Bruce123

Pete - no it’s been an issue since... staff have started to use Teams. Bruce.

Just a quick question, is there a way to set the region/time to UK for all existing and new Teams? Thanks, Bruce.

We've just experiencing what you described; user A (SfB) added user B (Skye) as a contact and proceeded to send a request for user to add user A to their contacts, but user A say they never received said request. For the moment we have advised that the contact must be added at both ends in advance of the Skype call. But doesn't anyone know if any fix for this issue? Kind Regards, Bruce.

Thanks!

Hi, Just a very quick question (hopefully). Is it possible for a Skype for Business user to make a call to a Skye home/personal user? When a user tried to test this it came up with an error about a company policy / restrictions preventing it. I had already made the appropriate changes to the Skype/Teams admin in Office 365, so I am not sure what the issue is. And the user is at home, so probably no firewall issue. I followed the advice in this article https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/skypeforbusiness/set-up-skype-for-business-online/let-skype-for-business-users-add-skype-contacts Thanks, Bruce.

We operate our Smoothwall filtering box in transparent/inline mode, so no users have a proxy address in their browser. But sometimes users connect into a Citrix server (multiple sessions on one server) and Smoothwall can't determine individual sessions on the same box in transparent mode (and the vb script that runs). Smoothwall have suggested pushing out the proxy address when users logon to Citrix, in this way Smoothwall can see each session as coming from a individual user, even though they are all logged onto the same host. They have also setup the config of Smoothwall to ignore Kerberos packets from the Citrix host (which I assume get sent by the script I mentioned). But we don't want to push out the proxy address at the user level, as we don't want it accidentally remain in their profile when they logon to desktops, so I would prefer to push out the proxy at the machine level, so any users logging onto the Citrix host go out via the proxy, but it never gets added to their profile. Does anyone have any experience of this or have any advice? Kind Regards, Bruce.

This suggests no layer 2 connectivity between AP and controller (as Meru can tunnel from AP to controller at layer 2) If you have only one VLAN for PCs, APs etc., you must have DHCP on this VLAN, why not try connecting a laptop to see if you get an IP and can ping the controller? Kind Regards, Bruce.

Can you choose to connect to the VPN before logging onto the laptop, otherwise it's a "Catch 22"?

Mindful of what?

Can anyone recommend any VPN software? The requirement is for a subset of staff (who have been allocated domain-joined laptops) to be able to use them to logon to the domain from home. I not really talking about Remote Desktop, but being able to use the applications installed on the laptop from home and have access to school resources such as Network drives etc. One solution we're potentially considering is called Pulse Connect Secure (VPN) I'm not sure if this is a more appropriate best place to post this query... but any advice/suggestions would be appreciated. Kind Regards, Bruce.

Also, does your own equipment connected to the NTE at one end auto-negotiate link-speed with the local NTE or with your own equipment connected to the NTE at the other end? (but if no one know the another to my first question I guess anyone knowing this as well is hopeful!)

I think that's probably the best way to do it...

Just a quick question (hopefully). With a common-or-garden Ethernet WAN point-to-point (e.g running at 100Mbit or 1Gbit), if you pull the plug to your own equipment at one end, does the customer interface on the NTE on the other end go down as well? I have a vague recollection that it does, but am not 100% sure... Kind Regards, Bruce.

I know this has been asked before, but what policy do people have for allowing users to create Office 365 groups themselves? A) Do you permit it for all users (willy nilly)? B) Restrict the ability to certain users (e.g. certain delegated staff - maybe head of departments)? C) Disallow it altogether? And with A) and B) and no central management from IT, what's to stop users from creating multiple, conflicting and confusing groups? E.g. what's to stop a user creating a group call Exams (even if a distribution list already exists for the Exams team)? I get the feeling MS want Office 365 to de-centralised, where individual users a free to do what they want. For example, the above scenario where users can create their own Office 365 groups or sharing their own OneDrive files (even to external users). Any thoughts? Kind Regards, Bruce.

