Planehazza

We're with Inventry currently, and desperate to leave. Terrible, outdated software, terrible support, and inconsistent setups/experience. We've used SignInApp for the central team but keen to get it in across the trust. We have enough iPads that we don't need to buy any new devices, but would require enclosures + NFC readers. How are people finding it in school environments, particularly with fire evacs? Currently the SBMs have Inventry RollCall installed on iPads but they complain every time there's a drill because they refuse to not use WiFi then complain when it doesn't work outside etc. Any others people have looked at? We've had EntrySign in two schools but wasn't keen on that - was just Inventry in Orange tbh

Thanks Tom. It's more MDM so Lightspeed vs Intune. I think I have a meeting with a Smoothwall Tom about filtering policies next month so if it's you, see you soon!

Yep. I've been at my org for 4 years and iPads have always been solely on me, in fact that's been the same for the last employer too, so iPad/MDM have been one of my remits for 11 years. Schools rush off any buy shiny cool thing without any thought on how to implement their own safeguarding, then kick off with IT when we're "the bad guys". It's doing my head in, but let's leave that there... I've looked at several methods but any that require any work from teachers is met with complaints and refusal. Who'd have thought it the job of a teacher, teaching ICT curriculum, to teach pupils how to type and enter a username and password? Heaven forbid they use word or Google Docs to save a list of passwords/PINs and dish them out in their lessons... 😅 Prior to shared iPad we had no idea which students were using which devices so any Lightspeed alerts were just against '<school>iPad73'. No idea who until the teachers went up to find which kids were giggling the most. Not good enough especially with the recent KCSIE focus etc, so our (my) hands were forced and shared iPad mode was built, tested, communicated (MANY TIMES), and deployed. Our ipads are a mix. We've just bought 90 new, but the rest are 5 years old on average, all 32GB. How else would you do it in a not too affluent area where school budgets are tighter than a duck's backside? 1:1 is never going to happen in my schools unfortunately

Going from Lightspeed to Smoothwall, there are some things I miss from Lightspeed. Their MDM bulk actions are much better than Intune, but Intune seems to work with devices much more quickly and more reliably.

Agreed. I knew it was going to be bad going into it, but KCSIE regs and lack of funding for 1:1 has forced my hand. We (I) have had sooo much grief from certain members of SLT/exec who are heavily involved in school safeguarding... it's infuriating. Boils down to them not wanting to teach kids how to sign in to devices. Funny that... The biggest issues is signin steps - if it fails, it's very confusing. Also, majority of our fleet is 32GB iPads ~6 years old meaning profiles get ~2GB which is filling quick with app data and photos. Doesn't matter how much I tell staff to back things up to Google. I'm going to test dropping the max user count from 6 (already dropped from default 10) to 2 and see if it gives them more space. Failing that, staff iPads will be reverted back to 1:1 but that's a lot of building and testing I simply do not have time for now. 500 tickets since Sep 1st across 10 sites. I'm singlehandedly doing SCCM upgrades, Intune implementations, Entra ID > Google SSO, Smoothwall implementation and deployment on top of doing direct support for 6 primaries. It's utterly bonkers, and I'm reaching burnout fast. Mistakes are being made.

Y No can do here. ~500 ipads in the trust, but 1500+ primary students. Simply no money to do 1:1 Shared iPad has been a nightmare. Staff were bumped up to instructors, so ASM enforce 8 digit alphanumeric. It has broken all logins and there's no way to clear users off the device that I can tell. I really want to tell the schools to abandon iPads as they start to fall off compliance. Utter nightmare.

Yep I questioned this too. Favourite dog and fruit encapsulating/acting as their username/pw is not MFA...

Anyone having problems with RollCall iOS app? Can't sign in. Type in users email, check the privacy policy agreement then tap send secure access link and it just errors with "sign in details incorrect. Please check and try again". It never even asks for PIN or password, I really hope Inventry start loosing custom so they sort their s**t out. I'm so done with them and, infact, we will be done with them from December.

Wish us luck, send flower to my funeral... We've turned a blind eye to iPad student internet tracking for too long. Yes, they've been filtered and tied to 1:1 pseudo accounts, but after I reminded them we were averaging 1.5 alerts per day across the trust and we had no way of tracking who was using any of the 600 iPads, our hand was forced and I've implemented Shared iPad mode, federated against Google. Some staff are very unhappy that it's too hard, but we just have to use Safeguarding to quieten them again. Anyone else been in this position? Teachers spouting safeguarding left, right, and centre, but heaven forbid they have to teach kids IT skills in an IT lesson, using a very simple user guide I created for them...

I guess another way to think of it is you're more likely to get backing from money people to ditch them now.

Oh I don't know real pain. I thought I did, but we're rolling out shared iPad mode across the whole trust, including KS1. Wish me luck. Drinking at work in schools is generally frowned upon, right? Just checking... 😂

Another bump to this but cloudwise are no more I believe, or were bought out or something. I'm in the process of implement Clever at our trust, employing the SSO feature for QR badge logins for KS1 and KS2, which is all free now. It's the MFA you now pay for and it's actually not too pricey.

Honestly it depends on who installs it. We've got it in 8 schools and every install is different. Good luck getting them all consistent, especially if you have more than one domain. Their product was all the rage 5 years ago, but now it's overly complicated and their support is abysmal.

We're going through procurement process in Q4 so I can ask, but I suspect you'll have an answer by then.

Thanks Ben, and for just validating how I feel with this. It's nuts. I'm already a but miffed with these iPads, as we're rolling out Shared iPad for ALL devices, including KS1. It was my idea as we've no other way of keeping them compliant with KCSIE without relying on teachers to keep track etc. They're going to hate them and me, but we've reminded them how dangerous these are when I've showed them we've averaged an alert a day on the current system, and we don't know who uses which device currently... I'm anxious, but content in my choice. OK, so if you'd be so kind, please hear me out... I can have a single default policy that applies to all the names them say iPad-{{serialnumber}} then add the devices to the Site1-iPad All/Site 2 - iPad Students etc groups to which another policy is set with a different template? Them having Site1 etc in the name isn't crucial; what's crucial is easy, quick software to hardware identification for group assignment. Being shared mode, I can't simply enter a pin to go to Settings > General > about and the serial on the back is tiny. Of course this begs the question of asset management - why don't they have tags on them etc. That's another resource/time question...