jthompson

Yep, outage here this morning for a couple of hours or so by the looks. Came back online shortly after 8.

Our staff seem pretty okay with the whole Chromebook vs [Windows] laptop differentiation. I like to think that it's as a result of me being a massive terminology pedant, but it probably isn't. I find that referring to things like settings or software packages by their literally correct name, if somewhat cumbersome, does cut down on ambiguity. I remember when I joined the school, they had recently launched with SIMS Learning Gateway, but had decided to refer to it as 'parent portal' in all of their comms. It took years to undo that, and we were still seeing 'parent portal' cropping up in queries after we'd moved on to a different product.

Been using Backupify for a while here. I can't remember how the pricing compares to the competition, but we are including only the staff accounts in backups and not students (the cost difference is massive and the staff accounts are way more important). We'd need a beast of a NAS to store it all on site.

I'm not sure you would be able to restirct Blogger publishing to within your organisation anyway, since it's not a Workspace app. Google Sites seems like the nearest thing when it comes to scoping it to your Workspace domain, although it won't technically work like a blog. You at least wouldn't need to setup and maintain anything extra.

I don't have a suggestion for centralised logging, but I just want to add that we do pretty much the same as above, but we also include the string "LOGIN" in that line. We then have an equivalent "LOGOFF" line in a logoff script. The files that we write out to are %computername%.log and %username%.log, which makes the log files a bit easier to use.

Used to use mRemoteNG, but have since switched to useing Remote Desktop Manager Free Edition instead (https://devolutions.net/remote-desktop-manager). Same kind of thing, but with a few more bells and whistles. mRemoteNG hasn't been updated for quite a while.

Another way that might work for you, at least to begin with: Google Admin > Apps > Google Workspace > Gmail > Routing > Email forwarding using recipient address map. Create a rule that that maps the head@ address to the name@ address. Note that that would duplicate messages sent to head@, so you might only want to have that in place temporarily whilst you get the head@ files, etc. transferred to the name@ account as needed. Once everything is available from the name@ account, remove the head@ account and add head@ as an alias to their named account. I would recommend that they use name@ as their primary address, with head@ as an alias. edit: I forgot that there is an option in receipent address map rules to not deliver to the original destination. That would prevent incoming messages from being duplicated unnecessarily.

I would also consider a cloud-cloud backup option as well, even if you just use that to backup your staff accounts (because £££).

You could also consider Chrome OS Flex to make use of your existing desktop hardware. There was also a mention of needing a local server for Locker or Salamander, but it looks as though Locker does offer a cloud-based option.

I can't really read Spanish. Does that say "I am a fish. I am a fish. I am a fish. I am a fish..."?

Some key switches are clicky, some are non-clicky.

If it were me, I'd be tempted to offer a regular desktop keyboard from spares instead, and close the door on any other such requests that might come creeping in.

Yeah, it still amazes me that the company that brought us AppLocker also brought us the Teams deployment method. Almost as bad as GoTo.

Is option 1 on your Gmail SMTP Relay Service set to "Only adresses in my domains". I'm assuming that your FSRM "From" address is also set to use an address in your domain. Beyond that, could option 3 (TLS) be playing a part? We direct our FSRM at an on-prem postfix server, which itself then authenticates with a Gmail SMTP Relay Service.

Regarding the 'Less secure apps' option, don't enable that. Just set up the sending account with some 2FA and then in the account settings create an app-specific password. FSRM would then use that app-specific password to authenticate with the Gmail SMTP relay service. The 'Less secure apps' option might be deprecated now anyway.

We've had some parents, who have more than one child in a year group, ask us to ensure that their child's name is always included in any relevant messages. In those instances, being told that "Your son has been placed in detention" is not such a great look.

I've been working on a few little projects that combine Apps Script with AppSheet lately. AppSheet allows you to build custom database apps (without having to write any code) on top of Google Sheets, with API functionality baked in and plenty of automation options (e.g. send an email if a new row is added and it contains a particular value).

Google Apps Script is ace. It's basically our secret sauce here.

I found it basically impossible to make any judgement on a unit's effectiveness based on the unit's own stats. Obscure stratagems, FAQs, Codex army rules belonging to a faction I don't own or stuff in serialised rules supplements would add layers of complexity that wipe out the core "strength vs toughness" comparisons that are about as in depth as I can manage. e.g. I'm going to fire a bunch of long range rifles at some T'au, but oh no, drones end up shooting the bullets out of the sky and then the enemy unit flies across the table during my own turn and charges whilst also shooting twice at me and I get no saving throws. I didn't know any of that because I hadn't read the T'au Codex or taken account of the fact that their custom sub-faction includes a rule that gives all units in their army some aura ability when within 72" of any of my units. I'm exaggerating of course, but basically that's why I like painting more than playing.

Yes. The free-for-all I described is a choice that we have made. Mainly becausethere is no public relations office and not desire to lump an existing member of staff with that role.

I'm going to be interested to see the new rules, too. What's been teased all sounds sensible to me. I've never played 9th, oweing mainly to a social life not conducive to regular games but also to the impenetrable and fragmented rules. Army and terrain selection seemed to basically be as gamified as the actual game, and relied on having as much knowledge of the opponents' choices as your own. 10th seems to be geared towards lowering that kind of friction, and not having to play regularly so as to attain the requisite level of grok. Not that the chances of me actually playing games of 10th are looking that much brighter, though.

I've certainly had them take a long time to get going after a restart, with the sync agents like Wonde basically timing out and needing a manual start because the dB services took so long. Might be worth contacting ESS support to get details of db optimisation patches and procedures. Our server is much happier in this regard after doing that.

With an AppLocker policy enforced, scripts will be blocked by default. Rules added to the policy will then allow for scripts to be run from certain locations where its necessary (iirc there is a default ruleset that you can get it to add, which allows for stuff to be run from C:\Windows, etc.). Make sure that those are only covering locations that your end users aren't able to write to.

There is also this plugin, to provide TOTP MFA - https://www.dokuwiki.org/plugin:twofactorgoogleauth We host our DokuWiki site externally, so that its availability isn't reliant on the very systems being documented.

One issue surrounding parents comms that I notice at our school is that it's difficult for us as an organisation to get a sense of what our comms look like on the whole, and how effectively we're using it. That is, how many messages are parents typically receiving? How regular do they feel to the recepient? Are they consistently presented (style, length, tone, etc.)? Does the school come across as a single, cohesive organisation, or does it feel like departments are operating in isolation (e.g. "English Newsletter" every month, but nothing equivalent from elsewhere)? I imagine most schools are like us in that they don't have a public relations office to strategise and coordinate all of that. We use EduLink, and consider it to be a solid product, but where parent messaging is concerned it's just a free-for-all where all of the staff have the ability to bulk email parents. I think there's a disjoint between what the school might think it's sending out and how well those comms come across to parents. If there was some way for schools to have some top-down reporting of types and volumes of messages (e.g. detention notification emails averaging X amount per day, volume of promotional messages over the last term broken down by subject area, etc.) that would go a long way to optimising things for all concerned. It's also important to consider email delivery failures and to flag where there might be an issue with the contact details in the MIS. We diligently log non-delivery reports and follow up with parents to get contact details corrected, or to advise them that we've been unable to deliver messages because their inbox is full, etc.