Janx1975

I am not sure the issue is the AP's - like I say, if I untick the Auto-Connect to SSID within the Google Admin console, the chromebooks can join the SSID and test SSID after entering the password with no problem - so not a network issue in my mind? The issue is that this should be an automatic joining to the connection without the need to enter that networks password.

Hi psydii - All access points are up to date. They are TP-LINK EAP225's (dont ask! lol) but they are up to date.

Hi, Been tearing my hair out on this one since July to no avail with the following: Received a consignment of new chromebooks - none would provision on existing network, thought they were the issue - took one home and setup fine. Next day the above chromebook back in school would not connect to the network. Other existing chromebooks started having similar issues - which has built up to the whole school. Got third line support testing the network and ports and Smoothwall with filtering - both checked out ok and pointed to Google. Raised issue with Google but they have put me on the backburner for the last 5 weeks After troubleshooting and having a play around I could see that when the SSID was set to "Auto connect" in the Google Admin panel ( Devices>Networks>Wi-Fi> SSID Name) the chromebooks would be stuck on the "Connect to Network" page - but showing that the SSID was "connected" in green. Puzzled I unchecked this and when I manually entered the password in the chromebook connected perfectly. I created a new test SSID and connected to this fine too - but as soon as I checked "auto connect" in the Google Admin the same issues abound. Powerwashing some chromebooks allows me to get some of them working, but with 300+ chromebooks this would take up too much time to resolve manually, especially as I am now an ICT-Team of ONE. Randomly the chromebook will show the problem as "DCHP lookup failed" or "proxy" or "DNS" but these have all been OK'd by third line support. Does anyone have any insight into why this is occuring, if it happened to you or know where I should be looking until Google ever respond? They just had me updating chrome OS on a test working and test failed chromebook but not really looking into my issue. With students back this week its been a nightmare.

I know its a long shot, as this post is so old, but any idea how to gain ownership of the \RemoteDesktopWeb\Internal folder? I have tried taking ownership, removing inheritance etc but I just cant get to see within this folder in Windows to start trying to brand the webclient..... :-|

We are using Google for Education - we dont use O365.

It appears that our school has the same issue that chinesewhispers faced (back in September 2020) with Chromebooks accessing the RDS HTML5 page internally (works fine from home). I would be grateful if anyone could illustrate the steps taken to get this working within Smoothwall as would be a huge help for staff during this second lockdown for on-site planning from their chromebooks. Also, when RDS was promoted to HTML5 did this require staff to use the domain backslash (schoolname\) before their username? I still have ours on test index.html and restricting to only a handful of staff until I can get this working internally as I am worried about external access being compromised. Any help greatly appreciated!

Hi ictgoodpractice, Just wondering how you got on with your wifi solution? We are looking to replace our.... *cough cough* TP-LINKS.... wifi "system" that was partially installed by my predecessor and its cracks are now chasms... Kind regards!

Hi, We are a GAFE school and recently moved away from RM to Vanilla, but one of the things I am unable to get my head around at the moment is getting Staff and Students to automatically sign into their Google accounts. The Google password sync is working ok, so password changes in AD apply to google email password. I had a brief foray into researching this but, from what I can see, the hoops I would have to jump through would only work on Chrome devices and not Windows 10 desktops etc anyway. As Staff and Students here have their homepages set to our internal sites.google.com/*user*-internal pages, they are being asked (rightly) to login (which is causing issues when they choose not to). Previously on the RM system, both staff and students just got their respective homepage without having to manually sign in, so there must be a way or a plugin I am not aware of. Would anyone have any clues, pointers or, even better, - a guide on how to achieve this? As we went Vanilla to save on support costs with RM, we are loathe to have to pay for a third party tool to do this... Many thanks in advance

Thank you both!

Hi, Our school is finally replacing 60+ printers for a fleet of 10 MFD managed printers. I am wondering if anyone here knows of a legal way of selling these older printers to save some money for the school rather than just scrapping them or donating them to a charity. The business manager is worried that we cant sell them on ebay for example, as this may affect our funding rights (as printers were bought without VAT) or be classed as fraudulent, so is wondering if there is any legitimate avenues for selling these onto a third part company (Midlands area). Even if it generates £10-£20 per device that would be something the school could use to put back in for our students. Any advice or info greatly received.

That's our hope - but we want to ultimately reduce what is uploaded to the cloud, thus what is backed up in the first place.

Hi mhaddock, We do have an RM support contract, but they dont choose what does and doesnt go into the backup - they only appear to support the backup technology and fix software related issues. The previous Network Manager appears to be backing up the kitchen sink, I just dont know if we need to be uploading to tape - things like "Program Files", "Temp", "Perflogs" etc when they are backed up as part of the VM digitial backup.

