Green_Goblin

Thanks for pointing me in this direction @BKGarry, it really helped during the meeting to refer senior leadership to our schools that are already using A Star!

Just bumping this in case it was missed during the half-term break

Thank you. Some of our schools use A Star Attendance but I'm not sure if it's the same schools that saw the demo. I have a meeting with Trust Leadership next week so will find out a bit more then.

Does anyone have any experience using Arbor with School Synergy Attend that they would be willing to share please? Attendance Leads from some of our schools have seen a demo and believe it fills some gaps in Arbor's attendance module but I'm not sure if this is a training issue or a genuine need for additional software. Thanks Jon

😂 thanks for the heads up. I've passed on to the school's HR dept. to correct.

Birkdale High School, Southport, are looking for a skilled IT Technician to join our team and help maintain and develop our school’s IT systems, including hardware, software, and online platforms. Key Responsibilities: Provide IT support to staff and students. Maintain and develop the school’s website and SharePoint. Assist with hardware/software installations, repairs, and upgrades. Support network maintenance and troubleshooting. Help manage ICT inventory and ensure data security. Provide guidance on MIS systems and parent apps. Essential Requirements: GCSE (or equivalent) in English and Maths. Level 3 ICT qualification (Networking/Systems). Experience with ICT networks and Microsoft technologies. Strong problem-solving and communication skills. Application Details: Deadline: Friday 9 January 2026 (midday) Interviews: Wednesday 14 January 2026 Note: CVs not accepted – apply using our application form. Full details can be found at IT Technician - Birkdale High School If you are passionate about technology and enjoy helping others resolve their IT challenges, we encourage you to apply for this exciting opportunity.

Bump! - closes Monday 10th

HOURS : Permanent, Full-time 36 hours per week Southport Learning Trust is a growing and dynamic Trust consisting of seven schools. At present our family consists of five secondary and two primary schools- Bedford Primary School, Birkdale High School, Greenbank High School, Kew Woods Primary School, Maghull High School, Meols Cop High School and Stanley High School. Due to retirement at Maghull High School, we are actively recruiting a Trust Senior IT Technician who will provide IT management and technical support to Maghull High School and the wider Trust. Full details can be found at https://maghullhigh.com/vacancies/

Job role: Senior IT Technician at Greenbank High School Closing Date: 24th November 2021 at noon Salary: £25,991 – £29,577 (Pay award pending) Permanent, 36 hours per week, full time Southport Learning Trust is a high-achieving family of schools including Greenbank High School, Stanley High School, Maghull High School and Kew Woods Primary School. Would you like to join our well-established and successful team as we seek to develop our IT service across our schools in line with our strategy and growth? We are looking for a knowledgeable, skilled and experienced Technician who has experience of a wide array of technologies and is comfortable working in a technical support environment. The successful candidate will possess an enthusiasm for technology, the skill set to deliver all requirements around a range of IT systems along with the confidence to work on their own initiative. You will possess a passion for ensuring that production and back office infrastructure is performant, secure, well governed, available and scalable. You will be responsible for gathering, understanding, documenting and implementing the infrastructure needs at Greenbank High School and reporting this to the Trust IT Manager. Please find further details and an application pack at https://www.southportlearningtrust.org/southport-learning-trust-vacancies

