IT Ideas

We have just started moving over to Google Voice in Trust schools. This is to replace the existing telephony systems. If you are a G Suite organisation, then its a really cool solution and works very well. If you didn't know, this is a cloud-based solution and you users can use their Voice number on any device, anywhere - not just the physical desk phone (entirely optional) sitting at school. You have integration with all of the other G Suite tools - especially Calendar and Meet. Basically read all about it here . I'm not going to duplicate the Google blurb - but go through a few things to be aware of. Cost Voice licences come in at around £8 per month. Each user who needs a Voice number needs one and every physical handset is associated with a user. Handsets - you have to use the Polycom handsets - VVX150's start at around £75. Remember you can use Voice on any internet-connected device - so these are strictly optional. You can see the full range of handsets here . Calls t...

Quick demo of the Linux Apps I use on ChromeOS. This was done on my HP X360 14 G1 - i3 with 8Gb RAM.

It's come to my attention in the last few days that not everybody necessarily knows that you can actually voice type in pretty much any app. Voice typing is natively supported in most operating systems now, including Windows 10 and Chrome OS. In Windows 10 you simply press the Windows key and H how to turn on voice typing. In Chrome OS you turn on the on-screen keyboard and click on the microphone button and you can type into any app be it an Android app, the web browser, or a chrome packaged app. A quick demonstration is in the video below. It makes putting comments on student work considerably quicker in something like Google Classroom. I've also just written this paragraph using the on-screen keyboard on a Chromebook.

I support one school in the Trust that used Bromcom and was finding it a bit tricky to get the data directly into Sheets. However, I've sorted this now and thought this might prove useful to someone. Step 1 - The Bromcom Report Write your report (or pick an existing one). Click Run Report and then select “Live Data Feed”. Copy the URL it gives you. Step 2 - Your user name and password to access the report You need the site ID which is the username. You also need your “User Access Key”. To get this click top right and “My account” and you will see a box with this in. Make a note of these. Step 3 - Setup the Google Sheet Make a Google Sheet that is going to receive the data. Click on “Tools” then Script and paste in this code: function populateSheetWithCSV(sheet, csvUrl, user, pw) {   var resp = UrlFetchApp.fetch(csvUrl, {     headers: {       // use basic auth       'Authorization': 'Basic ' + Utilities.base64...

In my previous blog post, I gave an overview of Google's new mobile device management for Windows 10 devices. A few weeks in now, we have a number of users using Windows computers managed this way. So below is a more detailed video look at deploying policies followed by some of the policies and how to configure them that we have used to date. Policy Settings It's important to note that unlike ChromeOS devices, you don't put machines into OUs, but the machines pick up policy based on the OU of the user used to enrol the device. OMA-URI policies we use: AllowManualMDMUnenrollment ./Device/Vendor/MSFT/Policy/Config/Experience/AllowManualMDMUnenrollment Integer 0 This prevents users from unenrolling a device. AllowVPN ./Device/Vendor/MSFT/Policy/Config/Settings/AllowVPN Integer 0 Prevents editing the VPN settings PageVisibilityList ./Device/Vendor/MSFT/Policy/Config/Settings/PageVisibilityList string hide:network-vpn Can be used to hide bits of the set...

Been here before - but this is the latest from the Google beta....

This is a relatively new Papercut feature that allows you to push print queues to none AD joined PCs and Macs. I've made a short video that goes over the main points below and some notes follow that. Before you begin you need to fully configure Papercut and have a test VM that you can use ( not intuned and with no printers on it at all - remove all the defaults ). Make sure Mobility Print is deployed and the print queues you want to deploy are published. On the Test VM follow this procedure: https://www.papercut.com/support/resources/manuals/print-deploy/set-up-print-deploy/topics/computers-not-joined-to-local-domain.html Once the print queues are installed - make sure you change the Drives to the Kyocera ones and set the defaults. On the Print Server edit the config file: https://www.papercut.com/support/resources/manuals/print-deploy/set-up-print-deploy/topics/advanced-set-user-ID-method.html Change useridentitymethod to “ prompt ” IntervalSecs = 300 MinRa...