Sean

Solved! The fitting company were in quoting for yet more doors today and they had a look for us - turned out that the card readers on either side of the door were too close to each other and their fields were interfering with each other - why on Earth it was only affecting fobs being read and not cards is a total mystery but they moved one of the readers up the wall and the other one down and now fobs are being read all OK!

See, yes, when I Googled it did look like the green banded fobs like these were Switch2 while proper Net2 ones were blue banded but, as I say, the green banded ones work with 15 other doors across our site It's a daisy-chained door, plugged into another door near by rather than being directly connected to the network but I found that 3 other doors the fobs work fine with are daisy chained too...

We tend to use printed cards with our Paxton Net2 card readers for door access here but often visitors from our Academy Trust head office turn up with Paxton branded 'bullet' shaped fobs with a green band One of the 3 new controllers we recently had installed on site just cannot 'see' these fobs at all, no red or green lights or beeping or anything, the door works fine with our regular cards and the fobs work fine on the 15 other doors we have on site! They installed P75 readers this time when they have used P50s in the past but the other 2 P75 doors they did at the same time are both working fine with the fobs, as I say! I can't understand what might be different about this one door / controller - does anyone have any ideas? Thanks

I looked on the Senso help pages and on the one about 'Broadcast Screen' https://support.senso.cloud/support/solutions/articles/79000116199-broadcast-screen it said **It is highly recommended for the Broadcast module to function correctly that you refer to this article about WEBRTC and make these changes. The article contains information for setting making this change for both Windows and Chrome devices.** Then there was a page about WEBRTC here https://support.senso.cloud/support/solutions/articles/79000118118 But like, wut? Has anyone heard of this and tried it? Did it help? I couldn't work out if it was saying that if not having the policy settings in place was an issue for you that you would be gettng these intermittant issues with Broadcast / Lock Screen or if it just would not work at all, even...

We've used Senso across our whole MAT for a number of years but at this site it seems to have taken a turn for the worse since we upgraded to Aruba 6300Ms and 6100s and went over to a VLAN scheme rather than being flat - now broadcast seems to miss 2 to 4 computers per class at random and WoL doesn't work at all (although, to be fair, I can seem to get alternative, specific WoL apps top work either now) so.. it's always awesome when an upgrade makes things worse! I notice, though that the last time Senso released a client update was back in December 2021 which is a while ago now! I'm thinking one of 3 things - They think the product is pretty much fully mature now / they've taken it as far as they can - The company is circling the drain and has no money to spend on development - they are working on a major update like a full rewrite on a new framework or something anyone know? Thanks

Hope you don't mind me necroing a 4 year old thread but it seemed like the best place to ask Yes on our NRS Civica system the tills are fine, no problem but the finger readers on the 2 reval units keep falling off the network I had naively thought that the reval finger-readers were fully integrated into the unit or an most an optional daughterboard but It turns out that they are separate network devices to the reval units themselves and seems like maybe they talk to each otehr via teh kitchen PC that started the revals in the morning in the first place? When they lose connection there is an error message on the reval app on the kitchen PC about not finding the finger reader on a comm port(!) and the only way to get it back working again is for the kitchen manager to physically open up the reval and power cycle it - this happens at least once to at least one of our 2 revals most days! I contacted Civica support, they sent someone out, he seemed nice enough at the time but they've taken his repost and said there's nothing wrong with their kit so it must be 'an IP conflict or something' and are maybe trying to say that we are liable to hundreds of pounds worth of call out fee! (Civica really do take every opportunity to overcharge ridiculously for every little thing - can confirm!) So.. any ideas guys? anyone had anything similar? Pretty sure there is nothing else using remotely similar IP addresses to the ones it's using...

