TwistedHelixis

We also are having issues with GCPW and Smoothwall cloud, but its our LA that host the Smoothwall system, so I don't know if we will be able to point clients at the gateway. I know the local authority contacted Smoothwall on behalf of all the school in our county last year, but didn't get anywhere. Ill keep checking back for updates.

@dhicks I just tried and got an error message when trying to log in with my fido key. I don't have a passkey setup, but the GUI opened for this, so I think passkeys would work. The really odd thing is, the office lady said she logged into GCPW with the office fido key, but I cant get that working.

Ill need to go into a school and log on, but I do seem to remember it working last time. Let me test it out next week and ill update this post.

Yes it should do those. Last year there was a version of GCPW that borked auto signing into Chrome, but that was fixed 6 months ago (ish) One thing I noticed is that starting with a fresh Windows device, not joined to the domain, and GCPW runs very well.

Just wondering if there is anyone using Action1 to manage their Windows updates, as I cant update any feature updates. When I try to do a feature update, say from 24h2 to 25h2, A1 says Windows 11 Pro Education is not supported. I really don't want to walk around and do this manually, that would be a real nightmare

They did have a quick look, but said they would look into getting it working, if they had a few more support / feature requests. Apparently I was one of the first to report this, although I now know a few other schools have also requested this. Contact Smoothwall please 🙂

Thanks for the info. Think I might grab one myself.

Is there a reason its discounted from £400. I know nothing about this phone is it an old one? Do they change the OS much from stock?

Just a FYI, the warranty might not cover a school or business, if its a home device warranty.

The ££ is for a license to manage them in Google Workspace, something I would highly recommend

Just though i would share the following... https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2025/09/ransomware-detection-file-restoration-google-drive.html

Had Samsung and a few other random makes, but Google Pixel is my favorite. The Wifi on off while its locked is the default, but I seem to remember you can change those settings, perhaps that's just on Pixel.

So, after lots and lots of testing, it is definitely better to let the staff log on first and let them become the 'Master' user. Main reasons are... Its much easier to find the users device in the admin GUI. Its very simple to make another user the 'Master user' There is a limit on the amount of devices that a single account can manage. Its how GCPW was designed to be used.

We have just purchased the Standard upgrade licences. Do you assign a license to the Super Admin account, in Google Workspace? Reason, they are a very very small school and only have one staff licenses left over, after assigning them to the current staff. I guess the Super Admin account could do with the extra security options that come with Standard, but this account is only ever used to access Google Admin GUI.

We had this last year. Seemed to sort itself out.

Its all down to other staff, but I am more than happy to help with any IT issues those staff might have with the Door systems or CCTV EDIT, although I do manage the backups for these systems. EDIT 2, If its a front facing system, someone else should be more than cable of managing that system. If its something behind the scenes that needs updating / adjusting or migrating, like a server, then ill do that.

In the process of doing something similar, but using Google. AD alternative = Google Credential Provider. DHCP = Probably Synology NAS or router DNS = Not sure yet. Could be Synology NAS Net2 = Might put this in a VM on the Synology Nas Printing = Only a small school and have been testing direct IP printing with 30 users, which has been fine for the past 6 month. Alternatives are Printx, but it is pricey for what it does. EDIT - Windows / Intune Polices = Google EDIT - Software deployments = Action1

BTW, found out you can use a single endpoint license assigned to 1 user, on a maximum of 15 devices. So I think for these, its probably better to just let each teacher log in first and become the Master user, especially at larger schools. Standard and Plus are stating to look more appealing now.

Thanks 🙂

Basically, I am worried that even if I have purchased the correct amount of licenses, Google will eventual decide to close this loophole and make each endpoint license only work on 1 device at a time, which would be a big problem if I have used a single Master account to setup all my devices,

Not 100% sure which question you are answering, so just to double check... Most admins just use a single Master account, as the first account to log onto all GCPW windows device? Google offer 3 ways of licensing GCPW. Standard, Plus or Endpoint. Both Standard and Plus include a load of other Google features on top of also letting you manage Windows devices and you also need to licence all the pupils (soon to be all pupils and all staff), so Standard and Plus workout extremely expensive if you just want to manage a Windows laptop. All of my schools, the pupils use Chromebooks, so they don't need to use a Windows device, so making us pay for all the pupils to use something they will not be using is not great for us. Endpoint license = Just purchase each license seperatly, just for the account that needs to use a Windows device. Each licenses is only £4 per year, so for a school with 10 staff needing to use 10 Windows device, it would cost $40 per year to manage all their GCPW Windows devices. EDIT - So in theory, I can buy just one Endpoint license, apply that license to the GCPWstaff Master account, then log onto xx amount of windows devices and they are all then managed for just £4.

For my testing, I created a generic account called GCPWstaff and used this account to log onto all of my test Windows laptops, before handing these out to some teachers. I know that the first account to logon, becomes the Master settings account. One of the reasons I did it like this was, if one of the teachers ever leaves, they can simple hand over their laptop to the next person, without me needing to remove the teachers Master account first etc. Are their any issues with doing it this way? One thing I have found, in theory a school could buy just 1 endpoint licence for £4 per year and then manage all their school Windows laptops using just this one licence, which is obviously not the way Google intended this licence to be used. I have purchased multiple endpoint licences, but so far only have it applied to my GCPWstaff account, which is now running on 6 test teachers laptops. Is there a limit to the amount of devices I could use my GCPWstaff account on? I guess this would be handy for an IT suite of devices. Would you suggest going forward, I apply the license to all the staff and ask them to log on first, or stick to a single GCPWstaff Master account?

The year 1 teacher at my school would very much disagree. I remember him saying previously, one of the most important things he can teach his pupils in year 1 IT, is a basic understanding of the importance of usernames / passwords and being able to use this skill in the following years. Previously, I would have totally agreed with you, but I have seen first hand over multiple years that they can all learn how to login in very little time. He does say it drives him mad and his hair fulls out each September, but he says the effort is really worth it.

The year 1 teacher at one of my primary school refused to use badges or bar codes about 5 years ago. He said its part of their job to make sure that pupils know how to log in using usernames and passwords, so they spend the first few weeks in September going over ond over just this one thing, until all the pupils know how to do this. Apparently by October, the kids not only know how to log in, but can now spell their first and last names, as no name shorting was also request. TBH, when I was asked to set them up like this I was very skeptical, but it does work. I mentioned this to a few of my other primary schools and I now have 4 school doing it like this. Also saves one of the other teachers later on from having to teach them. Not had any schools asking to go back to how it was done previously. EDITED to make sense

So I think they are going to buy the stand alone 'endpoint' licenses, as they are almost free. Would have liked them to get the Plus, but its not my choice