FishCustard

Not sure where this should go - feel free to move if there's somewhere better. Having looked around for a local "IT technician/manager/dogsbody" group and not finding one, I was wondering whether such things still exist. I recall going to some years ago, and know they still exist for Data Managers and similar positions. There's the ANME, of course, which I'm a member of, but I'm talking local meetings for sharing best-practices, "here's how I solved this", trialling technologies that other schools have, etc. If not, I'm very tempted to start one. No idea how I'd go about promoting it though other than emailing other local schools (which I wouldn't actually do - schools get far too much promo-mail as it is!!).

Apparently said theory has been shot down by Lucasfilm (and it doesn't sound like an "oh crap they're on to us" denial, more a "wat? that doesn't make sense" denial), so hopefully it's meaningless.

The script is only really designed to run during startup, at which point obviously SIMS wouldn't be running. If you want to adapt it to push updates at other times then yes, you could have some mechanism to work around this. However, if the server has been updated no SIMS clients will work beyond the login screen so I doubt it'd be a major issue.

User tunnels - device tunnels don't seem reliable enough yet. I'll put a post together about how it all works and link it here sometime this week.

@Shaun_Dark_Lord , @Garacesh - I believe you were interested in this?

You can use PowerShell to do it (this is fast becoming my catchphrase...). Well, PowerShell and a scheduled task. I'll do a proper write-up on it, but you create a scheduled task to run as the SYSTEM user when any user logs on that runs the PowerShell script. That way it runs in the background with full rights (and can't interact with the interactive user's environment). Then you have a startup script for laptops that creates that scheduled task so it's a zero-touch system. Just build, boot, get the user to log on in school, and they're good to go. I put the relevant files on each local machine so that if for whatever reason the connection gets deleted, it can be re-instated at the next logon without needing domain connectivity.

Hi all, Some of you know of my scripts that allow you to update and deploy SIMS/FMS using PowerShell rather than SOLUS 3. I've written a proper guide to setting them up (it's not hard - just editing the script variables to suit your environment and staging some files). Have a read, let me know what you think: Deploying and updating SIMS and FMS using PowerShell | Serenity for Sysadmins

I don't see the point of all this. Just have Windows 10 Home, which can't be joined to a domain, and then W10 Pro/Enterprise that can be joined. That way businesses can't cheap out by buying the non-domain one (OK, SMBs without a domain can, but meh), and Home users don't have to worry about 101 different versions.

If it's cloud storage you already pay for, then that could make sense. I'd probably just copy the files up there, spin up a new Veeam instance somewhere and test copying them back down and restoring.

As usual, paying customers are beta testing a Capita product.

We use PeaSoup through Haptic, ~£550 per year for 1 TB of space.

Tried it at BETT a couple of years ago and asked some pointed questions of the rep - I wasn't impressed at all, particularly with the (lack of) reporting features.

I tend to agree with this, but I'll still watch S3. They had a really strong visual concept, which was fine for one series but they tried to do the same thing again (sort-of) and it became a little stale.

Because it's 'phone-first' and 'disruptive' and 'probably less effort to develop'...

There are issues around selling on eBay/with PayPal regarding separation of financial concerns and VAT reporting, yes. There shouldn't be as much of an issue with selling on an invoice basis - this way everything is recorded and funded in the "usual" way. I'd find a company that wants them and get the school to raise an invoice. If unsure, you/your Business Manager should talk to the LA's financial controller/their department. (Even if you're an academy they should be able to advise)

Would also like to know this - I can't find it either.

And the way its worded would seem to mean that parents, visitors, contractors, etc. would also have to turn it off, which is ridiculous. This isn't a risk-based approach, it's reactionary nonsense.

There's no Customs Duty on things under £135, so all you'll have to pay is VAT, which I believe eBay sorts for you.

Ahhhh yeah that makes more sense. The problem with 280 character summaries!

Except of course Daenerys did help them fight. Chances are without her they'd have lost the war against the dead.

Should be in the SysWOW64 folder, at least it is on my W10 PC.

Document management is the only area that'd need special consideration. Other than that SIMS is just a client-server MSSQL application. All the brains is in stored procs and the client.

Have you tried manually registering the extension with regsvr32 /u MSCOMCTL.OCX (you may need to find the file in the System32/SysWOW64 folder if it complains).

Yep, my partner and I both thought they were, er, 'putting on the Reich' a bit strongly there...

^Do this^ to avoid any GDPR issues - please! I'd recommend a separate head@ inbox to limit the chances of successful phishing. Of course, in very small schools without a Head's PA/Office Manager type position this may not make sense.