jthompson

I guess our on-prem SIMS server must have been in a very sub-optimal state if we're enjoying Connected! Narrator: It was.

Perhaps some A/B testing going on? Or maybe a different SKU. Ours is Education.

Encountered a similar issue when I in-place upgraded our print server from 2019 to 2022. None of the queues worked after the upgrade. I rolled it back and have since built a fresh print server on 2022, with mostly all the same printers and drivers added to it, same Group Policy options for Point and Print, etc. no issue whatsoever. I don't know what the cause of it was, but for us it didn't appear to be any kind of driver incompatibility. Could you perhaps roll-back and try upgrading from 2016 to 2019 instead?

Secondary. About 1600 pupils and our SIMS db was ~30GB at the time we migrated (a lot of that was historical InTouch messages).

Not noticed that with the taskbar specifically, but I've noticed that Explorer windows can hang painfully if Google Drive for Desktop is busy syncing. Something to do with a new underlying architecture of Explorer compared to Win10, and the context-sensitive UI elements (new toolbar options and right-click menus) not being able to draw promptly. Maybe check whether you have any similar file sync going on at the time things appear to freeze.

For us, the regular end user experience has been good. SIMS .net runs faster for us than it used to when running locally. The SIMS Connected service has been reliable, too, with no apparent sluggishness at certain time of day or year. My big bugbear is with the third-party connector. We're still running an on-prem server to host our third-party sync utilities. Although that's much less burdonsome than managing a SIMS server, the VPN from that server to SIMS is a real bottleneck. Our EduLink syncs take 10+ hours each time. On occasions it'll tip over the 12 hour mark, which bascially means that EduLink then falls a day behind the MIS. Less noticeable with other sync utilities though, tbh. Our exam officer finds that it's better in all but one regard: managing files for import/export is more fiddly and confusing, as you have to use a floating toolbar at the top of the window to transfer files between the local computer and the remote RDS session. It gets confusing fast to have Windows Explorer windows from the local system and within the SIMS Connected session up on screen at the same time. Having A2C within SIMS Connected is a bonus, as it doesn't tie her to needing to run that on her school PC. I don't think we've any regrets about the move. There was never really an apetite for switching to a different MIS at the time. I absolutely love not having to manage an on-prem SIMS server.

After installing the September 2024 update, my Windows 11 Start menu appears to have reverted back, with the lock/sign out/switch options immediately available from clicking the user name rather than hidden within the annoying account panel. Anyone else noticed this? EDIT: Yep, definitely a change from August (22631.4037) to September (22631.4169) patches.

Just had another look at our installation. We have the auto upgrade option on, so ours is still Azure AD Connect v2.3.6.0 I'm assuming that when the next auto upgrade capabale version is released, it'll then be something named Entra ID Connect. Auto upgrade doesn't necessarily install each new release, since some releases are available only as manual downloads. As per https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/entra/identity/hybrid/connect/reference-connect-version-history, the most recent version available for auto upgrade is still 2.3.6.0.

It can be really hard to get a feel for how much comms parents are getting from a school. It's going to vary depending on how many children they have at the school, which year groups they're in, what subjects/clubs they're involved in, what their attendance/behaviour is like, etc. If you're going to allow staff more generally to bulk message parents, try to get SLT to lay down some rules in pursuit of a consistency in style, formatting, frequency, etc. If you can, monitor email delivery failures, as that can be a good way to pro-actively iron out wonky parental contact details. This year, I'm actually on the receiving end of this as I'm now a parent of a school-going 5-year old. Their school uses both WisePay and ParentPay, confusingly, sends out direct emails and also uses ClassDojo. ClassDojo is my new pet hate: very low signal to noise ratio from a parent perspective, doesn't send in-app messages as emails (so we can't search across all the messaging in one place) and is always on the up-sell (what parent is going to want to pay a monthly sub for some premium features?).

From Sky News: UK's first 'teacherless' AI classroom set to open in London No idea what systems are being used exactly. Quite a lot of sweeping statement and very little crunch in the article. A few other nice lines...

I've not tried for VLC. If I get a bit of time at some point I may experiment and report back, since that might be a useful one for us for exam accounts.

We're managing to to this to set Chrome as the default browser. I know that Windows treats PDF app association as something of a special case, and generally doesn't like that being changed by anyone other than the user themself (because security), so we gave up on that one. To specify Chrome as the default browser, we use a GPO to point Computer Configuration -> Policies -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> File Explorer -> Set a default associations configuration file to an xml file stored in a share accessible by all computers/users. We use the UNC path the to file.

