Synkrox

Not used them but the idea had been floated to start using them. (we have loads of traditional Paxton stuff around) Duly noted and will avoid! Thanks

I use power automate to automate the data of students and classes into a single excel spreadsheet every night. This has filters for classes,drop down options for registration marks and dinner choices all ready to go. On those alarmingly regular days when Bromcom is down we send the spreadsheet link out to all staff to complete electronically so it's all in one place and easy for attendance and kitchen to get the info. Clear it down at the end of the day then it good to go again. Got this set up during the recent chaos and it's made everything as slick as I think it can be.

Probably would have been fine if it weren't for a customer that dared to refresh the page.

As you point out it's a breach of their terms blocking ads - And that's a bumpy game of endless whack-a-mole. If ad-blocking is ont he cards you may as well roll out Stacher so they download themselves. Then they can drop the MP4 straight into Powerpoint too. Some staff here use Youtube but it's discouraged. We have Jellyfin, IntoFilm, iPlayer, ERA etc ad-free resources that staff can tap into without the agro of inappropriate suggestions/thumbnails/content on Youtube.

Fairly resiliant I think - no complaints! The other building I have with one sign-in point and bluetooth connection the printer ocassionally goes offline then comes back up - I think someone down there might be turning it off/on though. It's not that often. I would say our printers were getting on a bit and had started acting weirdly. Control panel on but not responding, web portal freezing etc, going offline but appearing on and ready. A restart fixing them. Having replaced them with visually identical but brand new printers (the standard Brother ones) seems to have solved it since then.

I have my iPads on WiFi in bouncepads screwed to wall and a larger one on bendy desk mount for disabled users. iPads are in kiosk mode and never turn off. SIA goes into night mode and I have a custom video that plays to stop too much burn in. Printer is ethernet and all power saving off.

We had issues, although I'm not sure it's SIAs fault. Restarting the printer often fixed it. Still have this setup in one building. In the main building we have our printer hardwired into the network and it never really misses a beat.

It could have been more polished, with no Q and A it might as well have been straight to video really. However I think it seemed like it came from the right place and didn't try to insult our intelligence or brush it off. The communication generally needs 1000% improvement though. If they'd been making improvements and trying to sort things over the months why is there no blog or update post until the brown hits the fan? Unless theres some secret group I dont know about, there isn't much in the way of 2 way development with customers and power users. Release notes only ever cover bits they've meddled with on the front end. Never a tech blog type of "We've tweaked this and you should find it improves X and Y". Had this been happening I think we may have had more patience knowing they were trying all along. Some of the responses from community and tickets with "no way of communicating with the devs" hasn't helped, and I've certainly been made to feel like a passenger on the Bromcom train. I'll continue to expect the worst but hope for the best!

Could anyone that attended share what was said? Is a revolution coming or more "we promise it won't happen again, again? but for real this time" Was hoping they would share recording or slide deck afterwards.

So they shouldn't even read my email and should just chuck it all in the same bucket, not answering any point I took the time to write? Their attitude to my time and that of their users being essentially worthless and was reflected in their apology-free "RCA" too. I disagree and it's a shame you feel such casual brushing off is an acceptable way to do business. I don't think the "donotreply" team at Bromcom are the same as those "making things better" but even if they were, perhaps reading about the impact it's really having on people might encourage them to pause next time they test in production. This is as lazy as half their attempts to reply to actual real tickets I've put in for provable errors in the system. Don't read it properly, reply with something vague, close. Maybe I'm just becoming an intolerant middle aged bloke? or maybe it really is ensh1ttificat1on.

My personally written out complaint was finally replied to, with a copy-paste email from this address. Which I think says it all. Heres the full text - I imagine most customers have already received this. Dear Customer, Between 3 and 10 March 2026, Bromcom schools across the country experienced service issues that led to a significant increase in contacts to our support teams. We apologise for the disruption and for the time it has taken to bring your complaint to a close. We understand the impact this caused, particularly during the critical period of taking registers. While the issues experienced do not excuse the delay you encountered, they did contribute to longer-than-usual resolution times, including for your complaint. We recognise how frustrating this will have been and are grateful for your patience. If you have not already done so, we encourage you to review the final Root Cause Analysis (RCA), which explains what led to the incident and outlines the remedial measures we have implemented to reduce the risk of recurrence. We would also like to invite you to join our leadership team for a live webinar on Thursday 16 April at 14:30. During this session, we will speak openly about what happened, explain the steps already taken in response, and share the longer-term measures being put in place to strengthen performance and resilience. We will also discuss how we are working to rebuild your confidence in our service. Please use the link below to register: While we cannot undo the disruption that occurred, we hope our actions demonstrate our genuine commitment to addressing the matter and preventing a recurrence. Thank you once again for your patience and understanding as we continue to enhance the reliability of the service you rely upon. Kind regards, Alastair McKenzie Head of Customer Success

