ahunter

Applicant sent fingers crossed..

I'm definately going to put myself forward for this one. Had that sinking feeling of losing out to internal applicants on a lot of occasions in the past so it can be very off putting. I Live in Cheshire so it would be perfect for me and would save the commute to Manchester.

So does that mean that there was no suitable internal candidate first time around? or is this one still open to internal applicants too?

What is the actual job title? isn't this the same job that was advertised as "Network Support Officer" not so long ago?

You are absolutely bob on with this. It's just the luck of the draw on the day. A NM is a techie when all said and done and usually only has to line manager just one other person. It all depends on how SMT view the role and in my experience every school is very different on what they expect a NM to be. The real manager of the network/ICT in school's is usually SMT or the head of ICT. The NM role is to act as an advisor on a subject they know enough about to plan, develop, evaluate and maintain.

I'm not entirely sure that even specialist certs matter, especially in an education environment. They may help but it depends on the particular employer, interviewer and how they see a particular qualification.

Hi, Your not alone, strangely enough I have the same amount of experience and have too put in lots of time and effort at two different schools to enhance my skillset and experience. Picking up Cisco certs, Microsoft Certs etc along the way. I am still yet to land a NM position and It's not because I am lacking in any way (per feedback) it is just that I have been very unlucky and in some interviews the panel has been looking for something specific with regards to future plans etc. In response to your questions: 1) I wouldn't worry too much about qualifications, especially if you intend to stay in education, of course it's good to have them but most school's look at experience and your approach rather than how many qualifications you have. 2)If your a Senior Tech, you are pretty much already at the level of NM especially with regards to the technical side of the job. You just need to enhance the managerial aspect of things, all I can recommend is speak to your current boss and ask them if you could take on some additional management level roles to get some more experience for the future. It is very difficult to make that step up to NM even if your ready. My old school never had a NM just 2 techies, Junior and Senior. I was the Senior so was responsible for the overall network but it is difficult and it really varies from school to school how they see an ICT Manager. I think it's just the luck of the draw, if your being promoted to Senior Tech I would say your pretty much there. Senior Tech's in school's are sometimes referred to as Assistant ICT Manager's anyway... Hope this helps!

I have done that but in WGM we are only managing workstations themselves and not user groups. Do we have to be managing user groups for the preference file to apply?

Trying to set default printer settings, I have saved them on one machine as a preset and noticed there is a preference file saved for these settings. I want to roll this out to all clients as default.

Managed to resolve it, strangely enough it just picked up the drivers automatically after a few days. As a side issue, does anyone know if I create a preset for printer settings, if its possible to have it select automatically for all users that log on? Thanks.

Hi, We currently have a suite of 30+ Macs that we manage using WGM. We only manage the clients on a per machine basis and not per user. We have recently had some Xerox photocopiers installed and we would like to share the print queue with our clients so that they may print. It is critical for accounting reasons that we use the Xerox drivers with the printers on all clients as users need to be able to change some settings when they print. We have installed the drivers on all client machines and have added the printers to our management station and allocated the printers out. The printers show up correctly on the management client as we have manually selected the driver that will be used. When the printers are allocated they default to the Generic printer driver (Generic.ppd) I would like to change this and have the clients pick up the correct driver which is stored in Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources. I have altered the com.apple.mcxprinting preference file and updated the PPDURL to reflect this but they still pick up Generic.ppd. The only thing I can see which is confusing me is the Xerox drivers are in .gz format?? We are using Snow Leopard 10.6.8, any help would be fantastic. Cheers

To be honest, I think this is how a NM post should be advertised. After all a NM is an IT Technician first and foremost with supervisory and developmental duties. I have been to far too many NM interviews where they overlook the technical side of the position which is about 80% of the job tbh.

Thanks for all your help, I can confirm that it was a faulty SC9 module. I have replaced this with one from another board and problem solved You were right through after speaking to a few members of staff it would appear that the board was not fully tested from day one as it has "never" worked. Nice of them to wait so long to report it, it's about 3 years old lol.

