Gongalong

Took around 2-3 hours to enable for us. - - - Updated - - - The UI is better than it was, it does allow selecting of hundreds of students at a time to add licenses. Ours already had them, thankfully!

Teams looks like it has lots of potential for disaster in a secondary school, so it's going to need some careful watching, and some clear instruction to students on using it appropriately. Looks like a lot of it can be locked down, but almost too many settings and policies...

Thanks all. @mullet_man Useful to know about the 24 hours! I noticed it wasn't immediate.

Hi Folks, In the old Office 365 Admin Centre I enable Teams for students by going to Settings > Services & add-ins > Microsoft Teams > Settings by user/license type, change to Education - Student, and switch on (Turn Microsoft Teams on or off for all users of this type). I can't find this setting in the new Teams Admin Centre. Does it exist? Thanks

Not for us unfortunately. We have a second connection with no filtering and it's fine on that, so definitely something the Smoothwall is doing, whether firewall or filtering.

Good point. I've been using Smoothwall's web filter report, but I think I need to dig deeper! I've followed this, and it hasn't worked. We aren't using decrypt and inspect on this particular VLAN and wireless SSID anyway, but I wondered if the firewall bit might help https://kb.smoothwall.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002134304-Configuring-the-Smoothwall-Filter-and-Firewall-to-Allow-Access-to-WhatsApp Oddly if I turn airplane mode on and off it connects straightaway, suggesting that the app does some sort of fallback, or is just odd full stop in the way it connects.

Hi folks, Any WhatsApp gurus out there? I haven't used it until today, but I've had reports from a couple of teachers that the last few days/weeks they are getting "Connecting..." at the top of the app. They are connected to our staff wi-fi, which goes through a Smoothwall, but traffic is not inspected, nor is WhatsApp blocked. (I have logged a ticket with Smoothwall anyway) I've just installed the app and am getting the same behaviour, a "Connecting..." at the top. I have specifically turned off the Mobile Data option (this is an iPhone, so in Settings > WhatsApp) although I get very poor/no data signal here anyway. Any ideas? Thanks

Not using it in anger yet, but we found ClickSend very easy to setup and to deal with.

I checked the mail merge fields, and admission number's not listed. You get the following. You can always ask if they will add it: Recipient: Title Forename First Initial Surname Full name Learner: Forename Surname Full name Form group name Form Teacher House group name Year group name he/she He/She his/her son/daughter His/Her him/her his/hers - - - Updated - - - Interested to hear what you find out about MFA!

I've not spotted MFA. We were going to issue guidance to staff about ensuring phones/tablets were PIN locked, and not accessible by anyone else - on my iPhone at least it seems to store the login details so I can just go straight in, but there are some setttings for login timeouts (although we do have timeouts set). There are templates which allow you to mail merge fields for emails/SMS/push. Not sure offhand if it includes admission number. If parents have the app, messages will go to that (emails will also go to their email account, but SMS will only go to the app if they use it), which notifications for are enabled as per smartphone setup. You can send push messages which only go to the app/website, but that seems more staff oriented.

Thanks both. Either switching to Policies or the List in Directory tickbox fixed it.

Ah! Hadn't spotted this way. I've been using User Config > Preferences > Control Panel Settings > Printers, and then adding a Shared Printer there. Will try via Policies instead... It was unticked, so will tick that. Thanks, will have a look there if it still fails.

Hi folks, I'm trying to use group policy to set a shared printer. I’ve done what seems to be logical, that is I’ve added a shared printer under User Config > Preferences > Control Panel Settings > Printers. No printer. I’ve double checked with GPUPDATE /FORCE, rebooted, ensured that security filtering is set to both Authenticated Users and also a security group the PC is in. Still no printer. Any ideas what to troubleshoot? Thanks

