ShorehamGeek

Many thanks. We're back too.

Thanks for the info. I will have a look. I'm hoping it can be as flexible as our current setup, where we have different rules if a particular student logs onto a school chromebook compared to if they log on to their own device? Also, I really like the fact that the current setup works with any laptop the pupil brings to school, and the pupils don't have any way to bypass the filters just by using a different browser (which seems to be an issue if I understand the cloud filter extension correctly). Anyway - useful to understand that there is a known issue with Connect for Chromebook, and that there is a potential issue in my future if this extension is discontinued.

Thanks for the info. I would hope to get lots of warning if this extension is going to get removed. We have everything working well here, with specific rules for pupils on a school device, and others for their own devices, that work really well. To have to try and work out how to migrate over to something that works differently isn't my first choice!

We've just discovered that the "Smoothwall Connect for Chromebooks" extension isn't loading on our Chromebooks. It appears that if a Chromebook has a profile cached locally, and that contained the Smoothwall connect extension, then everything works as normal. If a student logs onto a Chromebook, all the other extensions load as expected, just not the Smoothwall Connect one. If a student logs into the smoothwall SSL login page, and leaves that tab open, then everything works as expected. It appears the behaviour has changed over the weekend! Anyone else experiencing this? Any ideas to try and resolve it? Thanks in advance.

Funny thing this morning, and unsure what is the root cause. Windows updates applied to some PCs last night... although I don't think that is the cause. This morning, on some workstations - odd error messages, some users unable to log in, we were unable to lock workstations using Netsupport. Turns out, Sophos now thinks that one of Netsupport's DLLs is a virus! This affected our DNA and School products. As a (hopefully) quick fix, I've added the DLLs to our Sophos on-access scanning exceptions, and all now seems to be well. Just thought I'd post it in case anyone else with Sophos and Netsupport is seeing funny things this morning.

We're a Google school too. Just starting our second virtual Parents Evening. If you've got GAM, and a way to make the bookings, you're halfway there. We use our MIS to make the bookings, then I grab the booking data, and create Google Meets for each appointment using GAM. Biggest issue we had previously was the emails inviting parents to the Meets going in the parents' junk folders.

You can do it. You just need to allow a little time. Call Google tech support, and request an exception to the new rule of disabling anonymous external participants in Google Meet. They told us it would be 24-72 hours to take effect. It seemed to take a little longer (almost as if a great many people were suddenly asking for it!). Here we only allow staff to create Meets, and it is only the owner of the meet that can allow external participants in to join.

Yes - here too.

Out of interest - what was the fix?

Effectively, exactly that.

Partial success! 1 of my sites is now using a Let's Encrypt certificate... The other requires a logon to access, and thus the config checks fail... Any ideas? Update - with a bit of tweaking, I now have my 2 sites using Let's Encrypt certificates. Thanks to those who suggested looking at this.

Do you have a similar configuration with a couple of https sites hosted on IIS? It would just be reassuring to know that it had worked for someone before I have a go!

I have thought about Lets Encrypt, I'm just trying to summon the courage to do this on an IIS server with 2 https sites! Have you used Lets Encrypt in a slightly complicated windows environment?

Looking to renew our Rapid SSL certs, a quick google turned up this site: http://www.sslmarket.co.uk The prices are considerably less buying through these guys than buying direct, which is great if it is genuine and reliable! Has anyone on here had any experience of this site? Thanks,

Us too. Chromebooks no longer authenticating with smoothwall (as the smoothwall addon which passes on the authentication no longer loads), and lots of confused students!

I used https://www.parkplacetechnologies.com/ I didn't need to ask them to fix anything, but their reference site sounded very happy with them, and the costs were very reasonable.

A position is available at Shoreham College. Small friendly independent school (3-16 year olds). Details in the job description. Let me know what I've missed! IT Technician

Have a look here: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/apps/R3_Qo_lbRSw I think that is where I started. Good luck!

Do you have control over the DNS for these accounts? I seem to recall being able to get back into a legacy account by changing a DNS record to show I was the admin.

This is how GApps seems to work. If you share a folder with a group, it won't automatically appear in their Shared documents until they have accessed it once. Normally there is a link in the email that is generated when you first shared the folder, and everyone else has clicked this link. If you subsequently add someone to a group, the sharing email doesn't automatically get reproduced. Options - either email them the URL of the folder, and once they've clicked it, they will have the option to add it to their drive. Alternatively, publish the link securely for future members of staff to access (which we do on our Intranet / GApps portal). Hope that helps - don't think you're doing anything wrong - just takes a while to get used to how Google works!

Hi, What MIS system are you using?

If you're sure your users aren't logged in - then this wouldn't help, but it's worth double checking. This setting also seems to take effect if you're logged into the browser or indeed logged into youtube without being logged into the browser.

Not sure if you've cracked this, I had this, and my fix involved going into the Admin Console, Device management > Chrome (Chrome Management) > User Settings Now find "Content" (about 1/2 way down the screen) and there is the "Safe Search and Safety Mode" section. I've got the students set to "Always use SafeSearch for Google Web Search queries and SafeSearch for Youtube queries" and the staff have got "Always use SafeSearch for Google Web Search queries only". That forces the additional safety for the pupils, but allows the staff to scroll to the bottom of the Youtube page and turn the Safety Mode off (which then gets remembered). Hope that helps.

Hi What do you mean go live? If you've already configured (do you mean created, or configured a sync but not yet run it?) the user accounts - then you're as good as live now - just need to distribute the logon details to the users. I think it would help to know how the staff have setup their own accounts on your domain. Do they have a [email protected] address?

Yes please.