smarties11

I can see a few issues here. There are some further errors in your XML. You still have ,lnk instead of .lnk for StaffCommon. Also in your screenshot you have StaffCommon (J).lnk and Shared (Q).lnk but your XML is missing the space before the ( for both items. Either update the XML to include the space or rename the shortcuts to remove the space. Also, all of your shortcuts need to be inside the 'Programs' folder. Move them into there and then update the shortcut paths in your XML to \\server\Icons\Students\Start Menu\Programs\name.lnk. Do you have your start menu redirected to the same location, i.e. \\server\Icons\Students\Start Menu? I'm questioning this because the path mentions students but then one of your shortcuts is to a staff drive. Sorry to sound so repetitive but these shortcuts must exist in the redirected start menu assigned to your user. If you can't see them in the start menu list on the left hand side, then it won't work. So is your start menu for the user you have been testing with redirected to \\server\Icons\Students\Start Menu\?

No problem, pleased to help. There are errors in your XML in terms of the columns and rows for your layout. At the top you have specified that the start tiles width is 6 cells wide. For your DesktopApplicationTile, you have specified each as 2x2. So the first item in School Apps should be Column 0 Row 0. The second C2 R0. The third C4 R0. The fourth C0 R2. And so on. Your StaffCommon shortcut had ,lnk instead of .lnk as the extension. I've corrected your XML for you in this paste https://pastebin.com/JWgwrT4h - give this a try? Do you use roaming profiles by any chance? If so no amount of fiddling is going to work, roaming profiles and start menus just don't play nicely in newer builds of Windows 10. We use local profiles now for staff and guest profiles (which automatically delete on logoff) for students. Also just to be absolutely clear - I did mention earlier but just to re-iterate - the shortcuts you have referenced on your layout tiles MUST exist in your start menu. Can you see shortcuts in your start menu list to all of the items in your XML?

In my experience it is better to start small with the XML and expand it as you go, testing each item individually. Minor errors in the XML file can cause the whole thing to fail. There are several errors in yours in terms of space between the lines etc. I'd also recommend using a proper text editor such as Notepad++ (freeware) rather than the notepad built into Windows. I've had no problems using DesktopApplicationLinkPath and UNC paths and we are using Windows 10 1809. Are you also redirecting your start menu - to the same UNC location you are specifying in your layout XML? Shortcuts MUST exist in the start menu for them to work in the XML. Where are you storing your XML? I found the best approach to store it in NETLOGON and then use a group policy preference to copy it to the C:\windows\ folder, and then use group policy to assign the layout from the C:\windows location. In terms of shortcuts to network drives, I found the most reliable way was to create a shortcut in your redirected start menu to the drive with the following as the target "C:\Windows\explorer.exe S:" - obviously replacing S: with the drive or path you want. Then reference this shortcut in your XML. For edge, just copy the built-in shortcut to your redirected start menu and then reference that. Same goes with Office applications. I've pasted my layout to paste bin for you so that formatting is preserved (https://pastebin.com/LGpvJNGN). We're using this on around 400 machines with no issues. You are welcome to use this as a starting point, I would recommend you start by trimming it down to just the Office shortcuts first and once they are working then expand the other sections. I also specify the pin list for the taskbar which you can remove if you don't need (the bits in between and ) Hope this helps, I remember the frustrations of getting this working!

Thanks for your reply. I had assumed it was using a new name for the shortcut that kicked things into life but it does make sense that it was because the XML has a newer timestamp. The next time this affects us I will just re-save the XML to update the timestamp and see if that fixes it. This is quick enough and easy enough to do without having to worry about the cache. Appreciate your time!

Hi, We've been redirecting the Start Menu to a network location and then using a layout XML to customise the tile layout for around a year now and it has worked really well without any problems. However, today I noticed an issue. One of the tiles on our start menu is a shortcut to an internal claim form. The path to this form has changed. I updated the shortcut in the redirected Start Menu (no need to update the layout XML as it just points to the shortcut lnk file) and now when an existing user logs on, the tile for that item is broken. The icon disappears and the text W~Microsoft.AutoGenerated appears with a random GUID at the end instead of the shortcut name. If you delete the users local profile then it works fine, as does a new user. So it seems that Windows must cache the tile data somewhere. Any ideas where this might be? I can get around it easily enough by renaming the shortcut and then pointing the layout XML to the new shortcut instead but this seems a bit silly? Thanks!

