johnabbots

Good afternoon all, I hope you're all surviving and looking forward to the staff going at the end of the week Our school has asked me to look into creating custom Teams templates so when you go to create a team from a template as well as Class, Professional Learning, Staff and Other we could have other custom options. I've looked online and are getting conflicting information to if this is possible or not. On the 365 admin if I go to Teams templates it states: Teams templates can be used to create teams, channels, and apps that are available to users with common needs or a common project. Teams templates are available to all organizations including small to large business and educational organizations. Admins in educational organizations won't be able to create or edit Class, PLC, or Staff team templates. Admins in educational organizations that want to deploy a custom template to people in their organization will need to use Microsoft Graph. Learn more But when I click on Learn more it takes me to a page saying: The ability to create custom templates is not yet supported for EDU customers. Has anyone managed to create one for their school and if so does anyone have any documentation on this please? Thanks

That's really good advice thanks. Do you have any preferred RMM's that you have used in the past please?

@ThatBoringBloke that's a good way of looking at it actually. Most of the secondaries are over 1200 students so have at least 500 devices to manage. Unfortunately the equipment in most schools is old so from what I've seen they're up against it. With most having only two staff if any one is off on holiday or sick etc it does seem to cause issues. I guess eventually we'll have to centralise the teams. Is that what most people have done and if so do you still keep a technician onsite in a secondary?

Good morning all, I’ve recently joined a Trust of around 30 schools (10 secondaries and 20 primaries) I’m currently struggling with the amount of work at these schools and wondered what staffing levels others have in their Trusts please? We currently have a network manager and one or two ICT technicians at each secondary depending on their size. For the central ICT team we look after the 20 primaries, all of the central trust staff and satellite sites, central purchasing of software and dealing with high level problems at secondaries. We currently have an ICT Manager and 4 ICT technicians. We’re struggling as all of the primaries are recently taken over and all have different hardware and software. We’re in the process of trying to unify solutions but are coming up against constant firefighting. I have said we need more staff and have documented tasks that we’re unable to carry out but keep getting told its not affordable to have more staff. I’m just wondering what levels others have to try and help with my argument. In terms of work to be carried out at the primaries/central we’re responsible for all aspects of ICT from their servers, switching, AV, computers to their phone systems, CCTV and access control for example. Some of the primaries are small but a lot of them are two classes per year group or more. Any help or advice would be appreciated. Thanks

Good morning all, Has anyone else had significant issues with ClassCharts speeds since returning from Easter? I have found that just logging in to the main page is taking 30 seconds or more during peak times recently. The speed on iOS is especially slow when using either the app or any iOS web browser. We have contacted support several times and are told different things. Sometimes we are told there is a known problem with speed and there is no ETA for a resolution. Sometimes we are told there is a known issue with iOS17 and to to downgrade to iOS16. Sometimes we are told to install a "network booster" but generally the support is never escalated and the problem is just passed on internally to their product team and that's the end of the contact. There is no status page available so you never know when they are having problems. I did see this thread /forums/mis-systems/236354-chartcharts-alternatives-due-unacceptable-down-time.html but wondered if anyone else can provide feedback please? Thanks everyone

Thanks very much for all your replies. @Rob_D I think the Multi Tennant management and federation information you have posted might be a good compromise between cost, time, and effort required.

Hi all, I’ve recently joined a Trust of around 30 schools (10 secondaries and 20 primaries) that all have individual domains and Office365 tenants. I’ve been told that one of my jobs is to join everyone together so that they can go to any school and login, share the same trust email address and collaborate with teams and OneDrive in a more effective way. Although I’m sure this is all possible to me it seems like a massive project so I was looking for some pointers from people that may have already carried out this task or perhaps outsourced it. All the schools currently have their own server setup with the secondaries all having recently bought decent clusters so moving everything to the cloud wouldn’t be cost efficient at this point. The other issue I’m facing is staffing levels. I’ve joined the Trust but there are only 4 technicians to cover the 20 primary schools and central team so starting a project like this when we’re already firefighting seems insurmountable. All secondaries have their own local teams with a network manager and technician. If anyone is able to share their staffing levels who look after a similar amount of schools or work to a model I’d be interested. I’m really struggling to think about the best way of doing this and to be honest where to start so if you had any thoughts I’d be grateful. Thanks everyone.