Hi folks, I'm switching over from a standalone WSUS server to SCCM and SUP. I've followed a couple of guides and think I understand the setup: I have added SUP to the site, created Software Update Groups, downloaded the updates which I will deploy, and will setup relevant ADRs. I have created device collections to target the necessary PCs. Are there any tips or things to watch out for? We are using the Office 365 apps, so I have enabled updates for that in the SUP and client settings. I will remove the GPO that's pointing the clients at the old standalone WSUS server. I'm aware that I need to add Win 1903 and later as a product, otherwise I get no 1903+ updates. Thanks

Jamf School had a ton of options for MacOS profile management, much as Mosyle does. The paid option comes with support, same with Mosyle. I agreed Jamf Pro is a much bigger product, but it also has a much bigger price tag and required training. We've done what we want with Mosyle, so not really a case of the wrong solution. Jamf Pro would have been a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

Frustrating that the search functionality across O365, EAC and Azure aren't the same.

We use RM Unify's AD sync, so are completely locked down on what gets synced from AD. They use the "Office" field in O365/Azure to store the year of entry to schooling, which is what the Azure enterprise app needs.

Problem solved. I spotted mail enabled security groups in the Exchange admin center. In the EAC I can filter by the AD field I need to use, and then add to that group. My objective was to be able to add users to an enterprise application in Azure, and I can only do that by individually selecting users (!) or security groups, and mail enabled security groups are picked up by that.

Hi folks, Any Azure gurus out there? I’d like to create a security group in Azure based on the AD user’s “office” field. I’ve tried googling around custom filters and groups but not finding anything. I can spot it’s possible to create dynamic groups, but I don’t seem to have this option so I’m guessing it’s because of the level of Azure we have (the free school version as part of O365). Would prefer to do it using the UI if possible, but resigned to doing it through PowerShell if necessary (although not looked at how this is hooked up to Azure). Thanks

Depends which version of Jamf, bearing in mind they bought Zuludesk (now Jamf School) which is a cheaper option. Jamf School is very similar to Mosyle, in fact I prefer the interface, but it was the aforementioned issues that caused us to switch to Mosyle. Ultimately all they are doing is using Apple's profile management via the cloud.

iMac is bound to the domain with a profile. Sorting out the profile was still a bit of a faff because of the field names used in the profile not actually being what the fields should have been populated with e.g. server hostname should actually be the domain name. Presumably that comes from Apple? I've had an issue twice where the iMac's domain record has seemingly gone "stale" and it needed to be re-bound. We don't actually use this in anger until Easter when we get 16 iMacs, so will see how stable it all is. Technically it seems a better solution to me to have the iMacs talk directly to the DC, rather than going some convoluted route. If the logon issues continue you can spend a couple more bucks per iMac and use a Mosyle app to login, which apparently still works with local ADs.

Jamf said I had to rollback to an earlier version of MacOS, which I just wasn't prepared to do - it meaning reinstalling 16 Macs, and what if it happened again?! I was curious to trial Mosyle anyway, so tried that and didn't get the issue. And although Jamf's support were good I started to get "shrug" answers from them, whereas Mosyle just seemed that bit better technically and always had suggestions. We're going ahead with Mosyle.

We've ended up using Mosyle, and binding the Macs instead. So far it's working. We might have been able to do it with Jamf but we started getting a lot of shoulder shrugging from their support, whereas Mosyle were much more helpful. With binding it didn't help that some of the profile fields were incorrect e.g. it refers to the domain server hostname, whereas it acutally means just the domain.

Hi folks, We're using Mosyle MDM to reconfigure some iMacs, including binding them to a Windows domain. Mosyle say it's impossible to remove or redirect the Documents, Desktop etc. system folders to the user's network home folder, and I can't spot any way of doing it within their solution. Are there any alternative ways of doing it, or is it just a case of the teacher hammering this home every lesson? (I’ve tested with GarageBand, and by default that saves in a local user’s folder, under Music\GarageBand. The Word app defaults to OneDrive, but then if you choose “On my Mac” it defaults to the local Documents folder.) Thanks

It transpires there's been an update to SMHW, so now it's relatively easy to select multiple classes for a particular piece of homework (select one class, then add the next (two clicks) etc.). So problem is pretty much solved for now. Thanks for confirming though that it's a Nova change.