DavidYoung

Hi John, I built a fairly large client filter deployment, my day-to-day experience is more on Chrome and iOS but I assume you're talking Windows. I don't think we've had any reports of this issue. Yes, this is annoying. As Paddy mentioned, you can create the MST yourself with something like ORCA, if you inspect the properties of one they've sent you you can work out the format needed. Again, not aware of any reports, however it will depend on the machine resources. The application runs as a local proxy server so will by default filter all traffic. You can exclude individual applications by adding the as filtering exceptions. I don't know if there's a way to do it the other way around, i.e. only filter some applications and exclude everything else. If you use Chrome or Edge and only want the browser to be filtered you might have a better experience using their Chrome extension but remember there will likely be other ways to get web access in Windows.

Oh yeah, that too. What I should have mentioned is that if you procure via G-Cloud, the initial term is generally 24 months with the option of 2 single year extensions, so that's not necessarily true.

Had my meeting with ESS. No movement on the 3 year renewals policy as ParentPay have invested £40m and there are great things coming. They said how much better SIMS Connected would be over Hosted and they were going to be slicing SIMS up and moving each slice to proper cloud over the coming years. They made a big deal about how many schools had left then come back to SIMS, and how disruptive it was to move MISs. Also made the mistake of asking my opinion on ParentPay which I gave (spoiler, not good). I am looking into frameworks and have browsed G-Cloud but have also found this: https://www.kcs4ps.co.uk/education-management-systems which seems like it might be easier to use and we also use KCS for the MFD framework.

There is never a good time to move but we are going to need to go through the pain to improve things in the long term. We have only just started working on this project and were considering moving during the 2022 AY but looks like ESS might force our hand. I have a call with them booked for this afternoon.

Hi Everyone, Just wanted to give a heads-up that our annual entitlement statement came through for one of my schools this morning and noticed they are trying to force everyone on to three year contract terms. The exact wording they use: I have sent them a message through the renewals portal and also emailed them directly to say we only want to renew for 1 year as we are planning to move to a new MIS soon. Just wanted to give everyone a heads-up and you might want to warn your business managers, etc. in case someone just clicks blindly through the renewal or, I suspect if the renewal form isn't completed they would just automatically move everyone to 3 year terms. I have to say when I saw they were taken over by ParentPay my hopes were pretty low but this is clearly just a way to force schools that are likely looking elsewhere to stay while they try to catch up. David

1. I have 8, 5 within my trust and 3 I'm supporting to move away from Windows. 2. Yes, we need to reduce the workload of IT staff so we can do more with the same size of team, our time shouldn't be spent keeping single applications up-to-date. It is generally the applications that are used by the fewest people that cause the most work for us. Proper cloud-based software that thousands of our users rely on every day cause us a tiny overhead comparatively. 3. Yes, it is if the service is run by a competent vendor who have far more resources than schools to protect and backup our data.

I see there have been a lot of responses already but my thoughts: I would challenge your conclusion that there is no advantage in the cloud based on the limited scope of your argument. Other reasons for cloud software, aside from the multi-user aspect: Security & Data Protection - On-premise infrastructure, particularly based on Windows is inherently far more insecure than properly designed cloud systems. This is a fact that we have resigned ourselves to so are moving as much as possible to the cloud. Accessibility and Compatibility - You mention storing the data on a cloud storage platform such as Google Drive, but that still requires a Windows PC to run the software. All our staff have Chromebooks now so want something web-based. I would also challenge your argument that timetabling cannot be multi-user, for better or worse, we have about 3-4 people who work on the timetable at one of our schools which results in many problems because the data is stored in monolithic files, as the users have to coordinate their access with everyone else involved and if more than one person tried to make changes, they will overwrite data. Unfortunately, our timetable is much more live, not something that simply gets set up before the start of the year but often requires changes throughout the year. Thanks for your input into the discussion. David

Thanks everyone. As mentioned, most MIS systems, even if cloud based either don't have their own timetabling offering or it is a legacy Windows app. Skolaris looks interesting, it doesn't appear to support SIMS which means we might need to wait till next year depending on timing (we were hoping we might be able to start using a new timetable package before the main MIS move). - - - Updated - - - Same, we took our RD gateway offline and everyone has to use the VPN now which is clunky. Security is one of the major reasons for moving away from SIMS.

