jthompson

Have to say I'm glad to see VLSC been retired. I always dreaded any interaction with it and never felt confident that it would work properly. Sign-ins often seemed really circuitous (and sometimes would maddeningly circle all the way around back to the sign-in form), and I'd usually have some unresolvable "online services awaiting activation" notifications for a few months after each new contract, and then MS would just not include the most important keys for $reasons. Some of that may persist now that it lives in M365 Admin, but it least it looks less like it was built for IE6 now.

This was back in April.

That's impressive work! Reading through your post, I was mentally ticking off the things that I can do using GLPI. I can do a lot of it but not quite everything that yours does. TBH I've never felt the need to have a big screen display in the office though, since I prefer to use browser-based tools that I can just as easily access when away from my desk or on mobile.

Whaaat?! Of course, you're right, but it's always bizarre when you realise stuff like that. Why do I not feel like an early-00's period setting would have any appeal whatsoever were they to do that now?

How silly! Everyone knows that Virginia Woolf was written by Robinson Crusoe, and not Mrs Dalloway.

I look forward to not getting any time to play it! It does look lush, and I agree that the crowdedness of some of the scenes does jump out. I haven't played GTA V for years now, but I suspect it would still be a hugely impressive game if I were to fire it up today (GTA IV had quite a crummy framerate if I recall, so I never got as lost in it as with V).

We're still deploying VirtualBox 6 via GPO. Haven't looked at v7 yet to see if this all still works. This is what we do to deploy VirtualBox 6, at any rate. An MSI installer is available from within the regular .exe installer (when running the installer, look in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Temp and take a copy of the msi). You can then use a computer startup script in a GPO to install it. Something like (version numbers are just what I've got documented, so obviously update accordingly): IF EXIST "C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VirtualBox.exe" GOTO QUIT msiexec /i "\\path\to\\VirtualBox-6.1.20-r143896.msi" /qr ALLUSERS=1 :QUIT Our VMs are deployed to client machines. They're copyied down from a network location to the local hard drive, where they remain (i.e. not copying down each time, or running across the network). The VMs are configured with an immutable hard drive, so that they return to their original state each time they're started up. I'll leave that step as an exercise for the reader, since the effectiveness of simple batch scripts to copy them down might depend on the size of the VM, the local network setup, etc. User's home folders are available within the VM using the Shared Folders feature. Importantly, we lock down the VirtualBox options available to the end user, so that they can't modify the VM config or add their own VMs. A separate GPO then applies a user start-up script for student users (in this example the VM being locked down is stored locally on the client machine at C:\VirtualBox VMs\SchoolVM). The start-up script makes use of vboxmanage to configure VirtualBox options. It registers the deployed VM with the VirtualBox application and then locks down the menus and other UI stuff to keep things simple. if exist "C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\vboxmanage.exe" ( "C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\vboxmanage.exe" registervm "C:\VirtualBox VMs\SchoolVM\SchoolVM.vbox" "C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\vboxmanage.exe" setextradata global GUI/Customizations noSelector "C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\vboxmanage.exe" setextradata global GUI/SuppressMessages remindAboutAutoCapture,remindAboutMouseIntegration,showRuntimeError.warning.HostAudioNotResponding,remindAboutGoingSeamless,remindAboutInputCapture,remindAboutGoingFullscreen,remindAboutMouseIntegrationOff,confirmGoingSeamless,confirmInputCapture,remindAboutPausedVMInput,confirmVMReset,confirmGoingFullscreen,remindAboutWrongColorDepth "C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\vboxmanage.exe" setextradata global GUI/RestrictedGlobalSettingsPages General,Input,Update,Language,Display,Network,Extensions,Proxy "C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\vboxmanage.exe" setextradata "C:\VirtualBox VMs\SchoolVM\SchoolVM.vbox" GUI/RestrictedRuntimeMenus Machine,View,Devices,Help,Debug "C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\vboxmanage.exe" setextradata "C:\VirtualBox VMs\SchoolVM\SchoolVM.vbox" GUI/RestrictedStatusBarIndicators HardDisks,OpticalDisks,FloppyDisks,Network,USB,SharedFolders,Features,Mouse,Keyboard "C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\vboxmanage.exe" setextradata "C:\VirtualBox VMs\SchoolVM\SchoolVM.vbox" GUI/RestrictedCloseActions SaveState,PowerOff,Restore )

I'm waiting for our exam officers' accounts to kick in with the T-OTP requirement, so that I can determine whether the Pearson app is required. If it's not, then I'll just circulate my standard T-OTP guidance to other staff, where I remind them that the Authenticator Chrome extension is available for them to use if they prefer to not have their mobile involved.