It seem to be coming from OCR Cambridge Nationals, the course they're doing here at least, unless multiple boards have an AR module now, if that helps any? https://support.ocr.org.uk/hc/en-gb/articles/360020028760-Cambridge-National-in-IT-2022-Unit-R070-Using-augmented-reality-to-present-information

Ah interesting - I'd not even properly considered specs! So.. are they looking for an alternative app now then? It was my understanding that this is a module of a GCSE course that's already underway, the ICT dept here are being characteristically cagey about the details though - I assume it's a non-optional module? Thanks

Well I don't know what whacky course / exam board our ICT dept has signed up for but apparently one of the modules for year 11 is creating some Augmented Reality content I had a look for them a while back and I couldn't find any AR app on the list of exam board suggestions that - Was properly freeware - Had a Windows version and wasn't mobile only - Was at least slightly intuitive to use and not just bizarre They've come back since and said they want Adobe Aero installing in all the ICT suites for after half term, to be fair Adobe Aero did seem like the best of a bad bunch - the main marks against it were that the Windows version is still in beta and even though it's just a little freeware app it wants to install the entire Creative Cloud platform before it will run I found this about packing Adobe CC apps from the admin console, generally: https://helpx.adobe.com/enterprise/using/package-apps-admin-console.html But I don't have an Adobe ID that has access to the admin console and it doesn't seem certain that Aero would be available as a package on there as it's a freeware, beta app and not a traditionally 'core' part of Creative Cloud So... Is anyone else being asked to roll out augmented reality software? Anyone had any luck with packaging and deploying Adobe Aero, especially without all the CC gumph? Or is there some nice, free, open source, user friendly Augmented Reality app for Window s that I've missed? Thanks Sean

Has anyone else who's using SIMS InTouch for sending SMSes to parents had any complaints from parents that they received text messages at obscure hours of the morning? SIMS tell us that this is just how the system works - if 'service is degraded' InTouch keeps trying to send until it is successful no matter how unsociable the hour! For what it's worth I've submitted a request for change - ticket no. 1701-3596365 on the Capita website, which you can upvote if you like... Thanks

Ooch - nasty Thanks for letting me know!

Oop, another bit of thread necromancy here Have ECDL changed the name of their plugin or something? I've just beeen told that we are running more ECDL sessions at the end of next month and I've been trying to get my head around how all this works again I found the test page and downloaded the linked plug-in but it's called 'PSIIA Plugin' (PSI In-Application, apparently) instead of EKSLW - is this the latest version of the same thing that's been rebranded or have I grabbed the wrong one this time? The new MSI for the Plugin is smaller than the old one but not by much Cheers

Yeah, mandatory profiles - annoying and problematic when you have them, annoying and problematic when you don't!

In reply to synaesthesia, above, but to the thread generally as well Adding printers via GPP is generally working well for us except for the issue of setting the default printer on a users first logon - at profile creation time, as detailed here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2787598 We have group policy set to clear out profiles that have been inactive for a week or so, therefore, it's causing problems after school holiday, absences, students being moved to other computers etc. (I SAY 'causing problems' - students have to be aware of the printer they're printing to and possibly select another one from the list, so it's not major but I DO have a call on from ICT about it...) I tried a VB script to run a gpupdate /force at logon but that only works about half of the time - I suspect it's often running before the printer connection is set up, like the GP to set default itself is I've read some stuff about maybe using GPP to set up a scheduled task to run a GP Update script on logon but haven't had much luck with that either - not sure the best user to run it as and the best location to run the script from, doing it that way Anyone else been down this road? Cheers

Since we migrated to our academy group's fancy new AD structure, last summer, ICT have reported that Internet Explorer is very slow starting up I finally got to go down and do some proper testing during half term this week and have come to the conclusion that it's an IE first run thing - basically, if a user has a profile in place on a given computer and has ran IE in the past then IE will start fine but if they haven't (and our group policy is set to get rid of profiles that have been inactive for 2 weeks) then IE can take up to about 2 mins to start up All the welcome screen and wizards are disabled but I guess IE must still be doing all of its setting up for a new user in the background I believe we were still using a mandatory profile for students, that had ran IE and gone thought the first-run process, right up until the change over last summer so that's why ICT weren't seeing IE starting up slowly before So... Does this sound right? Is a slow starting IE on first run just a fact of life if you don't run mandatory profiles and periodically delete unused ones or is there anything else we can do to speed up the 'first run' a bit, without having to go back to mandatory profiles? IIRC In earlier versions of IE there used to be a small pop-up displaying the stages of the first-run set-up process, is there some GP setting somewhere to bring that back if only to give users something to look at while they're waiting? Thanks

