HaroonEdTechPro

Late to the party, and you may already have this deployed. But I've just deployed this at an LGfL school as Microsoft Defender wasn't doing as good as a job as MailProtect. First week of Sophos, seems to be going well, I like some of the features such as banner on emails that tell Staff if the email is from an external recipient or is trusted. Sophos has two modes, you can either enable this as a Gateway (MX records goto Sophos then forwardes to your email service) or Mailflow which seems to be a Connector so MX records remain 365 but still go to Sophos first. It also has a feature called Clawback meaning historic emails with confirmed bad content is removed from the mailboxes. It also protect Staff, by having Data Protection policies so if a Staff Member tries sending out data such as Pupil PII, it can be stopped. MailProtect is great for end-users, giving them a daily breakdown of blocked emails, allowing them to release themselves and is straightforward so minimal Staff training is required. I believe users can unrelease blocked emails from Sophos, but it requires them to have a log in to Sophos Central (with end-user permissions) and then navigate through different menus. TL;DR. Sohpos is more configurable and has greater features, MailProtect is end user-friendly and does block a lot of content.

Raised a support ticket on this and did the Escalate to LGfL… they said it’s a MS problem and they wouldn’t deal. I couldn’t see any Windows Updates or Office updates that could explain anything. I took this as an opportunity to move the school away from StaffMail to 365!

First user reported the problem last Thursday. As far as I can tell there is no difference, the version is the same. The update numbers match.

Hi there I am supporting an LGfLMail school (Don't start 😄) where Outlook desktop app for most users is not working, it keeps prompting for the password. I thought this could be the AutoDiscover reg key problem from a few years back, so applied this, but no change. Support Desk are pushing the buck to Microsoft. Has any one else had any problems within the last week with LGfL Mail not working on Outlook desktop app?

This price looks like its in the range of our Portal Pro product which includes the features I'll mention below and Attendance Writeback into your MIS in seconds from call pickup. We do have a Lite version, which does Caller Identification of Parents, Staff, Students and Local Businesses, Screen Popping into your MIS, CPOMS integration, Caller History (no more I just had a missed call from the School, who called me?) and direct writeback into Arbor's Communication and Notes (not via Wonde) for around £350-400. Schools with our solution typically save 2-3 minutes per call on average.

+1 for EdTechPro, but I am biased 😀😉 We do offer 30-day trials of our solution for Schools to try out the solution. You can either contact us or one of our Partners. https://www.edtechpro.co.uk/partners We are currently developing a Teams - MIS integration solution which will be a gamechanger for schools.

Just me being silly but TuiCoin sounds like a cryptocurrency

Hi Andy Do you have Allow modification of wallpaper turned off in Restrictions? Tbh - doubt it will work but worth a try... I couldn't see a setting for this in Apple's MDM documentation https://developer.apple.com/documentation/devicemanagement

Have you tried Home Screen Layout? This should help you remove Settings. Or even better use the Web Clip alongside Guided Access Mode?

Hello, I've been reading this thread with interest, I recently started my own SaaS company in the education space. In fact we have a new product launch tomorrow! Some things I wish I did beforehand but learned and rebuilt along the way. 1) Use Google Firebase Authentication or Auth0 for your authentication system. These systems support SSO and are companies that spent lots of money investing in security rather than making your own system. 2) Does your software support Free School Meals (FMS) status, something to look into. Pupils do not have to pay for lunches when they have this status. 3) Make sure your company has Cyber Essentials and ISO 27001 or similar certification, that provides your company with training to keep data secure and trust for schools about how you store and manage data. 4) Ensure you have Data Protection policies in-place about measures you use to keep data secure, be transparent about your processes. Schools need this for their Data Impact Assessments. 5) Wonde is a great data aggregator, we use them and are very happy. How often are you pulling in data such as Allergies? Remember Wonde's APIs may not be current. Wonde pull data from school MIS systems once or twice a day, make sure the customer knows that if they make a change in their MIS it will not pull over immediately. Also Wonde does not pull in data for all UK Schools MIS make sure you read the Wonde MIS/SIS Coverage guide and on your website note the systems that fully support your app. 6) How are you managing data retention such as when Pupils/Staff become leavers and data is deleted. Are these values being managed by you or the customers. 7) Have the mobile app ready before release. A school I work with have a web-app for Meals and it was awful to roll out to parents because of how long it took to get set up and helping them log in each day because they don't save their passwords. Having an app means one-time set up on the device and then it hopefully stays logged in. 8) Do as much client-side as you can. For example use AJAX rather than rendering on Server-Side. 9) Are you using Sendgrid to manage email sending, you can do create your own email system but using Sendgrid for me especially has better deliverability rates 10) Use an industry standard web development framework that supports APIs (We are using Symfony with our own internal plugin for tenant management) 11) Use a CRM to maintain customer info (We started with Hubspot but will be moving to our own internal system soon) 12) How are you managing tenants information, one database for all customers? Or each customer having their own database. We opt for this option because if a client leaves instead of using a WHERE in SQL to find records related to the school we can just delete the database and be certain their data is removed. 13) Embed Analytics (How are people interacting with your app, which buttons are getting clicked the most and the least) 14) Privacy Notice and Saas Agreement (We spent upwards of £3,000 meeting with a law firm to get ours done, but it extremely important because it goes back to Data Protection/GDPR) 15) Server penetration testing, expensive but needed when you are dealing with an app where special-category information is kept. 16) Marketing, have a plan on how you are marketing, emails/cold calling, etc. We outsourced marketing to a firm to do telemarketing and emails before going in-house. If you want I can PM you there info. But also make sure you make calls yourself and run demos yourself to know your product inside out, I know it sounds silly as you build the software, but when I ran my first few demos I was so nervous I forgot key features, write down a script you'll use during calls. Know in the first few calls you will likely mess up and say something you shouldn't. This goes away with time as you get more and more confident. I am more than happy to jump on a Teams call to help you out with any business questions or about the education sector. We were all new here once! :-)