0808 223 1133 This is the number for citizens advice (who act as the go-between for trading standards) Had a chat to a lovely bloke and have opened a case with them that has been escalated to trading standards. There's no point me sharing you my case number on here as each person has to report individually, but if you do have half an hour then please give them a buzz and get some more cases logged against them.

For the second time now Juniper have tried to add on a module and invoice us for the priviledge of not asking for it. The first time I kicked off a stink and got it refunded. The second time I only found out about it through this forum so kicked off again. It looks like they have updated their Ts and Cs - so if you do business with Juniper they are allowed to invoice you for whatever products they decide to create, and it's up to you to opt out at the time - if in fact you do get their messaging. I don't have a record of the actual Ts and Cs that were live when I signed up but I would put money on this being added after the last time they did it. (If anyone knows of a product similar to Sonar tracker please PM me so I can get rid of them.) Full reply from helpdesk: Hi Chris, Thanks for your reply, and I'm sorry to hear you feel this way. This was not our intention, and we value the relationship with your school. I have escalated your feedback to my line manager and marketing team to ensure this is taken into account for future initiatives. Parental Engagement Campaign We have received feedback that many schools are looking to improve parental engagement this year, and with the Schools White Paper "Every Child Achieving and Thriving" placing clear expectations on schools to evidence pupil belonging and stronger parental engagement, we truly believe there is value within our new bundle. This is why we wanted to provide this at a discounted rate across all of our existing customers. Our aim was to provide the opportunity for schools to save money in paying for additional tools (e.g. Tapestry, Class Dojo) and streamline communication tools together with Sonar. We have aimed to be transparent with our communications throughout this trial via messages in Sonar itself for users, plus email communications. These were sent during January and February informing schools of the trial, allowing them to explore the features if they wished, or informing us if they didn't want to go ahead with this. Following the trial deadline of 27th February, we pulled data from the system to ensure only schools that had used the features were invoiced for this. As we identified that your school did not engage with this trial, you were removed from the campaign and were not invoiced. Mailing List As requested, I have updated our system to ensure these two emails are included in our mailing lists, and techsupport is listed as the main contact for Sonar. Future Campaigns We completely understand your request and appreciate you taking the time to let us know your preferences. At the moment, unfortunately, I'm not able to opt your school out of all future trials. Communications relating to your products and services, including things like offers, updates, billing information and service notifications, form part of your agreement with us. Because these are required to deliver and manage your services, they aren't something we're able to switch off or unsubscribe you from individually. This is referenced in our Terms & Conditions, in clause 6.6 copied below: 6.6 Should Juniper offer the Client a free trial period in respect of the Services, unless the Client does terminate the same by serving notice on Juniper in accordance with these Conditions prior to the expiry of that free-trial period, such period shall automatically convert to a subscription and shall be deemed to run for an Initial Term in accordance with Clause 5 of these Conditions and shall only be terminable by the Client in accordance with this Clause 6. The Client shall be liable for and shall pay all Charges due in accordance with Clause 9 of these Conditions. We're sorry for any frustration this may cause, but I can confirm there are no additional trials planned for your Sonar subscription currently, but this is subject to change as determined by the business going forwards. We're always happy to answer any questions or talk through the communications you receive if that would be helpful. I hope this helps and if you have any further questions, feel free to get back in touch. Best wishes,

This. 100% This is the prompt you put into copilot, not the one you send to customers. This is my favourite bit : • Repeated user retries amplified load, further impacting performance I mean... what were they supposed to do?

Sway is fantastic at what it does but never gets any promo from MS except for when they removed images and videos from uploadable content. I'm scared to recommend it as I can't help thinking it'll be next on the chopping block.