Hi, I am trying to streamline our backups and as I have inherited the current system, wondered what is good/best practice for what data is backed up. In this instance we still have Symantec Backup Exec, taking a weekly digital backup of all the VMs and then a separate server backup of the 1st & 2nd server, along with member servers (we are an RM CC4 school) but also includes a backup of the backup server, VCenter and wireless servers. These server backups are then duplicated to Tape weekly. There is also a daily incremental backup of the servers. As the actual VM's are being digitally backed up, do we really need to be backing up a whole server (including Window, program data, Program files etc etc.) such as the 1st or member servers, or just the user data folders? We are hopefully going to be migrating to a Vanilla network very soon, and we are looking to potentially backup to the cloud, either via Redstore or a MS Azure solution as the tapes and loader are very old and starting to fail with greater regularity - so anything to get our data backup down is a priority. We are also going to be getting students (but mostly staff) to purge old documents, or upload them to their Google Drive areas as part of this also. Just wondering what your thoughts are, and best practice/examples you may have. Thanks in advance.

Hi, So I have been asked to enable the sound options for Year 7 & 8 students at our school (for 'yesterday' as per usual!)- we have RM CC4 and 'somewhere' in one of the 47 GPO's there is a restriction on staff & students from being able to see the "Sound & Multimedia" option in control panel or indeed see the volume icon on their taskbars. Is there any way to see which group policy is being applied / takes precedence? It has been a very long time since I played with group policy and the policy I can see within the RM Management Console are less than the group policies within the usual group policy management panel on the server. If memory serves, I would have to enable access globally and then restrict it to individual groups? Is that right? Many thanks for any help in advance!

Up against it at the moment, I come off long term sick then lead tech goes off... We have RM here and VMWare which helped me find out the names of servers and then IP addresses etc. I then grabbed spiceworks and got that set up (for a quick helpdesk) so that it could go off and scan the network for me. I then tried to compile all the login 'documentation' into a usable spreadsheet and then just progressed through and tried to organise them into admin network logins, hardware (switches), software, websites etc. Unfortunately the previous NM's registered for everything with their staff email accounts - I have tried to pull everything into an office mail account "itadmin" so that if anything happens to me, someone will have all the info in one location. Still shocked to see main office staff using their staff accounts instead of using specific office role accounts "exams officer", "finance officer" etc but thats for me to tackle down the line... We have RM Support and Entrust - everything setup prior to my appointment. I wanted to get rid but seems that time and effort (and contracts) are against me at the moment. How are you doing?

I was (AM) in a similar situation as yourself - I have done my best to try and collate and audit what we have here after 6 months (1 month lead tech was sick and 1 month I was off long-term sick). The "documentation" I had were just screenshots of login screens minus login information etc and equipment audits were undated and unchecked, so I had no idea if I was reviewing spreadsheets with already changed data - making the task tedious and fruitless on many occasions. Also this is my first gig as Network Manager/Senior network tech - I have just been mostly 2nd line desktop support over the past 18 years and have fingers-in-all-pies so to speak. They have RM here which I wasnt told about when I asked at interview so feel like a complete newbie everyday. Just plodding on until I figure out what to do or they get rid of me lol!

I will look into this tool for Admin staff to use following the bulk import that I will have to do this time round, many thanks! I am a new Network Admin, and "SIMS stuff" was always done by my NM in my previous employment so I never got my hands dirty with it. I'm already fed up with having to wait until staff logout of SIMS! lol.

I have just compiled the .csv and will be doing the import on Thursday after school - any idea how long it generally takes to complete this from your experience MrMat?

Thanks I will get a CSV ready for them and cross my fingers!

Hi, I have just been tasked with getting staff work emails into their existing SIMS accounts for some online service enrolment, most staff appear to have personal email addresses or non at all etc. Is there a (foolproof) tool that would allow me to be able to import a list of emails to a list of existing staff entries? I dont really want to be entering 100+ email addresses in manually... but I cant see a way from my forays with google and edugeek search.

Would you happen to have a step-by-step guide or something similar that I could take a gander at? Ultimately I would be trying to set up a guide myself and show common pitfalls and areas to focus on during the process. SLT has given me the green light to go ahead, but they want it planned before the head approves. They are cautious about removing RM specifically for the support they give (Network manager turnover has been quite high here over the last 2 years and I can see why!) Using RM to remove their network would have some poetic justice, has anyone used this offereing from them? If anyone from RM is reading - do you have any case studies?

Does anyone have any experience with the Governments "Schools Buying Strategy" for printers?? ~ https://www.gov.uk/government/news/money-saving-deal-for-schools-printers They seem to be Canon printers. Getting this school into a leased printing service is a big priority for me to save costs and my budget.

Thanks I will have a look into OSTicket

I agree with that timetable - Summer 2019 is do-able. Ultimately there is a lot of studying/planning ahead of me, all whilst learning this new role...

Looks like I have inherited an RM network that I am keen to remove for a Vanilla network - I have never worked with an RM system before so I am feeling a bit like a rookie with the idea of having to move it (limited network/server experience). If anyone could help me out with where/how I should even begin planning this, I would be eternally grateful.