Mr.Ben

Yes! Zero Comms from them.

We were just using Smooth wall until recently. I don't think/feel that the firewall aspect isn't good enough for complex environments, and as a result we have moved firewalling to another product. That approach reduces risk as well - we can move firewall, broadband and filtering providers as separate projects, making them less disruptive.

Just jumping in here to say we use the NCSC's Protective DNS Service. It's free for schools.

I'm seeing issues with Air print as well - even on relatively new devices that still have updates. It's working fine on iOS 26, but broken on 27.

We use Kiosk mode, with USB access and limited program access. I've scripted auto sign in with a local account, and we have a dedicated SSID that is turned off during exam times.

I prefer Printix for just printing, but it is still quite limited on copier support for other functions. We have just rolled out hive for staff (which is brilliant), but the experience for Students needs work. Both systems have issues with iPads, but having use both Papercut hive is the easier to manage.

Hello Edugeekers, I'm working with a school that currently uses Mr/Mrs XXXXX in the display name field, which is breaking several systems and making it hard to identify people. Do any others still use this format for accounts - if so, how do you make it work with systems that required a first name?

No, it is pure madness, and not obvious. You either have a choice of: Having a profile per device group (assuming you are happy with using the serial in the name of the device) - this is what I do Or Having a profile that doesn't set the name, which means they are all called iPad on enrollment (and then you rename). Having said that though, you could provision in one profile to ensure a name and joining to the appropriate groups and pick up the appropriate settings, then move it to another profile without the name setting?

If you are talking about iPads, then that is expected behaviour. The enrollment policy enforces the name, so you need to have multiple enrollment policies depending upon your naming convention.

AFAIK it's still not a really useful SSO solution - users have to configure it for themselves, which removes the 'making it easy' benefit.

Happy to show you our set up if you have 30 minutes in the week.

The is really sad news as I confirm he was a lovely man - our local celebrity, but would shop in Tesco's, where I often served in in my youth!

A little. I've bought a GUI conversion tool and put it in the Company portal for them to use: https://forgeclass.co.uk/ It's less than £100, converts to Word and PDF (PDF is more reliable).

I've inherited a challenge with this in my latest post - they had just replaced the 5406zl core with a single, 24 port Aruba 6300M fibre switch (all 10G). That was ok - it's powerful enough, but didn't meet the DfE requirements, so I stacked it with 3 more switches in this year's budget - all 6300s, 1 more fiber and 2 ethernet. All of our fiber runs now have 2 paths to 2 separate switches, which is great! The total cost of the core was £20k, but I am serving the whole building from the additional, unused ethernet interfaces and can meet the WiFi standards for APs in the building.

I also remember a time when everything was on premise. The hours I spent updating and learning about: SIMS Exchange SharePoint LMS Systems (a few) All of which were critical to the school. Now all of these are taken care of by a team of dedicated engineers, allowing me to be better at keeping other systems up to date. Yes, there are outages for all systems, but the reliability of them vastly outweighs what we could achieve 15 years ago as small IT teams, and fact I'm not making these changes at 2am because something's gone wrong continues to amaze me. It's not like the work managing other systems hasn't increased (access control/CCTV/networks/firewalls/MDMs) - we need time do sort these now as well!