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Great thanks. It sounds like there are a lot of staff resources being used; we're a single school and not part of a MAT and SARs are very uncommon and processes aren't embedded at all, hence all the questions. Appreciate the responses

Afternoon all, Looking to replace some short throw projectors with standard large TVs and wondered if others were using this successfully. Someone mentioned they'd visited a school a long time ago where they had 75" TVs with a perspex covering the whole TV. This protected the screen and also meant it could be written on using whiteboard markers. They just used laptops with the TV as a secondary monitor and extended the screen. They didn't seem to have a problem with glare, but they didn't tell me if they did and it seemed like a standard set up to them. Has anyone else tried this method? Quite cheap compared to the alternatives and my budget is getting hammered. Appreciate any input

Thanks, but whose responsibility? Who actually does this in schools? Or what do schools do? The Headteacher is responsible for most things

Thanks for the reply. We do have a DPO but they are external and want paying for the redaction of the SAR etc (which SLT aren't happy about the cost) , hence my question. I'm pretty sure SLT should be more involved in the process, but hard for me to say that's what other schools do, as I don't actually know what other schools do.

Hi All, I was wondering who does what in the SAR process in your place? Here, I.T. collate the raw contents based on searches of the network, email, OneDrive etc and go through it (removing duplicates or whatever isn't required) CPOMS is looked at by DSL person -Who does the redaction? (and what do they use if known?) -Who actually finalises the data to be provided to the parents/staff requesting the SAR? -Should IT be more involved than just giving someone senior the data for redaction and sifting more finely? Any help appreciated.

ok, thanks for that. Will have a look as it's the first thing I've seen key related. Hard to envisage we are one of very few schools who still have keys and need to do this every year, or maybe it's the site team doing all this in the background for everyone and not the IT dept!

Yeah we have SALTO but have many doors which aren't included and the cost and overhead (changing batteries for all doors for example) is prohibitive for a school in our position at the moment. Cheers, what asset register? SNIPE for example? It has caveats using this particular one, as it's designed for IT predominantly. Thanks,

Afternoon, well, evening now. Apparently we need to track who has keys issued them as part of the site audit each year. I created a key issue database in Access, which is actually ok and does the job. So, when someone tells me a key has been issued, I log the physical key to a user, then every year I print all of their keys they've been issued on a form, excluding returned keys, and this form gets put in Staff pigeon holes to amend/remove/add which keys they now have, then sign it and then back to muggins here to update the database for that year, then file all the returned forms ina file. Obviously I'd rather not do that and would love to just send an email to them, where they accept what they have via a portal and no forms are involved. I use SNIPE for assets and thought about that, but the only thing it doesn't do is send out Asset emails in bulk, so I'd have to go through each user and email their assets. Plus they write some useful info on the forms which they couldn't do via SNIPE, so maybe it won't do. It's a hell of a set up, so keen to look at better options. What do others do? I am told it is really important, yet some of SLT seem to disregard the importance when it's their forms! Appreciate any help.

We use the above for booking laptops from laptop banks and PAT tester, mini buses, and some other things. For example, we have a laptop bank which has 20 laptops and a teacher/staff member (365 SSO/LDAP/ other) can book them all, or book a number of them, leaving what can be booked by others. Works really well, but only use it because we use it for room bookings.... which is thoroughly amazing by the way! Would certainly do what you want, but would be too expensive just for our library but you might be richer than us

Yes, good choice in Freshdesk. It was too expensive for the number of operators we have, but great product and I would be using it if not for cost. I was just saying that Spiceworks Cloud isn't the free utopia some think!

I used Spiceworks cloud provision a while ago now, which at the time seemed a godsend as I already support 5 other on-site spiceworks servers and there wasn't a need for a lot of customisation for this department. I found their mailservers really unreliable and it caused me more issues trying to see where email delays actually were, and all the time it was their end. Probably fine though if you don't need quick responses to tickets and can sit out a delay until they sort their queues out!

Just bringing this up again for my own benefit We use a 75 AP mix of AP121 and AP230 APs from Aerohive and have done for 7-8 years now and now looking to renew/replace. Been really solid and never had to do much at all since implementation bar adding some VLANs and SSIDs. Staff laptops x 130 use NPS and Radius to connect and are farmed off to various VLANs based on Smoothwall elevated access requirements for certain users. Works really well bar a bit complex maybe, but rock solid. Post 16 only wifi users x 50 have their own PPSK key for their devices. Bit of an overhead, but can control traffic and trace stuff well this way. Guest access is a bit of a pain for users with SSL inspection and the need to install our Certs. we have 1k students and 150 staff roughly, and smartphones are banned in school, so lower school have no need for wireless. It seems Aruba is quite limited in terms of configuration features compared to Extreme/Aerohive. Just wondering with the solutions recommended, how does the solutions actually work? Appreciate all school sizes are different and some will work better than others with larger or smaller deployments. Sorry to hijack the thread, but it is kind of connected

Looking into this too. No replies which is a downer. Did you pursue this? Cheers

hmmmm... just me then Doesn't anybody have this requirement? Surely not everyone has teacher workstations in every classroom and cover/supply is needed at some point?

