DeGrimmy

Hi Tom, unfortunately we're still having the same issue and for some reason, I can't view the diagnostics page on the Cloud Filter panel to check if the blocklist has been updated.

Apologies, I had a look for an existing thread before posting but I missed that one. Thank you for the update!

Hi all, We're getting a brand new issue we've never had before where Smoothwall Cloud Filter is giving us this message when users are trying to print from SIMS: I've had two reports of this so far this morning from staff - One from our Cover Manager, who is trying to print the Notice Board Summary in the Cover Arrangements tab. We've discovered that SIMS exports this as a HTML file in temporary files and then tries to open it in the default app for HTML files, which is Google Chrome. Even though this particular file is all text and no photos, Smoothwall Cloud Filter then blocks it with the above message. A workaround is to set the default app for HTML files as Microsoft Word so that SIMS opens the file in Word instead, but this obviously isn't the most ideal solution. It looks like Smoothwall Cloud Filter is having some issues this morning, according to the Smoothwall Status page, and I can't access the Cloud Filter settings right now. I just wanted to check if anyone else currently has, or has ever had this issue and what you did to fix it please? Thanks in advance!

Try blocking this URL: https://classroom.google.com/u/0/n/picker?hl=en-GB This worked for us a while ago, although admittedly, I've not checked for a while. It should block the YouTube search page in Google Classroom.

We have something like this for our kitchen phone: https://www.manageathome.co.uk/pd/sound-sensor-transmitter_18670 The little sensor pad sticks to the phone's speaker on the base, and when the phone rings, the transmitter part also rings. The kitchen office is a room at the back of the main kitchen area, and we ran the cable to the detector through the wall so that the transmitter blasts out on the other side of the wall. We've had no complaints since.

Yes, I've noticed that students prefer to type "Classroom" into Google and blindly click the top result here instead of using the waffle menu, student bookmarks folder that we have in place, etc. At least one of the top 5 results in Google for us does appear to be a Google Sites page, but we have Google Sites blocked for most students here. We don't have an intranet page or student links page like we do with the staff, so I'm now wondering if it's worth setting Google Classroom as the student homepage in Google Admin - It would definitely help to avoid this scenario?

It's a fair point. At this point, they might just have to put up with what is already there. I pointed our Media Studies teachers to Google Fonts instead, but I don't know if they've directed the students there or not.

I'm afraid I don't remember this particular instance either, sorry. We've since had problems with task scheduler jobs not recognising that the user running them has the Batch Job access in the Local Security Policy on the server. Does it come up with any errors when you look at the job history in the Task Scheduler?

That has worked perfectly, thanks! I've also blocked the Forum (dafont.com/forum) just in case.

Could you post a screenshot of the URLs in those categories please? I've just had a request to unblock DaFont for students and I'd like to sort out the same for our Smoothwall. Thanks!

Not getting a second series is a bit of a shame, but I expected it after the reception it had. I felt like the story was just getting somewhere!

Oh yes, Episode 5 was what I was waiting for! I need to watch it again!

We're 4 episodes in now and it feels like we're finally getting to a good point. I know the wider Star Wars fanbase are a little upset about the show so far, but I think it's all up from here!

If anyone fancies owning their very own Vault-Tec supplied Pip-Boy... https://international.gear.bethesda.net/products/fallout-series-pip-boy-die-cast-replica

As a Fallout fan, I was not expecting much from this series - I was thinking more of an "Adventures in the wasteland" kind of thing. However, I'm pleased to report that it was so much more than that and I loved it. My partner and I watched it all from start to finish yesterday because we couldn't stop watching, and she liked it too - She was quickly on Fallout wiki to see other Vaults' intended purposes. I definitely recommend, even if you've never touched a Fallout game!

We've had several emails already this morning from the NCSC. It looks like a Google issue.

While emailing back and forth with the Smoothwall engineer, he asked me to check the built-in "YouTube Allowed Videos and Playlists" standard category that we had started using after the redo, while logged into Cloud Filter. I couldn't, because it's not a custom category and it would appear you can't view standard categories through Cloud Filter. I doubt this is the reason, but it made me think that perhaps Cloud Filter doesn't see custom content added to standard categories. Well, as a last-ditch effort after posting this thread on Friday, I decided to move everything from that standard category into a brand new custom category on the on-premises box. I added the full YouTube URLs into the Domain/URL Filtering box like we used to when we had everything working, rather than using the Video ID box. I updated the web filter policy to allow the new custom category for students. I left the YouTube block policy where it is, enabled to stop students from accessing anything else on YouTube other than the approved videos. Then, I logged out to publish the changes to Cloud Filter. Sure enough, the approved YouTube videos started working across Windows and Chrome devices again. YouTube remained blocked if we tried navigating to youtube.com or any unapproved videos as a student. If we clicked on an approved YouTube video link, we couldn't then search at the top (this was another workaround some students were using). I left it there for Friday. The only thing I had to figure out was why students couldn't view videos that were previously approved and then embedded into a post on Google Classroom. This morning, using the Realtime web filter log, I discovered that "youtube.com/embed" was blocked. I also found "https://www.youtube.com/youtubei/v1/player?prettyPrint=false" was required to load the videos in Classroom. Once I added those to the new custom category, embedded videos in Google Classroom posts started to work. Then, while I was in the realtime web filter log, I wanted to see if I could work out a way to fix the Google Classroom workaround that the students were using. Through pure guesswork, I found the URL "https://classroom.google.com/u/0/n/picker?hl=en-GB" which I blocked for students, and this has blocked the search box that would pop up when trying to embed a YouTube video to a Google Classroom post. Oddly, this doesn't block the search box 100% of the time on Windows devices using the on-premises box but it's rock-solid on Chromebooks using the Cloud Filter. So, this might be considered a bit of a bodge job, but we have everything hopefully working in the way we want it to. YouTube is blocked for students overall, and they can only access pre-approved videos that are explicitly allowed through Smoothwall across both Windows devices and Chromebooks. Plus, we managed to fix the holes (that we're aware of) in the policy!

