speckytecky

I totally agree @mrnoisy

Star lady as ever @witch - thanks very much.

Has anyone come across a description of the component applications that come with O365 Calendar is pretty obvious but a descriptive of how it can be used to best effect would be handy, One Drive best use in education a description would again be handy, the standard Office products are self explanatory but descriptions of how Delve, Video, Class Notebook and Sway can be used in schools would be really helpful? I can see https://products.office.com/en-us/academic/office-365-education-plan when running a search and have pointed out to our staff that they have access to these various components some while ago but alas haven't had any feedback so I'm keen to see if I can spark a bit of interest by offering a description of how they are being used in other establishments.

We are currently experiencing an issue when online in O365 where Word, Excel files etc refuse to open in O365 and therefore have to be downloaded? Seems to be an intermittent thing?

We currently have a 7 year old tower server as fileserver, DC and most other roles on a 2008 Domain, with SIMS on another tower server a remote desktop tower and a Mini Mac Server. We have SWGfL FTTC (giving download 30.90 MBPS Upload 9.8 MBPS), Sophos, Impero, the current Adobe CS6 FTE based agreement that's currently in dispute and Microsoft FTE licensing for Office etc. The Domain is NT legacy that's been migrated several times now and has lumpy bits in it! Fiber runs between various rooms but far from all. Decent Ruckus Wireless across our small site. An eclectic bunch of switches the best being 2 HP Proliants. Workstations are all running windows 7 Pro, some being 32 bit because they are so old (8 year old Fujitsus and a few 5 year old laptops). We are a small EDB Special School and our lads currently are very prone to breaking kit; especially laptops. We are looking at developing and implementing a new Strategic IT Plan. Obviously mindful of budgets a rolling plan. What to go for? Server 2012 R2 and virtualisation for sure but we are looking for advice and quotes on all other aspects - perhaps a clean fresh domain rather than a further migration, review of connectivity to all classrooms, Cloud based storage / backup and SIMS. Which would almost certainly need faster Broadband and with that I guess in-house Filtering - Smoothwall? About the only thing we don't need to change is Ruckus!

Thanks @DaveAshworth That looks pretty scary. Lots of reports of resultant BSOD's in the comments below the article!

We have a 64 bit Windows 7 Enterprise laptop that's set up to syncronise the Home Documents folder on. The user is working from home today and her documents are coming up greyed out. She has restarted the laptop - to no avail. She also experiences the same issue when at school on a regular basis and then carrying out a restart brings the documents up live and accessible again. Any ideas please Edugeekers?

My recommendation is The Brother MFP-9140CDN. Does the job very, very well. we have 3 now and the users love them. Bonus the cartridges are recyclable Freepost.

@Steve21 sorted it for me and did it without making me feel like an utter chump! Steve gets my "what a guy" award for today. Cooer, I lost count years ago the number of times you good folk on Edugeek have hauled me out of the mire. Thanks folks.

Bit of a strange one here. Trying to run a Remote Desktop Session on one of our Server 2008 R2 boxes and it seems to logon ok but then the desktop is unpopulated and no cursor visible. All that's there is the Minimise / Restore Close box (which works. Trying it locally on the server it just brings up an empty blue screen (not BSOD!) running with another Domain Admin user logon brings up the usual screen. Any suggestions please (SIMS server so I'm not inclined to restart daytime).

I actually thanked the OP and contributed to that thread. I pick up the smeghead award of the day I guess! As it is we do have an existing agreement so looking at the final post from @jszkudlapski we should be OK.

Interesting responses to the OP. I've been in school IT for 12 years now and have always gone with Dells on a 4 hour on site warranty / extended warranty specked, supplied and installed by Capita. These responses have given me food for thought that's for sure. Thanks for the responses. That said I nothing but totally positive comments for Dell server support - tops every time.

Our school has been running the Adobe suite under an Adobe SSL / EES type agreement for a couple of years now. I'm told that the agreement scheme hasn't directly been renewed by Adboe but they have given a 6 month extension whilst they look at the way forward on this. Anyone got anything more concrete on this?

We have MalwareBytes on all our servers. I've been amazed at the intrusions it has picked up and stopped. Bought an annual licence that covers 10 machines for something like £150 a year - has to be paid for online by a card in US $.

You have probably already considered project Step recorder PSR.exe free and built into Windows 7 upward?

Possibly a numpty question but I'm going to ask it anyhow Are you sure this isn't a memory module issue. I had some memory delivered recently and several sticks were duff and they caused the machines to BSOD.

It's OK here in Wiltshire.

Edugeek and you @difinity are just tops. The screen arrived lunchtime - been ages on order. I have spent an hour or so Googling to try and find the how to guide I remembered having seen. Then in a brain wave I thought, hang on have a gander at Edugeek and up pops your little beaut of an URL from my earlier query. Edugeek is a gold nugget Forum that's for sure. b

All sorted now thanks as ever to input from Edugeekers. I'm blessed if I know what I'd do without it. In my infinite unwisdom last week I'd installed Private Firewall on the laptop not realising that Windows Firewall was already active when away from the school. The two were clashing. Private Firewall now removed and all is ok again.

It's Sophos without a Sophos Firewall. Odd that it has been running without any problem until now. I've tried a local log on and that has the same result.

A member of staff came to me this morning saying that her school issue laptop was connecting to her home ISP but wasn't pulling up the Internet. We are running through SWGfL so she knows to untick the proxy in LAN settings and had done so. I live near the school and took the laptop home and connected the wireless to my home ISP. Sure enough same result. No website access through any browser with the proxy unticked and Automatically detect settings ticked. Strangely in Network settings it's displaying Internet Access as OK. Also running a ping on bbc.co.uk that pings fine. The laptop is Toshiba Sat Pro C660 running Windows 7 Pro and it has been giving her Internet access at home fine until this weekend. Back in school with the proxy setting enabled the Internet is fine. Any suggestions please?

+ 1 for Cannon. Have an AIO and even my wife can use it without assistance

Good posting Ben_Mayo that's drawn some enlightening answers. Subtle hint; you have kindly given thanks in your replies which I'm sure those who responded appreciated. That said could you please also consider using the thanks button or adding a rep star and comment where the answers have been particularly helpful. I've certainly found several very useful and with a fleet of 16 GB iPad 2s expect to be putting the advice to good use sometime soon My current biggest bugbear with iPads is the constant flow of staff seeking replacement cables and charging units because they havev'lost' the security marked ones they were issued with. Gits!

I did promise to post up our Draft Strategic Development Document so here it is. I can take no credit for the basic document. A fellow Edugeeker shared it with me and to my great shame I can't recall who it was - their School Logo though is on the map on the final page. If they could identify themselves hopefully anyone who uses it will give the thanks due to them.Overview of Strategic ICT Developments at X School.docx

We purchased a limited number of MWB licences from the company direct. It had to be paid for online on a card.