Jamman960

Hi All, I'm currently assessing options for replacing our aging Promethean IWB's with LCD touch screen's, many are coming with Android built in to some degree, they all tend to be limited to Jelly Bean(as the vast majority of non branded tabs and mobes are - anyone know why?) and most appear to be limited to selected apps unless you sideload etc. Does anyone consider having android to be a must have? I worry that its going to be stuck on V4 Jellybean(for the next 8-10 years) along with any vulnerabilities that pop up, we'll end up with staff expecting to be able to do more than it allows - we already have nursery staff complaining that they can't use iplayer/youtube via our clever touches without using the PC. At the same time they're using the android side to let the kids draw things and then complain they can't print/save it to the network. I'm thinking we're better off not having the android built in but ensure that the desktop software is suitable - I'm currently preferring Oktopus James

You'll also need a batch photo import licence each year, it's £70 if I remember correctly.

Hi, I'm having a few problems with a boards usb connection, I've previously had to replace the cable after our site team removed it by force when decorating and now the connection is becoming temperamental, restarting the PC appears to solve it for a while. The board in question is an 78" prm-ab2-01, I've currently got a 64" PRM-AB264-01 in storage. Are the circuit boards on these interchangeable by any chance? I'm not convinced the circuit is the issue but if we're able to swap them it'd be worth a shot. Regards James

I'd be interested to see a postmortem of this, my other half was still receiving replies that were obviously sent in the morning at midnight last night, outgoing emails were going straight out but incoming are severely delayed, an email sent at around 9pm arrived at 3am. I guess there isn't much they can do other than let it play out to avoid losing important mails.

My mrs is still having them come through, it must still be catching up as they say they've deleted the list, someone requested a read receipt on one message lol Good thing no one sent attachments in response

The inspection report for each school is probably as close as you're going to get, it should detail the total number of pupils along with the number of year groups, this should allow you to make an educated guess, it may even state average class size and normal number of forms per year. The census would certainly hold the info but from my understanding they generalise the data availible to the public and wouldn't declare that school x has y number of pupils in y6 etc

We've just started using Gamma(direct), Local, national and mobile calls are included on the 3yr package

How does everyone handle & filter their general enquiries emails? We currently have a distribution list setup that goes to our 4 front of house office staff, previously when we had less frontline staff the mails would also go to the bursar and headmaster. We now receive more marketing mails via this than genuine messages so I've been tasked with sorting it out - I've said that filtering out the marketing mails would result in too many false positives. My first thoughts are to ditch info@ and replace it with a few more focussed lists or possibly stop advertising addresses on our website and instead have an enquiries form but having looked at many other school sites the vast majority still seem to be advertising a generic office@ address, some have a form as well. Cheers James

Unfortunately those digital(Tdm) lines can't be connected into switches at all as they're simply receiving signals/ voltages from the pbx and not IP packets/Ethernet frames, much like your normal incoming phone lines, they'll be getting 48v from the pbx but this isn't Poe. If your system isn't too old it may be a hybrid/sip capable in which case you might be able to buy sip licences and compatible sip phones for the job, if it is purely a Tdm system you will need additional cable runs and possibly an additional line card James Is your pbx

I work full time in a mid sized independent prep school doing absolutely everything without external support other than for paternity leave, based on the primaries and secondaries I saw when working for an external support company it seems to be a good mix of the two, we've just taken on a junior tech in preparation for our mobile/digital learning expansion.

haha, at least it didn't come flat packed!

Exactly, im going to go for Sangoma gold support for a year or so then decide whether it's worth continuing with, we can always get support by the hour via voipon if necessary, hoping to get my techie fully familiar with it so I can go on annual leave in peace. Having done everything on site here for the last 8 years on my own without external support I can't see this being particularly taxing, figured I'd ask having heard one too many so called horror stories from telecom companies wanting more business in case I was missing something.

Fantastic, thanks all thats what I was hoping to hear I'm thinking about going straight to SIP trunks as we've currently got 4x ISDN2 connections in place with different numbers across our sites Our existing phones are all TDM/Digital handsets and are all leased so need to go back(sooner rather than later!) I'm planning to go with T23G's(getting a fantastic price atm) in general areas followed by T29G's in offices along with a few wifi sip phones, we're paying an absolute fortune at the moment so no matter what I buy results in a huge saving Its funny to hear all the horror stories from phone companies, I was told this morning that one small company realised that their IT guy was spending all of his time fixing the system so it ended up being cheaper to go with a proprietary system...

