Ditto

Haha - and there was me looking for "COPE" meaning on google - so much better to just ask! Being honest, I would think the pre Twitter era expression of "full of sh*t" would do the job better

Mostly phone use would where no internet connection is available so relying on telephone cell network. When staff are within the office or have internet capability, they'd use Teams Voice. This challenge is specifically for when they are out and about and need to make calls.

Something I wanted to come back to. IP is often protected with 'patents'. Does anyone have the appropriate SIMS license and/or other documentation that claims patent ownership or anything else that is relevant to IP?

My company has just issued all mobile phone users with a new android phone. They are now allegedly all MDM (I assume via InTune). Our IT support company have spent at lot of hours (possibly at our expense) trying to put together a Power Automate or PowerShell solution to migrate the GAL to the phones contact list. Sounds a bit mad to me. I suspect there is no good reason for the whole GAL to be migrated, but there would be a list (or more) that each phone user. Probably there should be one common address book for the phone users and it may contain details of contacts outside our domain. So, some questions and advice please. i) Given all phone users will have an M365 account, do we even need to synch to the phones contact list ii) If we did accept GAL synching, how would that best be achieved iii) If we had a dedicated address list, how would that best be setup and synched. iv) If an individual wanted to keep contacts beyond the list, especially for contacts outside of the domain, how is that best managed?

Winner!

Just looking for someone to post the first picture of the year for an in bloom daffodil. I have some that I reckon are possibly within a week of bloom. Nothing abnormal though, proper outdoor one, nothing from an artificial setting

Just a job I came across - thought it might interest someone, but not for me. Remote working is why it came up in my searches. https://join-us.nspcc.org.uk/jobs/vacancy/-azure-cloud--application-support-engineer-nationwide/7590/description/ £35,423 - £44,903 plus the following where applicable: London weighting upto £3,366 per annum or Home working allowance upto £500 per annum Nationwide/Remote Department:Technology Platforms Permanent 35 hours Closing Date:25 February 2024

I raised this earlier, but is the ESS code available within the database in a readable format or is it encrypted? Forced decryption of the document store wouldn't be acceptable, but would make you wonder about the level of security of the code and/or the document store. Their statement about access to data via API's seems to be regarded by some as not sufficient/convenient/time efficient. This story clearly has some way to run. It's sad that the topic of discussion for the MIS market place is basically legal warfare amongst the top 3 players - would be so much better to be discussing improved performance, stability, availability and improved functionality from them all. In some ways I get where ESS are coming from, but I think reaction to their 3 year contract saga, which remember CMA investigation led to changes, leaves them on the back foot in terms of perceptions here.

Good to hear this. Is the moral in the story not to agree to work over the weekend?!

If MIS players were pupils in a school, ESS would have been reported for bullying, but in this case, those they have tried to bully, have hit back... and hard! Looking forward to the CMA investigation - but that will take some time.

I'm not surprised and GOOD!

Interesting post from @bringmoredata (aka Joshua Perry). https://www.linkedin.com/posts/joshuaperryuk_guidance-to-customers-extracting-data-from-activity-7144076127815286785-UD4k/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop not least for the fact that a post queried about other MIS providers being open to open access to their systems if someone decides to move to another provider, potentially moving to SIMS. CEO of Arbor replied and nipped that in the bud in an instant! Also interesting to hear the comments on accessing SIMS data by the means ESS suggest.

I'd forgotten about this - /blogs/hedgehog13/2406-ess-threatens-capita-injunction-over-use-sims-northern-ireland-schools.html I suspect the answer to the previous post is "No!".

Our IT provider has just told us we can have Power BI pro for about £2.50 per user per month, Premium for about £6 - this is Not For Profit. They were baffled why when I published, colleagues could access the report when I shared it- given that we are on Desktop free version; they felt that shouldn't be possible. I'm not convinced on the Premium price, or their general expertise. I'll report back as things progress.

The school (primary) I was a governor with, which joined a MAT, initially had a technician/network manager who was paid out of the school budget. After a few years, the person was Tuped to the IT provider the trust signed up with for the MAT. This would have been funded by the MAT, out of the top slice.

I can't recall that I've worked with a head who'd entertain a conversation about caching or normalisation! They just want the system to be quick, reliable, functionally rich, easy to use, and as inexpensive as possible!

I'd be really interested in knowing the details on these tasks. Also, how those tasks are dealt with by other MIS, in particular Arbor.

Just popped up on my work laptop. But half an hour later, installed fine.

Out of interest, what is the preferred SaaS document storage model nowadays. I remember when on Progresso, we produced fantastic looking end of year reports - really good looking, a lot of detail, agreeably branded, but several pages long. We stored other sizeable documents too. At times, I considered just storing a link to our near limitless Google Workspace. We could control access rights nicely, but it never felt quite right.

I couldn't see Arbor in the list, but perhaps I am looking in the wrong place? Perversely, I did see Bromcom, but someone in an earlier post in this thread said they had gone on hold as a result of the December statement. I'm inclined to agree with you that it is a scare/delay tactic. FUD is truly still alive!

I did wonder about the perpetual license and thought what you described would be the case. Makes a bit of a mockery of the word 'perpetual'. How explicitly does the new license invalidate the old - would be interesting to see it tested in law. Presumably anyone who didn't renew could still access their data how they like, but won't get any maintenance or version updates? I doubt few are in that position. Retention needs to follow the schools policy. It's notoriously hard to pin the legal requirements, with little to no guidance from the DfE, but when it comes to safeguarding data, it can be a long time. Also, lots of what should or shouldn't be kept won't be in SIMS. CPOMS and other apps come to mind, and I would be delighted to meet a school that has a water tight retention policy that is actioned to the point SharePoint, OneDrive, Google Drive, all staff PCs, backups and more are compliant. Data retention is harder than many might imagine. If you end up in part of a serious case review (Children Act 2004), you really want to be sure you have retained the right data for the right amount of time. Yet, you have to balance that against being compliant with GDPR Principle (e) Storage Limitations. Chances are that if your DPO isn't involved, well simply, they should be.

Looking at that picture, I want to know which hand moisturiser you use! I mean, given your... well let me say your extensive experience, including teaching, yes, I think youmentioned it once, that's an extremely good skin condition

Topical for me at this stage, as I'm starting to use Power BI more and looking to roll out report sharing too. As ever, getting to grips with snd understanding MS licensing is not easy! What has been explained to me, it there is Power BI desktop, Power BI Pro, and Power BI services. Services and Premium might be synonymous, but I don't really know. I and all colleagues have access to Power BI desktop, but you each user might need to register to it on first use. I understood Pro supported sharing, but I have found sharing a report with a colleague works fine - perhaps Pro supports sharing outside of the domain, but I think it would only be necessary for the report writer. My understanding is Premium is for very large organisations so I haven't really looked in to that. I have also tasked our outsourced IT company for details - a week later I still have no more details. I'm believe Pro is around £10 per user per month, but it is suggested a Not-For-Profit version is £3. I'd be delighted if someone can step in and paint a clear picture of how things Power BI really stand.

That's has been talked about too, but increasingly for me, there is a lot of talk up the chain, and not so much action!

When I last reviewed MIS, probably 6 or 7 years ago, cost alone ruled ISAMS out. We were getting very good deals on Progresso (who we stayed with in my tenure), but how did pricing compare across the options for the ones you looked at?