Shaun_Dark_Lord

Over a month has gone by. Still trialing Zammad. It's far from perfect, but with effort, can be made to meet our requirements. The price makes it really attractive - Just have to pay for an SSL cert. Their hosted solution isn't as competitive compared to the educational pricing offered by their competitors (including Jira), but if you need something and have time to tinker, the free self-hosted Zammad isn't a bad option. Would still be interested to know if there's anything better out there - But for the moment, it looks like we'll be saving some money but increasing my workload.......

Morning! Jira has been getting worse, so replacing it is no longer optional. I've been trialing Zammad - Self hosted, so the running cost is negligible, and it get's us 95% of the way to replacing Jira - But it has some niggly issues that are annoying, and they don't seem overly flexible regarding feature requests. Has anyone found anything else they like?

Ignore this found the issue with Chrome.

Hi All At some point in November 2025, folder redirection just stopped working for our students. It looks like it was initially broken by KB5070349, but subsequent updates have broken it further. I've spent far too much time this week trying to restore the functionality. The initial November issue seems to have been due to the fact that we restricted the students from accessing the "Run" dialogue. But granting them this then just gets broken by other patches, so I wasn't confident that I'd ever finish playing whack-a-mole against Microsoft's update team. I replicated the functionality with a login script to create Junctions for each of the folders I wanted to redirect. This worked great - But then when I started testing applications, Chrome broke. We're primarily a Google site, so Chrome is pretty integrated into everything we do, and the Chrome extension that does web filtering is critical, so we force sign-in to Chrome. By enabling folder redirection using the Junctions, Chrome has decided that none of the buttons on the Sign in to Chrome page should work any more. I got a couple of other traditional folder redirection methods working, but all broke Chrome. I then tried Work Folders, as it looked like everything would initially be written to C:\, and then synced to the local server. Work Folders works great - But as soon as I updated the Documents folder location from "%USERPROFILE%\Documents" to "%USERPROFILE%\Work Folders\Documents" Chrome broke again. Has anyone else had this, and did you find a solution?

We've been an Atlassian customer for the best part of a decade. That's about to come to a very messy end. Each time Atlassian got greedy, and moved a previously included feature behind a new additional service, we found a workaround to keep things going. But this time they've crossed the line. User sync is now a $4 per user per month paid feature. Atlassian - If you're reading this - You know where you can shove it. Anyone considering Atlassian, please look elsewhere.

49 clients appeared overnight - Guess patience was the answer.

Thanks @Roberto I can see the computers "syncing" in the sync manager; But in entra.microsoft.com I cannot see these. Maybe I just need to be patient? Odd that the users and groups appeared instantly.

Hi All We recently moved to Microsoft EES licensing. Our reseller told us during the discussions around moving to EES, that there was still a way to allow our students to use Office without needing to sign in. That method was the "M365 Apps Enterprise Devices Edu Sub Add-on", and supposedly, all we need to do is get our clients to appear in entra.microsoft.com and there we can assign the licenses. Any idea of how we're supposed to get our domain clients there? The users can be synced with the "Azure AD Connect" tool, which seems to sync everything other than computers. I can get SCCM to sync clients into InTune, but that doesn't seem to talk to Entra. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

"Make" is not a recorded field - I've noticed in some cases, the make is included in the model field (e.g. "VivoBookASUSLaptop X509JAP1510CJA"), but the position is not consistent. That has not been a concern for me, as our asset database is very close to accurate, and the serials match up, so we'd have that as a reference if needed. The Chrome requirement appears to be a major hurdle. It looks like the policies are only enforced when using Chrome, so a user on an unsupported OS could simply sign in with a different browser - Even if we set Chrome as a requirement for sign in...... I'll continue testing, but this looks like another Google feature that had no thought put into it before rollout.

Hi We've run a few reports to see what OS staff are using at home. Unsurprisingly, there's a worrying number of out-of-support Windows 10 devices (10.0.19043 and older), along with a few Windows Vista - 8.1 devices. Google has introduced "Context Aware Access" which should in theory allow us to set minimum OS version requirements for or Google domain users. Has anyone played with this? Any examples, tips or lessons you can share? Thanks!

We're primarily a Google shop, so MS would be a headache to implement. I did ask Halo about pricing - No additional discount offered.

