Kamar updare message !@#$%^&*

[Patrick Dunford]

So now Kamar have jumped on the bandwagon and decided it would be a
great idea to bombard our end users with messages telling us that they
should update their Filemaker client to a new version.

This school closes in 3 months and we are not going to waste our time
running around all the teachers computers to update them if it isn't
necessary.

I want to know how to stop the message from popping up on people's desktops.

[Tim Harper]

Hi Patrick,

you would need to ask Kamar that question - they are responsible for the message.  The only way I know is to upgrade to the new client.

regards,

Tim Harper


Phone 03 443 5167 (messages cannot be left on this number)
Mobile 027 443 1236

t...@mtaspiring.school.nz
www.mtaspiring.school.nz

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[Nick Steenson]

Hi,

The update process that's prompted had quite a few issues too, many teachers reporting dozens of filemaker install windows popping up and re-opening when closed etc.

I'd advise sending a staff wide email out with your own links to the 32/64bit versions, or deploying before the users flood you with tickets!

I'd be interested to know what issues others have had as well, in case that's something isolated to us. KAMAR apparently hadn't heard of the issue until I called to mention it.

So far issues I've found with FM15/KAMAR seem to be limited to the 32bit version, but I haven't done extensive testing. Let me know if you find the same!

Nick

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[Kent]

Hi Patrick,

Please see the release notes on our web site regarding this change.

In particular, the link to how to postpone this prompt for all users.

https://www.kamar.nz/105607

Kent.

[Kent]

Hi Nick,

If you are still having this issue, can you please contact the KAMAR helpdesk as it shouldn't be happening any more.

We were able to track this issue down to a certain combination of 32bit / Windows and implemented a workaround. I did hear of one other school affected by this as well.

Kent.

[Nick Steenson]

Great that it's been resolved!

I haven't had the issue for about a week now, though I think I'd manually installed/deployed most that had the issue by then.

Troubleshooting a printing issue too, I'll call the helpdesk about that tomorrow :-)

Cheers,

Nick

--

[Patrick Dunford]

But it can only postpone for 2 weeks, I want to postpone it for 2 months.

I don't see why we should have to waste our time updating all the clients when the school closes soon. We have not got a lot of time to run around and update them all.

We own our computers, not Kamar.

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[Blake Richardson]

Just set it for fortnightly reminders they will only get 4 warnings before the school closes, surely thats not a big deal......

[Patrick Dunford]

It's too late when people have installed it and broken their installations, which is because it somehow corrupts the Kamar.fmp12 file that points to our database. This is a busy time of year for staff who are writing students reports, which they use Kamar extensively for. It's highly irresponsible to push an update onto end users who have no idea of possible ramifications, and you would have no clue if it is a convenient time for us, we should be allowed to choose that timing ourselves.

On 10/08/16 09:56, Kent wrote:

--

[Craig Knights]

Just finished the FM server upgrade to 15

Took me about 2 hours longer because I didn't check the system requirements properly!

On Windows, it needs to be 2012 R2 rather than just plain old 2012, so watch out!

Right, dinner time!  So hungry!

Craig

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[Julian Davison]

So, to summarise:
Update prompt very annoying, how dare Kamar have an update so close to the school closing.
Kamar say prompt can be suppressed.
There's no time to go around everyone, the school is closing soon, that's ridiculous to expect it.
Actually, we don't have to go around, people can apply it themselves, which they've done willy nilly and broken the settings.
Kamar shouldn't make it possible for users to upgrade themselves as they don't understand the implications especially when it's a busy time.
Kamar are irresponsible for leaving the management of user sites to the sites themselves rather than scheduling a forced update ala Windows 10.

At least, they seem to be the takeaway points.
I disagree, but your mileage may vary.

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[Patrick Dunford]

Who is forcing Windows 10 updates on anyone? Under the schools package MS will give us a free updates server that we can use to decide exactly when and where we are going to roll out any update we choose.

I wouldn't expect the Apple fan club to understand this, because Apple doesn't in reality cater for the corporate sector, although they like to pretend. There are so many limitations in Apple products that frustrate corporate administrators every day, unless you want to shell out $$$ for third party solutions, compared to what MS provides in Windows free of charge.

The prompt can only be suppressed for two weeks at a time, which is saying "we" have the right to dictate that you must install the update come what may. As I have said that WSUS server lets us defer as long as we want.

You should ask the person paying the bills if they think they want to waste money upgrading the system when it only has to run for 3 more months. We are not going to put anything on unless it is absolutely essential.

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[WHS Ict Technician]

It wasn't the best move

I was away on the friday - i'd had no prior warning from KAMAR that anything was about to happen, so i couldn't postpone it in advance.
I came back to school on monday to chaos - lots of staff are running osx 10.8 for compatibility with whiteboards, and had attempted OS upgrades to meet the requirements of the client KAMAR was pushing.

The update itself wasn't a smooth process - the installer failed to correctly set firewall permissions, so many staff had completely lost KAMAR access.

All in all, a botched move, that didn't need to be

I hope that kamar learns from this

1) contact schools and TELL THEM when you are going to make changes. burying them in a website without notification isn't helpful
2) don't prompt users to update - prompt admin to make them
3) don't release things on a friday, for the love of god.

[Mike Etheridge]

I feel your pain, but I’d have to say that since I decided earlier this year to push through Mac OSX to Yosemite then El Cap on all machines (shout out: got some good advice from Norcomm on this), workstations and servers, and declare end of life on anything incompatible, everything has been going so much better. At the time the new OS X versions came out, there was good advice from KAMAR on update/transition, and they moved to solve problems back then. i’m not seeing any issues in our (pretty much) all Apple setup with updates at the moment.

Mike

[flow in]

At some stage, we are just going to have to give up on the 'legacy' gear that doesn't work with the newer OSes. The crazy 1 year cycling means that things are out of date after 3 years though. I'm glad i'm not a hardware peripheral manufacturer, keeping up with apple must be expensive.

[Keith Craig]

2007 and 2008 machines still work with El Capitan. Some need a RAM upgrade but this is easy for the older machines.