Afternoon, Just wondering what people do with Cover staff from Agencies with regards to accessing the Cover work and delivering it to students from an IT perspective. Whilst it's been good during lockdown that every teacher has a laptop, it means that we are disadvantaged for Cover staff and iT provision. I mean disadvantaged in terms of not having static teacher PCs in the classrooms. This would be fine if we did. Supply/cover walk into classroom, login with generic username, access Cover Team resources for example. Already connected to Projector/sound. I thought an iPad would be good; already configured to access Cover Team from the TEams app, can connect to projector using lightening to VGA/HMDi and show the content. USe a bluetooth boombar for sound (we have a load of non-hdmi projectors still.) A quick test showed that this could possibly work, but the sound wouldn't play through the teams app. It played through every other app on the ipad, just not teams. I looked at everything I could settings wise. The other option is a laptop, but they have to login, go to the team, connect to projector using HDMi/Vga adapter maybe. Possibly duplicate screen to projector, and it all just seems like a massive potential IT overhead for the simplest of things. Not all cover/supply are overly IT savvy from what I can see! All staff will be member of the Supply/Cover Team and will upload cover work to the files area where the Supply/cover staff will access it and show to the class. Anyone have any workable solutions? Or solutions you currently use? I get what needs to happen, it's just how practical each solution is and how much overhead it will be. Thanks

Thanks for replies. The culture change is there and has been, but it's more the evidencing side and keeping that updated which seems to be my issue. That's what GDPR is all about I thought. There seems soooo many templates everywhere and huge data spreadsheets which staff need to complete and then it needs analysing and formalising surely. Do you send out annual data collection forms? Getting them to complete the form again just adds another massive spreadsheet to the mix and is time consuming. Do staff apply to IT/Someone else if they want to subscribe to a website which they provide student details for logins etc? Maybe an option here. I just get an email saying is it safe to use, then I read the privacy notices and say yes, but it doesn't get updated anywhere. I should add it to GDPRis with details. So that is down to me. It's really the process for getting staff data evidence up to date and kept up to date which is what I'm struggling with. Maybe everyone does it at such a high level, not much changes as it's covered?

Thanks @Ditto. I do have GDPRis but it doesn't cover everything in terms of getting the info from users and keeping them updated. Like many others, someone has to do the stuff in the background and then the DPO confirms compliance or not, but the data collection needs doing by someone who can do it. I don't want to , but I do feel IT wise I should have more input, and more input means more aware, certainly from the electronic data perspective.

Superb Pete, thanks a lot. can get my teeth into that for sure. Any procedures for inbound and outbound data? I can handle inbound within security of devices and systems etc, but more the outbound and save locations really. I sent a massive spreadsheet out to staff (mainly admin) asking who they communicate with in terms of sending out data regarding staff and students. Agencies etc. They (most) completed it. Things like where are they saving files to on the network, where are they emailing sensitive data outside, are they encrypted emails, and a whole lot of stuff for them to think about and input. Those spreadsheets have died a death really as things have been added to no doubt and they send out data to other people not specified at that time. I should probably send this out again annually. Is this what everyone does? Is there a slick way to do this? A proforma and a manageable way to collate?

Afternoon, I am struggling keeping on top of GDPR related stuff when it comes to users, admin staff especially. I find I seem to prioritise this stuff lower down and it gets out of date really quickly. I think some of the issues are -staff signing up to stuff without a clear process for data protection checking ( I can introduce that better) -New staff - no process to add them to a GDRp audit I just don't seem to have a slick process at all, nor provide one and it's mounting up on top of everything else. It just seems millions of spreadsheets which need updating all the time when I get a chance. We buy in a DPO service and they do an audit annually and answer GDPR questions raised and they have some templates for this and that. Does anyone have a slick process that they would be willing to share? Do you send stuff out annually to each staff member asking the same questions and they fill it in again? Do you provide copies of what they've previously specified and ask them to check for changes? I'm finding it a nightmare to be honest. I would dread an audit that was thorough! Appreciate any pointers and anyone's time to help here sharething have a slick process emailing everything is out of date and gets prioritised lower, h

Nice one. I set the students up with the default Teams policies etc and change staff to a custom staff policy. I figured more students come in than Staff. Is this not the case with you? Do you run scripts to change Staff or something? Mine is very manual for staff

BT net here. Not been down in almost 5 years nearly. (touch wood frantically) Hosting our own Smoothwall firewall and filtering. Best thing I've done. Used to be with SWGFL prior to that. Used Telecoms Solutions - Internet and Networks - RHM Telecommunications and can definitely recommend their service. Just glad to never have to use our BT local business ever again!

ahhh cheers for that. I am using my account which has full admin access (well nearly full) but I can see the other 2 issues with Skype etc, Exchange commandlets, but not that teams one. Switching accounts to a full admin account shows it now. Appreciate the reply. Still weird though. Must be what 365 admin role is used.

Yes that's where I'm looking. Nothing under that ref number at all. Weird. Is it still there?

Can't see this report at all. TM233796 - Users may be unable to access the Microsoft Teams service IS the Health dashboard dependent on licensing level? Just had a report of Services down in Teams from a user but no incident,advisory of history relating to the above. We have a Teams license

Seems fine here. Other issues with uploading assignments from the app apparently... well 3 reports anyway