hsimpson

Hi Nick, Just wondering if you managed to create mailboxes in Exchange 2010 from CSV and if so how did you do it in the end?

You can use GPO to push out shortcuts but there are limitations such as not being able to account for applications being installed in different locations on different workstations and the shortcuts will still display even if the software isn't installed on a particular machine.

I'm curious, for those that manage email at a school, how do you provision users into said email system? I know you can use Powershell for Office 365 and I believe gmail has APIs you can call...

Indeed, if you're willing to pay Automate creation of user accounts in Active Directory, Exchange mailboxes and more

The latest version of the SIF specification includes SIF web services which allow you to query a SIF agent (much like you would a SOAP web service) and ask it for specific data. Far less heavyweight than the usual message delivery patterns in previous versions of SIF. It will take a while before this functionality is widely available in the UK but if each MIS had an agent which supported it, it would make extracting data from any MIS a far easier task.

Conflict suggests the staff accounts already exist, were they previously provisioned in Fronter?

Indeed, SIF would remove issues like this, it supports HTTPS and client authentication and the UK data model contains objects which allow you to transport Free School Meals SIF Implementation Specification (UK) 1.3 - SIF UK

If you don't mind paying for an application launcher and want to assign different applications to different user groups and computers Manage your desktop icons for an entire network from a single location

Have you tried using Group Policy Management Console? It includes a Group policy results wizard which can be run against local or remote machines.

Sorry, you're right, Google Apps is far from static and does include some VLE functionality. I don't think it has the concept of assignments or electronic mark books though? I guess if you can code your own stuff you could add that kind of functionality. All pretty impressive considering it's free.

Sorry I didn't put a link in my first post, I'm a newbie to this forum and hadn't created enough posts to allow me to include a link glad you like the software though, pleased I made the recommendation

If you just want a static website and don't need any particular VLE functionality then something like SharePoint from Office 365 for education or Google Sites from Google Apps for education (which are both free) might be appropriate.

Check out this thread for a few suggestions http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows/57491-creating-new-users.html

You should contact Capita and use one of their existing mechanisms (Command Line Reporter and Capita Business Objects I think) rather than querying the database directly - the database schema is susceptible to change and any changes could break your queries.

I use a bit of free, open source software called Prey as an anti-theft solution for my Mac. Maybe it will provide you with a little extra security?