Hey David, I'm gutted I missed this job. Did you appoint in the end?

What version of Windows are your tills on and when have they said you have to upgrade from? Cheers

Thanks for the screenshot @howartp Even though we are on 3.7 it looks older than Sync2 as on your screenshot. They have not given an option just to upgrade to Sync2 they want nearly £3500 to upgrade the tills to Windows 10 and to upgrade the Sync to version 2. Has anyone stuck with Windows XP and got them to upgrade just the sync?

Does anyone know what Sync2 actually is? Is it on all of the tills or just the desktop/server that runs the Sync software? Our desktop/server has Sync software which talks to ParentPay to pull down the diners balances and that is on version 3.7 named SyncUNC so hopefully therefore is already on this Sync2 perhaps? They are trying to get thousands out of us so any help regarding this would be useful. I love the way they are scare mongering people into updating from XP due to cryptolocker quotes from the NHS and engadget but has anyone seen them ever do an update on Windows XP anyway or even install antivirus! Cheers

Does anyone know what Sync2 actually is? Is it on all of the tills or just the desktop/server that runs the Sync software? Our desktop/server has Sync software which talks to ParentPay to pull down the diners balances and that is on version 3.7 named SyncUNC so hopefully therefore is already on this Sync2 perhaps? They are trying to get thousands out of us so any help regarding this would be useful. I love the way they are scare mongering people into updating from XP due to cryptolocker quotes from the NHS and engadget but has anyone seen them ever do an update on Windows XP anyway or even install antivirus! Cheers

Thanks I will give this a go Cheers

I've had a search and not seen this anywhere but please forgive me if its been asked before. Does anyone have experience of scripting or through the Office365 admin portal deleting a file from multiple users OneDrive accounts? The students love sharing and spreading this particular game and I'd love to do a search and delete all example of it. Thanks

Well I've had great fun today quarantining 25k flash games so its certainly not slow :-) Thanks again!

Just thinking now the only way this could be improved for me would the ability to schedule the running of tasks so when the lovely darling copy the files back the next night or whenever they get removed again. Is this possible perhaps in a later release?

@bizzel excellent this has done the trick and now all is working amazing!

Thanks for all your hard work I've checked it out and have one suggestion for the next release if this is possible? I searched our shared drive for a swf game and it returned a lot of results and I choose to quarantine all of the examples of the same file. The quarantine must put them all in one place but not with the folder names as it will only quaratine one example of the same file name if that makes sense before it comes up with an error that the file already exists. Cheers

@bizzel you are a legend

I know O365 won't send the photo with the email outside of the organisation so this sounds like it differs somewhat from Google Apps. Think we are going to end up removing them I was just interested to know what other schools do as I know a lot will be using Salamander and the likes to sync pictures. Cheers

This is partly true but our Photos are synchronised from Sims so they did not choose to have them visible it just makes life easier for staff to identify. Cheers

This is amazing and so fast! Can't wait for the release where I can select all the files and boom gone! Cheers

Good Morning everyone, We have had a concern raised that students can see other students pictures (tiny 4k thumbnail) on the O365 email address book and that students could then share these along with the names online. We could remove the pictures or the student address list completely but just wanted to know others thoughts first and where we stand with GDPR etc. Cheers

Thanks everyone for your input its really good to hear what other schools are doing.

Hi everyone, For the last 5 years we have been lucky enough to replace a large amount of our computers with the VeryPC Flex https://very-pc.co.uk/products/classroom-pc/flex I personally love this case as its height adjustable, all of the cables are locked away, it has front USB and audio ports and we have had the least damage of any case with these. In fact I don't think we have ever had a case damaged. I also love the fact that unlike an all in one if the monitor dies or gets damaged it can be replaced and also it has standard components inside and you can get PSU's on ebay for less than £10 All of this and the price VeryPC give me is pretty competitive. I'm thinking of sticking with it again for another year but I'd be really interested to know what other people are using and if anyone has anything better? I'd be really interested to know what the big boys like Dell and HP do which is comparable? Plus just all of you lovely Edugeek's opinion really on this and any other cases you think are better? Cheers John