smarties11

I cannot download consolidated workstation patch 1 - gives me a 'download failed' error and a 404 error when I click it in SOLUS. A colleague in another School kindly sent me it over e-mail, so I could manually extract it just for the census workstation - and McAfee Threat Prevention 10.7.0.1751 detects the pulsar.exe file as a 'potentially unwanted program'. I expect it's a false positive. Could this be related though - is it triggering some AV systems and hence the issues?

It's working fine again this morning without any local changes. I guess YouTube have changed their code!

Thanks Steve. It was the syncing I was particularly interested in. Will have to write some PowerShell then I suppose!

It does the same for us even with the machine in exceptions. It worked perfectly until yesterday, we've been using this method since April :-/ Infact I've just tried it with my 4G connection and same result so it's definitely looking like YouTube have changed something their end with the way embedding works and Microsoft are going to need to catch up :-(

Hi All, For playing YouTube videos in a Teams live lesson, we're advising staff to insert them into the PowerPoint (Office365 ProPlus Current Channel 13029.20344) using UI route Insert -> Video -> Online Video. This works really well, as when the students hit play it streams it directly on their own connection rather than via Teams, which can occasionally be choppy, especially if our staff members are Teams'ing from home on a slow connection. This worked up to and including yesterday, however is now broken! I thought our SmoothWall was blocking something but it's not - and I came across a message on a Google support forum in the US where someone was saying similar. We can insert videos into PowerPoint from other sources such as Vimeo. Are others in the UK having the same problem? I guess we either wait for YouTube to fix it (unlikely) or Microsoft to update PowerPoint? (unlikely?!) Thanks

Hi All, We're using Teams quite extensively now, and I'm finding that many of the groups we're creating in Teams already exist in AD as distribution or security groups. Staff/department groups etc. If we synced these AD groups to Azure/M365 using AD Connect (we currently exclude them), can these M365 groups then be 'teamified'? i.e. the Team membership be based on the underlying AD->Azure synced group, so that adding users to the AD group updates the Team at the next sync? Many thanks :-)

Now that's the kind of solution I like! I'm new to RDWeb and didn't realise there was one. I'll look into this, thank you!

Yeah that's what I was hoping for, or some kind of local GPO cache that can be copied from another machine...

Hi All, As the title says really - we have some staff self-isolating, they have laptops with our AppLocker GPO applied. I've set up a new RDWeb server so we can publish some RemoteApps - however in out AppLocker GPO we block mstsc for staff. I can remote control the computer easily enough using Teams, however I wondered if I can locally change the AppLocker GPO any how? We don't have a VPN so I have no way of refreshing the GPO. I know I could stop the services however I still want AppLocker to run :-/ Thanks

Hi All, We're using Teams for live lesson delivery in cases of self-isolation etc. In our training we've instructed staff to upload their PPTX files to the Files tab of each class team, and then when presenting a PPTX through Teams, they can click 'browse' then 'teams and channels' and choose a previously uploaded file. This worked well, as it meant the file was there as a student resource too. On the latest Teams update that brings the new default dark mode, this option has been removed?! We can only browse OneDrive or upload from the PC. The creates an issue for our staff who have poor upload speeds at home, the previous way was ideal as it presented directly from the cloud and upload can be done in advance. The only workaround we have found is to open the PPTX in Teams, from the files tab, first; and then it appears on in the list of recently used files. So you the capability to present from the Files tab is still there but they've removed the user entry point? Am I missing something? Thanks

I downgraded on Friday, down to 10.2.1.0.183 which is the Ruckus recommended version for our ZD1200. Thankfully I still had a 10.2 .bak file but it was almost a year out of date, so lots of changes to remember and implement! So far so good though....

I've had the app running all day on my Huawei P30 and it's not made a difference to my battery drain. Although I always have Bluetooth on anyway. So far I'm quite impressed with the app. It's a shame it's taken so long to arrive, but this genuinely has the ability to drastically reduce the spread of the virus IF people install and use it!

This isn't the case. You shouldn't even order a test if you have no symptoms. If you are told to self isolate by track and trace, then you cannot go back to work until after 14 days. Even if you develop symptoms and test negative; you still stay at home for 14 days. If you develop symptoms and test positive, then you stay at home for 10 days after the symptoms started and anyone else in your household/support bubble self-isolates for 14 days and follows the same procedure.

We are also seeing issues here with 10.4 build 98. Not causing us big enough issues yet to do a roll-back, but we are getting 5 or 6 APs per day that are crashing and rebooting. It seems to be down to load, as I did this upgrade during the summer holidays and didn't get any issues at all until the students came back. Intrestingly, on the ZD1200 support page the 'recommended firmware' is still 10.2.1.0.183 refresh 5.

If you don't want to move your data to O365 or Google Apps, then definitely check out Foldr! https://foldr.io/ We use this and it is fantastic. Apps available for iOS and Android. I'd be wary of using HAP+ - it's not been updated in a long time, nor has it been pen tested.

