David44

The Slides either needs to be shared with "Anyone with the link" or if you are publishing to the web, you need to untick "Restrict Access to the following (your school)" on the publishing window. You will need to do the former even if you are using Chrome Sign Builder, which only works for Google Admins BTW.

Apart from the student now having the wrong name in the MIS, unless the umlaut was there in error.

If the error when you attempt to change the password is in Windows then it's a Windows/AD issue. Google Password Sync can actually change passwords on Google accounts so that they don't comply with the the password complexity rules you have set in Google. It just syncs the password from AD to Google, no questions asked and no checks made.

Do they leave them open or close the lid when they leave the Chromebooks? Do the Chormebooks sign the users out or do they sign them out and also restart? Is the same thing happening on all Chromebooks, everytime? I'd check how these options are configured in Google Admin for the OU(s) that the Chromebooks are in if you haven't already done so. Reboot after uptime limit Action on lid close Scheduled reboot

I'm interested in how this works. Do staff and students sign in using a QR code and MFA? How do students store their QR code, do they carry something around with them that has their QR code printed on it? What is the MFA method?

Has anyone who was using Pay360 Education Payments moved to another product yet? Which one? How is it going? Anything you wished you knew before moving?

Here is a list I prepared some time ago, I know nothing about any of these companies or products though. SQuid https://www.squidcard.com/ iPayimpact - CRBCunninghams https://www.schools.ipayimpact.co.uk/ WisePay https://www.wisepay.co.uk/ Parent Pay https://www.parentpay.com/ SchoolMoney https://eduspot.co.uk/product/schoolmoney/ Pay360 Education Payments https://www.pay360educationpayments.com/ School Gateway - Schoolcomms https://schoolgateway.co.uk/ My School Portal https://www.theaccessgroup.com/en-gb/education/software/parent-engagement/

We are looking at this at the moment, looking at their website anyway, we haven't actually seen the software yet. I've never been involved with timetabling before but as far as I can see, Edval generates a .etz file, Noca T6 generates a .spl file. Can SIMS and/or Nova T6 import a .etz file? What is the work flow if using Edval? Also, is anyone actually using Edval for timetabling at the moment? EDIT: To answer my first question, yes, it's possible to use with SIMS and/or Nova T6 (see PDF file on this page... https://www.edval.education/sims-novat6/?lang=uk) I'd still be interested to hear experiences of anyone else using this in the UK with SIMS though.

I've had something of a confirmation from The Access Group that Pay360 is closing. I emailed them asking if it was closing, they invited me to a webinar "to give schools an overview of our offering". I said "At this stage I was just after confirmation that Pay360 and/or Pay360 Education Payments is closing." they responded with "Yes I can confirm that is the case". Access would obviously prefer that all schools using Pay360 Education Payments move over to their 'My School Portal' product and maybe they hope that schools don't have time to shop around once they hear that Pay360 is closing. It's in their interest for schools to have as little time as possible to look for alternatives. The fact they aren't announcing it, in as much as there seems to be nothing about the closure on their website or the Pay360 Education Payments website (which still has Capita branding, 5 months later) must work in their favour. This is obviously speculation on my part though, other than the email exchange described above, I have had no dealings with this company. Maybe one of the mods would like to change the title of this thread to 'Pay360 Education Payments is closing' or similar? It currently suggests that one school is planning to move away from Pay360 but it's actually the case that every school will be moving away from Pay360 within the next few months. I'd be interested in hearing what other schools have planned. Did you know Pay360 was closing? Has Access' handling of the announcement put you off them as a company?

What MIS are you using?

The other company posted here (https://socialmediacheck.com/) state they don't ask for the password, they use OAuth2 to access your account. So, you'd go to the company website and authorise them to access your Facebook account etc using a token. Much like when you sign in to a third party app or site using your Facebook, Google or Twitter account, you get a consent screen that tells you what information the OAuth2 provider will share with the third party. This is not a case of someone at the company going to facebook.com signing in manually and making a judgement based on what the algorithm decides to show that day. I imagine all these companies work in a similar way, accessing the data using an API authenticated using OAuth2. Easy money. Ridiculous overreach though, yes.

It's worth mentioning that Work Profiles are not compatible with Android Go but it's still possible to attempt to add an account that requires a work profile on an Android Go device and you don't seem to get a meaningful error message telling you why it has failed. Adding a work profile to a regular Android phone has been pretty straight forward though, generally users just do it themselves. They might sometimes ask IT how to do it and they might be in the IT office when they do it but IT don't really get involved, it just works how it should.

Pay360 is expiring in July 2023? Do you just mean your school's contract or have you heard something else?

Is anyone still using this? We are paying for it but it seems such a waste of money as students often can't sign in and give up as their is no option for them to reset their password themselves. @simpsonj Your experience was quite different to ours. I had several emails back and forth simply asking for the format of the CSV file which they couldn't seem to send me, something that should have been on their website anyway. I managed to create a CSV file but only through trial and error and them drip feeding field names as I asked for each one individually. I never did get the actual CSV format from them. We brought it with the intention of students signing in with Google but we run out of time because they are such a frustrating company to deal with. Does it work better with Google integration? Maybe I need to look at that again but typically there seems to be no documentation on their website about this either.