Thought I'd just tag on to the end of this thread. Our staff have been notified by Pearson that MFA will be required for their Pearson Portal accounts from today. The guidance instructs users to install the bespoke Pearson Authenticator app from the App/Play Store. I'm hoping that it's just generic T-OTP and that other authenticator apps will be fine to use. Why there would be need for anything non-standard on that front I don't know, other than to make their onboarding and end user support less confusing (people often get confused when invited to use Google Authenticator in conjunction with a non-Google account, for instance). https://support.pearson.com/uk/s/article/Logging-In-And-Accessing-Pearson-Services-Using-The-Pearson-Portal Edit: Reading a little more (https://support.pearson.com/uk/s/article/Pearson-Portal-Authenticator#Q2) it does look exactly like regular T-OTP. Maintaining and mandating a bespoke app seems like a mad decision to me.

Blazers are a bit old fashioned on the face of it, yes, but I do think that they're both a great leveller and something that's very hard to look scruffy in. Something else that I think will become more of a thing is how gendered uniform policies can be. They really shouldn't be. The earlier post about boys' hair length is a great example of when a uniform policy decides to be regressive rather than progressive.

Uniforms serve a number or purposes, not least of which is the very practical problem of "should this person be here?". If everyone on your site is either in a school uniform or wearing a recognisable lanyard, that helps things, no? Also, uniforms can serve as a leveller, smoothing over a whole category of social issues that might otherwise interfere with the school day. They can also contribute to building a cohesive school culture. There are plenty of ways to be your own individual whilst wearing a school uniform. If clothing is all you've got going for you, then perhaps being part of a organisational culture might be a positive thing after all. On the coats thing, if the coat is not actually part of the uniform, then it should just be subject to whatever general standing rules there are about conduct (i.e. no overt political slogans, etc.).

I don't think that's possible without some scripting shenanigans. Even then, that's going to bulldozer over whatever out-of-office options users might want/need to be setting for themselves. To do it, I suspect you'd need to either script some gam commands, or use a service account that can impersonate users and script it using an Apps Script project that does it via the Gmail API (complicated). I used this blog post as the basis for setting up a system that automatically applies Gmail signatures for our staff. The blog post includes the steps necessary to create a service account that can be used in conjunction with calls to the Gmail API to set users' Gmail settings. In this case it's updating their signature, but could presumably be adapted to set/unset their out-of-office. https://caspan.com/2021/10/google-app-script-set-gmail-signature-template-on-org-users/ I'm not a fan of auto-responses though, especially if they're used anything other than sparingly. Email threads can very easily get messy because of them. Our org's standard email footer (Admin > Apps >Google Workspace > Gmail > Compliance > Append footer) for oubound messages includes a bit about repsonse time expectations, working hours, etc. which is our nod to this.

More a case of "at no extra cost" than "free" as such, but Netflix will be adding the GTA trilogy (GTA3, Vice City and San Andreas) to their games catalogue from 14th December. https://about.netflix.com/en/news/grand-theft-auto-the-trilogy-the-definitive-edition-arrives-on-netflix I still remember my first go on GTA3 (back in 2000 was it?), and if you'd told me then that it might one day become my goto toilet game, I don't think I'd have believed you.

I've been able to do some cool automations off the back of querying Wonde from Google Apps Script projects. Once I began to get the hang of it it's much neater than working with file output from command reporter. Hugely powerful. If you register yourself as a Wonde developer, that would be your route to setting yourself up with API access to your schools' MIS data, and your projects would work the same regardless of which MIS a school was using. There's obviously a bit of a learning curve and cost there in terms of setting it up and working out the basic Powershell functions or whatever to begin exploiting it in your projects (and there's always ChatGPT to help), but if you're a coder at all I would consider it.