Hello, We are starting a project to move our trust away from SIMS to a new, fully-cloud-based MIS system (not chosen yet, early days). Part of this is obviously the timetable, but it seems most timetabling software is Windows based. We would love to be able to use a proper cloud product, does anyone know if anything exists that is fully cloud, web based? Thanks David

I uploaded the sheet to Google Sheets (despite the instructions specifically saying we couldn't) and had to manually fix a lot of the data validation. We have a Google sheet connected to the consent form that we scan the barcode into, then use the =QUERY function to populate the gov sheet. At the end of the day we download it and upload it to gov.uk and it works. It's a real pain that it limits you to 100 rows per sheet. We have to upload about 5 each day.

We are re-advertising this position at a higher salary level. Salary Scale J Point 39 – 44 - £44,790 - £49,827 36 hours per week / 52 weeks per year Start Date: As soon as possible Coombe Academy Trust is looking to hire a Deputy Director of IT to join the Coombe IT services team, supporting and driving IT strategy in the trust and for other local schools. Job Advert Job Profile Person Specification Application Form Closing Date 24th June 2021 Please send applications to [email protected]. www.coombeschools.org

I wouldn't use hotkeys, you should be able to add Qlab directly to Companion so it isn't emulating the keyboard but actually sending the commands directly via OSC. There is also a module which includes feedback so you can have the button change depending which que is running, etc. Instructions for that are here: https://github.com/bitfocus/companion-module-figure53-qlab-advance/blob/master/HELP.md. I'm not sure about running a service on the PC. Another option would be to set up a Raspberry Pi 4 using https://github.com/bitfocus/companion/wiki/CompanionPi-Documentation to keep it seperate.

You should be able to add an instance of Qlab and put the Mac's IP address in so it communicates directly.

Look no further than my faviourite piece of software: Bitfocus Companion. It integrates with many production applications over the network including Qlab, just install it on the PC and you'll be able to control Mac remotely.

Fair enough. We lease our machines so can't compare directly but that seems like a valid price for what you are looking for.

Your best option for MFDs is to purchase or lease throug a Framework agreement, that way you don't need 3 quotes as the agreement has already been put to tender and the framework ensures you get a good price, but also, importantly, good terms and conditions. We use KCS: https://www.kcs4ps.co.uk/education but there are others available through CPC, CCS, etc.

Salary Scale I Point 33 – 38 - £38,883 - £43,860 36 hours per week / 52 weeks per year Start Date: As soon as possible [/b] Coombe Academy Trust is looking to hire a Deputy Director of IT to join the Coombe IT services team, supporting and driving IT strategy in the trust and for other local schools. Job Advert Job Profile Person Specification Application Form Closing Date 21st May 2021 Please send applications to [email protected]. www.coombeschools.org

So agree with this. There are too many horror stories to risk it and, particularly with leasing, you know it is all correctly tendered and approved. The framework pricing does change but it is minimal and goes down as well as up. There are particular machines that have much better framework pricing compared to others, I know with Ricoh, the 55ppm colour machines are cheaper than even smaller mono ones because it was chosen to be the 'standard' machine on the framework that would fit most environments. We also get PaperCut from Ricoh but it is just a licence and we actually do the installation ourselves. If we wanted to licence other manufacturers then we can easily add that on either via Ricoh or the other supplier.

Hi Brimstone, do you have a guide to explain how to do this? I haven't been able to find on the internet, only found things about DNS-over-HTTP, unless that's what you mean? Thanks.

Hi @Koldov. Can you please send me a PM with your details and I will see what's happened to your request.

Netsweeper categorises sites is many languages. You can see some of the top ones here: https://www.netsweeper.com/live-stats/

This is our config (same school as @Chris_Cook): It starts the one day timer from when the card is first used. 3 devices per card.

It frustrated us, I did try Google drive with a direct download link but it didn't work. In the end I set up a GitLab account (I think Github would also work) and used their static pages feature to host the file.

https://support.parentseveningsystem.co.uk/article/444-g-suite-how-to-configure-teacher-logins

You can do LDAPS against Google Workspace, but if you are talking about School Cloud systems then we have them set up with SAML against G Suite which would be much easier to configure than LDAPS against AD as it doesn't require firewall access to your DCs and is more secure as Google handles the authentication and it is proper SSO as long as the teacher is authenticated in Google first.