TechMonkey

Thanks ibpalle. So is there a way to turn the firewall on? Or is it down to how the traffic is being routed through the Smoothwall? Currently all traffic is routed through the Smoothwall as it is set as the Gateway of the core switch.

Nope, no Bridge members. It used to be the firewall, in days gone past. A separate device was setup, but we are now looking at moving back to Smoothwall as an all-in-one device to simplify things.

Even with those tick boxes set, no results coming in the log. I have to be honest, not sure. I would have said firewall but would be guessing. Nothing is set in the bridging options.

Yep, had it running for a good month now and it had some rules previously. Never seen an absolutely blank log, so I'm guessing it is something technically gone TU, just thought I'd check my sanity! Back to waiting for 2nd line

I seem to have a silly issue. I'm starting to set up Firewall rules on Smoothwall and taking it slowly to ensure I don't do anything silly. I am turning logging on to check the rule and see what it catches, but I am getting no logs at all. Even the default rule is set to log at the moment and still a big empty. Is there something really obvious I am missing like an ON button for the firewall? I have a support call open but so far 2 weeks and all I have had is a request to update to the latest version and an escalation.

Personally, I would go build from scratch. Firstly, you get to know the infrastructure intimately and have a hand in all the decisions and bring everything up to modern standards, rather than be stuck with decisions RM made 10+ years ago. Things like AD structure and domain name. Secondly, you can be sure there are no hidden surprises waiting to bite you when you least expect it. Old accounts, scripts and the like. Next decision is on-site, cloud or hybrid. That entirely will be based on where you are at. It might be the time to leap out to the Cloud, or just get onto a newer domain doing what you were doing before to be confident to move ahead. If you go on-site, I would go SCCM for PC building, management and application management. If you go Cloud, I would say be ready to relax a little and not have the control you are used to.

Run past with legal but email asking for the cost to buy out the contract & if you have not heard back within 14 days you will presume there is no cost. Forces their hand.

Speak to some suppliers, at one point they were offering to buy out contracts to get you out early. Not sure what length of term they were looking at but might be possible.

Do the Teams logs (unless MS has put them behind the pay wall) show issues? They are pretty comprehensive and can show issues. One theory, could it be the other party? They have rubbish network/internet and your users are seeing the effect.

Couple of thoughts. Can you replicate the 'issues' and are they tangible? Or just it feels slow? Is it laptops or desktops or both? If you can replicate, try plugging into the core switch and see if the issue is there and then work back. If the issue is there, then it is probably external and your ISP needs a kicking. Alternatively, install something like PRTG free and monitor the traffic on ports from a problem user all the way to the core and see what kind of load is being generated. Presuming switches don't have an logs you can look at to see errors?

Restrict all staff emails to management only?

Is the Name still one of your pupils? Is this on a desktop or on an App? There is a UI issue going around on Android at the moment that does something similar to this. Possible only on the Samsung UI One.

Wondering how others manage pupil notes, particular in cases of parental communication? Do staff just have to write it up into your MIS? Do you have a funky system? Is there a specific member of the admin team who gets everything sent to them and have to type it up? We are currently in the ridiculous situation where a lot of pupil data is held distributed across staff and the push back against centralising it is due to staff time and workload (they won't have the time to copy it to another place). I am being told to sort a new system that will help this, though my view is staff need to pull their finger out, but this is not a popular view. So, what are you all doing?

I may be misunderstanding, but in Intune you can create more than one enrolment profile, you then get different QR codes. So you won't be offered to pick the profile, you scan the profile QR code you want. You can also create a dynamic group based on the enrolment profile name which makes it easier to then use that group to assign config and apps to.

Do you have an iSAMS identity account? If so you should be able to access the Developer Documentation. If you haven't got access contact support and they will be able to give you access. They have an example application you can test the batch API with.

I'd dispute bits of your first statement. It isn't proprietary but is built on general tech (MS data warehousing tech I think) and using Enterprise Power BI to allow things to be built. When I last looked it was pretty customisable. Also, through this project they give user friendly labels and views which is a massive time saver. Expensive is subjective. I've done a fair amount of direct DB work. Have you got the school IP setup to be allowed access to the database? You need to talk to support and get this turned on, if it isn't already setup. If Look studio needs to access the live data direct, then you won't be able to unless it only ever comes from a single IP and this will lock anything else out from accessing the DB. Using PowerBI I had to setup a helper on site to access the data from the school site. I don't know if Look Studio has something similar. Have you tried accessing the data via the API? Direct DB access is not really supported or recommended.

They all seem to be served up from https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ so block that? Or do you mean from the app as well?

Someone may have a better idea, or be able to prove me wrong, but I think you can't now. MS has tightened up SharePoint online to make it an internal resource, not for public use, and anon access is not something you can just do for whole areas. We were looking at setting up a Careers portal for distributing information to parents but had to abandon it due to someone would have had to either generate a link for each document or give all the parents an account. There is no blanket anon access. So, your option is to generate an anyone with a link URL for each video and send them out, or give them logins.

This. Easy to update, easy to add to, means everyone is used to going to a single point to get things so you can build on it. URLs as shortcuts are a bit retro IMO.

ah.. but... Ehh..... You..! Seriously?

From various threads I have seen, VMWare reps have been saying that education customers should reach out to their/an account manager as they can sort education discounts, resellers can't. Don't know how true this is or if the educational discount is worth it though. I was about to try and sell moving to VMWare to the org but have well and truly been put off. Which is a shame.

I am a bit fuzzy on all the ins and outs but you can control Copilot (the chat not for M365) in your tenant settings and another benefit it keeps everything within your cloud. If you have set users with age indicators it will allow and disallow per age.

ViVi is one that gets banded around. I've not used it myself personally though. We are moving to boards that have the casting built in to avoid this issue.

We have 15 as a compromise between nothing (wanted by teaching staff) and 5 minutes wanted by DPO. As CHiLL, it is interrupted by slideshow or full screen video. If I could trust staff to lock their machines when they walk away from the class I would make it longer. But they don't and they prove this every time they try argue the point.

As an alternative to my previous post, you can provision DPSK natively in SmartZone but I don't know how well this works in practice so you could use it as proof of concept at no extra costs and without the fancy VLAN fiddling. I would still recommend CloudPath though.