Turned off for students in Google Workspace, but any YouTube videos posted in Classroom classes are watchable for them there (iirc YouTube videos embedded in Classroom are served from youtubeeducation.com). YouTube is generally available for them when not signed in to Google, however. That'll be subject to our web filtering, which adds the special YouTube headers, or whatever (I can't remember).

We use a Javelin DNA Pro. Does duplex: colour on the front, but black only on the back, which is fine for what we need. Software is good enough for what we need. We're not printing off large batches from merged data or anything, just staff IDs as and when. https://www.nbstech.com/javelin-dna

Some Google Drive users are reporting that Google has lost some of their Drive files. Reads like some users' Drive for Desktop app hasn't been syncing their local cache up to the cloud, as Google are advising those affected to not delete their local appdata (which is where the app caches files locally). https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/11/google-drive-is-investigating-sync-issues-as-users-complain-of-lost-files/ Personally, I always check the system tray for sync status when updating files, especially important ones.

GCDS doesn't sync passwords, so try resetting their Google password directly in Google Admin.

Yep, SIMS would almost certainly be the only MIS with an on-prem desktop app option these days, but even they are unlikely to be offering it in that form to new customers now. Since it was bought by ESS, the business has been geared around shifting everyone to SIMS Connected, with a view to ultimately going cloud-native, so I suspect as anew customer they'll just be offering you SIMS Connected. At which point the properly cloud-native competition seems like an easier choice. SIMS isn't well-loved on these forums, and is unlikely to be any IT bod's first choice. Most of us using SIMS in some form are likely doing that because our schools have a long history of using it and it's therefore deeply embedded into workflows throughout the organisation.

Prior to having DOB-based initial passwords, we would occasionally send out a randomised initial password for new staff account (to HR or line manager) if that person wasn't due into the office to collect an assigned laptop. That would only ever have been on request, though. Not ideal, but resonably well controlled since the password is effectively a one-time use, and misuse of it by somebody else is likely to become apparent pretty quickly when the new staff member can't get signed in as expected.

Staff and student user accounts get provisioned here with the person's date of birth as their initial password (dd MMMM yyyy), with a new password required at first sign in. We can then just distribute a new staff username to HR or line management, along with a reminder that the initial password will be the person's date of birth. Not all staff need to come and meet the IT team upon starting. Gmail has a confidential mode which is handy for those odd occasions where a password does need to be emailed to someone. It allows you to make the content of the message available for only a set period of time, and you can revoke it at any point, so it helps contain it more so than a regular email.

Yep, housekeeping and September rollover tasks. Also, details of the backup & recovery systems.

I remember constant articles about Half-Life in PC Zone magazine. When I finally got to play it I remember the feel if it being quite visceral compared to other games at the time. When HL2 was first demoed, I remember the physics engine just blowing me away. Was it HL or HL2 that first had a flashlight? That seemed to me a really amazing thing to see.

Classroom classes' files/folders aren't stored in Shared Drives, so you won't see them under Admin > Apps > Google Workspace > Settings for Drive and Docs > Manage shared drives. If you've found one of the files or folders that you're after, have a look at who the owner of it is. If it's a user on a different domain, then those files/folders belong to a different Google Workspace tenancy (or an external Google account, at any rate) and have just been shared with users in your tenancy. It would therefore out of your reach from an admin point of view. If the owner is an account in your Google domain, then the files/folders do belong to your tenancy. If the file/folder is stored in a Shared Drive, then there will be no 'owner' user, since the shared drive itself will be the owner. In that case, the location of the file may be able to be ascertained by having it open and looking at the file location in the UI. It could be that it's a file stored in a shared drive that you're not a member of, which will obscure it's location. The same may be true for Classroom classes, technically. They could belong to another tenancy, and your staff and pupils are joining classes outside of your domain. That seems less likely, though. Have a look at Apps > Google Workspace > Settings for Classroom > Class settings to see whether your users area able to join classes outside the domain, and also whether any external domains are allowlisted. As for something that you can do... if you've got access to a file, look at whether there is an owner listed in the sharing list of the file. If there's no owner, it's sitting in a shared drive. If you're a member of the shared drive in which it resides, the name of the shared drive will be visibile within the UI.

In Gmail, delegated mailboxes are two clicks away also, but can sit there through the day as a separate tab.