chrisjako

Where is the data being held?

Problem with yeastar is they are a Chinese company so you probably shouldn’t input contact details to them which technically breaches GDPR

Just came to say don't touch CIVICA cloud, we are with them they dont sync arbor data for 48 hours which causes chaos with parents, currently looking ot end for a breach fo SLA they take hours to answer the phone and tickets still not repsonded since february

I’m at breaking point with this company, before they joined Qoria I was a real advocate, even recommending them to our LA of whom took them on for a lot a Bradford school and things ran virtually seamless for a decade. Fast forward to three years ago, we joined a MAT of 19 schools and smoothwall won our tender to join them all together with a central management smoothwall parent and child box structure. Its an absolute pile of horse manure, I’ve had issues right from the start of them sending faulty s1 boxes, post installation we had 5 boxes hacked due to their install team leaving the password as default and they had the audacity to blame me for not checking them all post their technical install handover! We where promised cloud filter from the start and due to a series of mismanagement on their side we only got it working a month ago, when I say working, it randomly blocks internet traffic across multiple sites sporadically causing the PC to look like they are running slow, we had to set an intune policy to test roll out inprivate so we could bypass cloud filter and voila it works, I am being made out by them to not know what I am doing when apparently they have 100s of customer uses cloud filter successfully only to be told by another technician that we where incorrectly informed about secret knock configuration and they further information about setting custom DNS records was released to us after that didn’t work on the child boxes. Their teams and our account manager take ages to respond. Don’t get me wrong there are a few gems in support but getting a hold of them is like trying to find a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. You spend more time logging a ticket then you do troubleshooting it with support. These things are just the tip of the iceberg! My team supports other schools outside our Trust and one uses Exa and surf protect, I called them several times to troubleshoot firewall ports for a new SIP system, EXA support answered the phone straight away, no need to raise a ticket, one stayed on the phone for 30 mins with me whilst we finished testing, this was way past 6pm too. I know they are a sponsor here and seem to get well protected whenever a ‘smoothwall issue’ post is made but I honestly don’t care, this company has been an absolute disaster for MAT and I can’t wait to rip this crap out once our contract ends

LOL, yeah i just spotted 2 of those three can be done natively, i've just setup an arbor report with the import contacts template and fired it out to my BM's across the trust to respond back to me - it is a manual process though, the only thing that looks good is the ability to open Arbor when that contact calls however i dont quite know how that will work in a central MAT 3cx installation with 19 seperate Arbor sites, maybe UPWORK is my friend here to complete a cheap CRM script for point 2

So i am aware that clarion have their own CRM which does the following: 1. Caller Preview- Displays the parent/student name so you know who is calling before you answer 2. Screen Popping – Once you do answer, it will open the MIS on the parent/student record automatically. 3. Click-To-Dial functionality - No more memorising phone numbers and no more misdialling. Simply find your contact and call straight from your MIS. But are there any other alternative solutions out there? Has anyone attempted to do their own

Contact me if you want to talk to someone,- been there, done that wore the T shirt - Our MAT is on one tenant its fab but was a grind to get it to this stage

I appreciate I said "crashes" however that was probably the wrong terminilogy - the green tick still shows on the dashboard so essentially isnt a "crash" - it just needs a service restart to function as intended - in this case the alert will not help

Web proxy randomly crashes and needs restarting – with no alert telling us it needs to. We find out when students are reported accessing the internet unfiltered, has happened three times over the space of 2 years within 19 academies, apparently a known issue

So for BYOD with http are you saying it could be possible for our students to bypass fitlering?

2 of these points can be fixed and prevented, one can not

It seems there are several issues that allow unfiltered sites across our academies • Web proxy randomly crashes and needs restarting – with no alert telling us it needs to • http/https-QUIC needs adding to firewall reject rules • Devices which secret knock via cloudfilter will not filter traffic when a browser is used that hasn’t got the cloud filter extension, for example renamed portable browsers that are difficult to police in an intune enviroment I have growing concerns regarding Smoothwall's effectiveness in safeguarding both our staff and students.

I mean if that was me i wouldve come straight out into the external access point so no cable was visible, there is a false celining at the other side to i dont know why they didnt do this, if it did have to have cable external run it would be inside proper trunking. I just hope to got they havent stapled it into the flat felt roof above otherwise we will have water ingress issues youears down the line

Nope not epoxy you are 100% correct it is a zip tie foam sticker, the same ones we all know to last around 2-3 days before loosing their tack and falling off, this is also a cat6a cable not a fibre

We have 17 schools in our trust currently undergoing installation of this project, our supplier who well established and well known to our community, seems to be rushing it through and subcontracting subcontracters. I visted a primary school today to see how its going and saw a plethora or install issues however this one stood out - I know my opinions of the install but what are your thoughts?