 

 

Keith Craig BCom PGDipBus(IS) CNE
Systems Administrator 

Phone +64 9 5231060 x843 Mobile +64 (0) 21541549

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[flow in]

I was talking about whiteboards and peripherals, mostly ones that use the bluetooth protocol.

that's the only reason some staff still run 10.8 - 10.9 broke bluetooth connectivity to a number of whiteboards.

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[Mike Etheridge]

Not that expensive. Having to put in a RAM stick at $45 to get two more years out of a machine that is 6 years old plus is pretty good value considering that book value is now zero, and machines are very reliable, hardware-wise as good as new. Have gone through the total cost of ownership thing so many times now I just can’t be bothered any more. Fortunately there is so much Apple product placement in the entertainment media, I’m not getting pressure form Board etc to go PC any more.

Mike

On 18/08/2016, at 10:50 AM, flow in <i...@westlandhigh.school.nz> wrote:

At some stage, we are just going to have to give up on the 'legacy' gear that doesn't work with the newer OSes. The crazy 1 year cycling means that things are out of date after 3 years though. I'm glad i'm not a hardware peripheral manufacturer, keeping up with apple must be expensive.

I feel your pain, but I’d have to say that since I decided earlier this year to push through Mac OSX to Yosemite then El Cap on all machines 

[flow in]

mike, i'm not talking about upgrading desktops with ram.

All our student devices are upgraded and running the latest OS with extra ram as required.

Some peripherals that are used by staff to teach are not compatible with OS beyond 10.8. That's a failing of the manufacturers to write software that meets the new OS requirements. no amount of ram will fix that!

So we have the choice - be able to use the latest KAMAR filemaker instance (and why we have to rush into the latest versions all the time i don't understand) or be able to use the classroom whiteboard. 

[Mike Etheridge]

OK, got it. We have a similar issue with our Manzana 2 touch boards, but its not affecting the staff much, no-one is really using the touch capability anyway, after an initial surge of interest. Just using the nice projectors that came with them, so a rather expensive projection system really, when it’s all said and done.

Mike

[Pete Mundy]

> So we have the choice - be able to use the latest KAMAR filemaker instance (and why we have to rush into the latest versions all the time i don't understand) or be able to use the classroom whiteboard.

I reckon the writing is on the wall for these old-fashioned SMS' that aren't using web technologies!

I sit here reading all the complaints, and am so very happy my small bouquet of schools are all using one variant or another of web-based 'cloud' solution. My last (and final!) round of SMS 'upgrades' was the one where we moved away from Musac / Kamar / SchoolMaster / Kidbase / etc, etc etc... :)

Pete

[flow in]

that's pretty much what is happening with ours too, except the projectors could do with being upgraded!

[Pete Mundy]

On 18/08/2016, at 12:35 pm, Mike Etheridge <mi...@etheridge.co.nz> wrote:

OK, got it. We have a similar issue with our Manzana 2 touch boards, but its not affecting the staff much, no-one is really using the touch capability anyway, after an initial surge of interest. Just using the nice projectors that came with them, so a rather expensive projection system really, when it’s all said and done.

Now there's a theme I've commonly seen before!

In the long run, it seems that HD TVs have been proven to be the best value approach.

Pete

[Alistair Baird]

And are you happy that all the data is safe and secure and not open to hacking ? Not saying ours is, but at least we have control over who takes data away, and it's not being siphoned off for some other purpose.

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St Peters College 

p 06 354 4198

m 021 990 259

e bai...@stpeterspn.school.nz

[Mike Etheridge]

Yep, we are moving to big TVs in the smaller teaching areas. Cheap, easy to use, long lasting, better to look at. Bit like me, really.

Mike

[flow in]

lol. 

what TVs are you looking at?

[Mike Etheridge]

Splitting this off KAMAR thread.

Have used Panasonics and LGs, whatever our AV supplier can get on current bargains. He does supply and fit at a pretty good price and often has a handle on the just outgoing model which has one less bell or whistle that is irrelevant in classroom situation, but going for a very good price.

Mike

[Patrick Dunford]

Thanks for sharing that with us. As your school is an Apple school, Apples are supposed to be easier to look after than PCs? :) :) :) :) :)

[Patrick Dunford]

I understand they have been seen to be dragging the chain on the web
based version of Kamar, and what I'm hearing out there is schools may be
turning off Kamar or looking to switch to another platform if they are
that keen to go for a web based system.

I know there are options for hosting it offsite, but that is still not
the same as a web based system.

[flow in]

offsite hosting has too many bandwidth issue, imo, plus the security nightmare that is web exposed databases.

I don't have an issue with hosting onsite - servers are not expensive and backups are cheap.

I do have an issue with bad communication, changes being pushed through without consultation and general cowboy attitudes to what is now a central piece of software.

Everything cascades from that single database. we can't afford it to be messed around with without due care and diligence. I'm not sure KAMAR understands their responsibilities.

[Patrick Dunford]

I'm setting up a laptop for a teacher going on a course and the backup to make the offline copy of our database is way bigger than it needs to be.

Kamar have decided that the backup folder is a great place to put the zipped update installer which is now blowing out the size of our backups. Grrr :)

On 18/08/16 10:04, WHS Ict Technician wrote:

[flow in]

> Kamar have decided that the backup folder is a great place to put the zipped update installer which is now blowing out the size of our backups. Grrr :)

that's exactly what i'm talking about. Some people pay for offsite storage. KAMAR needs to step up their game. I wonder if they realise how critical their software is?

[Pete Mundy]

> On 18/08/2016, at 1:08 pm, Alistair Baird <bai...@stpeterspn.school.nz> wrote:
>
> And are you happy that all the data is safe and secure and not open to hacking ? Not saying ours is, but at least we have control over who takes data away, and it's not being siphoned off for some other purpose.

I'm not sure I could ever have that level of confidence, whether the SMS was local or hosted. But I'm certainly at more ease knowing that if it does get hacked, it'll be far wider spread than just my schools and it won't be me that the finger is being pointed at.

Pete

[Patrick Dunford]

It's not just they are web based and convenient for staff / parents, it
is the interoperability with other stuff that can access them over the
internet. I rather think that is the reason some vendors have been
dragging the chain, although Edge has had some issues migrating from
Musac and being able to offer similar reporting functionality. But the
fact that they have redesigned their hideous database speaks volumes of
what they are expecting to provide as customer opportunities for working
with other cloud based systems.

