FragglePete

So, finally got around to installing a new controller in one of our Smartboards - doesn't take too long, a little tricky but board has to be removed from the wall to fit (2 man job). You then have to run their Smart Calibration tool which sets the serial number, checks everything over, etc - so far, so good. All working again in one location, four more to do. Pete

My understanding is that you can only order if you have a local lockdown in place. I guess they're just getting every 'ready' for when they happen (see how I didn't put 'if'! ) Pete

We've just had a new e-mail yesterday indicating another allocation of devices - would appear they are gearing up for further disruption. Following the links, etc it would appear they are getting stuff in place in case of local lockdown - our allocation this time is massive compared to what we were offered before. I think I'm going to pursue Chromebooks this time around as our testing of these so far has been really positive and would be a lot less hassle than the wheezy laptops they've been given out. Pete

We've used School Cloud's Parents Evening System (PES) for several years now - really good product and their support is excellent. We however have just started using Edulink One which has almost identical features to PES so did give notice that we wouldn't renew.... however, the lockdown happened and School Cloud very cleverly introduced (and gave for free) their system with new Video Meetings for free - however, now costs an extra license to use. The primary school I look after used is and loved it back before the Summer holidays. We're going to do our next two Parents Evening using their new video system to see how it goes - and we'll decide whether to keep it in the new year. But our basic tests so far seem really good. Pete

Implemented the latest Workstation Patch last night - and then today we found we couldn't deploy SIMS via SOLUS3 anymore! I've raised a call and they've acknowledged that there is an issue that a lot of other schools are having the same issue. You'll get the following error when clicking the Check for Updates button on the SOLUS3 notifier. "Selected package has no expected target versions assigned to it, cannot deploy" SOLUS itself deploys with no issues, just won't do SIMS Workstation. Pete

As an experiment, I've just re-installed 11.4 with our activation code..... and it still activated. We did roll out 19.1 over Summer, but we've had so many issues with it I'm going to roll back to 11.4 now I know it activates. Pete

Another +1 for Foldr. Staff and Students love it here and with LDAPS setup (which we all should have done by now, right? ) you can use it a external password recovery/reset system also. Pete

Ok - I just hit the Reset Sync button on the profile, and it now appears to have created a new set of Groups with Teams - so would appear to be working again. I assume the 'Expired' teams/groups be deleted/removed after a certain period of time? Pete

Thanks for getting back to me. I'm pretty sure I checked the Archive Tick box when I did the cleanup tool. Most confused now. Pete

Can I just jump in on this - as I'm not sure whats going on with ours at the moment. Our profile expired, and with all the timetable changes, groups changes, etc going on - I took the opportunity the essentially expire all the Groups/Teams that were created and start a fresh. So, we now have the tenant full of groups which start with Exp0920_* (these are showing as Active). I've since created a new profile and upload all the necessary .CSV files generated with the Salamander tool and this is showing no errors but has not created anything new ie, no new groups/teams have been created. Am I missing something? Done something wrong here? Pete

They have also followed it up with the following advice.... Please for any other M685s who need to run a firmware update, please do the update manually.When the pop up appear, do not run the firmware update automatically. Go manually to the folder and lunch the firmware update from therem the USB connection should be a direct one. Pete

Further update. Smart have agreed to replace all 5 controllers that we're showing as bricked. Nice. Just going to be a bit of a task getting those replaced quickly. Pete

So, an update - following a phone call from Smart, they told me they would look into it. And, today I get an e-mail saying that they will replace the controllers FoC for us. So, obviously a problem with this. However, we've just discovered another 2 boards that have gone down in the same way. These must have happened before my Applocker tweak fell into place. It would appear, the teachers were mindlessly clicking on things and doing the Firmware upgrade themselves (not reading the prompts). Hopefully, I can get all 5 replaced by Smart, but well done to them for making this offer. Still, be wary of Smartboard M600 Series with the SBM685 controllers and the Smart 19.1 download - don't let it upgrade your Firmware! Pete

I'm also going to nominate Edulink One here also - it's been a life saver for us over the Lockdown period. So simple to use by teachers, students and parents alike. And Overnet's support has been brilliant with all the questions we've thrown at them along with suggestions. And, you just can't beat value of money. Pete