**Bump** - closes Thursday

The link works for me, but like you I still haven't received the invitation

Job role: Senior Trust IT Technician Closing Date: 2nd July 2020 at noon Salary: £27,905 – subject to annual review Permanent, 36 hours per week, full time It is with great pleasure that I introduce you to Southport Learning Trust, a high-achieving family of schools including Greenbank High School, Stanley High School and Kew Woods Primary School. Would you like to join our well-established and successful team as we seek to develop our IT service across our schools in line with our strategy and growth? We are looking for a knowledgeable, skilled and experienced Technician who has experience of a wide array of technologies and is comfortable working in a technical support environment. The successful candidate will possess an enthusiasm for technology, the skill set to deliver all requirements around a range of IT systems along with the confidence to work on their own initiative. You will possess a passion for ensuring that production and back office infrastructure is performant, secure, well governed, available and scalable. You will be responsible for gathering, understanding, documenting and implementing the infrastructure needs of the Trust. As an employer Southport Learning Trust will develop your career through an ambitious professional development programme and look after your well-being in a supportive environment. As an employee you will have access to an excellent pension scheme, well-being package and competitive annual leave. We would like to invest in the long term career of an exceptional candidate and would welcome appropriately socially distanced visits from prospective applicants. Please email [email protected] to arrange a convenient time. Ian Raikes Executive Headteacher – Southport Learning Trust Further details and an application form can be downloaded from https://www.greenbankhigh.co.uk/jobs/

Job role: Senior Trust IT Technician Closing Date: 4th March 2020 at noon Salary: £27,905 – subject to annual review Permanent, 36 hours per week, full time It is with great pleasure that I introduce you to Southport Learning Trust, a high-achieving family of schools including Greenbank High School, Stanley High School and Kew Woods Primary School. Would you like to join our well-established and successful team as we seek to develop our IT service across our schools in line with our strategy and growth? We are looking for a knowledgeable, skilled and experienced Technician who has experience of a wide array of technologies and is comfortable working in a technical support environment. The successful candidate will possess an enthusiasm for technology, the skill set to deliver all requirements around a range of IT systems along with the confidence to work on their own initiative. You will possess a passion for ensuring that production and back office infrastructure is performant, secure, well governed, available and scalable. You will be responsible for gathering, understanding, documenting and implementing the infrastructure needs of the Trust. As an employer Southport Learning Trust will develop your career through an ambitious professional development programme and look after your well-being in a supportive environment. As an employee you will have access to an excellent pension scheme, well-being package and competitive annual leave. We would like to invest in the long term career of an exceptional candidate and would welcome visits from prospective applicants. Please contact Mrs Diane Murphy on 01704 567591 extension 124 to arrange a convenient time. Ian Raikes Executive Headteacher – Southport Learning Trust Further details and an application form can be downloaded from greenbankhigh.co.uk/jobs/

Where would I apply a high priority rule for the VoIP server please? Not sure I understand the question. Do you mean do internal calls connect directly client-to-client rather than via the VoIP server?

Excellent, thank you. I thought that might be the case with the web interface. I'll continue to test and monitor. Other than adding a proxy exception for the VOIP server, bandwidth limiting and bandwidth shaping is there anything else I can do Smoothwall side?

Hi ibpalle and bald_pig Sorry, this bit was badly written. I'll try and clarify; I've been testing calls myself and at the point where it breaks up I can be looking at the traffic graph and it may be showing 20Mbps but a second or so after jump up so I guess what I'm wondering is if there is a delay on the info on the traffic graphs or is it really only using 20Mbps at the point of the issue? Similarly there can be high traffic before the issue is noticed but the traffic graph can have dropped down by then. Yes, I can see the traffic being put in the right class. To be honest, as we've had no complaints of internal call issues and noticed none ourselves I wasn't looking at local switching. We don't have anything installed to test internal network usage since The Dude started crashing my PC. Any suggestions please? We use HP switches.

Hi I wonder if anyone could help with a problem I'm banging my head against the wall with at the moment? We have FreePBX virtualized and going out to internet via Smoothwall on a 200Mbps leased line. Recently call quality has been intermittent with some calls experiencing missing audio. QoS is applied up to the router (Mikrotik RB2011). FreePBX is in its own VLAN and connects to internet via firewall rules in Smoothwall. Phones are in the same VLAN and have QoS settings applied. Before putting phones in same VLAN internal calls were affected but since placing them in the same VLAN as FreePBX they have been crystal clear. I've applied bandwidth management and bandwidth limiting in Smoothwall but this has made little, if any, difference. This was also happening a few months ago but seemed to be resolved. Speedtests showed we were only getting 100Mbps on a 200Mbps circuit and the problem went away when this was remedied, however, current speedtests show we are still receiving 200Mbps. It may just be me but the issue doesn't seem to be strictly limited to heavy bandwidth usage, more how many PCs are being used at the time i.e. on Friday 5 IT suites were in use but, according to Smoothwall's traffic graphs we were only using around 20Mbps incoming and experiencing the issue, yet earlier on in the day we were hitting 150Mbps but the issue was barely noticeable. Any ideas please?