On 18/08/16 13:04, Pete Mundy wrote:

[Alistair Baird]

Did anyone pick up that the update also disabled the KDMS - which is now ADMS and not supported by Kamar (but freely supplied by them). Support will be at iTed's Standard Rates.

 

https://www.kamar.nz/105606.

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[flow in]

oh dear god. 

i missed that, since the name they used didn't match the name theve been using until that announcement.

if that breaks, i'm recommending we ditch kamar. do they not realise how important that is???

On 19 August 2016 at 06:03, Alistair Baird <bai...@stpeterspn.school.nz> wrote:

https://www.kamar.nz/105606

[Alistair Baird]

You just have to re-enable it, and it carries on. Found that out when a few users weren't being updated in AD. Then when we contacted Kamar, they said "The name change had the adverse side effect your technician outlined, whereby the service did need to be re-enabled again. We apologise for that oversight. No other issues have been reported as a result of the name change."

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[Matthew Strickland]

Hi all,

Just a quick question - is the association with fmp12 files and FM15 broken on PC's? I have noticed on a few installs but not my own machine.

Uninstalling FM seems to delete the association, but reinstalling in my case doesn't create one.

I've also seen some Visual C++ Redistributable issues after install as well but I think another application installation is causing this.

Matt

[Nick Steenson]

Not just you, I noticed this on a few of my machines too. Without any further investigation, I assumed it was because I installed FM15, then of course uninstalled FM14 or FM13 (as it's not a straight upgrade :-S), which broke the ftype associations. 

At a guess anyway.

Nick

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[Craig Knights]

Yes, I had to make the association myself on a new win10 install..

ta

CJK

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[Alistair Baird]

It's another 'known' problem.

https://www.kamar.nz/105592

[Patrick Dunford]

Not that I have noticed so far, it seems to be mainly something funny happened that meant their usual shortcut, which points to a Kamar.fmp12 file that is stored in a special folder on their laptop, doesn't open Kamar, it just opens Filemaker. Replacing that Kamar.fmp12 file with one from a backup fixed their problem, but it seems to happen randomly on a small percentage of upgrades.

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[Matthew Strickland]

OK, oddly in my case I always remove FM first then install the new version, and associations didn't work for me. (no reboot)

However I am guessing, remove FM, reboot, install FM may work.

It seems a rather odd bug to have on FM's part. FM15v2 maybe? 

Matt

On Friday, 19 August 2016 10:17:06 UTC+12, Alistair Baird wrote:

It's another 'known' problem.

https://www.kamar.nz/105592

On 19 August 2016 at 10:15, Craig Knights <craig....@gmail.com> wrote:

Yes, I had to make the association myself on a new win10 install..

ta

CJK

On Fri, Aug 19, 2016 at 10:14 AM, Nick Steenson <stee...@mtaspiring.school.nz> wrote:

Not just you, I noticed this on a few of my machines too. Without any further investigation, I assumed it was because I installed FM15, then of course uninstalled FM14 or FM13 (as it's not a straight upgrade :-S), which broke the ftype associations. 

At a guess anyway.

Nick

On 19 August 2016 at 10:11, Matthew Strickland <ma...@zebis.co.nz> wrote:

Hi all,

Just a quick question - is the association with fmp12 files and FM15 broken on PC's? I have noticed on a few installs but not my own machine.

Uninstalling FM seems to delete the association, but reinstalling in my case doesn't create one.

I've also seen some Visual C++ Redistributable issues after install as well but I think another application installation is causing this.

Matt

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[Kent]

Hi Patrick,

Please see the following instructions, which explain how to adjust where the file attachments are stored, so that they aren’t included in Backups

https://www.kamar.nz/105365

These steps were supplied in the 912v23 update in January 2015 when we first started storing files / attachments.  We have referred to them in the release notes again as our usage of this folder has increased - especially in the latest update.

If you can get in contact with me regarding the closing down school - I’ll see what I can do to break this check for you.

regards

Kent.

[Kent]

Hi Matt,

We have raised this with FM and it has been addressed for the v2 release.   I understand it was an issue with the software they use to make the windows installer.

You can find more information about this on our web site:  https://www.kamar.nz/105592

cheers

Kent.

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[Kent]

Hi Flow,

If you try  he...@ited.co.nz   and not  he...@ited.com  you may have more luck contacting them.

The reality is, this has never been a core part of our software - it’s always been an external product and something which was treated as a bit of a hobby.  It was nearly 10 years between development of the previous version and the new version we released last year.  It’ll probably be another 10 years before we were to touch it again.

We now have a number of third party services that are using the ‘Directory Push Service’ including N4L’s Pond, SchoolPoint, SportsGround and a few others. As well as the Active Directory Management Service itself.

I’m also aware of a couple of people who have written their own listening service for managing Active Directory, independent of ADMS.

We will continue to provide support for the Directory Push Service as we have always done.  However, now you have someone who can provide support on the AD side of things as well.

ITed have agreed to continue to supply the current version to schools free of charge - and they are currently supporting it at no cost.  ITed work in schools, have their own support and development team and I’m confident will be able to take this product further than we will.

They have already released a patch for the current version which addresses some bugs. And I know they are already working on a new 2.x version. How they release and support this is up to them.  The current 1.x version will remain free.

regards

Kent.

On 20/08/2016, at 5:21 PM, WHS Ict Technician <i...@westlandhigh.school.nz> wrote:

So Kamar has taken what is, from an ICT viewpoint, the single most important part of their software and offloaded it to a third party, whose only money stream is through support. Then that company's website and email doesn't work

i fear for the future

On Friday, August 19, 2016 at 9:38:09 AM UTC+12, WHS Ict Technician wrote:

oh dear god. 

i missed that, since the name they used didn't match the name theve been using until that announcement.

if that breaks, i'm recommending we ditch kamar. do they not realise how important that is???

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[Kent]

Hi Flow,

> Everything cascades from that single database. we can't afford it to be messed around with without due care and diligence. I'm not sure KAMAR understands their responsibilities.

