Zoom7000

I highly recommend Sign In App. We moved 3 schools to them from InVentry and SG World. 2 schools using Arbor and 1 using SIMS. Ticks all the boxes for what you're asking for, very reasonably priced and extremely easy to set up!

Before I left Virgin Media last May, I was bumped up to 500Mbps by retentions for £31/Month on my previous contract. I used the price rise get out clause to cancel and move to full 1Gbps fibre (FTTP) with Community Fibre.

EU Parliament approves common charging cable from 2024 This is a step in the right direction, but until the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) sorts out the current mess that USB-C is in, this could get really confusing for consumers! Currently, you have cables that support power & don't support power, cables that support data & don't support data & cables that support video & don't support video! Not to mention USB 2.0, 3.0, 3.1, 3.1 Gen 1, 3.1 Gen 2... 🤦♂️ Pretty sure USB-C was supposed to make USB simpler. It's more confusing than ever at the moment! 🤦♂️

I was asked by SLT to create social media accounts yesterday. I have referred the question to our Trust's legal team. The KCSIE requirements aren't exactly clear on how extensive a search is supposed to be: Is it a simple Google search? Does it require a search of the actual platform? How many platforms are the school supposed to check? If it does require a search of the platform, is this violating the platforms terms of service? Is this correct? Because clearly there are millions of companies who have social media accounts? Ultimately, in my case, I'm not being asked to carry out the search, just create the accounts. So, the question that I am most interested in, is whether creating accounts of this nature is a violation of the platform's T&Cs. A few SLT members I have spoken to are referring to guidance from Browne Jacobson here. However, even that doesn't go into detail as to how extensive the search needs to be. The question is, where do you draw the line?

So, I'm guessing we all understand the concept of MVNOs (Tesco, Lebara, Voxi, ID, giffgaff etc) who piggyback off the main 4 networks (EE, Vodafone, O2 and Three) I'm with EE and I'm trying to find a decent retentions deal. When I was getting them to try and match or better one of the EE deals on uswitch, they were telling me that anyone who comes from uswitch is also put on a piggyback plan, even though the contract is with EE. Vodafone sales tried telling me the very same thing. So, are they telling utter porkies here and just trying to get the direct sale, or is there truth to the deals you get from comparison sites just aren't as good as buying direct?

Is it just me or is anyone else thinking that Spanish server rooms are gonna be a little bit toasty?! Source - Euronews

The Google Associate Certification fall out of the education area, so this isn't something I've come across. Having said that, I've done a quick search and found the Associate Cloud Engineer certification. Unlike the education specific certifications, I've found that these certifications don't come with much in terms of training or resources. In fact, if you click the links to the FAQs, there is a preparations and resources section that take you here, where it quite literally says "Hands-on real world experience is critical to preparing for Google Cloud certification exams." This was the case for when I did the ChromeOS IT Admin exam (now discontinued). There is a link to the Google Cloud training portal, but the general assumption usually is that you are already working with these tools if you are looking to certify. Maybe if someone else has already done these exams they can confirm right or wrong. But this was my experience from the ChromeOS IT Admin exam.

We've been using the enterprise edition of PDQ Deploy for several years now and I've always purchased the upgrade as it's been a great product. However, the price has increased this year by nearly 200%! It used to be $450/year with educational discount, it's now $1275/year with educational discount! 😳 Does anyone know of any alternative enterprise app deployment solutions that aren't nearly as expensive?

I've been using a demo of 3CX for a few weeks now and I think the admin aspect of it is excellent. The portal is great, really easy to get around and it's super intuituve. However, does anyone else think that the frontend UI for general phone users is terribly poor? Compared to the likes of 8x8, RingCentral, Gamma Horizon, Zoom Phone & Google Voice, all of those look so much more polished than 3CX. Ironically, I feel like the UI for the admin portal for 3CX is better than the admin panel for all of the above! Really wish they would just make the general UI look and feel a lot more modern! Ultimately, we'll probably go 3CX for ease and price, but that's my main gripe. The app and web UI need a LOT of work!

My wife makes a mean cookie as part of her baking repertoire! Here's some Choc Chunk Brownie Cookies she made for me and also some of her Terry's Choc Orange and Hazelnut Choc Chunk cookies!

I use 1Password Family for personal use. I've watched a lot of YouTube videos that recommended it highly over the likes of LastPass and Dashlane, the former of which has some pretty shady privacy practices according to .

Does 3CX need an onsite controller? I'm looking at replacing our VoIP solution and would like to go fully cloud based, however, a couple of suppliers have told me that you need an onsite controller, especially if you want internal calling between multiple sites. Is this correct?

Cue the registry tweaks for removal lol

Just found the completed entry form in my pocket!

Would be great to meet up with you at some point on Wednesday!

What a beast of a setup! Would totally gift this to my daughters who are starting to get into games that need just that little bit more power than an iPad! 😂

If you're at Bett on Thursday, then please do pop in to my session. I'll be speaking on "Cyber Security in Schools" & highlighting some of the key dangers & safeguards for schools & MATs to be aware of. 🗓 Thursday 24 March 🕒 3pm - 3:30pm 🏢 Bett Academy Live South Theatre 📍 ExCeL Hall South Find out more here: https://uk.bettshow.com/agenda/cybersecurity-in-schools I'd love to see you there! 😊 I may even have a little giveaway!

This is the current question that everyone is asking. It's not clear how much storage Google Docs/Sheets/Slides/Forms etc currently uses. Hence, it's harder to judge what would be sufficient. If you go to the Admin Console and then Reporting > Highlights > What storage is being used? You can see the totals. Just be aware that the big figure it gives you is just My Drive files and doesn't show Shared Drive storage. You have to click View Details to see Shared Drives storage, which is usually a lot more. I agree with the retention problem. We're looking at using Google Vault to delete any files in My Drives that haven't been modified in over 3 years. And the same for Gmail. Deleting all emails older the 3 years.

Would you be happy to share some example scripts?

This is an issue that is affecting several schools currently. If you log the call with Google Admin Support and share the case numbers with me, I can pass them on to my Google contacts for escalation.

Are you using MDT to deploy or WDS? If so, how do you execute the scripts during deployment. Also, are they PowerShell scripts?

Something I would also bear in mind is that when the hard storage limits come in (currently, this July) every Google Workspace domain will be limited to 100TB of storage. As an example, if you currently have 9 schools in your Trust, each with their own Google Workspace domain, each school will get 100TB, totally 900TB. If you consolidate all of the schools into just 1 Google Workspace domain, everyone will have to share just 100TB. Google did initially say that they would make special considerations for any "districts" (it was an American announcement, but I would presume this would cover large MATs in the UK too) with over 20,000 students, but I'm not sure exactly what this looks like. The only issue and it is a big issue, is if the Trust wants to start using Gmail with the Trust domain (e.g. [email protected]). Then I presume you would have to consolidate the domains, at the cost of the storage. Though there may be other ways round that (e.g. unique domains per school etc). Just some food for thought. I'm looking at a very similar discussion at my Trust as we are merging with another Trust.

That's very surprising. From my experience, if you don't have a preferred partner, they will point you in the direction of a few, to avoid showing favourtism. But interesting that you were assigned one.

I signed up for 3 years of Google Workspace Education Plus via Canopy Education. As far as I'm concerned, it's the most value added route, as signing up with them also gives you free access to their Workspace Skills product (worth several £100s itself), which we use for both staff and students as a self paced learning tool for learning how to use Google Workspace.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was Visa. Lost revenue from Amazon sales would have been a potentially HUGE loss!