mrforgetful

I feel I need to come back and post again. I spoke to their technical support and they had the system running smooth for me again. Our situation was caused by having logging enabled on every client, leading to hundreds of thousands of entries. I've removed the log feature, cleared the database and it's working great now. Historically, back on v6 we needed logs but now we have alternative safeguarding software, the AB logs are superfluous.

Interested to hear people's experiences of this. We used Senso over lockdowns and it worked ok for something over the internet, but was too much latency for classroom suites (we have 300Mb here)

We've used AB Tutor since 2007. Stayed on V6 until last year as it still did everything we needed, but it was starting to show it's age, particularly with mulitple monitors. So we upgraded to v9. Finding it laggy and buggy, shouldn't have bothered. Used Senso over lockdowns as you can have groups show users, not devices, which is really useful on laptop trolleys where students can get things from other locations mixed up. At the end of the day though, it's Cloud, and lag was inherent to viewing screens. Looked at Impero and NetSupport years ago but were massively more expensive than AB Tutor, albeit with many more features. But we just didn't need those features for the cost. Veyon, whilst free, was very basic. A small step up from TightVNC!

Good luck getting hold of the SDS Tool from Ruler. You complete contact details and receive an email a short time later asking what your requirements are. You reply saying you want the free SDS Tool and get no response. You chase it up a few days later and get no response.

Which is your best bargaining tool of all. Hi, I like them both the same, what's your best price as whichever comes in lowest gets bought.

I had a demo of Impero and liked the look of it, pulls a lot of things together into one package - not had a price yet as not in a position to be buying, but will definitely keep it in mind. Thins like shutdown policies can be more complex than AB Tutor that we use right now, as in you can tell shutdown to only happen if nobody is logged in, or to refrain from shutdown should a certain program be running.

Have you looked at e-safe? We get it through out LEA and it's monitored solution so no workload to analyse for us.

How much is it for you? Will cost us around £10 per pupil for 3 years.

AB Tutor. Cheap and easy to use. We are still on 6 though as it does all we need.

Do you want to send encrypted emails? Here http://www.edugeek.net/forums/cloud-services/163048-sending-encrypted-emails-external-users-o365.html

Wow, thank you for this, have been looking at installing encryption certificates for months and debating whether the work was worth it. This is a much better solution and works good.

It was approved on a level above our, and involving multiple LEA(s) and they signed up to it so that's good enough for me.

Whilst I would just Switch User, it is possible with AB Tutor to send a Lock command and then Unlock. This is intended to be used to get a students undivided attention but we've found it will also unlock a computer left logged in by a user. Can be useful if it's an office machine with work files left open that you need to do something on.

I can recommend ESafe for the fact it's a monitored solution so from an administration point it's very low maintenance. http://www.esafeeducation.co.uk/ Or it's available through Smoothwall.

Yeh we unofficially (as there is no SLA) will close a ticket that hasn't had a response in 10 days. Not had any complaints. I think the sample SLA here will be a great start and gives me some ideas. Thanks guys.

Ok, so like now we have tickets that we've addressed and the staff haven't come back to confirm that's not a black mark on our stats, good. We often find people eager to report a problem but not confirm a change has being satisfactory, of take a week to provide more information requested, I guess these cases too would not add time to out resolution.

Pausing the timer, I like that. Just looking through this Sample SLA - Wiki Thanks for the starter points.

Any rough ideas on what problems should be included in an SLA and what timeframes should be set to resolve them? Also who is responsible when the problem lies in requiring outside contractors? eg, I have a projector that needs replacing but requires the whole pole replacing too due to fittings, this requires an external contractor but they can't get here for two weeks...

Just heard back from out LA confirming it is resold from e-Safe. Yes we've had a couple of teachers 'caught' looking at things that are fine. I've seen the reports and they could be more detailed. 'User typed 'gay' no other information available' is not a great detail to go on. Could be anything.

Surprised at the amount people spend on monitors - we usually just go for some ~£90 decent brand, Iiyama/Philips whatever there is at the time.

A lot of software of this nature it 'invisible'. No more of a chore to run an uninstall msi than it is to Add/Remove...infact in bulk it is actually a better method.

We use it. Used PCE in the past and was so labour intensive having to go through all the false positives. E-Safe removes this problem with it being a monitored solution, for that I feel it is worth the extra cost - though the head may disagree yet as they didn't see the PCE implementation. We had some problems initially with it causing a certain program to crash, a common Office program. They were adamant it hadn't been seen anywhere else and worked tirelessly to fix the issue with a school specific patch. All works fine now and as it's Safeguarding I don't even have to deal with the daily reports they send. Every once in a while or strange problem will come back but after applying the patch again all is normal.

Does the Smoothwall offering only have key capture or does it analyse screen content and as such also catch violations in-application what were not typed by the end user?

I have CDs in my drawer from 2006 leavers! Infact you can see data storage progression, it goes from CDs, to DVDs, to 3.5" HDDs and then 2.5" HDDs which I still use for archiving. There are more encrypted sets offsite.

Version 8 released this morning, just having a little look and thought I'd give a heads up to others. To be honest though we are still on 6 as it fits our requirements.