Planehazza

I agree, but it seems teacher workload is obscene nowadays so many simply don't have time to learn. What boils my pi55 is when I spend time implementing something that would save them several hours every week if they would spend 30 mins watching a video I've made for them or pointed them to, but refuse to because "they don't have time". The irony is not lost on me... 90% of the time, as you touched upon, it's change they fear, not the IT. Moving to SharePoint is different to files and folders on a network share, but if I could show them all the benefits to the user such as 'one copy for all Team members', recycle bin, retention, file version history etc. The pros far outweigh so the cons that are largely just "it's change, so I can't do it, it's too hard"

Apologies if this is the wrong section. So we've just had SalamanderSoft implemented which links SIMS to our AD for account provisioning and Timetable > Calendar syncing. Pretty handy for students and teachers alike. My question is more in line with policies and handling of new starters. We are secondary education with two schools and ~3500 people. When a new student is added to SIMS, an account is generated in AD with a unique password which, currently, is spat out to a CSV file. I'm looking for ways to streamline this further and, obviously, in a more secure way. Forms and Flows would be interesting and I know a lot of universities (where account numbers are much higher) use an activation portal, but this is probably beyond what we need. If possible, could you outline your onboarding/offboarding processes? Looking for ideas on how to distribute user accounts to new starters securely etc. Sorry, it's a bit of an open ended question, so I'm hoping once the ideas start flowing and I can see how others handle it, I can narrow it down further.

Teachers are moving around different rooms a lot here. Outlook desktop is too slow and runs the risk of clogging local disks. We have an unwritten policy, more advice really, to use OWA in the classroom/work rooms, and Outlook when at 'your PC' in the office. We use Office 365 BTW, as we use Teams and SharePoint for resource storage. 365 is much better than 2019 for cloud integration. Downside is the necessity for shared device licensing (or perhaps I've used the ODT wrong) meaning that every user has to have Microsoft Apps for Faculty/Students assigned otherwise Office desktop apps won't be licensed... Oops

Just jumping in here as it's an interesting. Can't help but think some of you have way to high an expectation of level of ability and caring of your staff. Some do not want to learn or change, and some will never understand 'techy stuff'. A team of four managing two schools consisting of 3000 students and 500 staff simply cannot be responsible for staff training full time.

Fast forward this to 2022 and we're still having similar issues. Tried various things and it always ended up with the conversation starting with user saying "printers aren't here" and our saying "log off and back in" then the printers' magically appearing... Package point and print don't do much now, not since MS's balls up with the KB update that stopped non admins from installing printer drivers. We've applied that registry fix (I mean vulnerability) but it was still taking two log ins. I've just changed the UNC path of the printers to FQDN as per the advice above and the printers are now appearing first time! Wooo! However, does this suggest a DNS issue?

I'm only good with Powershell for basic commands, largely stuff that can't be done via a UI, but I'm by no means a scripter or intermediate let alone pro user. We don't even remotely have the time need to get good with it and build something like that myself, but I am highly impressed and jealous that you have

CDB uses SalamanderSoft (free). We create department teams too, but the beauty of using CDB's portal is that it handles permissions automatically. We're going to SalamanderSoft soon too and are about done with our build doc. Staff are super excited for their SIMS timetables to be in their calendars automatically, let alone it handling user creation for us. Win win.

The rewards are so worth the effort for setting assignments etc. if you can have the Teams created automatically based on MIS data. That's where CloudDesignBox (I linked to them above) come in. About £10k for the first year including build and top tier support, but so worth it.

If you have the budget I would STRONGLY recommend you look at third parties like Cloud Design Box. Managing Teams manually would be a nightmare in a highschool and with CDB it syncs with SIMS, meaning Class Teams with a SharePoint site and automatic permissions are created for every class and subject. Very cool stuff. Also if you are moving to cloud, try and move from Office 2016/19 to Office 365 so that the on prem office environment is up to speed with 365 app changes. It also brings in the auto save features so that opening cloud files on desktop apps save and you don't have staff downloading and saving multiple copies of files. And coming from experience, getting teaching staff to move from legacy T drive to cloud files is not an easy task. Plan for lots of training needed as they can be... stubborn with change. Make sure you go through your SharePoint/Teams admin centres and set policies for chat permissions, sharing permissions, or I guarantee you the next question from SLT will be "how do I block... for safeguarding". Avoid logon scripts that map OneDrive as a network drive. They work, but IME, you're better using OneDrive for Business desktop app and then using GPOs to control how much can be synced (looks at local SSD space, Files on Demand, automatic clean up). If you tell staff to access their OneDrive just from the web, you'll have people downloading copies of copies to their H drives in no time. TRUST ME. https://www.clouddesignbox.co.uk/ I'm no pro, but we've almost completed what you're about to start.