We're running O365 for all students and staff now on our Win10 machines (approx. 370 computers) using Device Based Activation and have had no issues at all once the device has been provisioned. The only niggle we have run into (on 3 machines in total) is where the DBA script fails (presumably because of a transient Internet connection issue). What happens then is that the O365 client activates against the user's account. So all we do now is check that the machine has licensed correctly before issuing it by looking at the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\ClickToRun\Configuration\O365ProPlusRetail.EmailAddress - if it has licensed correctly the key value should always start with '_D' which represents the O365 device based user account '[email protected]'. Other than that it has worked superbly for us.

It looks like you have been validated for A1 Plus, so to get the A1 Plus faculty licenses to show, you should just need to take an unlicensed user through the self-service sign up page at https://products.office.com/en-us/student/office-in-education - i.e. make sure the user you choose currently has no licenses assigned in O365 admin. This will then license that user for A1 Plus and make the licenses available for you to assign to other users. If you set shared activation in the XML, then this is how your O365 clients are activating. This model basically activates the O365 device for each user individually when they log in and is designed for situations where you might have 1 PC shared by a small handful of users e.g. in a hospital or call centre. I read somewhere in the MS documentation that 'excessive activation attempts' would result in activation being blocked. I don't know how many activations it would take, but in a school where on student computers there is a high turnover of logins/logouts you could easily hit several hundred activations per day - so we decided to go down the Device Based Activation route instead. This creates a 'user' for each client in O365 admin and your client checks in I think every 30 days. It's dead simple once you've got it up and running but does require the computer to have an Internet connection at the point you run the DBA script to activate the computer. Bear this in mind if you want to automate this process using SCCM - as the task sequence command run under the local system account, you'll need authentication exceptions in place for the Microsoft domain on your proxy.

Click on the billing button on the left hand menu, and then licenses. If you have them, they will show here as "Office 365 A1 Plus for faculty" and "Office 365 A1 Plus for students". You then need to assign these to your users instead of the standard A1 ones or the Office 365 ProPlus ones. If your Office 365 deployment is working then most likely you have SSO turned on for your tenant and your users are being signed in automatically. If you specified 'shared computer activation' in your XML, they will be being activated against this, otherwise they will be being activated against the Office 365 ProPlus license (designed for home use) and each computer they use in school will be counting towards their 5 home licenses and you will soon run into issues. You really need to use either Shared Computer Activation or Device Based Activation. We opted for the latter but it does require some additional steps. See here for information https://boards.microsoft.com/public/prism/80710/category/34626?token=f55452094b. It's worth pointing out that Device Based Activation isn't officially supported outside of the US, but there are plenty of schools in the UK who are using it without issue. Hope this helps!

£1500 to store tapes off-site? Our local solicitors does this for us FOC! If the tapes are encrypted there's no need for anything radical here.

Ah that's great, pleased my vbs worked for you! I used to use GPP to delete the files but then I found that when a user is logged in, and a background policy refresh occurs, the user ends up with no wallpaper. So a logoff script is definitely the best place for it.

Seems a bit strange then! I see you said you've deployed the update to a collection containing only one PC - are the client settings above also deployed to that PC? Or could it be using the default policy? And I assume you're using the correct correct x86/x64 update flavour to match the O365 client architecture you have deployed? It doesn't sound like you are doing anything different to us, I think I followed the same guide you linked to when we set it up a few months back too!

I think we're talking about different things @KevinB. It's the SCCM client setting I mean, as in my screenshot below....

Have you set an SCCM client software update policy to allow management of the Office365 client? It will take a little time for this to be picked up. What timescale did you set for the availability and deployment deadline? Unless you set these to 'as soon as possible' the SCCM client decides when to pull the update within the dates you set based on client activity. Manually running the scan cycles on the client is always hit and miss. They don't start immediately; it just makes the request of the client and again the client decides when to run it based on activity.

I'd say the issue here is the mixing of technologies old and new. Smart 11 was released in 2012 so is likely only officially compatible with Office 2010 and possibly 2013. If you're running Office 2016/2019/365 client then I'd suggest running the latest Smart software and when the 45 day trial expires just get your staff to sign in with their Office 365 accounts which will activate it without the premium features.

