supportman

Has anyone found a Starlink schools provider yet? Quick google shows this company but I would rather go with someone proven. https://www.chigwellsatellite.co.uk/

We've got a Unify Wi-Fi 7 setup and its working well. We don't use 6ghz and use Enterprise 2 security. Seems to work well.

Permissions is really important to get right, that was our biggest learning as well. I'd advise giving office staff and SLT a high level of permissions at first (without personnel) and then remove them as time goes on if required. Will save a lot of headaches at first.

We did it over easter, I think it was the best time personally. No real issues with the migration as we had a test database to play with for a couple of weeks beforehand to show off and let people use.

I simply used a spreadsheet showing all the different 3rd party systems and costs that were needed with Sims compared to Arbor or Bromcom. Was an easy decision after that as SLT could see how far behind Sims had got.

I've managed to block it by dropping packets to these 2 addresses which are the ranges for their dutch free servers. [TABLE=width: 1774] [TR] [TD=class: wide-cell]Proton VPN IPs [/TD] [TD]169.150.218.0/24 185.107.57.0/24[/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE] Not a complete solution, but good enough for now. EDIT: This is a good document on it as well Smoothwall Filter & Firewall: Blocking Web Proxies and VPNs – Help Centre

Yep BYOD device, but it has no SIM card, just using our guest network with the proton VPN app.

Just had a incident in our school with students using the free proton VPN iphone app. I had assumed smoothwall would have blocked this, but clearly not. Just tested on my iPhone and it gets round all our filters. Any idea how to block? Seems it uses port 443 so cant do it that way.

Here is our configuration.xml file if that helps? We had similar issues as on OVS you cant deploy 365 properly.

We just restrict all access to the UK with a whitelist for staff away on trips. MFA for key personnel manually set. Stopped phishing and hacking accounts overnight once we applied it.

I've just been asked to find the least most used computers in school, thought it was a cool PowerShell 1 liner to try on the domain controller: Get-ADComputer -Filter * -Properties logonCount -Server YOURDCNAME | Select sAMAccountName, logonCount | Sort-Object -Property logonCount If you have more than one domain controller it might be worth also running it on the other ones for an accurate count. Essentially this should output a sorted list of domain computers by logincount. Enjoy!

Support from Suprema over the phone was OK, but they could never actually come out and fix anything. They never sorted the sync issues we had even after several software updates. Its a South Korean product and I don't think the UK support has any influence over the product or at least couldn't fix it. Essentially their fix was to stop it syncing with Paxton and manually add users. It also messed up our paxton server so we couldn't upgrade it any more. Overall I thought it was a OK hardware product let down by terrible software. It used to crash often as well and you had to restart the service. Overall glad its gone!

Maybe but each school can negotiate just as much, especially when they get quotes from all the providers. My experience was always that LA's overpaid in the past and tried to subsidize primary school fees at the expense of secondaries. That was a long time ago though and goes back to the times of BECTA and national roll outs....

Quite a story! Funny you should post this as we just got rid of Suprema, as it had loads of issues. We've gone to Mifare wristbands as well as simple ID cards or keyrings for the older kids. The Suprema software is terrible and was causing sync issues, 100% CPU issues and the fingerprints were not even reliable on the doors. It was a 3rd party bolt on with no clear lines of support from Paxton. Basically after much discussion we decided to rip it out and go to normal Paxton access. I think Paxton do not offer a biometric solution for a reason, it doesn't work well.

I guess there is no real need to mandate an MIS centrally any more. All the MIS's can transfer data in the same way so it really is up to what best suits a school. The only real exception to that is a MAT who might want to centrally check data on dashboard.

Just tested with a PDF and it showed inline so no need to download. I can't re-order folders non alphabetically though, didn't even know that was possible previously I have my folders in a hierarchy personally.

Why would you want to stop it? Its so much better than the old version! I didn't like at first but its grown on me....

Webinars are ok, but generally someone wants to search and find a 5min intro to a feature from a skilled trainer. This should also be updated and posted every time there is a UI change or feature release. You can blur student data on YouTube very easily these days. Just like the Harris academy have done here Our timetabler came to me a couple of months back asking me for a link to the new "Timetable feature" video. Eventually he found this with google: Cloud wTimeTable demonstration | Bromcom MIS but its mixed in with loads of marketing videos that are no use to anyone who already has the system He came away frustrated and kept using his current 3rd party solution. One place on your website for short form video tutorials that does not require a login would save thousands of support calls I think. Doesn't have to be YouTube, but a single area I can link to when people ask me questions would be great.

Its a great community as well... Bromcom does lack the video tutorial side of things though, that really does help users a lot. I've asked before that you dedicate someone from training to run through the whole system on your YouTube channel, but nothing has been put up yet. I really think it would benefit your support desk if you had those videos like Arbor. If you could pass this comment on to the service manager it would be great. If I was service manager it would be the first thing I would do!

When we did ScoPay to Bromcompay it was a simple case of just changing the provider as the balances were already synced on our cashless system locally. Was surprisingly simple!

That really is useful to see who's got what. Now what would be really interesting is to break that down into primary and secondary schools.

Any of these i'm guessing Microsoft Teams enabled devices I wonder if the android app is available for other devices....?

Just testing out Joan with an old android tablet. Pricing looks reasonable if we just use it for our shared rooms. Less that £200 a year and £400 for an E-Reader. EDIT: Looks like it integrates with outlook room resources! Awesome.

I've just tested the outlook idea, I have created the resources and can book them for events. Is there any way to show the calendar on a door with a tablet or something?

I've recently been asked to have some kind of digital signage on the doors to our conference and hall to show digital bookings. Is anyone doing this? I've seen e-readers used in some offices with a calendar on the screen to show availablity. Currently we book rooms on Bromcom which works, but i'm open to other solutions..