Hi, We are currently experiencing a very odd problem with one of our Smartboards. I have ran through the elimination process with SMARTtech and nothing seems to add up. I'm wondering if anyone has had a similar issue. Here is what I have checked: 1. Light on the smartboard is a steady green light but the board does not respond to any touch from the pens or a finger 2. Pen tray seems to be operational, as when each pen is lifted the IR sensor lights up, if I reset the board the IR sensors on all trays light up as expected 3. USB cable seems to be functioning correctly, device manager and smart control panel both say the board is connected and working properly Buuuuuuuuuuuuut the board does not respond to any kind of touch at all. Got me completely stumped this one! Any help would be fantastic. Cheers Adam.

They are not completely phased out though yet as you can still sit the exams and certify as MCSA and MCSE aswell as the MCDST if you want it. The MCDST exam sets expire June 2011, the MCSA and MCSE exams are not currently due to expire.

Not a problem, glad I could help. With regards to the Directory status showing on the login screen and not on others. We experience the same issue its completely intermittent and seems to resolve itself after a reboot. Not sure what causes it I think its just a temporary glitch but I'm glad the major preferences are holding for you. Just following on from the power schedule issue. We have incorporated the power schedule into our images in order to still powerup/shutdown our machines automatically. This seems to work fine and does not have any affect on any other preferences not applying, just a thought if you still want to configure the powerup/shutdown.

What pre-requesites do you have for the MCSA? if you are already an MCDST you can pass the MCSA in 3 exams if not it will take 4.

I totally agree with this, previously working with the technologies will help you get through the material faster as you don't have to remember everything in the books, as like you said you will already know certain things. I have just passed 70-271 and am sitting 70-272 in a few weeks I also have the books for 70-680 and 70-685 next on my list before moving on to MCSA and MCSE. Finding it relatively straight forward though but like wagnerk said its all about doing things the "Microsoft" way.

Hi, We have recently had this issue on a Novell eDirectory integration. What we found is there is a glitch if you have scheduled startup/shutdown configured in WGM on the iMac's. Switching this off in Energy Saver has cured our problem. What was happening for us is occasionally a user would logon and receieve no WGM preferences, they would then log off and back on and the preferences would apply no problem.

I know I should but a little scared due to past experience. How would you approach it?

I have tried to on numerous occasions before. I have worked here for 15 months but have worked for the the LEA for 5+ years at another school. I don't even have permission to create new user accounts and whenever I do anything on the servers I always get questioned like I'm a naughty boy or something. Novell doesn't use Domains so thats a problem also.

Would I be able to do this from my workstation though with admin rights? presumably I'd have to do that from a server to which I have restricted access.......not sure why. I did know you can use group policy but have never needed to experience with it as the RM network bundled it into the MMC.

Hi, I am currently working at secondary school that has 210 computers. Currently when there is an update to SIMS, Flash Player, Shockwave Player, Adobe Reader etc etc basically any updates. I am expected to go around 200+ computers and install manually. I cannot begin to explain how ridiculous this is, my NM does not have anything reliable in place for rolling out software packages/updates across the network which I think is unacceptable. I mean 200 computers is not a lot but what if we had 500 would I STILL be expected to go around manually....probably yes. Having come from an RM network background and racked up 5 years experience this seems a crazy practice for me, at my last school we always built the package on a clean workstation then used rm management console to roll it out. The network we currently have is Novell and I understand that you can do this in ZenWorks but I don't think it's setup. Is there any way of doing this from my workstation with admin rights in order to help me out? I'm going crazy here I'm Senior ICT Tech but seem to be expected to do everything so I haven't really got time to go around manually This wasn't meant to be a rant as such but how frustrating!! To make matters worse, I do feel that the NM is not approachable on things like this as I think it may be taken as me questioning their ability, which I am not. I just think/know there has to be a better way.

Thanks for the info guys, the other thing is I don't currently have any Microsoft qualifications do you think it would be worth while to get the MCDST, MCSA and MCSE done before they retire them? or just go ahead with the MCITP programs?

Hi, I am planning on starting my MCITP Certification's soon, I have 5 years experience in a school setting as ICT Technician and Senior ICT Technician so hopefully should have enough base knowledge to see this through. I have ordered the official study guides for exams 70-680 and 70-685 I am also planning to sit 70-686 before moving onto the server administrator ones. I was just wondering if anyone has any additional "free" sources that they know of, possibly websites with free practice questions. The other thing is I am doing this completely off my own back, how do I arrange to take exams, I understand its prometric for Microsoft stuff but I have only ever dealt with Pearson Vue. Cheers Adam.