Hi Lisa, Yes, exactly that - if you assign a general level then it isn't picked up as a learning aim in the October census. It's a solution that we have been using for over 10+ years, it works really well and I've not come across any pitfalls.

What we do is have a private study subject set up in Nova T6. We code it 'Zp'. Then every option block on the sixth form timetable has a subject Zp, alongside the other real subjects. Also, any subjects not running for all periods of the block have the short periods made up with Zp. This is then scheduled and sent to SIMS. When assigning course levels, the Zp classes need to be assigned to the 'General' level. Then, when doing curriculum allocations in SIMS, in any blocks where a student isn't taking a subject, we allocate them Zp. This fills the blank periods with Private Study. Registers can then be completed.

Thanks Sam and Paul. Will look at OBS and VLC. I did look at Teams live events but from September they are only available to those with A3 or A5 licenses I think. We could do Teams and tell all attendees to join with camera and mic off, so the only video being broadcast was the presenter - but then will they all remember?! Attendees would also all need to pin the presenter as otherwise they will just see a grid of empty video streams and one tiny thumbnail of the presenter. I'm also leaning towards pre-recorded. It could be done easily too in PowerPoint.

What about all of the checking and validation rules that go on in the background, when you actually generate the return itself? i.e. validating the return you have created against the DfE's specification. Or when the DfE add a new data collection item (that requires new fields, UI entry points etc). I am responsible in our School for generating and submitting the census; having completed many tens of statutory returns, I'd be extremely surprised if it is as straightforward as you say to be honest. Particularly with the Autumn census which includes learning aims for Sixth Form students. There are always patches and issues with SIMS at every statutory return, and that's from a company supplying and supporting thousands of Schools. It would be a lot of work and effort to do this for a single School IMO.

I think the biggest hurdle you have here is with the DfE statutory returns. School Census, and School Workforce Census. Any MIS would need this functionality built in, and exportable to an XML file to upload to Collect. The specification and format of these XML files changes every single return; so it's a lot of work to reprogram and update the MIS to meet these specifications each time for a single School.

Hi All, I've been asked to look into live streaming of assemblies for September. My first though was to use Teams as we have it set up already and were using it for the last two weeks of term, so it is 'embedded' and familiar for Teachers. However it seems silly to live stream an event taking place into School, to 30 or 40 different classrooms in School, using a cloud based product. Has anyone looked into this, I'm thinking there must be some software or product we can use to live stream across the LAN? It would need to be easy to use and set up. Our broadband connection is only 100mb, and at circa 2.5mb per HD stream (according to MS) we will be using most of the available bandwidth we have if we use Teams! Thanks

I've voted @robyholmes Completely agree. This seems a huge backwards step to me, and I'm not sure why. Perhaps they're planning for worse case scenario - another lockdown and huge hit on their storage. For the first lockdown, most Schools didn't go down the online lesson route, however I think most have now got it in place for the future. The hit on their services in the event of a second lockdown in September is going to be catastrophic! What SDS changes concern you? I've only seen positive changes coming, e.g. reintroduction of auto teamifying of groups etc

Hi All, Received a 'major change update' from Microsoft this evening to say that from August 20th, all tenants with A1 or A1 Plus licenses will no longer automatically upload Teams meeting recordings to Stream. Participants will have to download from the 'chat window' and then upload to Teams, Stream etc themselves. This is a bit concerning from a safeguarding perspective....and means for online lessons, Teachers will have to remember to download the recording (then upload back to the Team for those who missed it to watch). What if they end the meeting and forget to do this? What happens to the recording?! Presumably if we pay for a premium license then this feature remains?

No problem @VXR! @johnathanadams - this is completely your choice. Publisher rules are in theory more secure, as they require files to be digitally signed, however you might find it more difficult to limit the rule just to the Teams files you want, plus they require tweaking when new versions are released. Maybe eventually MS will make Teams a program that is installed for all users and run from the Program Files folder instead, like they should have done in the first place!

Yes of course, this is what we allow in AppLocker. Executable Rules %OSDRIVE%\PROGRAMDATA\*\SQUIRRELTEMP\* %OSDRIVE%\PROGRAMDATA\*\MICROSOFT\TEAMS\* %OSDRIVE%\USERS\*\APPDATA\LOCAL\SQUIRRELTEMP\* %OSDRIVE%\USERS\*\APPDATA\LOCAL\MICROSOFT\TEAMS\* %PROGRAMFILES%\TEAMS INSTALLER\* DLL Rules %OSDRIVE%\USERS\*\APPDATA\LOCAL\MICROSOFT\TEAMS\* %OSDRIVE%\PROGRAMDATA\*\MICROSOFT\TEAMS\* Also make sure if you already have a block rule in place (we used to block *\teams.exe) that you remove this too as a block overrides an allow.