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We achieved this using Wonde to pull data from SIMS and built our own tool using Laravel (PHP). Find pupil in the system and then we have a field containing teachers' emails comma separated which you just copy and paste into the Gmail to: box. An on-the-cheap option if you're willing to do some coding!

https://www.decisivetactics.com/products/printopia/ This would look to do the trick!

Bonjour alone will not make your printers discoverable to iPads..... only Macs. If you want the ipads to be able to print to your windows server, you need a third party tool. I remember one I used years ago called 'AirPrint Activator' but don't know if it's still around now?

In the past, I've had machines that won't domain join because the PC and server time are out of sync and so the crypto fails. So simple but took me forever to work it out!

Update: I've just noticed that the windows 7 machines say 'Preparing Desktop' for about 10 seconds when a 'known' user logs in for the second time. So it does seem like normal behaviour on both 7 and 10. I guess this is just another case of slow logons with Windows 10 -- something which I see all too much on here! Advice appreciated.

Hi all, I have a Windows 10 client logging onto the domain. Server 2012r2. No roaming profiles, redirected folders. Login is fairly quick. Only about a minute and a half for first logon. I have verbose messaging on so on the first logon you see items such as - 'applying group policy printers policy etc'. and then after all that you get 'Preparing Windows' - all normal behaviour. However then on subsequent logons for that user on the domain PC, the messaging goes from 'waiting for user profile service' (only about half a second on this) to 'preparing windows' for about a minute and then we're finally logged on. Edit : Just timed this with a stopwatch on a domain machine and it was 40 seconds from cold boot to logged on. Is this average? It's much less on Win7 I thought preparing windows was only for first logon as this is when the profile is created etc. It's weird because once the user it logged on their profile hasn't been reset, all their settings and files are there... it's just like Windows doesn't realise their profile is already on this machine. I don't have this issue with windows 7 clients on my network. first logon is about a minute 45 secs and then subsequent ones are very swift. thanks in advance

Not sure about the second one but my solution to the first one would either be to have reception/head's PA collate notices and send out each AM. But a better solution which I would probably use myself would be to setup a small web server (or use your existing intranet if you have one) to host the notices and push the link via GPO to the desktop of every PC. If you want to keep it simple, someone with reasonable competency (or through the use of a WYSIWYG editor) can update it as necessary OR you could build something in PHP/MySQL with a form that lets staff submit their own notices. This is a bit more complex but I'm sure you can find an open source project online where someone has already done this. The best of both worlds would be to have a web based system as described above that ALSO sends email digests to staff. Think I quite fancy developing this now!... [emoji23]

Yes it is an online exam. I've done Google Certified Educator and it's the same system. There's lots of scenario based questions... they give you a dummy environment to login to and perform tasks on. Quite good fun!

1. On a mac you can setup locations. So you have a school and home profile. One with the proxy enabled and one without 2. An out of the box Mac is more secure than your average PC. Since ~2015, full disk encryption (fire vault) is enabled by default when you setup the laptop. You have to actively untick it if you don't want it. The OS is inherently more secure thanks to being *nix based, most viruses are built for PC. Macs will update automatically unless you tell them not to. In my experience my mac updates are far more reliable than windows updates which sometimes hang or fail to install 3. for the ease of use, OS and security. It's worth the money in my humble personal opinion 4. If you use Office365 for email you get Office for Mac as a free download. If you're GAfE then you're probably standardised on google apps anyway so may not even need a traditional office suite. 5. no comment. All I can think of off the top of my head is something PC only like SIMS but ours is hosted in RDP anyway so it would only be a case of installing RDP client on her mac. 6. I've never heard an issue of a wireless network only 'liking' PCs and objecting to Macs. Windows print servers interface perfectly with OS X. I print to our 2008r2 print server daily via my mac. 7. She's likely asking for it because she uses a Mac at home and hence is better 'trained' in OS X than Windows.