Got the pricing back for Halo - Not an option for us

If someone here recommends it, I'll take a look. Halo ITSM being based in the UK saves some legal headaches regarding data protection.......

Halo ITSM looks pretty good - Have requested a sales call.

Service Now - "XXXX Orchestration transactions/mo/account" - So doing the same thing as Jira - Limiting automations.

@Roberto Sorry - FITS / ITIL model not specified, as for the most case, it's more of a nice-to-have rather than a game changer. We have SLAs down to individual request type levels, but once the helpdesk was up and running, to odd few tickets with missed deadlines had reasonable explanations. Not fussed about an app. I'll take a look at Service Now.

Hi All We've been running Jira SM for roughly 6 years. It was good, and scaled quite nicely for our 19 school Trust. Recently, we've seen consistent reliability issues, and some very odd design/functionality decisions that have made us question why we're paying them. So, what alternatives can you recommend? Beyond the normal helpdesk functionality, we need; API access to read, create and update tickets. Google SSO. A customizable frontend, so users only see their relevant ticket types. An automation system (without usage limits) to handle the basic stuff like notifications etc. Secure data connectors, so helpdesk forms can include relevant data (class/room names etc.). Multiple helpdesks within a single larger instance, so managers can easily see an overview of what's happening in a single dashboard. We'd also like; Integration with Snipe-IT, so tickets can be attached to assets. Integration with a knowledgebase for the tiny fraction of users who want to figure out a fix themselves.

Getting the same here on SCCM 2503 - All the MS community articles I find state that these should clear on their own, but are not doing that here.

Yes - Updated to the latest (2409), and rebuilt the boot images with the latest ADK.

Hi All One of our schools has a very old SCCM server that is now causing a headache. W11 21H2 task sequence had been setup by a previous tech. This seems to be running fine. 24H2 is required for some new clients. I've done the normal build and capture, copied the 21H2 TS and replaced the Windows image with the newly created 24H2. The main issue is that the clients are not renaming to the OSDComputerName value - They're just sticking with the randomly generated MINIT one. Other issues include a random prompt half way through the TS to ask why the client just rebooted (the TS told you to), and all the W11 bloat that we were getting rid of is remaining. Any ideas on the naming issue? If we can get past that, the other bits can probably be figured out.

Tried that - Deploys, runs, insta-closes.

Hi All So now that Microsoft have borked our ability to deploy Windows Store Apps via SCCM without an InTune subscription, I need some open-source alternatives for some of the Apps not bundled with LTSC. I'm specifically looking for alternatives to; Windows Calculator (The new resizable version) Windows Camera Any recommendations? The Camera App is mainly used to some of the cheap USB visualizers.

That's interesting - Haven't been kicked off before....... It's unlikely to be the web filtering - Everything comes back ~15 minutes after making a config change.

Hi All Last Thursday, I added a new SSID at one of our cloud-hosted Unifi sites (We have 16 schools all managed in one Unifi Cloud hosted instance). Adding the new SSID resulted in the following; All wireless clients across all 16 schools were booted off the WiFi for a few minutes. Switching over to a wired connection allowed us to see a list of Unifi sites, but attempting to select any of them timed out. Attempting to access the Unifi support site to log a ticket also timed out. Everything did eventually come back up, and I logged a ticket with Unifi. Unifi checked their logs, and informed me; "Hi Shaun, After discussing with my team, I can confirm that the behavior you encountered did not affect client or UniFi device connectivity. Access via incognito windows or local connections remained fully operational. The problem was identified and resolved with a service update earlier this morning, and the Site Manager is now working as expected. Best, UI Support Ubiquiti Inc." Which is interesting - Not sure why we didn't think of firing up an incognito window to solve the issue of being disconnected from the WiFi....... The next morning, I got in early to attempt the SSID change again. Same result (at least locally). Updated the Unifi ticket. Radio silence. Anyone experiencing similar issues? Anyone using cloud hosting and NOT currently experiencing issues?

Hi All Does anyone have recommendations for remote learning platforms? The requirements I've been given are; Teacher to have control over student cameras/microphones. Teacher to be able to see all students, but students not able to see each other. 1:1 teacher/student voice chat when required. Scheduled lesson time slots. Cheap/Free Thanks