Best practice should be for teachers to archive a class at the end of the year, and then make a fresh one for a new incoming class.

The other issue with X (aside from its new stance) is that it seems as though you need to be signed in to see anything, even content embedded elsewhere, which makes it's markedly less useful than before as a public announcement tool.

There's no link, other than whether or not Google Classroom is turned on or off for users in particular OUs. No link at all between Workspace OUs and Classroom classes. It seems unlikely that your student OUs aren't all inheriting that setting from a common point higher up in the OU structure, though. My guess is that there is some custom or third-party tool that is relying on students being in those class OUs in order to either populate classes in Google Classroom, or do some other thing. If I were writing such a tool, though, that's not how I'd do it: I'd sync from MIS or Wonde for that, not from a Google Workspace OU structure, since students are likely to belong to a number of different classes.

Thanks. I'm definitely going to give that a listen. I confidently predict that shifting AI processing more and more onto the end user device will create a [somewhat false] impression of it not having such a dreadful energy cost.

When you're doing a DKIM lookup on mxtoolbox you'll need to include the selector along with your domain name. e.g. enter schoolname.org:selector and not just schoolname.org.

The email I received says that it'll come into effect from 9th October. But yes, it's a shame as it works well for us but I'll struggle to justify the cost.

This is how we do it. We first mount a vanilla Windows image from a deployment share (MDT here still)... Mount-WindowsImage -ImagePath "E:\DeploymentShare01\Operating Systems\Windows 11 Education 23H2\sources\install.wim" -Index 1 -Path "E:\Mounted" ...then run the following script to remove any unwanted Appx packages... # Create a list of unwanted AppX package names. $Apps = @( "*DevHome*" "*FeedbackHub*" "*GamingApp*" "*GetHelp*" "*Getstarted*" "*Microsoft3DViewer*" "*MicrosoftOfficeHub*" "*MixedReality*" "*News*" "*OneNote*" "*Outlook*" "*People*" "*PowerAutomateDesktop*" "*Skype*" "*Solitaire*" "*Todos*" "*Weather*" "*WindowsMaps*" "*Xbox*" "*YourPhone*" ) # Remove packages for all users. ForEach($App in $Apps){ Get-AppxProvisionedPackage -Path "E:\Mounted" | where {$_.PackageName -like $App} | Remove-AppxProvisionedPackage } ...and then finally save the changes back to the Windows image in the deployment share. Dismount-WindowsImage -Path "E:\Mounted" -Save If you're wanting to do this on the running Windows system rather than on a reference image, I suppose you'd just adjust the Get-AppxProvisionedPackage command in the script. Note that pre-existing users will likely still have the Appx apps, since they'll have already been provisioned into their user profiles.

Aha! Oho!

And there was me thinking that the Windows 11 Start menu couldn't get any worse!

Multiple instances can use the same project. You just need to reuse the Oauth files from the project, dropping them into place for each instance. client_secrets.json oauth2.txt oauth2service.json Those files basically represent the keys to the kingdom (whoever has them has your Google Workspace domain!), so store them in a password manager or somewhere equally secure. I'd also strongly recommend only installing GAM to Google Cloud Shell, and running it from there. That would prevent you having to have those super-sensitive files held locally on Windows machines. It also means that you can access GAM via your Google login from any web browser.

Whilst watching the Paris 2024 Olympic Opening Ceremony, and seeing the various national teams river-cruising up the Seine, I was struck by one thing. Some of the boats were huuuge, but... ...Ghana need a bigger boat.

That's the issue with Chrome OS Flex, too. It can probably be installed on hardware that's not certified for it, but it's the uncertainty over whether the regular updates stop all of a sudden (or an update arrives but borks it) that is the killer.

Between the W10 EOL dates, W11's more strict hardware support and ChromeOS Flex's EOL dates on older model PC hardware being on a similar timescale to that of W10, there are just no viable OS options for our older hardware. I did look at Ubuntu desktop, which can be domain joined to AD and does have some Group Policy administrative templates available without needing to purchase any licensing, but some of the design philosophy in Ubuntu just made it not viable (e.g. all users get read privileges of other users' local home folders by default). Which is a shame considering that it's basically supported on whatever ancient hardware you want to hang onto. You can get more extensive Group Policy options if you purchase Landscape licenses for the machines, but it's still not going to be viable imho. Maybe if you're just after providing a web browser behind a domain login it might be worth a look.