Synkrox

Yes for bulk messages, but you can turn on the option for parents to communicate direct with teachers and vice versa.

You do get an account manager, but the reason it's so cheap is it's for you to decide what devices you need and not be assisted. The other lots provide an assisted purchasing experience. Take a look at the catalogue and you'll see there's a nice selection with a few options like finishers and staplers, and the spec is slightly higher than base anyway, extra large paper trays come standard for example. We went with the C4510 + Card Reader + Integrated Stapler.

If your servers are up, your SBC is up. Maybe host it on something redundant but not sharing a service that might require reboots during the day. 3CX Mobile apps don't use the SBC. To plan for a full blown critical incident, the cloud based nature of it means that switching to mobile data or remote work is seamless. It's only on-prem hard wired stuff that drops off. We had a closed day due to boiler breakdown, everyone worked from home and used their phones as normal, even receptionists answered the queues exactly as they would have in school. When out on trips, staff use their phones as normal and can call reception via 3CX app just as they would if they were in school. What I'm trying to say is... benefits vastly outweigh the risks.

You know I'd forgotten about it. It's running on a secondary DC on-prem. It's basically invisible and has zero impact on anything. We have 333 extensions registered, several receptionist Fanvil X210 phones with loads of BLFs too.

2.5 years into 3CX - hosted by them. No problems to report. Even migration from v18 to v20 went alright for me.

I've had a bit of a tiff with our Alto sales guy - he was quite upset to be losing our business and quite indignant. New machines from Ricoh arrive next week!

Check out the CCS Framework for Ricoh - came in cheapest by quite a way for us. Don't bother calling them as the salespeople don't even have access to the framework pricing, go through CCS and get the fixed price catalogue. You can still add papercut/printinx with them too. https://www.crowncommercial.gov.uk/agreements/RM6174

We are looking to overhaul our WiFi provision but I'm conscious that it's never been properly scanned and setup properly, so I'd like to get some professional advice before I start signing orders. Our building is quite demanding, having lots of glass in areas and heavily insulated walls both internal and external. Our demands on the WiFi is also quite high as all our staff use 3CX VOIP whilst roaming around. We currently have Unifi gear but can switch if it's not up to the job. Any suggestions or recommendations regarding companies to come in and do a survey? (Happy to pay, doesn't need to be a free one from someone looking to shift a particular vendor, just needs to be good!) Thanks Chris

Just my 10p worth.... Give them good laptops and go wireless projection. Once they see annotating a powerpoint while wandering around the room they'll be converted. One Device, zero login times, minimum cabling. cheapest rolling replacement cycle.

I wonder if as a non-profit you get Microsoft universal print licences cooked in too? this could be one nice simple option, quite a few models can now connect directly to universal print. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/universal-print/fundamentals/universal-print-printer-list

I was going to reply in full myself but you have summed up my thoughts perfectly. Especially regarding the linkedin crowd.

Yeah they are similar to ones produced by "Hills components" that were the go-to models in the past. Hills closed down and Crusader started selling them and have developed them a bit further too. Don't shout it too loud in case they are listening but I agree they are a bargain given the build quality. Barring absolute vandalism they are rock solid.

Yes those are the foldable lightweight ones we use. 4 Pole ones work fine on our Thinkpads and I think it's kinda the standard now, if you don't have separate headphone/mic jacks.

Classroom teaching PC's were the first thing I chopped when cutting back at a previous school. Replaced with Wireless projection or an HDMI lead to their laptop.

If they don't fund an MOT for the minibus do they still use it? If you've made the case and they've chosen not to give the money requested, then they have decided to retire >200 devices they can't afford to maintain and will have to rearrange the rest of the IT estate to accommodate the needs of staff.

Sorry - the "almost unbreakable" models at the top. I've also got some of the "foldable lightweight rugged" ones too. No problems with any of them.

These are my go-to https://crusaderav.co.uk/collections/easy2use

Totally this. All our devices are Win 11 because we planned for it.

Following a bit of a moan I had on here in a similar vein to yours I had a convo with Darren earlier this week to give him feedback. It's slightly reassuring to know I'm not alone. I do hope things improve.

You can publish a calendar to a public link straight from outlook. (maybe OWA only) Think you'd only see one room at a time though. I have a QR code linking to the public link on the door in case people want to load the full schedule.

We have a Teams room which has a panel like you have shown and is booked through outlook. For everything else we use "Booked scheduler" which has "monitor views" which you could use to show bookings on any screen. Our staff love it as it's so simple to see whats booked for a week at a time, just click to reserve it.

Voted. This is what prevents us from rolling out Bromcom SSO. More than half our staff only use the Teacher app, so cannot access the QR code on the web portal (which I think is the only other way of activating the app)

I am a Bromcom user, and am actually a fan of it overall, but I went through this a couple of years back and found exactly the same. The onboarding for a new school really isn't particularly great and the guides and webinars on different modules tend to start from a system which is already set up, rather than detailing all the prerequisites and how each bit links to another to help you actually understand the workings of it. I emailed the boss Ali about this at the time and suggested that they could actually offer a "support plus" package with assistance on getting stuff set up. Ideally they need to hire someone to present walkthrough videos for each modules getting set up from scratch and stick them up on Youtube. The bromcom helpdesk is very "tech" focused and only really want to deal with problem tickets rather than user assistance and TBH the speed and efficiency of these tickets being resolved has not been great if they don't see it as important (still cant use a double quote in a comment in the teacher app, nearly a year after reporting). If it's an obvious gap in functionality (seeing a childs date of birth or medical info when looking at emergency details for example) you get bounced to the "ideas portal", which then just get deleted after a while. The bromcom community page isn't much use either, a lot of questions on there go unanswered. I feel very much like a passenger just sitting by watching whetever Bromcom choose to do when they choose to do it which is a shame. The people employed by Bromcom that do interact on there are decent enough and seem to try, but I think spread too thinly. We ultimately went with a third party support company to fill in the gaps for us and help us onboard and work with our staff to get systems how we want them. Hoople in Herefordshire if you are wondering (we are across the border in Worcs) They will jump into a teams call/remote session or in person and guide us through whetever it is. We are a couple of years in now and it's becoming more comfortable with the system overall, and as I said at the start still like the system, but I can totally relate.

Ahh, I've been here about 2 years ago when we made the same move. I was told there was no way to automate this and every file would need to be downloaded manually. However I do enjoy the challenge of "it can't be done!". My solution was hacky and messy because the scholarpack website isn't easily navigated automatically or with a keyboard, and some tabs did/didn't show on pupil profiles, meaning things moved around. I used an AutoIT script that would programmatically go to each student record, then to the documents page, and then call a chrome add-on that would download all files on a page and rename them as it went. (https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/simple-mass-downloader/abdkkegmcbiomijcbdaodaflgehfffed) Hacky and messy, but it worked and was hands-off once running. As my code used screen coordinates it wouldn't be any use to you I'm afraid. Once they were all downloaded into folders the uploading was a doddle as I had them in named folders and just drag+dropped into the relevant student in Bromcom. Scholarpack (eventually) gave me a data dump which included the documents but IIRC all the filenames were some form of UUID and not useable and I'd already got it sorted by then.

LA funded SEN school here - all signed up and working. We use Canva and Affinity apps, all sign in with MS365 SSO and get all the premium stuff thrown in free as part of their Edu offering.