I don't know if there's anything interesting to glean from this but I recently reported our issues to Capita (case number 1604-3477791) and the support rep has replied with an internal Knowledge Base article about the issue that isn't generally available to the public: "1075-9663-0700 - Error creating window handle. System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception KBA-07657-G6W1P8 Notes Various areas of SIMS inc. but not restricted to: Personnel Student Details Focus | School | Arrange Cover Routines | Statutory Returns | School Workforce Census Fault code: 1075 9663 0700 Error creating window handle. System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception SIMS .net crashes Win32exception Workaround The error is caused by lack of resources on the system. It is usually an intermittent problem, happening on different workstations at different times. There is an internal investigation on going to establish if this is an application fault. See internal notes for details. Customer can be advised as below to minimise frequency of the crashes. To prevent the problem from occurring: Ensure that the person who uses SIMS has a high spec workstation Reboot the workstation daily as this will free up all previously allocated handles, or prior to performing tasks that involve heavy data input, restart SIMS. If affecting Cover: Use Tools | Cover | Global Settings and change the 'Cover Diary Rows' to a lower figure, so that the Cover Diary does not load and save so much data in one operation. Please set this to 10, then test by incrementing by 5 each time to find the optimum level. Check solution KB109255 for advice on performance issues." Sounds like they're still investigating whether it really IS a SIMS fault from that! I didn't get the 'attached notes' unfortunately

Sorry to bump with slightly old thread but we are just in the process of rolling out the Spring 2016 release right now Does anyone know if all the fixes for all the memory leak and performance issues mentioned in this thread made it into V7.168? We're particularly interested in the memory leak on the student details page Thanks Sean

I've had a look through the forum list and I guess this is the best place to ask this - it's more legal advise really One of our suppliers of particular web services is quite expensive so we were looking around for other suppliers and we found one we liked that was significantly cheaper. However, when we informed our current supplier in December that we would not be renewing our licensing and support, due at the end of January, they informed us that the terms of our contract say that we have a rolling contract and we need to inform them 90 days before the renewal date if we want to cancel and as this date has past we are now 'locked in' for at least another year We checked all the small print and that is, indeed, what the Ts & Cs say, however, I have heard of cases where certain Ts & Cs have no backing from the law and are effectively not worth the paper they're printed on - does anyone know how the law applies in this case? I think 'Scam' is a harsh word considering that they do provide some kind of service, albeit at a hugely inflated price compared to some of their competitors but, on the other hand, I have this nagging feeling that if we were a pensioner rather than an Academy then Ann Robinson might be interested in our story... Thanks guys

Right, yeah, I have a MS 'FixIt' that does that, I tried it and, having resynced her own files, my colleague's laptop now seems to be back in the desired state It would have been nice to have some way of sorting these situations out without the regular user having to re-sync their stuff but thanks for confirming there isn't, at least I can stop trying to work how to do that now...

We have Offline Files set up so that whenever a staff user logs onto a laptop their homearea syncs with it and is stored in the offline file store, which is great What's not so great though are situations like the one that has occurred recently - my colleague in the department was on annual leave and had left her laptop on her desk when a user came in in a flap and needed to get logged onto something, so we logged her my colleague's laptop. Unfortunately, when my colleague returned, she found that the remaining 20Gb of her mSATA SSD had all been used up with this user's synced home area So we had a look and, making sure the laptop was disconnected from the network so we knew we were defiantly just working with the offline versions, we navigated through the Sync Centre and deleted the files we didn't want to be synced to my colleagues laptop Unfortunately, when my colleague's laptop was re-connected to the network, synced and then the users own laptop also synced the user still found that we'd managed to delete her files! So is there a safe way to 'surgically' break sync partnerships with users homeareas without accidentally deleting the ONLINE copies of their files? This is something that's always bugged me about offline file sync This is Win7 clients with Win 2012 servers, by the way Thanks Sean

