Primus

Hi all, just wanted to check my understanding on something - teachers of classes on Teams can use the insights feature to track student use of the team, submission of work etc. but there isn't a central way to check across the school that SLT could use beyond the usage reports available in the Teams Admin Centre is there?

No, for us it was the number of students we had to have self isolate - this then triggered a batch of over 200 becoming available which we ordered and received. As groups self isolate we issue them a device and then when they return it gets sanitised ready for the next self isolating group.

For the benefit of anyone who has similar issues in the future could you explain how you sorted it?

https://www.smarttech.com/support/discontinued-products

It's because of the size of the contract and the law requiring a full tender process. The allegation is that the tender process was not correctly followed. I am surprised so many members on here have taken a view that Bromcom shouldn't bring a legal action. If Bromcom feel the law has been broken and they have suffered to their detriment then they are entitled to bring forward a case. Schools are not exempt from following the law and taking a blanket view that you shouldn't sue a school or MAT even if they have done wrong is flawed. The court will decide if there has been wrongdoing - it is unlikely a firm the size of Bromcom would bring a baseless case - remember they themselves will have already paid a fortune for legal advice. If they bring a baseless case then they will pay financially and reputationally but to suggest they shouldn't use the law of the land for fear of reputational damage is very unfair. Perhaps it might be best for members to hold off on commenting about reputational damage until the outcome is known and to not enter into procurement processes themselves with a closed mind relating to one of the major players in the fairly small market.

Conversely, as someone who will be part of the process of replacing the MIS across a MAT, Bromcom's actions don't put me off them at all. Not everyone will feel as strongly about it as some on here do. In addition there's a bit of a dearth of quality competing products so failing to consider Bromcom as part of your process would be cutting your nose off to spite your face. If you follow your compliance processes correctly and the law correctly you have nothing to fear - if Bromcom lose they'll be paying all the legal fees. Conversely if you don't then you can expect to be paying for that error.

Post your errors and your config (sanitised).

You've got duplicated IP addresses - are there any devices on statics that could be conflicting? How many DHCP servers are you using.

Classroom does require Drive as it makes folders to store everything in and manages them for you.....in your Google Drive. If you try to use Classroom with Microsoft Office files you'll find it's a lot more awkward than using G Suite native files too.

Depends what you want setting up? Have you got a Google domain already set up with users populated in it for example? Generally speaking G Suite is pretty easy to administer, certainly a lot easier than O365.

You CAN move in Y2 or Y3 with an MS agreement but my experience has been that no one can touch the pricing the original reseller gave you so even though the discount is logged in I've consistently seen it be slightly more expensive to renew with an alternative provider.

I believe it is only for super admins - the description on the App Store says: FOR WHOM? - This app is only for super administrators of Google Cloud products, including G Suite Basic, G Suite Business, Education, Government, Google Coordinate, and Chromebooks.

Strangely given their love of all things Microsoft, Newcastle City Council also went with Chromebooks.

Yup we are an area of local lockdown but what triggered the availability didn't seem to be this but rather rising case numbers we as a school were reporting. We haven't been offered any further 4G hotspots.

No need to roll your eyes, in 4 years it's had 3 different names - entirely unnecessary. Referencing another company that also makes unnecessary changes doesn't help the cause.

Repeatedly changing the name of a key product is ridiculous - it's not been G Suite for very long so we're talking about 3 different names in a short period of time. Pick a name and stick with it. No one is arguing against necessary change but this is change for the sake of it.

We ordered our maximum allocation in 1 go. My office is now full to the rafters with Chromebooks!

I've only just got used to it being G Suite - loads of people look blankly when you say G Suite and you have to say Google Apps, this is uneccesary confusion. I know @jamesleonard has moved on but maybe he can see this and feedback - this is nuts!

Please please please can they make their mind up and stop changing the name?!

True but I'm wary as every time I updated our R720s the iDRAC card had a fit and the whole motherboard had to be replaced! Now they're out of warranty and consigned to non-critical tasks I'm going nowhere near their bios!

In warranty update when convenient regardless of not having issues. Out of warranty - only update if having issues or require a security fix.

I'm sure by 2030 SIMS will have their new cloud based solution out

The Class Dojo UI might be slightly easier for tiny ones but I don't see how it's much of an improvement over Google Classroom and the integration of Classroom with G Suite makes it more compelling.

Log it with G Suite support then as I've also only ever seen this happen where the classroom folder has been deleted.

We split SCCM and SQL across two VMs - each has 4 cores and 16Gb of RAM.