matt40k

Yup, got Sir, you are being hunted and Sonic yesterday. Pretty awesome.

@winng have you seen @GREED site? Market Statistics | Eduware Consulting - he's joined all the FOIs for what MIS systems school (inc Academies and Free Schools) in England used to submit the Autumn Census for the last few years. So any supplier listed has successfully implemented their MIS and the school has completed a Census return so they should have a good feel for the system. At the bottom you're find the raw spreadsheet which you can then filter by Establishment Type (Free Schools). Hope that helps.

I hope you didn't create the SIMS account @Steve21!! It's important that steps like @PhilNeal has stated are followed, this how vulnerabilities occur, you shouldn't assume that it is secure just because only you know the password! Just look at Heartbleed, just because large companies like Google assume something is secure does't mean you should. Far as you are aware the schedule task is sucking all the data out all your data then the application is uploading to some server in China. Limiting the scheduled tasks\application isn't going to stop that, but it will at least limit the amount of damage that it could cause. It's not like it's difficult either, few clicks and you've gone from potential releasing an entire schools information - everything from SEN data, to staff bank details and everything inbetween - to a heck of a lot less (still not great of course)

Being honest, RedStor\RBUSS (if brought via the LA) isn't cheap, especially when you think most of the backups are restored from what basically is, a kinda robocopy of the data onto another area of the server, but that's not what your paying for, your basically buying insurance. Take St Felix Middle in Suffolk - it burnt out, (BBC NEWS | UK | Education | 'Our school was destroyed by fire') - only reason they had data was that the technician wisely took the backup tape home, a legal nightmare - even encrypted. Don't even say fireproof safe, they had one and there is a picture of the office where it used to leave, I'll buy a beer to the first people able to identify the safe left alone be able to recover data from one of the backups within it!! Personally, you wouldn't want to backup 1.5TB of data. For me, just backup your MIS data and a few other bits. Sit down, look at your data and mark it 1 - 5 with 1 being, "OMG I don't want to even thing about losing that!!" to 5 being, "well, I could always redo that, but it would be nice". Then look at the costs, the 1's would instantly be RedStor. 2-5 would depend on the cost, if it's an extra few quid, it makes sense to add the files. Generally the 4 and 5 would end up on a cheap NAS, heck for the price, get two slap one at each end of the school. Basically, if you heard your school was on fire, do you want to be worrying is your data safe? Did the backup run last night, did you swap the tape over, when was the last time you actually did a restore to check it actually work? Redstor pretty much takes the worry away which would disappear once your LA has confirmed the data is ok and is restored onto a temp server. Your 4 and 5's people are prob going to be a bit accepting they might have lost data in scenarios like half the school has disappeared because of some disaster. Oh, and for those of you thinking, "I back up to an outbuilding" or even another school, remember, people in the Twin Towers used to backup to the other tower as they believed that was safe. Let's hope your right.

RedStor - School Backup, Online Backup for Schools, Remote Data Backup and Recovery for School Data Pretty much anyone who wants a reliable backup: Redstor - Remote Backup for Schools Service - Our Clients

Not sure I'd give them System Manager, they could add permissions themselves then which is a bit cheeky. Also not sure why they would need access to staff records like personal details :S EDIT: Also seems odd. Also, why don't suppliers export a security group for you to import, it's a really nice feature in Sysman7!

You feeling ok? Sure I didn't see Intel or Samsung being mentioned

Only true cloud, where load is dynamically spread across servers and additional servers are spinned up when required (Arbor). Grey cloud - web based or client\server (like SIMS) you stuffed. You have to hope the guys and gals at the other end know what they're doing and actually are willing resolve it - ie spend the time\money.

Isn't this so you only get current?

Depends on your support agreement really, if you've got fundamental IT problems, your MIS support won't cover it. It's like phoning up Google and saying you can't get on your email when you have no internet connect. Sorry if that sounds so harsh, but the fact is it works, if it doesn't work it's something you've done\not done. First thing I'd try is log on to one of the clients, then RDP onto the server, check both can resolve the FQDN (ie you can ping LAPTOP.longcroft.ac.uk from the server and client can ping the server FQDN), after that I'd be looking at removing the AV, restarting then trying, if that works, your AV is lying about having a firewall feature - had that with symantec before.