One of the reasons for introducing the self-updating, is there was an issue that in a rare situation could cause data loss. As soon as we were aware of it in January, we notified schools via e-mail, our web site, forums and in KAMAR itself. Yet, despite this - we still have a number of schools using the affected version.

Anything that may result in data loss, no matter how minor the possibility is - is something we take seriously, so yes - I do understand our responsibilities.

> I do have an issue with bad communication, changes being pushed through without consultation and general cowboy attitudes to what is now a central piece of software.

To add our perspective to some points which have been made in this thread:

• All the information (except for the ADMS change) was available on our web site in advance of the update release - the majority of it over a month in advance.

• The key changes (External Storage, Client Updates) have been made known well in advance. In the case of the client update process, this was on our web site in April and demo’d at our conference in May. The external storage goes back to the start of 2015

Unfortunately, it got ‘buried’ over time and I take on board that we need to be more pro-active about reminding schools of upcoming changes. For future FM updates, we will advise via our web site and also email when available.

> So we have the choice - be able to use the latest KAMAR filemaker instance (and why we have to rush into the latest versions all the time i don't understand) or be able to use the classroom whiteboard.

The last time we required schools to update was after the release of FM13 at the end of 2013. We encourage schools to update in the mean time, especially if there is an issue they are experiencing that is resolved - but we don't require it all the time. In January this year, we advised schools via e-mail, our web site and forums that we wanted to move to the latest version. We again repeated this at our annual conference in May shortly after FM15 was released.

Apple have always been very aggressive with their OS X updates - and care less about backwards compatibility that other OS’s do. A lot of older OS API calls have been deprecated and many new functions have been added since. 10.12 due out next month will make 10.8 four major OS’s old…


Kent.

[flow in]

yes, i saw i had the address wrong, which is why i deleted the message. No response form the correct one yet.

"The reality is, this has never been a core part of our software "

no, Kent. The reality is YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND that AD integration IS a core part of your software NOW.

Times have changed. 

"I’m also aware of a couple of people who have written their own listening service for managing Active Directory, independent of ADMS."

Of course they have, with you guys failing to acknowledge how important it is, what other options do we have?

"ITed have agreed to continue to supply the current version to schools free of charge - and they are currently supporting it at no cost.  "

I don't understand this. Why would they offer free support? what is in it for them? 

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Phone: 03 755 6054 | Cell: 022 027 5107 | Fax: 03 755 6269 | i...@westlandhigh.school.nz
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[Patrick Dunford]

Only if you use that part of Kamar, we don't but I understand a lot of people with Active Directories would.

In my view it's a tossup between AD and the Google equivalent these days. I am not so sure how easy it would be to integrate all three.

On 20/08/16 17:21, WHS Ict Technician wrote:

So Kamar has taken what is, from an ICT viewpoint, the single most important part of their software and offloaded it to a third party, whose only money stream is through support. Then that company's website and email doesn't work

i fear for the future

On Friday, August 19, 2016 at 9:38:09 AM UTC+12, WHS Ict Technician wrote:

oh dear god. 

i missed that, since the name they used didn't match the name theve been using until that announcement.

if that breaks, i'm recommending we ditch kamar. do they not realise how important that is???

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[Patrick Dunford]

My understanding was 14.0.3 was a problem and 14.0.5 fixed that problem.
This update that is telling people it needs to install is a later
version than 14.0.5 and as far as I know is not essential to guard
against data loss. There are some new features apparently in 15 that may
be nice to have.

I think a reasonable compromise is a nag message that is just a message.
As far as I can recall some of the earlier versions of Kamar did this.

[Alistair Baird]

Kamar is the source of origin for our students usernames and passwords. This updates (via ADMS) AD/LDAP. We then use GADS (Google AD Service) to update to GAFE, so it's all automated.

Kamar doesn't have a GAFE update service. The N4L service is different and is for website filtering.

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[Alistair Baird]

I contacted iTed a couple of weeks ago and got the standard we haven't got any idea of development time and can't give any indication of release dates, neither could they give me any idea of when they may have that info, then lo & behold they released that patch a week later, and they didn't announce it or tell me!

On Sunday, 21 August 2016, Alistair Baird <bai...@stpeterspn.school.nz> wrote:

Kamar is the source of origin for our students usernames and passwords. This updates (via ADMS) AD/LDAP. We then use GADS (Google AD Service) to update to GAFE, so it's all automated.

Kamar doesn't have a GAFE update service. The N4L service is different and is for website filtering.

On Sunday, 21 August 2016, Patrick Dunford <kahuk...@gmail.com> wrote:

Only if you use that part of Kamar, we don't but I understand a lot of people with Active Directories would.

In my view it's a tossup between AD and the Google equivalent these days. I am not so sure how easy it would be to integrate all three.

On 20/08/16 17:21, WHS Ict Technician wrote:

So Kamar has taken what is, from an ICT viewpoint, the single most important part of their software and offloaded it to a third party, whose only money stream is through support. Then that company's website and email doesn't work

i fear for the future

On Friday, August 19, 2016 at 9:38:09 AM UTC+12, WHS Ict Technician wrote:

oh dear god. 

i missed that, since the name they used didn't match the name theve been using until that announcement.

if that breaks, i'm recommending we ditch kamar. do they not realise how important that is???

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Alistair Baird

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p 06 354 4198

m 021 990 259

e bai...@stpeterspn.school.nz

[flow in]

How do you synchronise student details across google, office365, moodle etc?

Are you doing your own exports from KAMAR, or do you feed KAMAR?

if the former, then generalising to "kamar is a central element in coordinating identity management" would be applicable. I don't care what tool is used - a schedulable vanilla export of data is fine - but for every user to be re-inventing the wheel when AD integration was once working very well is a downgrade in KAMAR performance.

Our google is kept in sync with KAMAR via AD. Kamar syncs to AD, GAM scripts catch the sync and pre-stage GAFE accounts, which then have their passwords set via the google password sync tool. GADS then completes the picture by organising and filing in all the details (i couldn't be bothered scripting GAM to do this, since it was already set up at the last change in kamar's sync method). Azure sync takes care of 365.

I'm sure other people have other methods, but i can't see how you do it without having KAMAR as the source.

Only if you use that part of Kamar, we don't but I understand a lot of people with Active Directories would.