Staff timetables all good here now, thanks Frog

An overhaul of the backup system is long overdue IMHO The ability to restore individual files, rather than an all or nothing restoration approach would be nice. This applies to emails as well as regular files and pages. There have been several cases over the years where emails/files have needed to be recovered and I've been told the only way to restore them would be to restore the entire partition from backup; obviously not ideal... Incremental backups and the ability to backup direct from Frog (to an NFS share for example) rather than having to use a Windows machine in a "man in the middle" approach. Or possibly, to be able to use common proprietary backup tools that we may already be licenced for to do the same. The email attachment limit of 10MB is a common complaint of our users and a configurable attachment size would be preferable. Email quota limits would be handy That's all I can think of ATM

I'm not sure where the assumption that because we are airing our frustration here, we are not directly reporting our issues to Frog comes from?

Have to say I really admire your positivity and enthusiasm for Frog However, I don’t think anyone is expecting perfection by not wanting updates to break key features every time they are applied, are they? I don’t believe this thread would exist if the updates only broke something occasionally? (Apologies to round2it if my assumption is incorrect!) The latest update was a bug fix so I think of that like MS Windows updates. We run a WSUS server and have never had a borked update in 3+ years (really shouldn't temp fate like that haha ) I don’t know much about Exchange but upgrading a 2000 Forest/Domain to 2008 R2 is a major change and, as you know, no mean feat. If Frog required an upgrade of equivalent scale I believe the majority of users would be sympathetic to that. All in all I think Frog is a great system. That’s not to say there aren’t areas that can’t be improved. Can’t the same be said for all companies? Jon

Another vote for KeePass here :-)

Hello All, We are currently reviewing our backup policy and are considering buying R1Soft CDP Server (Thanks to recommendations on EduGeek ). Our current setup is as follows: 3 Server 2003 STD servers 1 Ubuntu server 1 VLE The Windows and Linux servers all backup to removable USB drives nightly. They are also backed up to a NAS box in another part of the school on a monthly basis. The VLE can only be backed up by connecting to a samba share on the box, so we use one of the Server 2003 servers to act as an intermediary between the VLE and NAS box. This is done using standard NTBackup. I'm wondering if anyone could answer the following questions? 1. If I understand correctly, the CDP Server backs up the other servers, using agents, to a network attached device (e.g. NAS). Does this mean the removable USB drives will become obsolete, or can you tell the servers running the agents to backup to a locally attached device? 2. We don't have access to install software on our VLE box so installing the agent will be out of the question. I guess we will have to continue using the intermediary setup or does anyone using CDP Server know of any features that would cater for this? 3. Has anyone actually had any experience of disaster recovery using CDP Server? 4. CDP Server sounds too good to be true so are there any downsides? Any advice/comments would be much appreciated

We seem to be having problems with the server and workstation service stopping randomly on two of our 2k3 servers. On one I can successfully restart the services but on the other it gives a permission denied error and only a reboot will fix it. All the servers run Sophos and perform nightly scans plus I performed a manual scan last time this happened (05/01/09) but found nothing. There are a few errors in the event logs, mainly 1030 & 1058 but there seem to be a lot of 7035/7036 information entries (service start/running) on the two servers affected. The weird thing is it shows attempts to start services that are unused aswell as required ones. I can't however find any entries about the services stopping. Has anyone else come across this before? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

That's fantastic Geoff thank you. I'll try that ASAP and see how I get on