What about your antivirus? Does that include a firewall? Is the firewall open on the server as well?

Monitoring wise... Not tried to be honest, few ideas however. Query the database - a bit crooked, you would need to check the status as well as the date. Look at the log file and some how parse it, might be a bit of a pain, but in theory you'd get raw logs so you'll be half way home as far as debugging any problems. Final option, doesn't the stupid thing create scheduled tasks? Can't you just get the status - anything other then exit code of 0 is a fail, again, also check the last run date.

I think we need the EduSpell app creating first ... right after the EduSoap dispenser for cleaning ones self after using dirty words like... S...L...G...

I'm sure some sort of fork will occur at some point, either with some of their innovative staff leaving to start up a new company or some sort of partnership. They are pretty much already doing a similar thing with Room Booking System\Parents Evening System and to be honest I suspect if you turned up at a event, you'll find them cross selling with Capita (and by proxy GroupCall Emerge). Not sure the time is right to start looking at other MIS systems really - still a lot of growth room and until the integration problem gets solved at a DfE level it's pretty much a pig.

Mmm, not sure I agree, the path your speaking kinda leads to creating a new MIS - like Teacher2Parent has created SchoolPod. Thing is, it's better to be a master of something then a jack of all trade. The company is in a pretty health state, it's better off then some of the MIS suppliers! They've got a good customer base - about 2,000 schools at last count, in Suffolk I know they have a nice wide spread across the types (Primary, Middle, Special, Secondaries) and they've still got good room for growth - 20,000 schools! Clearly a focused business plan works!!

They dedicated to parent engagement, which they do really well. They would be more likely to integrate with another MIS then to start entering the teacher market.

Well it was a filing cabinet full of HR documents*, at the moment it's a wall... neither particularly speak much, but I'd welcome them to start doing so. * The exception being people who pop over and ask me things.

My god I hope they're not expecting the tax payers to bail them out! I mean if you can't get the basic stuff right, no amount of money is going to save you!!

Hey, it's never too late to hear your right

There are a few "techy" issues why you might look at other MIS systems, I think the issues that get raised here are often environment, ie hardware not spec correctly or software not configured correctly - with a cloud product or even just a web based product, most of these issues disappear. You will off course still need a working device!! Those environment issues will occur regards of the MIS system, it's just a cloud MIS you could almost get away with walking into PC World and picking pretty much any device they sell and it'll work, SIMS, well... not so much. If the environment issues where such a problem, you can basically spend money to resolve it - remember 20,000 schools use SIMS and yet we only see a few hundred people moaning about upgrades! The "techy" issues I would say are worth a look at a new MIS are, development cycle - SIMS does what, 3 releases a year, Arbor does about 12 a year - that's not patches either. Still I would look at their last 12 month release notes and the roadmap head as it doesn't mean they will be able to do any of the changes you want any quicker!! The other is testing, a focused MIS like ScholarPack will have a easier time testing then SIMS. ScholarPack is focused on the primary sector, SIMS is has to worry about a lot more scenarios, like if that shinny new secondary school module will affect primary schools.

It's a pretty poor reason to change MIS systems. I mean the end-user - teachers, office staff or headteachers etc - don't care how much effort is required to get it working, so long as it's working and that boils down to cost. If you were going to change MIS system it should be for improvement - look at Arbor and their big data stuff, how they are using public data, raiseonline and other data sources to give you more information at your figure tips. Making IT staff life easier by changing the MIS system should be a bonus not the why.

Was it proxy settings for Chrome? Because @Norphy prob right about the site needing adding to the proxy exception list.

Buy her some ear plugs. Sorted.

I don't think BitLocker is as mature a product as say CheckPoint in terms of end-user gloss, with that said, it does what is says on the tin so does it really matter? If you've got a BitLocker included in your windows enterprise license, makes sense to use it! Guess you would go for something else if you have win7pro oem licenses and you don't have a Microsoft agreement.

Good point, you'll be surprised how many people have been moaning about moving from XP to Win7, especially on an IT floor.