TechMonkey

I'm pretty sure there have always been alternatives but they have either never gained traction or found niches, so Independent or SEN schools. This was never helped by LEAs basically forcing schools to go down the SIMS route.

Depends on your definition of "Industry leading software" and if the company would spend all it's resources trying to placate current users and support until they could get the new version out, while not bleeding cash or customers.

We used Class Teams, so Pupils are students and Staff are staff. I wonder if this is the difference? Seems silly to, even in a corporate setting, allow any one to kick anyone!

This could be a good option as you could set it to allow replies to posts, so if a teacher posted something the pupils could still reply. Only downside is they could jump on an old comment and have massive conversations.

You could script the removal of Teams licenses from all pupils. The only effect I can think of is that they may lose all membership of teams, so you will have add them all in again next term. The only consequence I am not sure of is if any assignments will be lost. In theory sounds a good idea, though you could argue it is a safe place for them to chat, rather than the myriad of cesspits out there. You are right though, do you disable email, so why Teams.

We have had a parent helpdesk for a while, from when reports went electronic and parents may having issues or had forgotten their login details, which happened every term. Just gets fed into our helpdesk but automatically tagged as a Parent Request and then gets dealt with as any other ticket. Means we can report on it and if a parent complains we have the paper trail. I can't remember it ever being abused by a parent but we are very clear and firm on our responsibilities and boundaries. If a completely out there request came in we would either close it if no response was needed or guide them to the correct person and explain that isn't our area. From our last quick analysis parent tickets weren't a massive drain.

I'd be interested in seeing that! Haven't got up the courage to fly the drone indoors yet! They were using a gimbal camera, like a drone, but hand held.

We have created various videos and created a Spark thingy that can be mailed out to potential parents. Makes it a nice mixture of media, presented in a pleasing format. There was talk of creating an actual video tour but I think that was decided against as our site is quite spread out, so lots of walking having to be sped up. Looking like you are in a Benny Hill sketch is not desirable apparently.

Live Events I think is TeamsMeetingBroadcastPolicy. Not sure about the other one sorry.

I've not done it but wanted to. The last time I looked I think it could only be done if you had an instance hosted by 3CX, or their FQDN, instead of a custom one. EDIT: Have just found this which is newer than when I last looked, so looks like it may be possible.

Can play online if you wish

We have a seperate GPO that is applied to all devices that contains the AppLocker rules. Stops any confusion. When you set them you can select the type then right click and it gives you the option to Automatically Generate Rules. This will give you the foundation and then add yours on top.

I think the only change we made was to recreate from scratch as a new Task Sequence had the BIOS and UEFI detection built in. I have two steps for partitioning, one labelled for UEFI one for BIOS, and they both have a variable setup in the Options tab for SMSTSBootUEFI. UEFI step is set to equals true, BIOS is set to not true. Not sure if these matter but the BIOS step has disk type set to Standard(MBR) whereas UEFI has it set to GPT. UEFI has 3 partitions, an EFI, an MSR and a primary.

From my initial reading I think the same as you, it would cause more issues than it would solve because it is intended for a very specific, strict use.

I am looking into Information Barriers to see if there is a way to limit pupil to pupil communication while allowing Staff to pupil communication. Not sure it will do it but haven't had a proper look yet.

We have used the default pupil policies with minor tweaking. That stops private chat for pupils but allows in team chat. It does mean a member of staff can't private chat with a pupil as well but they can private chat with another member of staff.

Try PRTG, you get 100 free sensors, you will need the SNMP details but it will sniff out the ports once that is done. You can create a dashboard to show you all the graphs or details and away you go. The other systems people mentioned would work as well, but maybe more involved with setup. So maybe use PRTG to get an idea if the concept works and is feasible and then investigate the others.

@Badaz52 - We use PRTG and have the maps up on a display board in the office, gives great visibility and a great talking point when staff come in. We only monitor availability though, not monitoring individual ports except the WAN port. @gerardsweeney - That would have to be a device function, so your filter or firewall and it would have to have Application awareness. So I think Fortinet do something, Smoothwall have a Layer 7 module but I don't think you can report on it or view in real time. The only other way to do it would be to monitor all ports and trace back where the traffic is coming from, identify the device and then look at it. Wouldn't be very instantaneous but would give a better overview, if say there wasn't a single port hogging the bandwidth you know the school maybe needs to upgrade the link.

We use FlyIcarus but by the looks of it they aren't taking new customers at the moment.

We have it defaulted to Greyscale and staff can change it in the print settings box when sending something to print. Having this as an option on screen at the copier will be great.

THe Option to default Duplex and Grayscale settings, at the time of print release looks useful as staff never remember to change to option in the print settings. At least this way they will have a second chance to change.

Staff Intranet?

Thanks, I'll take a look. I thought it needed a deeper UEFI change to be able to get an image from before the OS started, but if they have solved it I will be a happy chappy.

It is a fine line but as long as you are not selling the service of a drone, or it can be shown that the use is of significant commercial use to the organisation then you don't need the PfCO. This was investigated by both us and the specialist insurance company to ensure we were compliant and we came to the same conclusion. With in the definition posted earlier there is also the clarification of: It is the difference between offering a service to take drone photos for someone to use on their website or as part of a website package and taking a photo to use on your own website. The former would need the PfCO, the latter not. I was very disappointed I wasn't going to be a pilot, I had bought the shades and lapel badge already! @mrnoisy the spontaneity is the big selling factor for us, yes we could plan ahead and hire a drone company to come to events, but they would probably charge a whole day, maybe half, and we only need 30 minutes of footage, if that. The head of Estates asking us to have an inspection of the roof for a leak saved us the cost of a cherry picker and waiting until the next holiday so repairs could be quicker. It also meant someone didn't need to go out on the roof until absolutely necessary when a sapling had started growing in a crevice on the roof and we could work out the best route to get to it. Again, saved the cost of a cherry picker or the cost of booking someone to come when they were free. Yes a drone is like iPads, if you haven't thought about it, only getting it because it is cool and don't manage it properly then it won't be used. If you have purpose and evangelise it then it will get used and can save the school money.

Do you mean profile pictures? We set these to the school logo so staff would have a visual clue that they were talking or about to send something to a pupil, rather than a member of staff. Then set the policy to not allow them to be changed.