In my view it's a tossup between AD and the Google equivalent these days. I am not so sure how easy it would be to integrate all three.\

[Tim Harper]

Hi all,

The N4L directory service is not just for N4L filtering.  The service populates Tahi and that allows SSO with N4L filtering (or you can use LDAP - we do already), Pond and other services.  See http://www.n4l.co.nz/tahi/application-catalogue/

A source of truth is essential.  For many (if not all) schools the SMS is the source of truth.  Over time I expect this will change.  Many of you will be aware of a Ministry initiative that I am a part of - see http://www.education.govt.nz/ministry-of-education/consultations-and-reviews/student-management-systems-ongoing-strategy-and-use/  In particular I'd encourage you all to read the SISI report at:  http://www.education.govt.nz/assets/Documents/Ministry/consultations/SISI-Report-FINAL.pdf

In time I expect the SISI common core database will become a cross-school student-centric source of truth that can be used for lots of things.

The SISI report should also be read in conjunction with Stuart Wakefield's (Stuart is the Ministry of Education CIO) presentation about the future state digital strategy that MoE has.  I have attached a PDF of Stuart's presentation to this email.  It is in the public domain.

In the mean time we need to work with what we have.  For my school this means that we use Kamar to prepare a file of users daily that we then process ourselves using a script to populate our identity database - we called it VENIM (Virtual Education Network Identity Management) and this is a mySQL database of all users that allows us to manage passwords, populate other providers and even restrict our users to one domain login at a time (ie kids can't share their credentials because if someone else is using their username then they can't!)  VENIM populates AD via a script and used to populate Google too - but when Google changed things we decided to use just GADS/GAPS instead rather than rewire our code.  (Previously the code integrated with MUSAC Classic very tightly and that was actually better than the way Kamar does it as Kamar requires the use of a .csv file that Kamar exports.  I really dislike csv.)  And I have to say that interacting with AD via LDAP is fairly trivial - I'm a bit surprised that Kamar are not supporting this as a core part of the SMS.

We made a deliberate decision not to use Kamar's AD synch when we first started with Kamar 2 years ago.  The risk was seen as too big to change how identities were managed.  We needed to guarantee the existing usernames and passwords - so using the adage "If it ain't broke don't fix it" we changed the source of truth to use the csv file that Kamar makes rather than directly interrogate the database.

regards,

Tim Harper


Phone 03 443 5167 (messages cannot be left on this number)
Mobile 027 443 1236

t...@mtaspiring.school.nz
www.mtaspiring.school.nz

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[flow in]

not a promising start:

[Pete Mundy]

On 21/08/2016, at 6:30 pm, Tim Harper <t...@mtaspiring.school.nz> wrote:

In particular I'd encourage you all to read the SISI report at:  http://www.education.govt.nz/assets/Documents/Ministry/consultations/SISI-Report-FINAL.pdf

It's a shame that the ministry site's IPv6 is broken:

MGIM:Desktop ~$ wget http://www.education.govt.nz/assets/Documents/Ministry/consultations/SISI-Report-FINAL.pdf

--2016-08-21 19:04:10--  http://www.education.govt.nz/assets/Documents/Ministry/consultations/SISI-Report-FINAL.pdf
Resolving www.education.govt.nz... 2a02:e980:1b::d5, 103.28.251.213
Connecting to www.education.govt.nz|2a02:e980:1b::d5|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 

(no response is ever received, so eventually I fell back to IPv4 to get it)

If there is anyone on-list who is empowered to fix it, feel free to reach out to me for a packet capture or further testing etc.

Pete

[flow in]

i've been trying to avoid .csv files - we use KAMAR for staff passwords too and I don't want to be able to see them. 

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Flow In, MA hons Cantab, MSc | ICT Technician | WESTLAND HIGH SCHOOL

Phone: 03 755 6054 | Cell: 022 027 5107 | Fax: 03 755 6269 | i...@westlandhigh.school.nz
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[Alistair Baird]

email he...@ited.co,nz direct. That's what I did.

On 19 August 2016 at 09:41, flow in <i...@westlandhigh.school.nz> wrote:

not a promising start:

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[Alistair Baird]

Synchronizing details across Google/Moodle - as we use ADMS, this populates AD immediately their is a password and/or username change. As this is a direct poke into AD, there are no csv files lurking anywhere with passwords. We sync accounts to Google via script twice daily, or I have an  on-demand shortcut if required, nornally only takes a couple of minutes. This only syncs account names/group memberships.  Google and Moodle are set up via Single Sign On thru Wellington Loop which verifies the password back to our AD, so the passwords never leave our on-site server. We don't use O365. Thus password changes are effected immediately from the source of truth - Kamar.

So our internet connection, AD and Kamar are critical path.

On 21 August 2016 at 15:22, flow in <i...@westlandhigh.school.nz> wrote:

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[Patrick Dunford]

I believe we must have exported the passwords from Kamar then imported them to AD, as a one time step. Therefore there is no synchronisation required from Kamar to AD as a live system.

[flow in]

do you not have it set up so that you can reset passwords in KAMAR and have it travel through all systems?

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Flow In, MA hons Cantab, MSc | ICT Technician | WESTLAND HIGH SCHOOL

Phone: 03 755 6054 | Cell: 022 027 5107 | Fax: 03 755 6269 | i...@westlandhigh.school.nz
PO Box 154, 140 Hampden Street, Hokitika 7842
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[Patrick Dunford]

Sounds like when I had a pile of Powershell scripts for user account management direct from AD to GAFE. Changes in Google authentication made it a nightmare authenticating the PS module to AD, so now the scripts just do everything on the AD side, to be replicated by GADs.

SISI looks like what has been needed for a long time in SMS - the real questions are over MOE access to the data, as mentioned in the summary.

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[flow in]

i agree, SISI looks like the answer if KAMAR doesn't want to recognize their role as a source of truth. 

The ministry forcing them to be that source to a central database, then using that central database to sync AD and GAFE and whatever does address the issue, by putting an extra step in the process. Rather like using a hammer to crack a nut, though.