We have two schools in our MAT, let's call 'em School A and School B to be super original... I want to have channel of videos where staff (in a group SchoolAStaff) can upload content and all students can peruse the channel and view. I DON'T want School B to be able to see the video. Do I create a new group in Stream (which will, annoyingly, come with a mailbox and SharePoint site that I don't want/need) and add all the staff as owners and students as members? Is there a way to do this without the faff of creating an M365 group? I can add a channel to a SchoolAStaff group, but this will obviously prevent all students from being able to view the videos. Or, I can create a company wide channel but this will mean SchoolB can access and view. The member of staff that has requested this does not mind if SchoolB can see the content; there's nothing sensitive and there's no data involved, however as an admin I am not keen on this one bit. If anyone has had a similar situation, how have you tackled it please?

Looks like it isn't yet possible. Oh Microsoft... how you overestimate the technical ability of some users. Fellow edugeeks, I beg you, vote for this feature: https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/599053-schools-and-universities/suggestions/40275127-ability-to-set-a-group-form-as-a-quiz

Hi all, When assigning a Forms quiz assignment, it appears you can only select existing quizzes if they exist in the context of the teacher setting it, i.e. 'My Quizzes'. Is there a way departments can work together and create quizzes in a group context and then assign them to class teams? Currently teachers are building a form, putting the 'share to duplicate' link in an excel tracker sheet, then duplicating the quizzes to their Forms context and assigning them via Class Teams. So, pretend I'm a teacher. I'm in a department Team with other science teachers and am the owner of a class team with 30 students. I create a Quiz ("what are atoms?") in Forms and go to Teams to set a self marking quiz assignment, and select "What are Atoms?" quiz. This is fine, but when you have a large team teaching the same topic, it brings in a lot of duplication and/or paper trail to keep on top of it. Why can't we link Quizzes that were created within the Science group to the class assignment?! I'm starting to get the feeling that this is the common approach, having seen various people at my place do it, as well my partner at the school she teaches at. There has surely got to be a better way???! Thanks!

We've started noticing problems where Smart Ink stops working or resets back to microsoft ink. We suspect that the issue is fast user switching, where people are getting complacent and not logging out. Has anyone experienced an issue where multiple people having smart ink open simultaneously on the same PC prevent ink tools from work correctly, i.e., they can't write on the boards or SmartInk stops working?

For future viewers, I found the settings I need, thanks to this thread: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/educational-software/159717-smart-notebook-11-4-smart-ink-settings.html#post1917996 Pushed out via a user Group Policy Preference item. Works like a charm.

Six years on, and you're a hero!!

We deploy SmartInk21 as a post install task via MDT. I'm looking for a way to deploy SmartInk settings to all the PC so that SmartInk is the default instead of Microsoft Ink. I cannot see a config/dat file that holds these settings, nor can I see any registry items I could export. Anyone managed to do this and shed some light? Or should I just try using a GPO to disable/remove Microsoft Ink tools? Thanks!

We were looking to do this on our new Smart boards with built in Android, but alas, it's not possible from our quick play about. With the Smart MDM you can however remotely manage it (basically RDP into the Android bit) and click the input button for them. God knows how they turn their TV on at home without IT...

So our solution in the end was just to use the ODT to add Office 365 to the image/deployment.

Bumping an old thread, as we're trying to get BGInfo running again after a few years without it. If you disable the 'Desktop Wallpaper' GPO, how do you prevent users (naughty children) from changing it? I have the same issue as OP. Wallpaper is set via user based GPO, but this is stopping BGInfo from changing the wallpaper. I can confim that BGInfo is infact running as it is allowed in AppLocker logs and I can manually run it from a desktop icon as the test user. However, hitting apply doesn't actually change the wallpaper or show the text. Turning off that GPO allows it to run, but then anyone chance right click an image and 'set as wallpaper'

Hi, We have O2019 on our image but we're moving more and more towards using Teams and SharePoint for collaborative work. The biggest hurdle is user training, but I want to try and make it as easy as possible. Starting off, we want to have the autosave feature, so that when an online file is 'open(ed) in desktop app' they can work together and save seamlessly like they would "online" in the browser version. Everything I'm reading is telling me we have to have 365 Apps installed, not the 2019 version. Currently, I'm building an O365 package using the Office Deployment Tool and will test adding that as part of an MDT task sequence, just not sure how the sign in will work and if it'll prompt users to enrol their device or take up one of their five licenses etc. Has anyone else made this move in their school, or are they any methods of enabling said features in 2019? Thanks!

