supportman

Dan you are definitely the man, thanks again for the quick response. Its fixed a couple of issues right away

Couple more comments on issues that have come up after a few weeks usage: - Parental consent is confusing parents. The option in the MCAS app says "No image on the website" but then parents must click "I consent" or "No I do not give consent". We've had a couple of parents complain that this is not clear. - For some reason we only have one "English" on our marksheets rather than "English Lit" and "English Lan". Not sure if this is a Sims migration issue or timetable thing. - Parent feedback on MCAS saying the payment function is too hidden (you have to scroll to the bottom of the index page to see it). They would prefer a nice big button to make payments somewhere prominent. - Parents using MCAS can't delete announcements past or future they just show as unread all the time - We still have issues with attendance pages taking minutes to load instead of seconds. Someone from Bromcom observed this happening and has gone back to the developers to look at it. Maybe a Sims data migration issue? As always these are just a few comments from parents and staff that I thought were worth pointing out. A lot of this is a really easy fix I think. I hope @Bromcom_Support and @Bromcom_support2 can take these and feed the developers and project managers. I just looked at the latest September newsletter and didn't see any real progress on the MIS side of things.

So I've got Microsoft Deployment Toolkit up and running now. Seems to be a nice solution. Does anyone have a list of common software /silent command line switches? So far I have these: Acrobat Reader, Chrome, Edge, Office 2019, Notepad++, papercut MF, VLC Acrobat_Reader_Installer.exe /sAll msiexec /i GoogleChromeStandaloneEnterprise64.msi /qn msiexec /i MicrosoftEdgeEnterpriseX64.msi /qn setup.exe /configure configuration-Office2019Enterprise_New.xml npp.7.Installer.x64.exe /S client-local-install.exe /SILENT vlc-3.0.11-win64.exe /S

Has anyone used Acronis Snap Deploy 5? It looks like it does the PXE boot and we can use our existing Acronis images. I do wonder if its worth investing the time in learning the "Microsoft way" with these things.

Why even upgrade in the first place?

Yep we did as soon as we saw Capita's latest financial results. Their debt is unmanageable so they are forced to halt all new investment and basically sell off anything profitable like their education division. I don't understand this mindset of keeping a piece of software which is so outdated just because it used to be pretty much a monopoly. Even less so trying to shoehorn it into a cloud or hosted environment when it clearly isn't designed for that and never will be. Having done the move I don't really see why we ever waited, sure there are issues with the new system but the migration took a couple of days in reality. The new system worked in parallel with Sims for a while for staff to get used to it. Then we got rid of all our 3rd party bolt on products and saved a bunch of money as well! Win/Win

Bromcom... its better in pretty much every way than Sims. Cloud based, constant updates, Teacher app, Room bookings, Parents evenings, Student app, PowerBi the list goes on... And best of all, no more solus or looking after sql servers!! We migrated our system from Sims with no real issues over a couple of weeks in the summer. Training is very good with bromcom as well.

We moved and its so worth it. Sims is totally out of date now.

We use Bromcom ---> Salamandersoft ---> AD -----> Azure AD now. Works really well after they set it all up. All users are automatic including staff and students. Single sign on the lot!

Couple more questions: How do you name the computers automatically? How do you join the computers to the domain? Is there any way to use different local admin passwords somehow? (we have a different password for each IT room)

How do you boot the workstations without a USB stick, for example imaging a whole room at once?

Morning all, I'm just looking into the technology to roll out new workstations on mass and wondering how everyone else does it. Traditionally we have created a sys prepped image with Acronis and then rolled out using a USB stick. It works but is time consuming. I have just looked at rolling out Windows 10 vanilla and then sending the applications via PDQ deploy, this works well but also takes a while and doesn't work with things like Visual Studio Community edition. So how is everyone else doing it? Any new technology that I am not aware of come out recently with this?

Its exactly why I am writing this thread, Bromcom seem great at taking feedback. I'm yet to see too many actual coding improvements, but I know they are reading this thread with interest All I want is the best MIS out there, taking these points on board and hopefully fixing them will make Bromcom the number one choice I am sure. The market is ripe for disruption and I would not hesitate to recommend Bromcom already.

Just remember that it is very difficult to backup large 100gb+ file libraries. I've tried with Veeam O365 backup and it just times out sadly.

Long time ago I know but i'm trying to create package for python with the path option enabled. Any idea how to do this with PDQ deploy specifically?

Another couple of issues that have come back from teachers today with Bromcom: - One teacher came into my office raging that he had been asked to complete a survey by Bromcom, when he needed to quickly do the register. No way to cancel apparently. - The site timeout is still causing havoc in our organization school wide. Every day we are getting a complaint which means I have to log in and change their timeout to 120 manually. - New edge chromium seems to have missing buttons on the Room Booking system for some reason. - Room booking system is poor in comparison to roombookingsystems.co.uk that we previously used. Teachers would like to see a simple grid view of IT rooms available for the week on a single screen. Single click the empty timetable lesson to book. Current system is clunky and not a great UI although it does work. - Having to pay extra for higher SMTP usage seems a bit of a barrier to us using the system more. - The new documentation site is lovely to look at and a welcome improvement but severely lacking in content. For example searching for "Room booking" brings up zero results. - The help videos available are excellent but again very lacking in content. For such a big system I would hope to see hundreds of tutorial videos on their YouTube channel. - Student UPRN was never migrated from Sims On the positive side I've had various feedback as well: - Parents loving the MCAS app (we have 1,400 parents on it now 2 months from launch) - Payment timeout seems to have been fixed - New seating plan feature looks good and saves time - System seems quicker that last week on longer loading pages such as attendance - Reporting is awesome - The Covid dashboard is very useful - Census issues have been fixed and the overall process is much better than Sims - Admissions process seems clear and easy to do - Salamandersoft integration working really well using the Bromcom API Bromcom have reached out to talk about our issues which is a plus as well and shows they are listening. I cant remember Capita every doing that Just as a reminder, I still think Bromcom is far superior to Sims and anyone reading this and thinking about making the jump should not worry. These problems are all easily fixable I think.

How much is it?

Yes we've done it, we have a general staff team with a linked SharePoint files section for all departments, admin and Co-Curricular in there. Works quite well I must say and permissions is far easier than a local folder in my opinion. Migration was "fun" and I definitly suggest cleaning your current local drive first of arching files over a certain year off using robocopy. But we got there in the end and made are going to make our local shared drive read only soon. The only issue we've had is finding something that can backup our 400gb Sharepoint folder.

Dont quite understand what your asking, are you migrating domains or something?

Seriously, just change MIS. You are trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. We moved away from Sims recently and have a cloud based, two factor authenticating MIS with IP restrictions out of the box.

Sharepoint files online and onedrive work perfectly for this if you have Office 365

Fiber to the cabinet is a contended service as well do goes up and down with speed depending on usage. Leased line is uncontended usually so totally different ballgame. I'd pay the 17k personally! We pay 12k for 500mbit. The internet is at the heart of anything we do. Its worth it.

I'd be careful about generalising, I'm on virgin media 500mbit here! No complaints (other than the constant price rises but you just phone up and they put them down again). Virgin have 14 million broadband customers which is about a third of the countries properties. BT are rolling out fibre to the home as well with around 1.5 million properties now connected.

Yeh ours is setup before the change, not sure how it works now but ours is automatically updated.

Yes its all automatic