I looked at TCL too, pricing is very keen but the chipset worried me. I've tried chipsets that arent qualcomm before with poor results, specifically with wifi connectivity. Apparently they have new "K70" models coming out later in the year which have switched to qualcomm. Their nxtpaper screens are lovely mind. My last batch was Motorola G75 5G. They've been pretty robust with just the supplied silicone case. A lot of our phones are Moto and I'm not sure how taking away chop-chop for torch and twist for camera would go down.... If you end up trying the crosscall let us know how it goes.

Coconnect here, wires only as we filter onsite with Fortigate. Just renewed for 5 years. Never really needed support, but when I contacted them about renewal options they were very friendly and helpful.

You are not wrong. Why, many years later, there is still Old and New UI is madness. And I'm getting quite tired of regressions and releases of minimum viable products. New student app being an untested mess, as was the teacher app and parent release previously, downtime this week, removing bits without notice (thinking about dinner balances screen which got put back after we moaned). Adding bits without notice (new dietary and medical tabs that I'm still not sure if we should use or not) It's infuriating. Noone seems to have holistic oversight of the platform or an interest in making the whole thing as good as it can be. Each module has an "owner" that works in a silo and it doesn't matter if their part of the system has a UI relying on right clicking (parents evening) selecting then clicking "actions" (stu/staff lists) or double clicking it, or hovering over then finding a pencil. I don't believe anyone at Bromcom truly takes customer feedback on board, they are ticket shifters. Good ideas get put on the "ideas" platform to die and get removed when you've got sick of asking. And noone there actually uses the system on a daily basis. And oh my goodness the documentation 😂 After nearly 4 years I would not sign up to use them again. This isn't something I've kept to myself either. I've emailed (and had a reply from) Ali the boss, I've done several 1-1 customer feedback sessions and customer service complaints and logged tickets all along.

I've had a spate of parents saying they've not recieved messages we sent via MCAS. All looks good our end and via green jelly baby so I think an app only. It could be a PICNIC issue, but it's quite a coincidence that I get a spate of these reports this week - especially with all the changes on the backend and the fact we couldn't see the MCAS messages page at all for several hours. Anyone else getting similar reports?

Same on some new Lenovo models they were showing off at BETT. Not a moment too soon either!

It's a similar to the journey I go on when I'm vibecoding docker compose YAML with Claude. (for the avoidance of doubt, this is not a compliment)

Yeah I popped it on the BC community yesterday and logged a ticket Edit: Looks like it might be working again? Still giving some 404 errors on dev console but otherwise pages seem to be loading. Couldnt get into messages/inbox yesterday

Yeah I recall browser caching issues, but funnily enough not recently... I'm sure there have been a couple of times where "delete cache files" has been a fix for things. But I actually can't remember when that was last the case.🤔 Be nice to relive the old days again if they are bringing it back! 🫠

Remember when it was falling over in Sept and their early fix was to keep turning it off and on again? 😂

09/03/2026 14:40 Service Performance Update (Fix Implemented for Tomorrow Morning) Following further investigation, our technical teams have identified the primary factors contributing to the performance issues experienced during peak morning usage. The issue relates to a combination of platform demand during the morning register period and how infrastructure automatically scales to respond to that demand. During the busiest time of day, when many schools access the system simultaneously, the platform experienced a rapid increase in requests. While the system is designed to automatically increase capacity to accommodate this demand, we identified that the scaling process was responding more slowly than required for the speed of the morning peak. To address this immediately, we have increased platform capacity in advance so that sufficient resources are already available ahead of tomorrow morning’s peak usage period. This ensures the system is operating with higher capacity from the start of the school day rather than waiting for automatic scaling to respond. Alongside this infrastructure adjustment, our engineering teams are continuing to review parts of the platform that generate higher-than-expected system activity during peak periods. Improvements are currently being developed and tested, and these will be deployed progressively to further strengthen performance and resilience. We will continue to monitor the platform closely during tomorrow morning’s register period and throughout the day to ensure the service remains stable. Mark Wilson Chief Technology Officer Call me old fashioned but I'd have popped a "Sorry" in there somewhere. And maybe some explanation as to why it has taken so many days for them to discover the issue/resolution (if indeed it is resolved!).