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Flow In, MA hons Cantab, MSc | ICT Technician | WESTLAND HIGH SCHOOL

Phone: 03 755 6054 | Cell: 022 027 5107 | Fax: 03 755 6269 | i...@westlandhigh.school.nz
PO Box 154, 140 Hampden Street, Hokitika 7842
http://www.westlandhigh.school.nz/

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[Alistair Baird]

I'm against SISI having usernames/passwords. I didn't see anything in there about it doing that.

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[Keith Craig]

Agreed – I would be reluctant to have these going outside. Usernames/passwords are an internal admin issue. There may be a separate “Realme” style login to give students access to the data held by the ministry.

 

Even in “The Schools Cloud initiative” (slide 10 of Digital Strategy) point 1: “A standardised but not centralised approach”. This suggests that individual schools would control access to the cloud based services.

 

Regards

 

Keith

 

Keith Craig BCom PGDipBus(IS) CNE
Systems Administrator 

Phone +64 9 5231060 x843 Mobile +64 (0) 21541549

 

From: <techies-f...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Alistair Baird <bai...@stpeterspn.school.nz>
Reply-To: "techies-f...@googlegroups.com" <techies-f...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Monday, 22 August 2016 2:14 pm
To: "techies-f...@googlegroups.com" <techies-f...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [techies-for-schools] Kamar updare message !@#$%^&*

 

I'm against SISI having usernames/passwords. I didn't see anything in there about it doing that.

On 22 August 2016 at 13:12, flow in <i...@westlandhigh.school.nz> wrote:

i agree, SISI looks like the answer if KAMAR doesn't want to recognize their role as a source of truth. 

The ministry forcing them to be that source to a central database, then using that central database to sync AD and GAFE and whatever does address the issue, by putting an extra step in the process. Rather like using a hammer to crack a nut, though.

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St Peters College 

p 06 354 4198

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[flow in]

so KAMAR is back to the source of truth that doesn't want to acknowledge its importance.

[Alistair Baird]

What other SMS systems have this functionality? Etaps/ MUSAC online ? anyone ?

On 22 August 2016 at 14:30, flow in <i...@westlandhigh.school.nz> wrote:

so KAMAR is back to the source of truth that doesn't want to acknowledge its importance.

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[Kent]

Flow,

I’m confused how you have gone from ITed taking over development of ADMS   to  KAMAR the SMS no longer being the ‘source of truth’…

What we are saying is we are focusing on being the SMS and are leaving things like Active Directory Management to those that work in that area.

Kent.

[Julian Davison]

PCSchool

On Mon, Aug 22, 2016 at 2:34 PM, Alistair Baird <bai...@stpeterspn.school.nz> wrote:

What other SMS systems have this functionality? Etaps/ MUSAC online ? anyone ?

On 22 August 2016 at 14:30, flow in <i...@westlandhigh.school.nz> wrote:

so KAMAR is back to the source of truth that doesn't want to acknowledge its importance.

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[flow in]

Hi Kent,

we haven't done that.

I think you are missing the point

[Kent]

Okay, let me state things from our perspective.

- KAMAR being the SMS is the ‘source of truth’ in terms of the student and staff data.

- KAMAR’s Directory Services is part of KAMAR and will remain so.   We will continue to develop and supported it.

- This service is used by a number of third party tools including ADMS, N4L’s Pond, SportsGround, SchoolPoint, CareersCentral, etc.

- Anyone can write their own listening service. It’s documented on our web site with a very simple sample php file showing how to do so.

- ADMS is a stand alone application, that runs as a service on one of your Domain Controllers, listens for the push notification from KAMAR’s Directory Service and handles it appropriately.   This is what ITed have taken over development / support of.

Kent.

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[Patrick Dunford]

The biggest advantages to schools are
- swapping SMSs and interchanging student data
- the other things that can hook onto the data.

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[Patrick Dunford]

Actually I think the SSO stuff is the answer to that.

On 22/08/16 13:12, flow in wrote:

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[Tim Harper]

Hi all,

At Mt Aspiring we have got over the issue of the Filemaker client needing to be updated on different computers by simply not running the client on a user's own computer.  The client is instead run as a remote desktop application (RDA) from a separate server.  

This has the advantages of:

• staff use the same process either at school or from home to access Kamar - they use the RDA app that we supply them with.
• RDA works on Windows and OSX
• no issues with oddball OS variants on staff or home computers (like the OSX bluetooth issue that Flow mentioned)
• no exposure of the FM ports to the internet
• our AD security is enforced to verify users
• staff only see the published apps and not the whole server
• we only have to install the client on one computer (the RDA server)
• all users can operate the client at "server speed" not "desktop speed" and this gives them a huge performance benefit.  Eg a report that used to take 90 seconds to generate on a local desktop takes only 30 seconds via RDA.
• users do not have to cache the FM database over the WAN if they are accessing from home - instead the client caches at LAN speeds in excess of 1GB/s
• Things like email from Kamar work better because we can all use the N4L relay with no issues.  Otherwise if a user was trying to send email say from their client at home and they did not have a Spark connection they would have been seen as off-net by the relay server and thus denied sending privileges.

The disadvantage is cost - we have to purchase remote desktop licences separately from Microsoft each year.

I should also declare that we have placed both the Kamar server and the RDA server in an external data centre too.  There is an IPSec tunnel between the data centre and school and we use that to keep our IAM system running, do server backups with ShadowProtect, link to our AD etc.  The data centre is also off-net with regard to the N4L mail relay server too so we got around that by running hmail locally and having the hosted servers use the IPSec tunnel to send email to hmail which then passes it to N4L.  When we set up the actual Kamar server we went directly to FM Server 15 -  that had an issue that meant we had to add a line to our reporting scripts to flush the cache for each report as otherwise all reports were generated in the name of the same teacher!

Would any of you do that to Kamar?  Love to hear your thoughts.

regards,

Tim Harper


Phone 03 443 5167 (messages cannot be left on this number)
Mobile 027 443 1236

t...@mtaspiring.school.nz
www.mtaspiring.school.nz

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[Julian Davison]

I think the 'publish as RDA' approach has more than sufficient advantages to out-weigh the cost.

It is a different style of application publication and management (Remote Desktop has some of it's own quirks and issues) but the 'platform independence' alone is worth it. There's a slightly different set of pros/cons if you're not already using Windows, which means it still may not be the best solution for all situations, but it's well worth considering.