Hi All, I'm looking into setting up a Freepbx based system using a Sangoma FreePBX appliance and 40 Yealink phones across our 2 sites, we currently have an Aastra system which is costing us the earth and is nearing the end of its 7 year lease. Before taking on a Junior Technician earlier this year I'd decided I didn't have enough time to setup and manage a Freepbx/asterisk based system on my own so have approached various phone companies for quotes on Mitel, Samsung, LG etc systems, I've now told some of these companies that I'm thinking of going down the DIY route and they've all come out with horror stories of how they've "rescued" companies from such systems etc etc, one this morning stated that Yealink phones aren't much good and don't work as you'd expect. I suspect all of these are either genuine cases where people had cut corners and not set it up right or pure fiction but who knows... could those of you supporting open source phone systems please give me a rough idea of how much IT support time ends up being dedicated to phones once its all up and running? I'm expecting it to be much the same as our existing system where I only really get involved with moves or settings changes... I'm assuming our data cabling isn't going to start crumbling like our ancient telcom cabling is so it should actually be a reduction in support time(once setup) in my mind VOIP is well within the realms of IT support compared to traditional propriatary systems and isn't as complex as setting up a windows network from scratch, so long as the switches are setup with vlans and qos we're good to go.

Hi All, We currently have Tapestry in place however some of our staff for whatever reason are finding it difficult to work with, some are wanting to move across to 2simple 2build a profile however based upon the trial we've had I'm not happy at all, my issues are as follows: 1. we get a single login to use across the web interface and tablets, there is no difference between teaching staff and admin. There is no accountability and staff enter their name on each observation as free text. 2simple say we can email them to get a new password generated when necessary - with Tapestry we know who's doing each observation because they've logged on with their own pin or password, if someone leaves we disable their account and know they no longer have access. 2. Ipads are essentially setup by loading the app then entering the username/password and assigning a pin, from then on only the pin number is required... unless the staff member decides to turn it off - sure they can't turn off encryption but being able to disable the pin is pretty much the same thing surely? There are other small niggly things such as the app being designed for an iPhone and looking awful on the iPad but surely the above are show stoppers?

@snagrat did you get anywhere with this at all? while testing our new MDM I'm getting the exact same issue. the MDM support are saying its due to Apple notifications not getting back but have tested this internally and externally. James

Sorry yep would need to be 64gb air2/mini4's(no 32gb version available) or a 32gb 10/12" Pro

Glad to hear someone else is using it, I've spent some time today getting DEP, VPP & users etc setup and its looking good so far although when attempting to setup the first 2 iPads its getting stuck awaiting final configurations... Figured I'd test out their support only to find its €25/mo or €250/yr extra, I've gone for the 1 month option for now - I'd probably stick with monthly going forward... if I need support every month somethings wrong having never needed support with Meraki James

What model iPad are they? If air2/mini4 or Pro you'll be able to use the upcoming sharing feature otherwise you're kinda stuck with logins via captive portal/similar for pupil differentiation

Just a quick one, this mdm was mentioned by an apple techie back in February when I attended a session on deployment in general which included a fair amount of 9.3 info, when I visited the site at the time it was a fairly average/Unknown mdm but now it seems to have adopted all of the 9.3 changes extremely quickly while Meraki still hasn't... Is anyone else using it? Ive just purchased 6 licences to try it out for just over £17 as they renew in January, it's only €5+vat per year/device hoping to find time on Monday to get it up and running https://zuludesk.com James

We've recently upgraded to an EoFTTC connection to get some level of uncontended bandwidth and service level agreement without going for a leased line, I'll probably bring in another one once we move to voip/sip and can get rid of our isdn's. We're lucky to have 2 different exchanges available in different areas of our sites so dual fttc/EoFTTC should be reliable enough

Full time net manager and tech here

Hi, We currently have an 1gbit MRV laser link in place between our 2 sites spanning ~240m with houses in between, this works perfectly and is as good as if not better than having an actual fiber connection in place. At the time of installation in 2010 it was our cheapest option to provide a link between sites, it was a large initial investment but has since only costs us just over £2k in maintenance each year inc preventative maintenance. MRV have stopped manufacturing FSO equipment so our support company are increasing the cost and suggesting we replace the link with millimeter wave tech. As ever wireless tech has moved on, when we were previously looking 802.11 just wasn't reliable or fast enough however now one of our other suppliers has suggested we go for a Ruckus P300 bridge costing us less than our yearly FSO maintenance... according to the specs it can provide a 500mbit link which is enough - we went the gbit route because there was nothing between 100mbit and 1gbit at the time. Has anyone got 802.11ac point to point links in place and are they reliable enough? I'm thinking of keeping the FSO in place with no maintenance contract, it'll probably last 2 years without cleaning or realignment if I can't convince anyone to climb on the roof beforehand, the P300 link or whatever we go with would hopefully provide an equally reliable backup link ready for when the FSO finally fails. James

I suppose if the cost of school dinners includes cleanup, supervision etc etc then there is going to be a shortfall when it comes to packed lunches but £1.80/day is way into making a profit territory. I'd be interested to hear what the majority of schools these schools are charging rather than the extreme end of it. Running state schools like businesses is wrong but I guess thats the road we're heading down Must admit I remember taking my lunch with me to the fields to eat while playing football when I was at school, if free options are available then its a bit of a non issue.

According to this article: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT206177 shared iPads require iPad Air 2/mini 4/pro... Fantastic that's all of our devices out including the 15 airs we just ordered... Can still use the classroom app which should still solve a few issues I guess