG should route any traffic destined for the MPLS network to the MPLS interface on the HP switch. However, I am still unable to even ping the MPLS interface on the HP switch from the TMG server. So, as a test, I changed the default gateway on a PC to the IP address of VLAN 1 interface and hooray I could ping the MPLS interfaces on the HP and MPLS switches, including our MPLS subnets. However, this isn't a practical solution for us, as it would have to done network-wide. Therefore, I was just wondering if anyone can help with configuration on the TMG server; in case I have missed anything. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you in anticipation.

Hi GuyJD, Thank you for your suggestion. Will have a look at WASP. In the meantime, I might also try setting up a hand held scanner with Excel. Cheers!

Hello, I wonder if anyone can suggest an inventory system with a bar code scanner that actually works properly. The idea is to be able to scan in bar codes from new hardware deliveries straight into the inventory database; therefore removing the need for a manual input. Any suggestion will be appreciated. Thank you in advance. NM

My account manager at BT Business Direct was able to source these for us not long ago. It was the Alphasmart NEO 2.

Hi Pichi123, I understand how you feel. IMHO, I'd say being able to show the ability to learn new skills very quickly would help; as well as possessing relevant qualifications. Also, I'd encourage you to get a voluntary role in your area of interest. All these info on your CV would make it stand a better chance. Best of luck.

Hello, Just thought I should post an overview about the work environment here: Generally, we mainly run an AD-based Windows network, however we also run Apple’s Open Directory to handle the logins on the imac and macbook clients. This simply replicates the user accounts from AD; such that users can login with the same credentials as on the Windows side. With regards to server infrastructure, we’ve got 15 servers with eight running Windows 2008, five running Windows 2003, one running Ubuntu Linux and other one is the Apple Xserve running the mac server OS. The usual IT services run on these platforms. We are currently looking to implement SANs and Virtualisation. In terms of backup systems, at the moment, we’ve got HP StorageWorks G2 Autoloader unit, Tandberg StorageLoader unit, HP DAT72 unit and 1TB external HDD to cover the backup schedules. On the client side, in total we’ve got 650 desktop PCs; 190 of this are installed in 6 IT suites running Windows 7 and Office 2010. The rest of the PCs are located across the site, in offices, other subject specific computer rooms and staff areas; these are a mixture of Windows XP and 7 but all with Office 2010 installed. Furthermore, currently we’ve got networked Apple iMacs, networked macbooks, iPad, iTouch, e-readers and Kindle Touch. Furthermore, in the classrooms there are, SmartBoards, Promethean IWB boards and projectors installed; about 50% of these are the LED types. Most of our printers are networked, usually 1 in each classroom where there are at least 5 computers or there is a specific need for it. Otherwise the PCs are linked to our managed Sharp multifunction copiers fitted with a card reader, located in convenient locations on site. Overall, the network has been upgraded in recent years to Gigabit Ethernet; and 11 x Gigabit speed fibre channels to various locations across the site. We also run a recently installed managed wireless network platform. In terms of school size, we’ve got about 150 staff members and 1400 students. Feel free to ask me further questions you may have. Thanks.