Additionally, it's not unique in anyway to Kamar. Other desktop-based SMS systems also lend themselves to this kind of setup. It's a slight extension to the (seemingly fairly typical) approach with old-school MUSAC of running it on a 'terminal server' that people remote desktop into. There's at least one NZ school which has gone down the RDA route with PCSchool as well.

Locally hosted or remote is a separate question, but as Tim neatly illustrates, either is fairly easily workable.

J,

[J B]

We used this exact method for years with MUSAC successfully allowing remote access happily over ADSL and an actual reliable way to access it.  Remote app shortcuts can also be pushed out via group policy as RDA and RDG (pipes it over ssl) offer to make an msi for you. Worked really well till we could move to a company who were responsive to the schools needs and offered a web based system.

 

Sent from my Windows 10 phone

 

From: Julian Davison
Sent: Tuesday, 23 August 2016 9:31 AM
To: techies-f...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [techies-for-schools] Kamar updare message !@#$%^&*

 

I think the 'publish as RDA' approach has more than sufficient advantages to out-weigh the cost.

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[Simon - OBHS]

Wow, what a thread!

Just want to give my feedback or 2 cents...

The forceful-ish-ness of the filemaker client, not with out its faults, made my life easier. When updates come out i put the installers in a location that staff can access and i make step by step illustrated instructions on how to update. Surprisingly though a lot of teachers can't follow instructions (go figure), no matter how simple.

Anywho, the auto update for the most part worked fine for the majority of staff, there was probably around a dozen that i had to manually.

I'm sure things will improve come the next update.

The AD sync thing, for us is not an issue as we have never used it. i used to just export a csv and run a vbscript which i had been using for years with MUSAC (shudders every time that name is mentioned).

Over the past few years since we had KAMAR, ive created a single powershell script which works in conjunction with the KAMAR directory sync xml output. Things need to be tidied up, but it runs well and manages the entire life cycle of the student's account. from creating the account, keeping it up to date, including name changes (it will update any folders to the correct name etc..) moving OUs (start of year rollover) creation and management of groups including class groups. when the student is marked as a leaver, it runs a process to remove from all groups and puts into a leavers OU and adds an expiry date that when hit will fully remove the account, archive the student's home directory and remove and profile folders on the server. It will also send an email to their student email account advising that their account will expire in so many days and to gather what data they want to keep.

This has been a long time in the making and ive been running it all year manually every morning for testing and it hasn't missed a beat yet. I have also been meaning to get around to re-writing in C# as a self contained windows service.

Following from this i just use GADS to sync with Google, its a great tool works, well don't see why to reinvent the wheel here. And Azure Sync takes care of Office 365.

If anyone is interested in the script, feel free to get in touch. simon....@obhs.school.nz

As for the remote app thing, i put two shortcuts on staff desktops "KAMAR (Local)" and "KAMAR (Home)". Kamar local, as you would expect just runs the loca filemaker instance where as the the "Home" shortcut runs the RDA from the staff RDS server. We do not open ports out to the net for kamar (nor do we pinhole remote desktop ports, but thats another debate). Being we are a Microsoft school, we use Microsoft DirectAccess which works great, very seamless for our staff, its just like being on the LAN, just a little slower, hence running kamar at home this way.

The other benefit for some users with having these two shortcuts, is that they can run two instances of kamar at once.

And just to jump on the bandwagon... my only gripe with KAMAR at the moment is that i can't automate pushing password changes captured in AD back into KAMAR. I can capture the password change just like Google Apps Password Sync does, there just isn't an API to push the password change back in.

[Nick Steenson]

I'd LOVE to push a password change back into KAMAR...

Nick

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[Kevin Whelan]

Great post Simon
I would love your script or better yet the service but am not convinced my skill levels wouldn't get me into trouble altering it. I have frustrations with the existing ADMS as it is now

As they have just announced that they are going to charge for adms from next year It looks like Kamar have set someone up to now charge for an essential service and made a nice little side project earner.
You should, or a group of similarly invested and talented on here develop your own in competition and we can tell them where to stick there ADMS.

[Julian Davison]

https://github.com is where it goes. Open source project to enhance the system for all schools, along with built in collaborative updates.

(Assuming there are no IP issues, which I'm presuming is true since it's being offered :)

[Craig Knights]

Tried several things last night remotely to fix the problem where the fmp12 file association gets lost with the upgrade to FM15 client.

It's on a Windows 2008 Terminal server, so the file associations have got messed up on user profiles..

Anyone got a nice fix?

I've currently got the users opening Filemaker itself, then browsing to the Kamar.fmp12

ta

CJK

On Wed, Aug 24, 2016 at 9:59 AM, Kevin Whelan <kwhel...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Kevin Whelan]

We do you RDA for offsite but isn't the point that the government set what is required and control who and what SMS software is certified and let the vendors build in Filemaker with all its dinosaur issues like clients

Why havn't they forced them to rewrite or recommended browser based SMS by now.
 tails wags the dog and we are all suffering because of it

[Kevin Whelan]

theres a registry fix on the kamar site, just need to import the missing associations

[Julian Davison]

Because the ministry accreditation process was a one-off and not an ongoing evaluation of SMS'.

Or at least it was, it's possible they've resurrected the concept, but certainly, while additional requirements were to be created (around things like the yearly returns and interop) the process was finished.

Ultimately, it's not the Ministry's job to convince a software provider to 'write their stuff properly' (rewrite, migrate to browser base) it's the customers. If Kamar has turned out not to be the appropriate software for the job, switch. Yes it's a major undertaking, but it's either worth it or it isn't. If there's no better alternative then you're stuck waiting regardless. No amount of pushing from the Ministry will change that.

There are alternatives...

[Craig Knights]

thanks Kevin, I couldn't find that last night for some weird reason...  

it's here if anyone else goes looking..  https://www.kamar.nz/105592

many thanks,

CJK

[Patrick Dunford]

Or there's Find another SMS as an option too...

A big deal but if you don't like what your vendor is offering, there are other systems out there.

