rogerdnixon

We set it up as a Trust. We have one Google Workspace setup and 28 schools. I registered as a Trust and then we when through the setup processes. I had to give them all of our domains, verify ownership. We use a dynamic group for each school so Canva knows which school they belong to and then a custom attribute in Google to indicate if a user is staff of students. Took a bit of doing - but has just worked since initial setup over a year ago. Worth doing as its very popular and gets a lot of use.

Write click on a file and select File Information and the details of the file are presented in to the right of the screen. Also the path is shown at the top of the screen in Drive. In a Doc/Slide/Sheet and so on there is an organise button at the top that shows where the file is and allows you to move it and open the folder that its in. As an admin you can use the investigation tool to look up the details of any file, folder or shared Drive.

We have Canva across our Trust - 28 schools on Google Workspace. Since I set it up its taken pretty much zero amount of time. For us: Teams = Schools/Central Teams Members Classes - don't use. To make the SSO work, we do groups mapping. So I have a dynamic group for each school called [email protected] and then this identifies the users "Team". Then we have a custom attribute to identify a user as staff or student. In the admin console for Canva - you can turn on and off the AI stuff and control what students have access to. But I don't look at it very often. Was a bit of a faff to setup - but people love it and it gets a lot of use.

Chromebooks here. Where we "need" Windows we manage them directly in the Google Admin console using Google Advanced Desktop Security.

If you want to know in detail why a message is blocked, log a support ticket within a couple of days of the message (quote the exact message ID) being caught and they will give you a detailed analysis of why its been blocked. I use this and then feed back to whoever sent the message as it tells them what's wrong with their mail. Just note that they only keep the detailed logs for a few days.

I daily drive a Chromebook myself and look after ~12000 of them across 28 sites. Chromebooks on a day to day basis take up zero amount of my time and just work. I'd need a much bigger team if we had more Windows devices. We are Google Workspace throughout - so they are really a no-brainer. Also removes the need for local server infrastructure and associated costs/security risks. To date there have been zero ransomware attacks on ChromeOS. Specific points raised: Video editing - we use Canva - device agnostic. Blender - don't think anyone has ever asked for that... Python - Coding with Chrome is good as are a number of other online IDEs Safeguarding - we use Securly and that give filtering anywhere. We also use Securly Classroom so teacher can monitor and control devices. I'd advise against enabling linux apps outside of admins as they allow pupils to install what they want and potentially get up to no good.

Don't know - I've had one from OCR I've had to use Excel with. But most seem to convert OK.

Mail merge - built into Gmail if you have Plus licences. In Sheets we also use Formmule and Autocrat addons. If you have Plus licences, Drive have an app to convert Excel Macros into Sheets macros. Not perfect - but pretty good.

ASUS Chromebook Plus CX3402CBA - 8Gb, i3-1215U and 128Gb SSD. Great device and very fast - about £217 ext VAT on Amazon.

We are similar in size - 9 Secondaries and 19 primaries + couple of teacher training orgs. Central team is me - 3 days a week and then 2 days based and teaching at one of our secondaries Senior Network Manager - 3 days Trust - 2 based at one the the secondaries System Engineer - full time Trust Then between 1-4 people onsite at the secondaries (typically 1 and a bit). So 20 it total. Primaries - we split between us and some of the secondary staff do one or more primaries. The only way we have been able to manage stuff is be standardising as much as possible over the years. So all the primary setups are basically the same. Common MIS, helpdesk, one Google Workspace tenancy for all, common filtering and common device management (everything on the Google Admin console as much as possible). Takes time - but worth the effort.

Most stuff is in the cloud now for our schools - but where we do have hypervisors still, we will probably switch VMware for XCP-NG. Seems to work great and all the built in backup you need. Fully featured for free or you can pay for support. Removes the need for Veeam. Has the features of VCentre and way more features than Hyper-V. Lawrence Systems YouTube channel is a great place to find out more. Just a thought.

We use Clever badges - have done for a long time. However, talking to them at BETT this year, its no longer free to new customers. Anyways - works fine. We a have a few scrips that pull the relevant data to csv files that get uploaded once a day and the code get uploaded into a Drive folder for each school. So they just look in their folder for the codes.

Google Meet also does this. Very accurate. You get a Google Doc at the end of the meeting. An Gemini Enterprise licence gets you more bells and whistles.

Chromecast HD or 4K setup with Cast Moderator would be the solution is you are Google Workspace - pretty cheap and works well.

If you have Plus licences, you can assign the cover supervisor Classroom visitor permissions and they just jump into the class they are covering and work as normal in Classroom. Works great at our schools.

Search/Launcher (the one where caps lock would be) and up/down is page up and down on a ChromeOS keyboard.

Private message me with an email address, ticket number and your primary domain and I'll drop someone an email.

Thats an interesting question. I'd log a ticket and ask Google.

We use AFI backup at our Trust (28 sites). Works very well and allows end users to do self-service restores. Cost is reasonable and files are restored in their native format. Very easy to use and configure.

Android device management is only includes in Plus and Standard licencing now. You can buy a licence on a per user basis separate to this if you are on Fundermentals. This change was announced at BETT this year.

Papercut MF allows users to assign the cost centre at the copier which removes this as a thing. Users can also assign cost centre and release jobs from the user web interface that you could push as a bookmark.

We use Securly across our Trust and that provides anywhere filtering for all of our managed Chromebooks, PCs and ipads. Simple to setup and works well.

We deploy either ChromeOS tablets or touch flip Chromebooks. Much easier to manage and true multiuser devices. Android devices are basically 1:1 devices which can be very effectively managed straight on the admin console. You do need a connection to login - although only the first time assuming you don't wipe user data on logoff. Being offline is not something I really come across much now - people hotspot etc if offsite with a device. No WiFi - bung an AP in there. However, ChromeOS devices work perfectly fine offline - as much as any other device really. Younger students we use QR code logins.

I totally ignore the whole booking thing and just go to the stands I want to look at and people just talk to you.

We have largely moved to Google's own Advanced Desktop Security now, but still have a handful of devices on InTune and use Securly. We use SmartPAC: The OMA-URI to do this is (so what we now apply in Googleland): ./Vendor/MSFT/NetworkProxy/SetupScriptUrl String - your SmartPAC URL (as http not https) Works fine in Chrome.