pete

At one of our schools, even with our staff groups / OUs selected and set as "Over 18" such as: School > Marked as under 18 School > Staff (group) > Marked (at this level) as over 18 School > Students (group) > Inherit from School ...we've found YouTube is rather hit-and-miss about recognising logged-in adults correctly. This could be because staff and groups are synced into Google from Azure, but checking in the Admin console there group memberships we're using are getting pulled through correctly. At another school where ther groups are directly created in Google they don't appear to have this issue.

Email body screenshot attached

As it says, our 3CX project might get kickstarted early due to a hardware failure, but I'm undecided on where to put the VM. I'd like to avoid reliance on one of our school sites if possible. What're you using, what are your rough costs (year-on-year) and would you host it the same way if you were doing it from scratch?

Just a heads up, since it's probably lurking in school's catch-all mailboxes. We got an email from the (registered 22nd Sep 2021) nhs-vaccines.uk domain pretending to be the NHS Vaccinations team and encouraging our headteacher to send out a vaccination "Consent checklist" to parents. Given the email and checklist's rabidly anti-vax content, I'm not sure what they were expecting to happen. Message title: was [FAO HeadteacherName] Student Consent Checklist for COVID-19 Vaccination Sender address: cvt @ nhs-vaccines.uk

@aicrd - yup, you're right. We already have an existing relationship with Schoolcloud, so we'd go direct to them.

We're in the market for a room and lettings booking system at a couple of schools. At present the "free rooms" booking system and SIMS Cover don't talk to each other at either school. We'd like two-way communication so a change in available rooms on either the MIS (room change due to broken leg) or Room Booking (free room is booked) updates the other system within 15 mins or so. So far I've spotted: ESS's Room Booking System - https://www.ess-sims.co.uk/products-and-services/room-booking-system (would prefer not to use, given experiences with SIMS Options Online and the grief we get from staff and parents over how awful it is) Schoolcloud's Room Booking System - https://www.roombookingsystem.co.uk/ (no write-back to SIMS Cover) And Schoolbooking.com - https://www.schoolbooking.com/ (no write-back to SIMS Cover) Am I looking for a unicorn, or has someone got a system in place that does two-way sync?

We've had LiveRegister at one of our schools for a couple of years now (replaced Cunninghams) and would recommend them. I'm looking to migrate another school to it, budgets allowing.

Schoolcloud for Parents Evening Software, with the video chat add-on at one of our sites. It's very popular among staff and parents, especially on dark winter evenings and just needs a recent web browser.

Exactly that.

Like this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wisdompro%C2%AE-7-inch-Colorful-Lanyard-Keychain/dp/B015NZ2QSK?ref_=ast_sto_dp&th=1&psc=1 But instead of a short lanyard there's a small split ring for attaching to keys. So far my google-fu has come up short and a visit to the local locksmith hasn't turned up anything. It's the sort of thing that comes with a MFA token to secure to a keyring.

The cheatsheets on packetlife are a useful reference: https://packetlife.net/library/cheat-sheets/

SQL Server permissions? Can the new DA admin the SQL server hosting the SIMS/solus3 database? This is a guess though - haven't run into the issue here.

Rebuild them on 2019, assuming you have software assurance? That's my strategy for 2012R2 of late if it becomes troublesome - otherwise I spend more time faffing with 2012R2 than it would take me to rebuild on 2019.

https://sysadminday.com/ There's a distinct lack of cake and alcohol here, but the peace and quiet from 1800 fewer end-users is a pretty good present.

Yeah spotted that. Their status page is at best misleading. It's currently down again, but the status page is all in the green. I'm beginning to think Apple School Manager is looked after by a couple of people in the US with no cover in other timezones.

Today Apple School Manager (school.apple.com) has been unavailable to login this morning (9am > ~11am) and now again at 14:57. The page loads, but the login box doesn't. And eventually the page shows an "apple school manager has stopped responding" box. Irritatingly, this my "sort out an Apple-related project" day.

There's a racist incidents in schools one going round at the moment and that does have a spreadsheet attached as an alternative to online forms.

Same here. Our SW still chokes if you're trying from IE on a 2012R2 VM. Works fine on everything else.

I simply wrote a letter on headed paper (pete provides IT services for $school, which is a trading name of $MAT), asked the appropriate headteacher to sign it and uploaded as a scanned PDF. I was approved within the hour. Caveats: We were already on the scheme previously (before letter/ID was required) so re-authentication was probably a checkbox exercise for Autodesk. It did take ~48hrs and a ticket for the custom deployment option to turn up for Inventor 2022 (which creates double-extension filenames and causes ransomware rules to trigger).

Yeah, the server is set as exception in SW here too. Checking available ciphers it's the same across 2012R2 and 2019 so it shouldn't be a connection negotiation problem. Flipping it to no exception in an attempt to get better logs (in case the vendor has an undocumented dependency on different domain) doesn't reveal a lot and the sync tool's logs are rather terse. Other MIS > third party sync tools (Wonde, Groupcall, ParentPay, SIMS Options) on the same server connect without issue, whether using the default proxy pulled from IE or explictly configured.

Bit of an odd one here. Does someone with a Server 2012R2 server (that's supposed/allowed to access the Internet) and a Smoothwall running Leeds 48 (current latest) mind visiting https://api.roombookingsystem.co.uk/PESMis.svc? in Internet explorer and posting success / failure as a comment? Background: We have a bit of middleware (SIMS > Roombooking System) running on a Server 2012R2 VM that's no longer talking to the API URL above. Nor does Internet Explorer on 2012R2. However, on Server 2019 (same proxy settings & filtering), Internet Explorer has no issues opening the API URL. This was definitely working on 22/03/21 (it's a manual sync done once a term, so pinning down the "it stopped working on" date is tricky). I've pretty much narrowed it down to "move the sync tool to a 2019 VM", but I'd be intrigued to see if it's just our site or a "doesn't work on 2012R2 at all now". cheers

Background: We pay (and then parents reimburse us) for 7 school buses (mix of minibus and 60-seater) for children who don't live along routes served by the LA. Bus passes are laminated card (Name, Form, Bus Route, Start and Expiry date), issued yearly. Finance are interested in not having to issue ~300 bus passes every year. Especially since most students will be riding the same bus for 5-7 years (depending on school and GCSE results). Query: On Edugeek, I can see some schools integrating student bus passes with door entry & cashless catering. Are you re-issuing electronic cards yearly? If not, how are you handling bus pass expiry and validation? So a driver can spot an expired pass from a post-16 student using the pass to get to college in the same town? Do your bus companies have any (standard, already on-board) equipment or information to link a badge ID to an expiry date? What does it cost you (roughly, nearest £1K is fine) to issue and/or reissue passes in terms of materials and labour? What were the initial setup costs?

I'd agree with @paulkerton - this is a school responsibility, not a student* one. If Fred in 7B goes into anaphylactic shock because of something in a grab-bag, "he should have clicked 'nuts' when ordering" isn't going to prevent a prosecution. *most of our students are pretty sensible if they're allergic. But there's always that one student who wonders if they're still allergic to peanuts.

We use Krystal for our registrar. On pricing they can control (so hosting, not domain names), Krystal also offer a 50% "you're a school" discount. US-based companies also work if you point them at something like this: https://media.nominet.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/27104952/Schools_Domain_Name_Rules.pdf to explain how school.region.sch.uk subdomains work.

Assuming it's the same type, yes. As far as the switch config is concerned, provided the port is the same (B8 = B8) it doesn't really care what the port can actually do.