A user has asked if the default date format for Teams could be changed from mm/dd/yyyy (popular in the US) to the dd/mm/yyyy (popular in UK). They are using the Teams app to access their Teams site. On researching this it seems that Teams is simply displaying the SharePoint site for the Team, and it seems that the default date format for SharePoint sites is mm/dd/yyyy. On researching this further it appears that MS responded to complaints feedback on this issue and provided a way for admins to set the default time-zone for all new sites in the tenant (using the new admin center), but not the default locale and date format. Does anyone have any ideas / thoughts. Or is it a matter of providing advice to new SP site admins to remember to modify the local/time-zone/date format of their site? Also, is there a way to set the default for Exchange users? I tried running a PowerShell script for online Exchange to set the Locale, TimeZone, Date format for all users, but it seems a little futile: a) It won't set the default (e.g. for new users) b) It always fails part way through with an error which the forums suggest relates to the MS cycling the DCs for the domain (affects scripts that take a long time which this would if it was able to go through all users at 2-3 seconds per user) c) Possibly won't influence other Office 365 apps? Any thoughts? Kind Regards, Bruce.

Do the wireless clients manage to get an IP? On Meru, Configuration, Wired, VLAN, ensure you have the new networks defined. Loads of other stuff you can check, but it's a start...

I was just following this thread, a couple of issues we encountered with caching exchange mode enabled (with o365): If a user intends for an email to be sent at a specified time ("the do not send this email before" feature under options which usually means "send it at this time"), it will only send it if Outlook remains open at the time specified. So if user wanted to show off by scheduling an email to be sent at 6:00am (like hey look how early I start work), they'll be disappointed. Also, if a new distribution is list is created it can take a while to show up on the Global Address Book (which will be in offline mode if caching is enabled, unless anyone knows otherwise?). Microsoft docs seem a bit vague about how often it updates, but in my experience it can take a few hours. These are two issues reported to us by users, rather than theoretical disadvantages. We experimented with disabling caching for 10 users, but 2 of the 10 reported occasional latency issues when scrolling through emails (as you'd expect), so the compromise seems to be enable caching but only cache 1 month. We also had one other issue reported by a user with a huge mailbox (I think it was something like 50GB) and Microsoft I think advise not using caching for mailboxes above a certain size (I think it is 30GB), but that's more of an issue with the end user not deleting emails. Kind Regards, Bruce.

Hi, We have a problem with a backup job in VEEAM which backs up VMs on a HV host, but doesn’t delete the incremental backup files. The job is configured to retain 10 recovery points. But instead there are 311 of them; the full backup and 310 incremental files in the repository drive. It came to light because it ran out of space. The job is configured for forward incremental with synthetic full backups every Saturday. But I can’t see any full backups other than the first one taken back in Oct 2018. So it doesn’t look like the synthetic full backups are working. The funny thing is the VEEAM server is also backing up VMware VMs in a separate job and these are working ok. Does anyone have any advice? Kind Regards, Bruce.

I hear the Cathedral is very attractive, especially this time of the year, well worth a long journey to visit.

Thanks for sorting it!

Our sQuid cashless payment system isn't working as it's not pulling through the new year 7 intake. Additionally, all of the existing users having been moved to leavers, so there are no active users at all! Obviously not good as the pupils need to eat. We contacted sQuid and they reported that the issue is because Xporter hasn't run successfully since 18 August. I can't think of anything that has changed on this date, we upgraded to SIMS Summer 2019 about a week before. Groupcall are very busy and haven't got back to us to investigate the issue. Looking through the logs there are messages about undefined variables, if this is relevant. Does anyone have any advice on a possible cause/how to resolve it? Help! Kind Regards, Bruce.

Hi, We are upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10 (1809). We have imported the Windows 10 ADMX Group Policy templates into our central store. We intend for the existing Windows 7 settings to apply to users/computers. For those that if already gone through the upgrade, what new Windows 10 settings did you find useful in the School environment? I notice there is a new setting which specifies a time-window where a update>reboot is acceptable (I can't recall it's name). Can anyone name any other useful settings they found useful? Kind Regards, Bruce.

Hi all, We're upgrading from Office 2016 to 2019 and in preparation I have imported the new ADMX Group Policy templates into the central store. I noticed that MS says that this templates package applies to 2016/2019 and o365. Does this mean MS are no longer providing separate policies for each new version of Office, and that the existing policies for 2016 will apply equally to 2019? Finally, can anyone recommend/suggest and particular Office 2016/2019 policy settings for a School environment? Kind Regards, Bruce.

We had this this morning and during the time these events were logged, users were reporting it was slow to login to SIMS. The user value in the event log is the MIS manager. So.. not sure about this one...

Also, I’m not 100% what happened to cause the issue in the first place...