Standard Sky Hub, bought a nice Asus router which works pretty well. QOS is nice and it's got a 5ghz AP unlike the Sky router. Sky don't have a 'modem only mode' like Virgin do so there's a fairly crude double NAT setup. Itworks and I haven't run into any issues but it still bugs me that Sky don't let you just bring your own hardware. I built a fairly cheap mini ITX server box. Runs Server 2012 r2 (Dreamspark licence) and acts as DC, DHCP, DNS and File Server. 3TB Western Digital drive is NAS-grade; worth the extra £ for reliability (3 year warranty too). Plex is installed but really just for hosting media up for the Fire box/Chromecast to access. Very little transcoding is done as I use Handbrake to encode everything on my Mac before uploading to server over LAN. Hyper-V is also running which houses a single Windows 7 VM which I use as a remote desktop 'Terminal Server' for offsite access. Oh, and I also have a Raspberry Pi running FreePBX which runs the 4 VoIP phones in the house. All this goes into a TP Link 8 port managed switch. (£20 amazon)

Will add NetSupport to my list 'to visit!' See you Thursday!

Hi all, We have a suite of Chromeboxes (https://www.asus.com/uk/Chrome-Devices/Chromebox/) and would like to find a way to shut them down each day at 1630. I can't see a payload for this is the Google Apps Management Console... Any ideas? asc

2 factor authentication should be switched on for that Gmail account. Either set it up with a PAYG mobile in the office or buy a few U2F USB security keys for the staff that want to use it.

As it's all cloud based the short answer is no. Why would you want to anyway? Google Apps is meant to encourage a system without boundaries, so students can work from anywhere. You are better off locking down the student OU to prevent misuse.... -Stop them from emailing outside of the domain (or disable Gmail all together: they can't wreak much havoc with just Google Docs & Classroom) -Disable access to things such as Youtube, Analytics (all te things which are either irrelevant or cause issues) to get down to a 'bare-bones' setup for the kids OR.... -Have you considered an assembly or something similar on things like "netiquette"/eSafety etc (your ICT co-ordinator might handle this). Better to teach best practice than lock down a system so they simply can't access it. You will find that this will better prepare them for later life where they will be in a less locked down environement and will need to be in control of their own actions/behaviour. If you share the specific problems you are having (what are the kids doing?) we as EduGeekers can probably advise a way for you to be able to control it!

For public folders, we create an account such as [email protected] or [email protected] and then add the relevant staff members as delegated access users. They can then have a 'Shared Mailbox' (https://support.google.com/mail/answer/138350?hl=en)

Yes you can have multiple domains in one Google Apps OU - works well for allowing communication across a MAT whilst allowing schools to keep their own domain names. Mailmerge is possible in Google Docs & Gmail yes. We use a plugin called 'Yet another mail merge' (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/yet-another-mail-merge/mgmgmhkohaenhokbdnlpcljckbhpbmef?hl=en)

We are also on Google Sites and have setup a Google Sites 'portal' which links to all the relevant items. It's locked down so there's a page for staff/students etc. PM me for more details and I'll send screenshots Google Sites is super easy (drag and drop) and then you just need to distribute the link to your students and staff. We put a link on our school website homepage but you could also deploy a desktop shortcut via Group policy.

Ricoh with Papercut here. Installed and service contract with ITEC.

Take a look at OpenSIS - stick it on a web server and it should do everything you need. Another one is http://www.projectfedena.org/

I think GAfE performs better in terms of collaboration. Students at our school love it - it can be accessed from anywhere (no need for a bulky school laptop with MS Office) and the simultaneous typing feature is really cool! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRaelhVbtx8 Also, you might want to research Google Classroom. It's way ahead of Microsoft's 'Teacher App' offering and staff find it super easy to use. Student uptake here is impressive, especially because they can put the app on their smartphones and check outstanding homework.

Just got the status update text.. "Investigating - We are aware of an issue affecting connectivity is SEGfL that is preventing internet browsing for a number of schools. Our engineers are investigating this and we will provide further updates within the next 60 minutes." http://status.rm.com/

Ericom AccessNow can be used on Chromebooks to access SIMS and other legacy apps (if it's hosted with a Terminal Server like Scomis do) If your school already has a terminal server then it's incredibly easy to setup!

Shut down our Frog box about 6 months ago.... WisePay for Payments ClassCharts for Attendance and Behaviour data Kerboodle for Online Textbooks (this replaces SORN files in Frog) Everything else in between is handled by Google Docs, Sites and Classroom! I gave a talk at BETT about using Google Sites as VLE - if you PM me I can send you the slides!

This website has some nice infographics on the stages of 'Going Google' and Google Apps for Education adoption! EITC Downloads - EdintheClouds It think it's a really valuable resource, personally

I think .UK is more deliberate though. It's easier to assume .CO is missing a .UK on the end. They'll learn eventually. I did a Whois on the corresponding .co.uk domain and it looks like they've got Office 365 activated on it!