Yeah I've thought about this in the past, but I was still under the impression an on prem server exchange was required to manage AD attributes, such as aliases etc? Our rerouting address is already configured: [email protected], and this is configured on Exchange via a Email Address policy automatically for staff/student based on an attribute set on their AD object. So, yeah I guess this could be done in AD without exchange, surely there's a lot more to the need of an onprem server than just this? Yeah we were quite shocked at that too, but I assume those high memory requirements assume the server is running as a full on onprem exchange server with hundreds of mailboxes, which isn't the case with 365.

In bold, that's it right there. We will need a handful of on prem mailboxes, albeit very few. Regarding your second paragraph, that's precisely what I did last night. New (ha!) 2008R2 SP1 Ent server deployed, and exchange 2010 installed via setup /m:recoverserver. Worked flawlessly once I'd installed the few KB updates that I'd missed. Of course, this obviously cannot and will not restore broken or lost databases, but thankfully the <100 on premises mailboxes were either inconsequential or destined for deletion (both in most cases) anyway. I don't need hybrid for this, rather the opposite, in that because we're using hybrid I need to keep an OnPrem server for the creation of new mailboxes prior to migrating them online. Like you say, we could do away with hybrid and rely on send connectors alone but that's for another time. The priority currently is restoring all lost services and at least getting the existing onprem exchange working again for now. Nothing missing from the dead server really. I probably could have just installed the mailbox role into the CAS server and been done with it, but I was more comfortable quickly knocking up a new server to replicate the old setup. The plan now is to get those in place upgraded to 2013 so I can deploy a replacement 2019 server. If I'm getting this wrong, I'm not trying to sound stupid; I don't need any help with that ha. Exchange is something I inherited and so am a little thin in experience and technical know how. I'm finding my feet with more than just managing it as I go.

It's all still a little over my head, but essentially we still have a lot of devices/local servers that require mail flow such as copiers, firewall etc. Short version, the comfort level I'm at is that I'd prefer to keep a single, lightweight 2016/9 exchange server onprem do handle the AD syncing to 365 for mailboxes etc. The problem I've got is that our 2010 CAS server is fine, but the separate MBX server is dead. It's not recoverable; without going in to too much details, a ransomware attack has rendered this server useless, as well as its backup. My current thought process is around two options. Install MBX role on the 2010 CAS server, and in place upgrade it to 2013. Then, install exchange 2019 on a 2019 server, reconfigure hybrid via HCW and update all the DNS settings etc. Or do I just spin up a 2016 server and install exchange 2016 which can coexist with 2010. Then, run HCW again and decommission the 2010 server. Right now, I don't know what the repercussions of losing just the 2010 mbx server are yet.

So without going into details, our 2010 Mbx server is dead and irrecoverable. CAS is OK. We wanted to go to 2019 on a single server anyway so now is as good a time as any. Due to the reasons for why Mbx is dead, we'd rather just keep our 2010 CAS off the network and configure a 2019 server to serve as the new on prem hybrid box from scratch. We have the necessary schema and functional level, so whilst it probably isn't the best way to do it, can I safely just create a new Exchange 2019 setup and reconfigure the hybrid config from scratch, all with the existing exchange set up offline? Obviously I'll need to adjust internal DNS to point to the new box, and thankfully all users are in the cloud now anyway so losing the mbx server was not a disaster. How does licensing work for 2019 with hybrid? We pay for Exchange Enterprise yearly; is this still valid for 2019 hybrid? We do not use Azure to host our AD; instead we used AADC on a DC to sync on prem AD to 365. Given this, I assume that a hybrid setup is in fact still the best method? We're not looking to move to cloud based AD any time soon. Thanks! EDIT: nope, our domain and forest functional levels are 2008 R2, which, in fried brain hindsight, makes sense as we have 2008 R2 servers in places. Time to rebuild them and get our functional level forward two decades...

After 4 days, R-Studio finished capturing an image of the array. Another 24 hours of scanning yeilded a load of files marked as green 'good' chance of recovery. All mp4/mp3/jpg files test thus far are corrupt. Apart from a few tiny 1KB albumart files, I'm looking at 100% data loss. I can't bring myself to admit it's gone, but I'm at a loss as to what else I can do now.