Primus

I think he was asking about support - the thread title is "MIS Support comparison".

When one of our schools used Bromcom I found the support to be brief and desperate to close tickets. Even where I specifically asked them not to close a ticket until I confirmed it was resolved - they still replied and then immediately closed the ticket.

Same view here.

What they're currently doing is a drop in the ocean.

Did you change it? I don't think ibpalle replied to your question and mine's set to 8192 too.

Quite, I'm not really sure what the purpose of their recent recommendations are given the budget issues. Just asn example, they talk about each edge switch having multiple 10Gb links back to the core that take different paths. Now I'd like to think our schools are pretty well looked after and we've invested properly, but in not a single school do we meet this and that goes for schools built as recently as 4 years ago by DfE. Sadly until we get some proper funding much of it is pie in the sky. The only reason some of our primaries are keeping their heads above water is that we're donating so much kit from our secondaries and we're charging them on a per pupil basis for everything from broadband to licences.

Actually it would seem that programme was called "Hosted leaders" rather than "Connect".

I tried it for the first time last year - mainly for the money they paid towards the cost of attending. In the end I didn't attend a single meeting - they asked when I was available and then scheduled me loads at mega early times like 07:30. Even after I told them I wasn't available and declined the meetings I then had loads of companies ringing me asking where I was. So in the end we didn't receive the money as we didn't attend any meetings, all I got was a load of hassle - never again.

I'm also happy to be involved with testing.

The minimum level of reporting I'd want is the ability to see which sites a particular user had been on with some alerting for concerning browsing such as suicide related content. It's also worth considering your statutory duty relating to Prevent when thinking about monitoring and reporting. Can both of the 2 solutions you suggested link to directory services such as AD so as to monitor and report on what individual users are doing? From what I can see CloudFlare cannot, does Diladele have all the appropriate lists such as the IWF ones? Does it include the list provided by the Home Office? KCSIE requires both filtering and monitoring: "Whilst it is essential that governing bodies and proprietors ensure that appropriate filtering and monitoring systems are in place" I would suggest that if your filter cannot tell you who did what and when then it's not up to the job - you cannot take risks with safeguarding, lives can literally be on the line and the consequences of getting it wrong can be horrific. I have direct experience of an instant alert relating to suicide where it's highly likely the alert prevented very serious harm and potentially the loss of a young person's life. KCSIE references the Safer Internet Centre - https://saferinternet.org.uk/guide-and-resource/teachers-and-school-staff/appropriate-filtering-and-monitoring - you don't have to follow the guidance here but the general principle is that you need a good and documented reason to deviate from guidance from authorities such as this.

My main frustration is we talk on here about best practice and we're doing it on a site that is massively not following best practice. It's become entirely ridiculous now - come on, enough is enough - how many more years are we going to be promised that HTTPS is coming before it actually does.

It is very disappointing that we're seemingly no closer.

How would you meet the requirement for reporting with this kind of setup?

Centralisation is essentially but it will take time - your starting point is the staffing structure and from that then inter-site connectivity since everything else depends on that. Walk - don't run!

I think before you go any further with any of this you've got some reading to do.

I think you might be better served looking at Google Workspace and perhaps using Chrome OS Flex on your existing hardware.

How big of an environment are you managing?

My concern is someone reads such a categorical statement, follows it and then ends up in real trouble when the real situation is far more nuanced. There is a more constructive approach that you can take which still protects you but doesn't put you in the firing line. I think we can all see the reasons why this shouldn't be a task asked of the IT technical team, but the issue is outside of our circle a lot of people would see the exact opposite - we're all "experts" in searching online etc etc. Often guidance and legislation is deliberately vague.

On that point alone, roaming profiles are deprecated by Microsoft and have been for some time. You are not comparing apples to apples as you could easily have your PCs logging on with local profiles. Logging onto a domain joined PC is always going to be a bit slower than on a PC that is not domain joined but you can get it configured correctly so that it logs on quickly - most of our PCs log on within 10-15 seconds and they're hardly brand new.

Clearly there are a lot of issues surrounding this and something that may on the surface appear straightforward can often become far from when implementing it. However I'm not sure advising someone to act as a whistleblower when the school are attempting to follow statutory guidance would be the best advice - I'd want some union or legal advice before I undertook anything like that as whistleblowing only grants you protection if certain criteria are met and in any case sadly usually ends up with the whistleblowing moving on. You can protect yourself by challenging the instructions you are being given in a constructive way, asking for guidance from the school or MAT's solicitors etc. You also need to remember that most actions undertaken by an employee are covered by vicarious liability - meaning that your employer would be liable rather than you as an individual. If you believed what you were being asked to do was then illegal you would certainly want some independent advice yourself and your union would be a good first port of call.

Don't blame the supplier, blame the DfE!

Windows 10 SAC goes EoL on October 14th 2025. If you want to go beyond October 2025 you're going to have to run LTSC which MS themselves say is not for general purpose computers - this article has a good explanation. MS themselves reckon LTSC accounts for only 2% of Windows installations. So the vast majority are going to have to get to Windows 11 sooner or later.

If you want them to log on with their email address just add it as a UPN suffix and change their accounts so that it uses the new suffix.

I'd do the same.

It's also worth pointing out that it hasn't been Google Apps for Education for quite some time now - it's Google Workspace and therefore Google Workspace for Education. As others have said, Google's own resources are excellent.