pete

For the "kid didn't turn up" AD accounts, you can configure Salamander to run a cleanup routine if the student's no longer active in SIMS. We have it disable the account, change description to "leaver - %datestamp%", and move to the disabled accounts OU. Note that if you're doing selective OU sync to Azure AD that OU move will disable or delete anything owned by their account in Office 365.

From mid-August > mid-September, new Y7 and Y12 students are created provided the application in SIMS in a status of "accepted" or "admitted" . Mid-year joiners are created when their application has a status of accepted or admitted. It's on the school offices to ensure that happens at least the day before the student physically arrives. Realistically it's trivial for your admissions team to flag the student as "never turned up" even after the application is accepted or admitted, so it's a question of what's more of a problem - the kid being unable to login on their first day or someone in the office having to click a couple of buttons. Salamander can talk you through your options.

"Nope, retention and audit rules mean we have to keep it for minimum X period plus or minus Y depending on the roles you held". The mailbox contents are part of paid work done for the school, it's not theirs and they don't own it. Is this a "staff member was daft enough to use work email for personal matters" scenario?

Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (second book in a trilogy).

They seem surprisingly on the ball if their DR documentation is correct. Has anyone had experience of them either with an IT / Data Protection hat or as an end-user? (We are talking to you EPM)

Running 5406/2930/2530 along with some older ProCurve kit and they're about the sweetspot for a balance of features/reliability and cost-per-port.

If systems that we provide aren't working as expected, we'll help / check our things are correct. Basic advice is given via email. If the problem is with the parent's device / home network (our stuff's working but they're using IE6 on Win7 and a site doesn't work, for example), we mention where the problem lies but otherwise don't get involved. Short version: Certain parents / families ruined it for everyone else.

Was expecting the infamous SIMS upgrade video.

There's a Stone King Webinar on 02-12-21 re the ESS SIMS Contract Renewal that it may be worth looking at. Your headteacher/bursar/business manager should have had the email: We are being contacted by schools and Academy Trust clients who are very concerned about how to respond to the contract renewal notices they are receiving from ESS, which propose a minimum contract term of 3 years going forward. Given what appears to be an automatic renewal in the event of no response, clients must urgently review their options. We have prepared this briefing to alert clients to this issue and to invite clients who might be affected to get in touch and to participate in a webinar we are arranging for 11am on Thursday 2 December, at which we will review whether the actions of ESS may be the subject of a legal challenge. Whilst not all schools and Academy Trusts will necessarily be troubled by the new 3-year deal, it is likely to be of particular concern to those considering migration to another supplier. However, schools and Academy Trusts cannot simply renew with ESS without complying with the public procurement rules, which all schools and Academy Trusts therefore need to consider, along with securing best value for money.

Windows 10's "Night light" function to reduce eyestrain (Notifications icon to right of taskbar clock > expand > Night light) and glare. or macOS' Settings > Displays > Night shift for similar functionality.

Pandadoc is also worth a look.

Similar call with account manager. Trust very unhappy at the promise of jam tomorrow.

Just spotted this too. It would be lovely if current incumbents would stop accelerating our departure plans from them all at the same time.

Typically there's a minimum determined by organisational (retention & destruction policy) or legal (financial records) requirements. Plus the "don't take the mickey" factor (a judge can decide your retention window is too short, even if it is company policy). If it's not covered on the retention and destruction policy, then ask for it (plus backup retention, internet access logs, homedir retention, safeguarding (SW monitor/myconcern/etc) logs, print logs with document names, CCTV and phone recordings) to be added. Here, mailbox contents are retained for up to 6 months after leaving (mailboxes have a rolling legal hold of 180 days).

Just started reading A Little Hatred by Joe Abercrombie. Can be read stand-alone, but reading the First Law trilogy first explains a lot of things.

Where 100% of your time is spent writing and a well-formatted document emerges from the other end. vs 90% of the time reformatting a template and 10% adding information to it. So far I'm thinking MS Form > Excel > Template with maybe some MS Flow thrown in for sign-off Stumbling blocks are: Multiple people (appraisee and appraiser) will contribute to the document Needs a review stage for everyone to agree before final draft is generated Shouldn't be dependent on IT maintaining it in the future (i.e simple enough it can be handed over to HR / HR can recreate with tools available to them)

Yup, set as the student work email address in SIMS so they sync correctly with third-party systems (GCSEPod, ShowMyHomework, etc) for SSO via Azure AD. The email addresses are written into SIMS from local AD using Salamander.

Do they see a register in the SIMS desktop app? Has cover been assigned appropriately in Cover Manager? If it's AM/PM registers, have they been assigned in the Pastoral Structure in SIMS?

On the UniFi dashboard, what's the DHCP error rate looking like over a week or so?

This sounds like a financial reporting obligation. School should be reporting the educational / non-educational breakdown in terms of hardware, software and services/subscriptions. Some bursars / finance depts will guess, some will torture their IT staff into arbitrating what does and doesn't count. We classify it as equipment that's not used for teaching and learning such as: Desktop for the bursar Backup NAS UPS compared to (for example): Bee-bots (think Big Trak but in mechanical bee form) Laptop trolley & contents for student use USB visualiser webcam It's a poor metric and most things can be argued either way.

In the UK at least, the grace period for the Age Appropriate Design Code ended on 02/09/21 - https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/01/uk-now-expects-compliance-with-its-child-privacy-design-code/

The short version is that I also wear a data protection hat and you lot are a decent sounding board for the more unusual queries while I wait for the DPO to respond. This is the first refusal we've had to issue that wasn't "sorry, we don't hold that data".

Speaking with the (outsourced) DPO, they agree that the information requested is for such a small data set that it could be used to determine who has Covid, especially given the implication is current cases. As such, we're refusing the request.

So: The request is from a parent of a student in a particular year group. They're asking how many pupils in that year group have contracted Covid. Their wording was ambigious, but pending clarification would be interpreted as "recently" vs "how many since the start of the pandemic". The school records who is absent with COVID (Fred Bloggs, 7B. Isolating due to COVID / waiting on PCR result. Start date X, Return date Y). This is in addition to marking a student absent due to illness in the MIS. Given the relatively long absence, this ensures work is sent home over the isolation period and any missing work (that should be supplied by teachers) is chased up.

We've had a FOI request (how many students in Year Group X have got Covid) from a parent. My feeling is giving a number on a year group basis could lead to disclosure of medical data (through guesswork, anecdotal observation of absence and gossip readily available to parents/students) about students. I've checked with ICO and (understandably) they're gone through potential exemptions but it's not on them to tell us what to do. An overall figure (infections across whole school) is less likely to be problematic, but that's not what they've asked for. Thoughts?