TechMonkey

Get CloudPath. We have a similar setup to you, including boarding, and use CloudPath to give each pupil a DPSK. With boarders we then push a boarding house only VLAN that we can then identify them on when they are in the boarding house to give more relaxed access. When they are in school they revert to school rules. This allows them to be ill at the boarding house and call mum, or watch netflix, without having special access around the school, or restricting the pupils to timed access. As for Smoothwall identifying users, no issues at all, nothing complex just works. One thing to check is that the URLs giving IP addresses a usernames aren't in the AuthBypass category. I found at my current school that a lot had been put in the AuthBypass which meant users weren't identified and you couldn't then allow staff access and not pupils. Happy to talk more if you want to chat about it.

I'm not an expert on it but just thinking it through I would say you need to keep the previous task open, a pause or something for 2 minutes and check mailbox again. That way the first and second email are linked. Dirty way to do it though, especially if you have a lot of door openings. Can you describe what you are ultimately trying to achieve as there may be a better way to go about it?

I used SoftCat. YMMV but my current account manager is very good. Happy to supply email if you don't already use them.

Ah, Wasabi there are no costs either way. Plus the data doesn't get charged for 365 days, so the weekly backups won't cost me for a year.

& what are the ingress and egress costs?

I'm about to press the trigger (once I wade through DPIA assessments) on Wasabi through AutoData who do 1TB for 5.99 (min 5TB.) monthly contract. Seems a blooming good deal to me.

Veeam would be my option. I'd find out what the issue was with the restore and get that sorted. Veeam will give you all the options for GFS or copies and delete expired copies.

Smoothwall the product is fantastic and just does what you need to. As far as I know it is still only one of 2 products that does true content filtering. It still needs a UI update to use some modern methods, but is still very useable. Being education focused does give them the edge. More often than not when sites are posted on the to be blocked thread, Smoothwall has already got it covered. Support, as with most education offerings, is variable based on time of year. September there is always a support issue as schools hammer them for help with new pupil setup, new migrations and all the new term fun. I have used them across 3 settings and a ridiculous number of years and have never been annoyed enough to feel the need to move.

& yet you did engage to post this!

No issues bar them running at 100MB. You do have to make sure you get the settings right if running different VLANs for the phone and device. Users really noticed the difference once we got them out of the line. I would not be installing any 100MB phones now, in fact we are looking at not replacing any phones except for shared spaces, and moving staff over to a mixture of headsets and using mobile phones with the app on.

I think he is saying the exact thing you are in less words. If you can't recover £1 a day value, due to lack of training, time, or staff applying themselves, copilot for M365 is not for you. Yes, you are also right, if you can't invest £2992 upfront then Copilot for M365 is also not for you. I didn't read any arrogance or patronising-ness, just a statement of fact when choosing any piece of software. All software should be having an effect on the school, preferably positive, and that needs to be measurable. Mostly that is measured by how much value, whether it be time saving or monetary value, is derived from the software. I have literally been in a meeting today discussing how staff can find the time to do something that we should be doing but aren't and the feeling is because staff are already being asked to do a lot and don't have time to do more. This leaves it down to me to find efficiencies or put forward the case to hire more admin staff. If something like Co-pilot can return its own value and the value for an extra member of staff then it has done its job.

If you are talking about the 3CX pricing page, it is using number of users to work out the number of simultaneous connections you are likely to use. 3CX is not using a per user licensing model. SO work out how many incoming and outgoing lines you are likely to use and base your costs on that. For schools 8 or 16 connections (depending on size) are normally enough but considering the cost I would go for 16 as annually that is less than what many hosted systems charge per month. Also, as ever, you can easily increase your connections if you find you are hitting the limit, harder to downgrade.

Many thanks for getting back to us. I can confirm currently we are not using HTTPS interception. The oddness was that we could see crazygames.com was filtered but it was getting through. I'm hoping to implement interception over the half term so I will see how it goes.

In the Net2 software you can set the operating mode to be on a timed operating mode. I have no direct experience of this but my understanding is that the 'reader' in that channel can be set to be inactive during that timezone, or if the reader is set to inactive by default, that it is active during that timezone.

Is the NAS a Synology box? They have a O365 solution built in for free (excluding any extra cost for storage you may need!). Have you looked at the auditing facilities in M365, that would be able to tell you who did anything with a file, let alone delete it. Getting it split up would be best, a huge area like that is ripe for someone doing something silly like doing a spring clean on everything they don't want. By year group or by subject and then only assign the staff who deal with those areas. Limits accidents.

I am taking a stab in the dark but I think it may be if you have clicked exclude in the safeguarding report. It isn't there if you haven't, it gets created and populated once the button is clicked. Though I may be very wrong.

That is a cool site, thank you @sigma. Bullet Force on CrazyGames.com was one we were having issues with, even with crazygames.com filtered and then looked at the creator and blocked all their domains. I think we have broken it enough that they don't bother but it still seems to get through.

We are having a lot of problems with online unity games and filtering. I think if the pupil has a bookmark direct to the game it goes through. Really hard to investigate as nothing obvious comes up in the logs and trying to look when they are actually on it is tricky. Had one that was supposedly on coolonlinegames.com, which is filtered, but was getting through. Filtered the game maker and that seemed to help a bit, but the game was still accessible. Can't filter unity completely as the computing teacher uses it.

ConnectWise ScreenConnect.

You have set that pupils can't create groups (which is very correct) and when you create a new plan it creates a group to accommodate the planner, which the student can't do. Hence the error, group creation disabled. As far as I am aware everyone gets a personal planner created any way so not sure why they would need another. You can also have one per team or SharePoint so if one is needed for a project a Team would be a better fit. I use it personally, have it as part of our team for non-ticket things, and have introduced it to staff but not sure how much it is used.

Wait, you are being paid more than £40 an hour?... Though of note is the School will get the £40...

DM'd you

I'll just for desirability.

Sorry to go of topic but have you had any issue with DPIA with Canva? I was looking at it but all their servers are in the US and they didn't seem to have any GDPR provision.

You can convert a shared mailbox to a regular mailbox. That might allow you to log in, assign the Form to a SharePoint or a Team, then close down mailbox and user. Once in a SharePoint or Team I think the form can be edited by any owner of that area.