Sorry to bump an older thread but any ideas on pricing? for an average sized secondary of around 1000 students? A few years ago we had migrated from SIMS Learning Gateway to Bromcom's 'My Child at School' which is nice enough but costs around £8k a year, which seems a bit excessive, especially considering only around 100 of our parental account seem to actually get used We've apparently had a verbal quote from some people called 'ParentHub' for just £1400 but their stuff only seems half finished - it appears to be a iPhone and Android app only at the moment with a web portal listed as 'coming soon' So is the £8000 for MCaS particularly high or is the £1400 for ParentHub particularly cheap or a bit of both? Thanks

We're having issues with RM Easimaths (which, of course, is a web-based product rather than locally installed app so I hope this is the exact right forum for this - apologies if not!) We are finding that, in the middle of a test or activity that it will stop accepting input in text boxes or allow draggable elements to be moved but the weird part is that IE hasn't locked up, animated elements continue to animate and even the box you can pop open to tell you how much time you have left will still open and close quite happily, which seems to be a Flash element so even Flash doesn't look like it's fell over completely! At that point the only thing I can find to do is refresh the page but that starts the activity from the beginning again which isn't ideal I HAVE opened a call with RM but they when they asked me what version of Flash we were running and when I said 19 they reckoned that was a 'beta' version and we should try rolling back to V18 but I double checked the Adobe website and V19.0.0.185 is defiantly being offered as the latest 'gold' stable release, it doesn't affect all the machines in any given class so we'd have to roll the entire class back to test and we get Flash updates from out Academy group via SCCM so there's no guarantee that Software Centre won't just update us to V19 again automatically So I was wondering if any of you were getting the same behaviour with RM Easimaths, what version of Flash you're running and, even better, whether you managed to find a solution This is also on 64bit Win 7 with only 2Gb of RAM in the machines - we're finding that we really need 4 to run our new OS and are looking at getting the RAM ordered too so maybe I should just put it down to that? Cheers Sean

So if the OS I'm running is 64bit windows 7 in the classroom, am I supposed to install the x64 version of the C++ redistributable or the x86 one? I'm probably going to go ahead and install both but I'd like to know which one it actually wants... Cheers

IT TECHNICIAN 37 hours per week for 52 weeks per year (8.00am to 4.00pm, Monday to Thursday and 8.00am to 3.30pm on Friday 30 minute lunch break) Salary is paid at NJC Scale 4, Point 18 to 21 (£17,714 - £19,742) We are looking to recruit an experienced, skilled and enthusiastic individual who is educated to at least GCSE standard including English and Maths and holds a relevant qualification for IT Practitioners. You must possess good communication skills, be able to work as part of a team but also be able to work on your own initiative. For a full Job Description and Person Specification please visit: ICT Technician | David Ross Education Trust The closing date for applications is 9th January 2015.

We have recently added 2 Win2012r2 DCs to our network with a view to retiring our old 2008r2 ones when everything's happy and stable In testing we've found that when we freshly image a Windows 7 client on a part of the network controlled by 2012 DCs GPO assigned apps actually continue to install even after a user logs in - this seems very strange as I thought these things needed to be run in the pre-logon environment to guarantee perms and non-locked files etc. Also what if the user didn't realise that the apps were installing in the background and shut the computer down? Would installation continue where it had left off on re-boot? Win 7 clients on a 2008 part of the network still seem to behave as before - getting all the GPO software installed can take a couple of restarts but installation stops once the login screen appears the 2012 part of the network DOES make Win7 clients pause for a long time at 'Please Wait' while assigned apps are installed but the difference seems to be if this wait time exceeds some timeout - Win2008 stops installing and gives a logon screen while Win2012 gives a logon screen but continues with the installs in the background Is this change of functionality documented somewhere? Are there new GP settings to control it? Or is it just us with a strangely behaving network? Many thanks