It really comes down to due diligence. If a staff member sees "Mrs. [Last Name]" displayed on the phone handset but hears a man speaking, and a court order notice for the father appears on the screen from Portal or the school's MIS system, this should immediately raise red flags. In cases where children call in using a parent's number, in my experience staff are used to these scenarios (I have covered the Attendance Officer role in a school I've worked in myself). Ultimately, it’s there to support, not replace, staff judgment.

Hi David, Thanks for your message. It's a good point. It’s worth noting that the vast majority of parents wouldn’t know how to spoof a number, and most UK carriers now override the Caller ID with the correct number or mask it if there’s any mismatch, which helps maintain accuracy. In Portal, when a caller’s number matches an existing contact, we label it as a "Matched Contact" rather than confirming "this is the person calling." (We now also mention this as part of Staff training) Additionally, if a court order is associated with a pupil, a safeguarding alert will display on their profile regardless of which guardian is calling in. Our system is designed to streamline information access, but it’s crucial that staff continue to do their due diligence. Thanks, Haroon

Hello all I am making this post to introduce my new company, EdTechPro. You will see our advert banners across Edugeek this month (November). EdTechPro's Portal is a solution that enables schools and Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs) to seamlessly integrate their phone systems with Management Information Systems (MIS). This integration provides instant caller identification, call history visibility, and the ability to log pupil attendance within seconds — ensuring a faster, more personalized communication with your school’s stakeholders.​​ EdTechPro offers free trials to schools that would like to see the benefits within their schools - we support all major MIS systems (including SIMS!) At the moment we support 3CX, but we can almost always support Screen Popping as a feature on the majority of PBXs. Features are: Caller Identification: Automatically displays the caller’s identity (parents, students, staff, UK schools, or UK businesses) on the phone handset. Screen Popping: Instantly shows the relevant MIS profile on the call handler’s computer, saving 10–15 seconds per call. Caller History: Gives call handlers a complete history of automatically logged past interactions, including who they spoke with, times, and any notes from previous calls. Safeguarding Notices: Alerts call handlers to any active court orders as soon as they answer. Attendance Logging: Enables quick attendance logging for entire families in a fraction of the time, with cases as fast as 20 seconds for a family of four. Please do check out our website or PM me to learn more. Thanks Haroon

Hi all, Quite a few of you have been asking about my solution. I am happy to say I have a basic web site up and running although way more information about the products will be added in the coming weeks, so probably best to have a look in September https://www.edtechpro.co.uk We offer two solutions Portal Lite - which links Caller ID to 3CX for schools (works with MATs). And screen popping where available to your MIS, if not available we provide a middle-man interface that will show you basic details such as Parent's Name and Children's Info. Portal Pro - everything Portal Lite does but allows you to write Attendance and view Call History from a middle-man software, making it easier not having to dip in and out of profiles, as soon as a Staff member answers a call the person can take attendance directly from our interface. Our product has had years of being tested in schools and developed on to be minimalistic but powerful. We also have robust security measures and Data Protection policies and agreements in-place to meet all the legal requirements schools need. Haroon

Hi Callum, Yes it should do. Happy to give you a trial of the software to test it out! :-) Thanks Haroon