Hi all, For years now, we've had our Smoothwall on-premises box and Cloud Filter linked up and we had a custom category which allowed us to allow specific YouTube videos while blocking access to the rest of YouTube for students. We are a Google school and have strict Restricted Mode in place on Google Admin for students. It used to work well - We'd approve the video on YouTube and then add the full URL to our custom category. This would then allow that video for Windows AD users through the on-premises box and for Chromebook users through the Cloud Filter. We recently discovered a hole in this setup, where students were using the YouTube embed tool in Google Classroom to search for YouTube content. We decided to redo our YouTube policies and followed this KB article: https://kb.smoothwall.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002030930 In hindsight, it does mention that it's most appropriate for non-GSuite for Education users. Since we've done this, YouTube has been basically a no-go for students. After a support call, we've been able to get the on-premises filtering working correctly for Windows AD users. However, Cloud Filter refuses to play ball and outright blocks YouTube for students. I've just got off a second support call trying to get Cloud Filter to work, and it lasted 5 minutes. The support engineer said that basically, our method of blocking YouTube while allowing specific YouTube videos would not work on Cloud Filter, and the only way to be selective is to unblock YouTube entirely through Cloud Filter and use Restricted Mode to restrict content. However, this would surely allow students access to YouTube and whatever unrestricted YouTube videos there are, which could cause disruption and timewasting in lessons. I was also told that the old method we were employing that has worked for years until we changed anything will definitely not work. Does this sound correct? Has anyone else had/got a similar setup and how do you get it to work? Thanks in advance!

We have Smoothwall, but had the same thing reported to us this morning. We've had a spate of YouTube issues lately and we've been messing around with our configuration, so I had chalked it up to that, but in this case, I was able to solve it by allowing "youtube.googleapis.com" and "youtube.googleapis.com/s". I don't know if they're new URLs or if it was because of our messing around, but you'd think this would be covered by default YouTube policies.

All other games I'm currently halfway through have fallen by the wayside. Helldivers 2 is all I play now. For liberty and democracy!

I tried the demo for this and I was quite impressed! I've not taken the plunge and bought the game yet, but I might think about it if I see it on sale at some point. Powerwash Simulator is amazing, and the tie-in DLCs that they're releasing are really high-quality. A very satisfying, chill game!

Wow, how did this thread gone over a year without a post?! We were all too busy gaming, I guess? I'm waiting very patiently for Horizon: Forbidden West on PC, but in the meantime I'm playing a couple of games I played a lot last year: I'm playing Star Wars: Jedi Survivor on a New Game + run in an attempt to wrap up all the achievements (I have one left, and it doesn't seem to want to unlock, perhaps because of the NG+). I played it at launch to completion on my first playthrough, and if anyone remembers, it had a disastrous launch on PC - The performance was awful even on half-decent hardware. This time around, it runs quite a lot better and I'm able to get at least 60fps solidly. It's a great game, very satisfying and really expands on the gameplay in the first game. My mate and I are also doing a second co-op playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3, and yesterday, I continued a solo playthrough that I started back in August.It's thoroughly deserving of all the praise and awards it got and I cannot recommend the game enough - I knew it was going to be good because Larian developed it, I bought it in Early Access but waited for the full release, and it really is a step above. If anyone's interested, I chose to play as a Dragonborn Paladin in our first co-op playthrough (a character I created for the tabletop game) and it was a lot of fun doing a lot of damage and smiting everyone! For our second playthrough, I'm playing a Halfling Rogue. In my solo playthrough, I'm playing a Half-Elf Storm Sorcerer. I'm really enjoying both classes I'm currently playing - They're very different, but both can be very satisfying!

I re-installed and played a bit of GTA V at the weekend after hearing the trailer was releasing today, and it's still good, especially on PC. One thing I did notice is, because the dialogue audio was recorded originally for release on the Xbox 360 and PS3 nearing the end of that era, the dialogue audio quality is a bit lacking and is noticeably compressed - But then (in my experience and I'm not an expert), many games of that era compromised audio quality to help with overall performance, I believe. I'm excited for GTA VI but the lack of mentioning a PC version is a bummer. I'm not going to buy a new console for this (because I did for Red Dead Redemption 2 and ultimately never played it on that console!) and it gives me flashbacks of the GTA V PC and RDR 2 PC releases being so much later than the original release. For GTA V PC, we had to endure the original Xbox 360/PS3 release and a subsequent Xbox One/PS4 release before a PC release was even mentioned, IIRC!

Nothing has popped up on the quakes list for that region - It's possibly just windy!

In my opinion, anything new could be set in the Mass Effect universe in the Milky Way galaxy and not necessarily involve Shepherd. I've always imagined some non-RPG game options set in the Mass Effect universe, like an XCOM-style game fighting off the Reapers. Perhaps you could choose which race to start as - Asari would have biotic special abilities, Turians would be more engineer-based. Even something like a shooter where you're a member of a non-human race's special forces. There could always be some mention of what's happening elsewhere in the galaxy, but I've always been intrigued by the thought of other perspectives. I know Bioware have been in a bit of trouble recently, but I feel like the opportunity's just being wasted.