The latest version will run in basic mode [same features as 11] if your staff sign in with a Microsoft Azure edu account. Only premium features require a license. As for Smart Ink, we don't have these issues with the latest version running alongside Office 365 ProPlus client.

Even if you are using roaming profiles you should still delete the cached wallpaper from the c drive as the profile isn't written back to the server until logoff. As well as the transcodedwallpaper file you need to empty the cachedfiles folder. This is the vbs logoff script I wrote to do this job, I found logoff works better as it means there is never a cached wallpaper at point of logon meaning the new one will always be picked up. Good luck! On Error Resume Next strPath = CreateObject("WScript.Shell").ExpandEnvironmentStrings("%APPDATA%") & "\Microsoft\Windows\Themes" Set obj = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") obj.DeleteFile(strPath & "\TranscodedWallpaper") obj.DeleteFile(strPath & "\CachedFiles\*.*")

Hi All, I've been tasked with reviewing the IT structures at another school. It will take the form of a questionnaire, which the school will have sight of prior to the review been carried out in person. I was wondering if anyone else (especially those of you who work in MATs) had done this before and whether they would be willing to share the format or template they used? I've bullet pointed my thoughts and ideas but would love to see anyone else's ideas and thoughts too. Thanks!

For the appx package removals, I find it better to remove these from your reference WIM image that you are deploying via whatever deployment system. Doing it this way means you don't have to run the script on every computer. You only ever need to run it when you update the WIM, and when you deploy this WIM to a fresh computer the apps are already gone. The script I use is this one https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Removing-Built-in-apps-65dc387b. At the reference WIM stage, you can also provision apps you have downloaded from Windows Store for Business that you would like on all machines (e.g. Microsoft Scan app). In terms of the Start Menu and desktop icons - we redirect both of these to a network share and then use a start layout xml for the tiles. However, I am looking at changing this moving forward as in my testing it is adding around 10-15s to the login times. I'm thinking of keeping them both local but using group policy preferences to add/remove shortcuts. The downside of this method is that I can't then see a way to maintain different start menus and desktops for staff and students.

If you use SCCM for deployment, then use this. Otherwise use WSUS. We use SCCM and it works great (it requires a WSUS server). It gives you centralised monitoring and reporting

I had the same issue with install speed. My machine is a relatively decent spec 6th gen i5 with 8GB RAM and an SSD and took around 30-40 minutes. It seems to still stream some installer content from Autodesk, as whilst the installer is ~650mb, the folder in Program Files is ~4GB, so I guess a lot of this time is spent downloading data. This is a concern for us as our Technology department use mainly laptops. Our lesson times are 1 hour, I can see SCCM running in to issues installing it in this timeframe and us ending up with lots of failed installations. I guess the update installer is faster. It seems crazy that they don't include all the data in the initial install rather than streaming it. It would mean having to have the laptops out of use and updates forced through by ourselves. Our Head of Tech is happy to use either Inventor or F360 so perhaps Inventor would make more sense for us, as the big updates are annual rather than 6 weekly.

Presumably this domain was registered on your behalf by the LA? Are you able to get a certificate of ownership from them? Usually for these kind of things you can prove ownership by creating a file at the web root or by creating a DNS record on the domain. Perhaps ask if these would be options? Either way Microsoft are being silly because it's impossible for anyone other than an academic institution to register a .sch.uk domain!

Ah, thanks Roby. It's because I went via the student page. Following the instructions you linked works a treat.

Thanks Roby! That looks good. Did anyone have trouble downloading Fusion 360 in the first place? I've logged in under my existing Autodesk account (which I use to download other free-for-education Autodesk software e.g. Inventor) and I get the message "We're sorry. This product is for students and educators only. It is not available for educational institutions to install on multiple computers and/or network servers." WTF?!

Thanks @robyholmes Yes, I'd definitely be interested in seeing that script please!

Apologies for bumping an old thread, but I was just wondering if there was any further information or advice surrounding the deployment Fusion 360? And in particular, management of the 6-weekly updates? We use SCCM here so anything SCCM specific would be appreciated! Thanks