Thanks for checking, Peter. You might be right, I can't say for sure that it has changed with the upgrade only that it has been noticed since the upgrade. I don't think anyone here looks at the timetable that way either.

Since upgrading SIMS .net over Easter it has been noticed that when we view the timetable in SIMS for a student or teacher from the link on the right of their record, Saturday and Sunday are displayed (and are empty as we are a Monday - Friday school). Oddly, this is only when 'Current Week' is selected, it does not show when Timetable Cycle is selected. It just seems to be a cosmetic issue, it doesn't seem to break anything but I can see no mention of this on the ESS forums or on here. Can anyone else confirm they see the same (and better yet, confirm it's a recent change)? To recreate, search for and open a student record in SIMS, click on 'Timetable' under the links section on the right and then set the view to 'Current Week'. Do you see Saturday and Sunday?

We don't have Windows laptops here but some staff do call the Chromebooks, 'laptops' and I try to stop myself from correcting them because actually they are probably correct. It's me that has been taken in by the marketing and using the brand name for a device when the generic term will do. After all, how many staff say 'Probooks' (for HP laotops) or 'Inspirons' for (Dell laptops) or 'Thinkpads' (for Lenovo laotops)? It's only really Chromebooks and it seems Surfaces that get called by their brand name rather than the generic term. Now, do you have Smartboards or do you have an interactive whiteboard made by a manufacturer other than SMART?

Sorry to drag up a thread that was started a year ago (which itself may be relevant) but is anyone seeing the Eligibility Key Check screen when they open SIMS this morning? All of our users are seeing it. I have reported it to our SSU and they say it is a known issue but haven't been clear if it's a known issue that started today and other schools are seeing it or if they just meant they have seen it before. I have asked for clarification but I thought someone on here could confirm if they are seeing this error for the first time today.

I'm only talking about the onboarding process here but as long as your MIS data is up to date, it's pretty much self service. We just tell parents to go to https://www.edulinkone.com/, enter our school code and then click on 'RESET LOGIN'. The site then emails them a password reset link so they can create a password. The username is their email address. No involvement from the school at all in most cases. Only slight issue is parents who share an email address, i.e. if the Mother and Father have [email protected]. They each need a unique email address. EduLink One itself, you already use, so you know what that's like. It's the same for parents, subject to what elements you allow them to view.

Yes, this does seem to resolve the issue, the user can sign in with their recently changed Google password rather than what is cached on the Chromebook although it means the user also has to type their username/email address in each time and as these are one to one devices, that is an extra step for them that we don't currently have. Not the end of the world though. It might be something we can implement on the new Year 7 device OU in September as those users won't know any different. That isn't quite what I described, although we do see this too and annoying as it is, it makes sense why it happens (and still happens with the setting suggested by @Oaktech above). It's shame that Google don't let us set it so that the password is checked against Google every time (with maybe a backup of checking the cached password if the device is offline) and making it more obvious that you don't actually need the old password, or better yet don't ask for it at all, if you don't store anything of importance locally. Google seem to support sign-in apps, to allow sign in with cards/biometrics etc. I wonder if it would be possible to create an app that offers a more user-friendly sign in process. I wonder if someone has already done so.

Is this normal? A user signs in to a managed Chromebook for the first time with their school Google account and password. The Chromebook now has their profile on it, in future they just click their name and enter their password to sign in. At some point, they change their Google account password (let's say from a PC or a phone). Now when they try to sign in to the Chromebook, they still need to use their old password to sign in. The Chromebook itself will report "If you recently changed your password, use your old password. Your new password will be applied once you've signed out" which also doesn't seem to be quite true. The new password only seems to be applied if the profile is removed from the Chromebook and the user adds their account/profile again by signing in again with their Google account using the new password. When the helpdesk change a students password, we have also taken to resetting the Chromebook from the Google Management Console to remove all the local profiles as this is easier than explaining to a student that they need to use their old password (which they have probably forgotten as that is likely why we are changing it). What do you do? How do you make this work for users?

Are they managed Chromebooks? The quickest way would be to enable Guest sessions (perhaps in a different OU) and then disable guest sessions afterwards. Parents can then just be instructed to click om 'Sign in as a guest'. You can also set up managed Chromebooks to automatically sign in with a guest session.

Looking at the headers of emails that I have received, at some point it looks like ESS changed from using outlook.com to send the InTouch emails to using flowmailer.com. Not sure when this was but I have an email from 31st August 2022 that used outlook.com, the next email I have access to is from 20 October 2022 and that and every other email I have received from InTouch since is via flowmailer.com. I don't know flowmailer.com but it's possible a change in provider may cause emails not to be delivered as reliably as before. ESS also have a secret list of email addresses that they don't even bother sending emails to. If a parent has blocked an email (whether they know it or not), it may be they ESS (or their provider) will never try that address again until you have contacted them and had it removed from the list. I have had to do that a few times recently via our SSU.

Fight fire with fire. Start broadcasting an even ruder SSID. Several of them.

The school could report it to Ofcom as an obscene broadcast too.