Afternoon all, We've got a large number of Smartboard M600 Boards with a SBM685 controllers. Due the recent change with Smart stopping us activating the older versions of Smart Tools we've rolled out 19.1 basic across the site. Initial testing before roll out seem to verify everything worked ok as long as teachers setup a Smart Account which was linked quite happily with Microsoft Office. During the process and setting up of some rooms a Firmware update was offered and we did this but it failed. Which resulted in all the lights coming on the pen tray and the board no longer responding. We can't re-apply the firmware as per their support article as it just not recognised. It looks like the controller has been bricked. We're now getting reports of several other boards doing the same, and we know for certain that we didn't allow the firmware to occur - so maybe the software offered the update to a regular user and they click yes and instant fubar! So, for now I've applocked the SMARTFirmwareUpdate.exe from running to stop others doing this - but I've got at least 5 boards now that appear dead. I've raised a ticket with Smart, but ended up phoning them to chase and while not very helpful, they are looking into it but these are out or warranty now so I fear the worst presently. I'm just staggered these recent update has potentially bricked the controllers. These were all working until we starting using the newer Smart Tools - conspiracy to upgrade? Any thoughts? Anybody had any luck in a similar situation. Pete

I know Parents Evening System by Cloudcloud (https://www.parentseveningsystem.co.uk/) has a built in Video Meeting system which has proved popular at a primary school that I look after. Pete

Not sure if it'll help, as we use Paxton Net2 Access, but our Yr 12 and Yr 13 students register the cards themselves at a MFD Device using PaperCut. Tap their card against the reader, PaperCut Embedded on the MFD requests the AD username and password and the card is then registered to them which is stored in the PaperCut Database. Script then runs once an hour which copies the Card Number into an AD Attribute, and we have Net2ADSyncServer which feeds this into Net2. This AD integration is great, as if we disable/delete a student account in AD it then blocks them access onto the site within a few minutes. Appreciate it doesn't match what your using, but may help you point towards a different approach? Pete

See attached. Hope it helps. Pete

I had this! It was essentially windows loading up a new driver for the network card, loosing the network connection which interrupted the task sequence causing this failure. I tired initially injecting the right drivers but that didn't solve it - bizarrely it still insisted on installing the older Realtek Drivers. The way I fixed it in the end was to put a 60 second pause in the sequence (essentially ping 127.0.0.1 60 times ) - just at the top of the State Restore group. We had done 80% of the site without any issues, but then just hit this on a couple of rooms using newer PCs. Head scratching for a bit but works all ok now. Pete

Hang on - found it! Doh! It's the 'Allow transcription for attendees' that needs to be switched on within the Live Events Policies. Pete

I don't even get that option visible in our Tenant. And it's greyed out when trying to set a new Event. I'll raise a call with Microsoft I guess Pete

Evening all, Hope some peeps can help me here before I raise a call with Microsoft.... For the life of me, I can't seem to switch on Captions for Teams meetings. I've checked all the policies for Teams messaging Policies, etc and they all seem set correct but Live Captions is just not being made available to us. I know it only works within scheduled meetings, but still not available. Even setting up a Live Event the 'Captions (preview)' option is greyed out. What am I missing - or is it a license thing? A number of our students are hard of hearing (even one of our teachers is), so this will solve a lot of issues at the mo but I just can't seem to see what I'm doing wrong. Thanks Pete

Yes - very quick. They'll send you an encrypted spreadsheet with the passwords against each serial number. They will then send the password via a text message to you so you can open it. Obviously some algorithm used to generate the passwords against the serial number me thinks - now if only we could work that one out! Pete

They stay as they are - all the ones created by SDS will be prefix with 'Section_' - teachers then get shown a nice list of their classes when they go into Teams. Issue I have now is that I have a whole load of Teams created by Staff before I got SDS up and running - will need a sort and clear out but I have warned staff that its happening. Pete

We've got a Unifi Video running with 54 cameras quite happily but have stuck on version 3.9.12 - anything beyond this version was just utterly useless. Must admit I quite excited (as much as I can be around CCTV) with their upcoming UnifiProtect Server UNVR which for just under £300 (plus Hard Drives) which will support up 50 cameras - so we can shuffle our cameras onto one (or two) of those instead. Pete