Chaniel

We did a short test run with 14 staff this morning and lite registration is going to be a pain, but can be done within 24hrs so I think we're going to outsource that to our multi-monitor using staff (aka people who can copy and paste efficiently). Doing that, it shouldn't be too bad... just tedious. For staff, they can register themselves. For students, we will do the lite registration using data from their consent forms. It requires things like DoB, Address, Email Address (parent), Mobile Number (parent) so will pull that data into the spreadsheet. Otherwise it was pretty straightforward, just a lot of admin on the backend.

The lite registration stuff is confusing to me as I don't feel the few documents are coherent and I think it's mostly based on test sites for the general public/adults. The consent form says that goes to students says "To process the test, we will register all participating students" and then asks for details like mobile number, post code etc. I'm assuming at this point that I'd enter all that data in and the results recorder would register them via the lite registration ("Register someone else") and can just copy paste from the spreadsheet...

So I've been thinking about this for a while as we need to set one up too, I'm thinking keeping it super basic is the best way. Thinking of doing the following: At registration desk, after checking consent, staff fill in three things on a Google sheet - Date, Student Admission Number, Barcode. As the test progresses through and gets to the results recording desk, the person there can just Ctrl+F the spreadsheet and scan the barcode and record the result. If it's a positive or void, they can then contact the necessary people immediately. My thinking is that using the admission number, we can just pull in other data using vlookups for other info (name, reg etc.) and we can keep the sheet going down vertically rather than horizontally... I did initially think we could have different sheets for each year group and the registration desk would just scroll through the list, but you'd have to have multiple columns for each row, per test and I thought that would be a bit messy. Any other thoughts from others would be appreciated!

Just chiming in to let you know that most barcode scanners can be set up to add prefixes or suffixes, some older library software required a ~ prefix if I remember correctly (our old Eclipse scanner did that too) but you can usually reconfigure if you find hte manual. Can't help with the main thread issue though!

Yeah, others are reporting it too, seems to be a worldwide outage! Hilarious that their app status shows everything is OK now. Google Workspace Status Dashboard

I can join in the recommendation of OS Ticket, it has a lovely cost of £0 and will do what you need.

Most likely going to be GPO Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Windows Update\Specify Intranet Microsoft update service location Do a gpresults on the client machine and see if a GPO is applying Windows Update policies

We use Salamander to sync and while this syncs the primary teacher and any shared teachers, we have it set so it's "add only" and doesn't remove anyone. If a teacher changes class, they manually remove the class. If we add someone manually (e.g. HoD, TA's etc.), the sync doesn't remove them.

You'll likely need to do some more digging, the full bounceback message would also be useful. If you go into the Microsoft 365 admin center and do a message trace (Security > Mail Flow > Message Trace) which will likely give you more information. I've seen this before where the admin had set a transport rule that if mail gets sent to allstudents it also gets bcc'd to another address, in this case, the message was going to allstudents but they were receiving a bounceback from the secondary address.

We use Salamander for our synchronisation of data between our MIS and O365/Google. For example; Syncing students to classes based on SIMS (and removing in the event of migration) Syncing teachers to classes based on SIMS Syncing parent email addresses to students for guardian summaries Syncing SIMS timetables to Google and Office accounts They're pretty quick if we want to make any changes to what it's doing.

You want to run this (without Chrome open already) "c:\Program Files (x86)\google\Chrome\application\chrome.exe" --kiosk "https://www.google.com" You can use GPO to run at user logon: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/troubleshoot/windows-client/system-management-components/run-programs-automatically Alternatively, you can create a shortcut to Chrome and edit the target field with the --kiosk part and whack that in the Startup folder

Not sure if this is what you're after, but in SCCM if you have a password set for PXE it is here: Configuration Manager Console > Administration > Site Configuration > Servers and Site System Roles > Distribution Point properties > PXE > Require a password when computers use PXE This is the password that is used in the task sequence wizard >

Are you recording audio separately? For our drama exam recordings we use a Panasonic HC-VX980 with a rode videomic pro (plugged into the camera). I'd imagine audio quality was more important than video for a music recording, so might be worth looking more into those.

Smoothwall can do this, it all depends on your setup of web filter policies and HTTPS inspection policies. https://kb.smoothwall.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002134764-Categorization-in-the-Smoothwall-Filter https://kb.smoothwall.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001834579-Understanding-the-Reason-for-Blocking-Shown-on-the-Blockpage-How-Does-Smoothwall-Categorise-Content-

I'd personally recommend you look into PoE Switches, they're not as expensive as they used to be and it tidies things up massively. As long as your PoE Injectors are 802.3af (minimum) & 1Gb, then you'll be fine using those for the UAP-AC-PROs as well.

Nothing fancy, we bought cheap for a proof of concept. Webcam: https://www.amazon.co.uk/LarmTek-Webcam-Computer-Conference-Calling/dp/B07VTPQ9NQ Conference Mic: https://amazon.co.uk/MTFY-Conference-Microphone-Omni-directional-Detachable-UM10/dp/B08D6H1Q2K Webcam is pretty wide-angle so when put just in front of the board, it managed to capture the entire classroom.

We've set this up in a couple of classrooms using a wide angle webcam and a cheap USB conference mic, the webcam's mic wasn't good enough to pick up students at the back of the room and the USB conference mic has a very visual mute button for the cover teacher to press.

Your switches are PoE Plus (PP at the end of the model) so support 802.3at, they'll be fine with the ubiquiti APs 802.3af = PoE 802.3at = PoE+

We got rid of VGA many years ago. How many of your projectors have HDMI at all? All the new laptops we've bought don't have DVD drives, we've been purchasing £15 external DVD drives for staff if they need them. Staff don't mind as it means they get a thinner/lighter laptop in comparison to their old ones. I'd run HDMI cables for the projectors that support it and those that don't have HDMI prioritise for replacement and deal with adapters in the meantime. Spending the money on some HDMI cables saves the headache of using adapters for those rooms.

I'm so sorry you have to deal with this. Unfortunately, the parent doing their own research is probably in line with antivaxxers doing their own research, they find something that backs up their point of view and discount anything else. The following publication is from the WHO https://www.who.int/peh-emf/publications/facts/fs304/en/ I would not come to any compromise, 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz wireless is not a threat and I doubt you'll be able to appease this parent.

If you're still experiencing this problem, I can't help you narrow it down but something that might alleviate the problem is adding the MAC Address you've identified as dodgy into the DHCP Filter (deny). I've used this in the past to prevent the DHCP server getting full of "BAD_ADDRESS", it doesn't fix the root of the problem but it can help alleviate the symptoms for the rest of the network while you get to the bottom of it.

I'd just get them recycled to be honest. It's usually more effort than it's worth if trying to sell old equipment as a school, especially if it's pretty old and used.

One other way I can think of is to create a transport rule (e.g. If the recipient is [email protected] then BCC the message to [email protected]) You could then enable/disable this transport rule on a schedule with a script running as a scheduled task. For example, on Friday at 16:00, it runs a Powershell script that enables the transport rule (Enable-TransportRule) and then on Monday at 08:00 this gets disabled (Disable-TransportRule). Not sure how you do that securely if you have MFA enabled though. Edit: Doh. Shared mailbox with the head checking it as mentioned below is definitely easier!

We push out chrome via SCCM but allow it to update itself, occasionally updating the application installer. We don't experience any issues using this method.

If you want to stick with HPE, the HPE OfficeConnect 1920S series is a pretty decent equivalent to what the 1800s were. Web managed and fine for smaller deployments. Ubiquiti stuff is also a good replacement.