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[Julian Davison]

Many. I've not met one yet that did things exactly the way I wanted, however. Customised, or customisable solutions are always a welcome addition - particularly if they're not 'hacks'. In this case Simon's system works with documented features of the SMS, rather than a backdoor reverse-engineered approach (which have their use, but not quite so attractive to the general population due to their inherent fragility)

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[Patrick Dunford]

Hence this SISI thing, it's what people on these forums have advocated for years.

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[Kevin Whelan]

alternative suggestions please, we've only ever seen musac and kamar

[J B]

Www.Etap.co.nz

 

Not the prettiest but at least they consider the schools needs to be important and worth working towards unlike certain other vendors.

 

Sent from my Windows 10 phone

 

From: Kevin Whelan
Sent: Wednesday, 24 August 2016 10:42 AM
To: Techies for schools
Subject: Re: [techies-for-schools] Kamar updare message !@#$%^&*

 

alternative suggestions please, we've only ever seen musac and kamar

[Andrew Godfrey]

To get around the association issue, we're pushing out a new shortcut pointing at <"C:\Program Files\FileMaker\FileMaker Pro 15\FileMaker Pro.exe" fmp://***.***.***.***/kamar.fmp12>

_______________________________________

 

Andrew Godfrey  |  Network Manager

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[Craig Knights]

that reg fix seemed to work great.

ta

CJK

[Nick Steenson]

I've deployed a startup batch script in GPO in 2 lines, assigns FType .fmp12=FMDBfile, then ASSOC FMDBfile="%PROGRAMFILES%/Filemaker/ etc etc.

If someone hasn't updated to FM15 yet it just fails, which is no biggie, and leaves the association as it is.

Of course this was before shifting to our entirely RemoteApp approach, but the RemoteApp server ran the script and sorted itself out nicely.

Nick

[Tim Harper]

There is also http://www.pcschool.net which is used by a few secondary schools. Eg Bream Bay, Avondale etc.

Based fom Australia.  Is already SIF compliant so it will work with SISI when that happens.

Regards Tim

(On the road in Taranaki)

[Julian Davison]

Christchurch Boys' High School also use PCSchool.

In terms of recommendations of an alternative, the question is really what are you unsatisfied with about your current SMS..?

On Wed, Aug 24, 2016 at 11:47 AM, Tim Harper <t...@mtaspiring.school.nz> wrote:

There is also http://www.pcschool.net which is used by a few secondary schools. Eg Bream Bay, Avondale etc.

Based fom Australia.  Is already SIF compliant so it will work with SISI when that happens.

Regards Tim

(On the road in Taranaki)

On 24/08/2016 10:46 AM, "J B" <sensat...@hotmail.com> wrote:

>

> Www.Etap.co.nz
>
>  
>
> Not the prettiest but at least they consider the schools needs to be important and worth working towards unlike certain other vendors.
>
>  
>
> Sent from my Windows 10 phone
>
>  
>
> From: Kevin Whelan
> Sent: Wednesday, 24 August 2016 10:42 AM
> To: Techies for schools
> Subject: Re: [techies-for-schools] Kamar updare message !@#$%^&*
>
>  
>
> alternative suggestions please, we've only ever seen musac and kamar
>
> On Wednesday, August 24, 2016 at 10:11:35 AM UTC+12, Julian Davison wrote:

>>
>> Because the ministry accreditation process was a one-off and not an ongoing evaluation of SMS'.
>> Or at least it was, it's possible they've resurrected the concept, but certainly, while additional requirements were to be created (around things like the yearly returns and interop) the process was finished.
>>
>> Ultimately, it's not the Ministry's job to convince a software provider to 'write their stuff properly' (rewrite, migrate to browser base) it's the customers. If Kamar has turned out not to be the appropriate software for the job, switch. Yes it's a major undertaking, but it's either worth it or it isn't. If there's no better alternative then you're stuck waiting regardless. No amount of pushing from the Ministry will change that.
>> There are alternatives...
>>
>>
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[Patrick Dunford]

Well these guys, they can't even have a forgot password link on their website that actually works, instead of directing you to their support home page.

[Pete Mundy]

 24/08/2016, at 10:46 am, J B <sensat...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Www.Etap.co.nz

Not the prettiest but at least they consider the schools needs to be important and worth working towards unlike certain other vendors.

Seconded. The UI looks like something built in the Claris Homepage era and displayed in Netscape, but of the schools I support, the 3 that use eTap have each individually reported back to me that they are very impressed with eTap's responsiveness to requests for changes or fixes.

One of these schools had even moved over to another web-based SMS last term after a smooth sales pitch to the principal, only to about-face and 'vote with their feet' by changing back to eTap again this term!

I had no bearing on any of these decisions. I help them implement whatever they decide is best, and I have other schools using other systems. But it sure is interesting to listen to the feedback from the coalface, and I've never had much positive feedback from the others.

Pete

[Tracy Briscoe]

The SMS’s approved for Electronic Roll Returns are: Assembly, eTap, KAMAR, MUSAC Classic (Student Manager), MUSAC edge, PCSchool, Synergetic, LINC-ED (https://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/data-services/collecting-information/school-sms-roll-returns).

 

Just over a dozen of the independent schools use Synergetic (http://synergetic.net.au/), which would be more accurately called a School Management System, rather a Student Management System, as it covers not just student data, but also HR, Payroll, Creditors, Debtors, General Ledger, School shop(s), Donors, plus more.  It: uses MS SQL for its database, which makes it very easy to query; has both a windows desktop client and a web client; and allows schools to add their own customizations in.  The down sides include: cost – it’s not cheap; service/responsiveness from the manufactures – though Synergetic have acknowledged this as an issue and are working to improve; It don’t have the nice NCEA reports that apparently Kamar has.

 

-Tracy B

 

 

From: techies-f...@googlegroups.com [mailto:techies-f...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Kevin Whelan
Sent: Wednesday, 24 August 2016 10:42 a.m.
To: Techies for schools <techies-f...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [techies-for-schools] Kamar updare message !@#$%^&*

 

alternative suggestions please, we've only ever seen musac and kamar

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[Patrick Dunford]

Here is an actual comment about SISI which is worth taking note of, because the Ministry isn't always right.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/education/news/article.cfm?c_id=35&objectid=11700525