jim_potter

OK - a year down the line and I realise I'm not great at marketing, so here's where I've got to open source. It will populate users, groups and resource calendars, put lesson events into resource calendars, subscribe users to groups and calendars. I've got it working nicely with CMIS and SIMS. Give it a look. http://www.ttsync.co.uk thanks, Jim

Yes. This is true - though every company has to start somewhere. If it doesn't work I'll open source it, but in the meantime I reckon its worth a go.

The plan was to sell TTSync as a hosted service, but no one is going to trust their private data to an unknown company, and it will stay unknown until I get a bunch of customers. Problemo. So.. plan B - package it up and get people to install it themselves. There are several issues here straight off... - its in Java. Its dead easy for someone to to reverse engineer and run off with the fruits of my labours. - How do I license it? - Its a bit complicated to configure. I've looked as obfusticating the code, but I'm not sure it helps - anyone determined to reverse engineer it could still do so. For a small fortune you can buy an ahead-of-time java compiler to make it into a native .exe application. Licensing - plan A - rely on honesty. Plan B - ???. I like plan A. Configuration - I've started writing a guide. Its already getting really ugly. configuring Google APIs is hideous, and then configuration for the software itself is a mass of regular expressions. Maybe I could sell my services setting it up + give away the software for free? This is looking increasingly like a good plan. I've also made enquiries about various partner programs - they cost. No surprises there.

Over the years I've met or heard of edu IT staff who have written some software and started up in business selling it. Sounds easy. I've decided to give it a try, and (possibly by way of free advertising) keep a journal of what happens. Me: about 10 years ago I did an OU degree in software development, then landed another network manager job, and my new found skills were left on the shelf. However, over the years I've noticed a gap in the market - electronic student timetables. Wouldn't it be nice if they could be injected into Google/Exchange/o365/WHY? So I set to work just last summer, and last september all students in the school had their calendars in Google.... ...nobody really noticed. Maybe I should have advertised it more. So I thought - this needs to work for staff too, and they need to be able to communicate through it. The problem was, what I had written was a proof of concept, but not really configurable, so I went back to the drawing board armed with bunch of chunks of Google code and a knowledge of what was and was not possible with Google APIs. I finally got a working piece of software about a month ago. I emailed all the local network managers and got an underwhelming response. This is going to be the story of what happens next. See the details of the software at public_web Jim Potter

Hi all, OK yes as a current network manager I do know what you mean - I'm very wary of giving out access to my network. I'll take this all as constructive feedback! Any recommendations here would be great. Would people be happier if it was installed locally? My reservation with this is I've written it with a very flexible (and therfore pretty fiddly) configuration setup, which I think would need a load of experience to get the best out of. I know a lot of systems connect to external APIs (we use CMIS and have > 10 companies accessing our data). Would this be a better route? The queries it runs on the database are read only (and copied from SIMS/CMIS directly - they are the ones run by the applications themselves) but yes I do agree that clients would be taking this on trust. With the API, there is a lot less potential for external comapnies affecting your data. As far as the config goes, its default action is to do nothing. The plan would be to switch it on bit by bit (eg manage 1 test user/1 group/1 calendar) and roll it out class by class/year by year etc. What do you at Salamander do? I know RealSmart do similar things, and the use the API. cheers Jim

Worked for me - free VMWare Player (MSI it out). As long as no one goes crazy with virtual disk size. I found that auto expanding disks started at ~5GB. I ran this over a network too, which worked fine. (I think vmware grumbled a bit, but no real performance problems) Or QEmu - virtual Raspberry pis (untested) Jim

I'm using a central server for administrator, an invigilator in the exam room (so on the same VLAN, you need to point invigilator to the admin server) and the client machines pick up the invigilator automatically. Well, thats how I did it. I don't think you can automate it. Do it by hand. Its only once a year. I haven't had it go wrong yet... Jim

Another one for TestDisk here. The last one I did was a physically damaged disk, I copied everyhing I could off with ddrescue to make an image of the disk then testdisk'd it. OK it didn't work (not enough original data left) but I'm not sure how commercial software could have got much more off the disk itself. Jim

I like the VM idea. I've deployed VMWare player for windows installation practice. Or set up a linux host and give them SSH access to it? Jim

I've just been looking at this myself... I have created a MSP file for Office with spellcheck removed, and applied it to the machines I'm using for exams. The only issue is knowing if its deployed correctly on that machine in time for the exam, but it seems to work. Hope that helps. Jim

Hi, We use GLPI (ww.glpi-project.org) I think. It doesn't create order forms AFAIK, but it does everything else you've asked and more. Give it a look. It changed my life. Jim