Jamman960

In our IT suite we have 4 50" TV's around the room with Apple TV's attached, we then use Air Parrot to distribute to them all at the same time or sometimes use a couple of PC's to send out different things or mirror to one of them from an iPad, this has worked pretty well for a couple of years now.

This might just be us but we're currently experiencing a strange issue where all pupils with a leaving date set aren't being imported to Groupcall despite their leaving dates being in July, still waiting for Groupcall to get back to me but figured it was worth mentioning here as its not the easiest to spot. We first noticed it when our year 8 pupils dissapeared from Satchel:One yesterday.. James

We've been fairly lucky with ours as enough people immediately started using it so we had enough work to do without taking extra non-helpdesk jobs on, once the other staff saw that jobs reported to the helpdesk were being actioned quickly they all fall into line. I used to find that I'd forget jobs that had been reported verbally then suddenly remember them in the middle of the night 2 weeks later, I now tell people I won't guarantee off-helpdesk jobs will be done and tell those that complain they should have put a ticket in, It takes a while not to feel guilty about it though but being in a position of having my workload on the helpdesk rather than partially in my head is so much more manageable. I often send out emails thanking staff for doing x and praising the high uptake even if the uptake isn't great, often they'll see that and start doing what you've asked as they had forgotten and now assume everyone else had already been doing it

Sims is still the HP of the MIS world, nobody ever got fired for sticking with the "Market Leader" and Sims is still a very safe bet unfortunately, they're also making all the right noises with their Next Gen claims so no ones going to criticise anyone for staying put, we can scream as much as we want but ultimately Sims works "well enough"

I think the real problem is that SLT's and admin teams don't see the problem with Sims, it works for them and with it being so complex they've had to invest a serious amount of effort to get it working in a way that works for them. In my school I'm the only one particularly keen to push this forward although our new head is coming from a school already using iSAMS and has already been through a migration which is going to be a massive help. I'm planning to approach this from a process review angle, how are we doing things now and how can alternative systems improve on this? can we reduce the number of systems we use and provide better value for all stakeholders in the process. I've been planning it for a few years but Covid, major management changes have pushed it further along the road. I'm still worried that Covid may still de-rail this although the Sept 22(in our case) deadline seems to have increased willingness to at least look at alternatives.

I can't see many schools being in a position to pull off a switch before April in our case I'm initiating a process review in January in the hopes of identifying where a more modern system would improve them, we're in the fortunate position of having our renewal date in September rather than April(independent)

We've often sent files inside password protected zip files via wetransfer, they're deleted after 7 days on the free tier and the limit is 2gb

Currently using OneNote for most things along with Snipeit for asset management but I'm thinking about going towards a full on service desk to organise projects, change requests, configuration items, purchase orders, contracts etc to create a fuller picture

I imagine much of it is like the old saying “no one gets fired for buying HP” - Sims has so much market share that it’s seen as a safe bet rather than a gamble (Can’t wait to be free from Sims!)

I sense that reporting all faults in a timely manner is important not sure why they’re after a security professional for the position though

Bickley Park School is looking to appoint an enthusiastic IT Technician to start as soon as possible, initially for a 6-month contract. The successful candidate will support the school’s rapidly growing use of IT under the guidance of our IT Infrastructure Manager(me) The ideal candidate should have some experience supporting end users in their use of IT and have knowledge of Microsoft Windows server/client systems, computer hardware/software and iPad maintenance. Bickley Park is a fantastic place to work, we've recently been awarded Prep School of the Year 2021. https://uk.indeed.com/job/it-technician-f9134f350527508f

We’ve had Toshiba machines for a while and they’re pretty reliable. I’ve had nothing but bad experiences with Kyocera mfd’s but that may have been more down to the supplier (danwood) being awful

Sorry to hijack the thread but I've wondered how this would work when going from one MIS to another, many 3rd party systems rely upon a pupils "ID" within the MIS rather than admission no's or UPN's - when migrating from one MIS to another would the ID's generally be ported across? I'm guessing in this case wonde would continue to present the same pupil data to the 3rd party and the change could be semi-transparent?

This seems to have been resolved by re-uploading the CSV's, we had to add a TA to a few classes and after the uploading the error has dissapeared. James

Yep thats right, all classes were renewed in June via ASM

Its only a requirement for staff apple ID's so we usually get the staff member to enter it during the setup process. Either that or I usually use my own(or my technician's ) mobile number's but haven't run into a limit as yet... might be a new thing Are you using managed ID's?

Hey all, Has anyone ever come across this error? this is the first time I've seen it and can't find anything similar online other than a few mentions of student authorisation errors, the solution seems to be upgrading IOS but the affected staff are on 13/14 already We're using JamF school(already submitted a ticket with them) but there isn't many settings availible to change relating to this and all seems to be ok within Apple School Manager where the classes are all imported from. Cheers James

Genee have a habit of dissolving and coming back... or at least their screens division did when we looked at buying from them a few years ago. Hope it goes well for you, I'd never heard of Genee Registrar before this.

We moved to freepbx in 2016 and it’s been great, started out replacing our existing phones but eventually changed to 1 phone per classroom - it used to cost us 300+ to add a new phone to the system and we were close to capacity but now if there’s a pc in a location adding a phone is simple and usually only costs us the price of a phone. We also went from 2 pbx’s to one to cover both of our sites Moving to sip trunks was easy, be weary that openreach freeze migrations during December, this caught us out briefly. We used Gamma and get trunks for £8/mo per trunk with 1000mins free covering all local,national and mobile numbers If I were doing it again I’d be looking at 3cx also but freepbx is more than capable

We were lucky, I placed our usual summer order of iPads in may and they were in stock by June and our supplier held them for us until mid July. My supplier is now having trouble getting them in again now Also ordered a couple of servers from ICT Direct which arrived a few days later Now just need to order an it suite of desktops but will leave them till October

I’d expect there is more you can delete, the solus database is probably taking up a good amount. I’d run tree size and figure out what’s eating the space, you can dismount the databases, move them to another location and re-mount, it might be worth doing this with the solus database. I’ve not had to look into it but I would have thought there’s a way to slim down the solus db as most of its contents will be irrelevant if you’re up to date already.

To be honest I think most are as good as each other, a lot comes down to who you have managing them and how good their service is in reality. I swear by our Toshiba's as they tend to go forever between maintenance visits, our provider DirectTec have been great(although they've just been taken over by Appogee...) At one point we had Kyocera devices via Danwood and they caused us nothing but problems, one would work for 200 pages once an engineer left and then revert to the same issue. Despite many calls and me insisting we never met their replacement criteria. We switched to DirectTec and had a fantastic experience, toners delivered automatically, engineers out within the day etc. I would look to ensure they are using genuine toner and parts as part of the agreement and hopefully get free toner delivery - it adds up quickly when their automated ordering system send out individual toners rather than combining them. Its also worth seeing if you can get them to freeze the cost per page for the first couple of years. As a school its probably worth looking into the frameworks availible, we didn't on this occasion as we had to pay a large settlement to our previous providers. James

What’s the problem with it being applied at home also? If they’re school devices their core purpose should surely be education or do the parents technically own them? We don’t allow pupils to install their own apps and disable iMessage. With Jamf school we’re able to apply policy’s based upon time or location

You can now enrol any iPad into DEP rather than having the reseller enrol them. The only difference is they can be removed from DEP for the first 30 days if I remember correctly. James

I’ve just used a portable hotspot with a smarty(3) sim for our sports day at a local athletics track, It handled a days worth of social media uploads, spreadsheet via OneDrive/forms/email usage very easily So long as you’re in an area with good coverage you’ll probably forget you’re on a 4/5g connection Currently paid £10 for 30gb on a rolling 30 day contract but £20 gets you unlimited(650gb fair usage apparently)