Update November 9th 2012
The information below has been superceded by the events of October 31st / November 1st.
If you have found this page, then you may be experiencing problems with internet access, email or both. Maybe we can help you.
Please call us on 01455 556100 or email me mike.mcsharry@systemed.co.uk
Regards
Mike McSharry
Capita have prepared quotes for schools on their (Capita’s) best understanding of the schools situation. You can see from some of the information below why it is difficult for Capita to give very accurate information.
In the last two days I have helped 5 schools to develop (with Capita’s help) the correct configuration for their school. This has helped them save many thousands of pounds.
Would your school like to have the quotes prepared more accurately? If you’d like me to sit down with you please drop me a comment, using the form at the bottom of this page. Comments will not be shown publicly until I’ve approved them, so you can use the comments box as a way of contacting us in full confidence.
Questions from a Leicestershire school and some answers
We work with many primary schools in Leicestershire and received this email from an ICT co-ordinator in a local primary school. His comments are in plain text and my replies are in italics.
If anyone from Capita (or elsewhere) would like to add any further comments or correct any of my answers I would welcome their ideas and will happily edit this web page.
| “I own the school’s domain name.EMBC currently host my domain. EMBC currently host my website. EMBC currently hold, filter and forward my school e-mail. Does EMBC need to retain my domain to be able to look after my e-mail? If I put an exchange server in the school does this remain true? Who holds the domain?” |
In our experience with commercial installations, including our own, the most effective email solution is when the organisation holding your connection is either the same company that holds your domain registration or they are prepared to work closely together. It may be more cost effective to consider the facilities offered by OpenHive Mail. Many schools are looking for shared diaries (for example room bookings and equipment) or sharing their own diaries / mail (this is where the deputy head, for example, can access all email and diaries on the .sch.uk domain for all staff). Some of these features may already be part of the OpenHive mail
| Would I still be able to use the address ending in @*****…sch.uk? |
Yes
| Can staff retrieve e-mail on an internal exchange server from anywhere with an internet connection? |
(I’m assuming this question relates to the Exchange question above)
Yes – this would require your internet provider to allow access to your server on controlled ports. This is exactly how I made this webpage. I received the email on my Outlook Web Access using a web browser linking to our own server
| Would they have to set up outlook to do this or is there a simpler way? |
They can use Outlook or a web browser or both – as I do
| We have a lot of e-mails we don’t want to lose (head and deputy). Is it easy to forward/transfer them to an exchange server from EMBC? |
This will take a small amount of work and planning. Best to clear out old rubbish mails first.
| Who would filter the e-mails? We would only have staff, admin and possible a class e-mail or two. |
At present the embc service does filter .sch.uk domains where these domains are hosted on exchange servers in schools. This will continue to be the case where the domain is registered with Capita
| I can host my website with anyoneIf EMBC hold the domain name and look after the e-mail would I just need to redirect EMBC to the website? (currently EMBC redirect to wordpress.com) |
Technically, the embc domain record does not redirect to wordpress.com – in your case it looks like there is a redirect from your Capita hosted site to WordPress. Capita are (quite rightly) regarding your site as being hosted by them as shown below. In this case you would need to pay the £350 per year charge. A better option would be to have the www record pointed to your web host. I don’t think this can happen with wordpress.com as I don’t think automattic (who own wordpress) can provide a fixed IP for a wordpress.com domain. A better solution would be to migrate to a wordpress.org domain like we do – we can offer this service.
The nest few lines show a quick test to show where your website is hosted
C:\Users\mike>tracert www.***********.leics.sch.uk
Tracing route to web2.embc.uk.com [92.43.65.24]
We then carried out further investigation of a few other school web sites under the control of a leading schools web design company. Their description of their service is “It’s a school web design, CMS (content management system) and hosting service”.
School A
C:\Users\mike>tracert www.******.leics.sch.uk
Tracing route to www.xxxxxxxx.com [aa.bb.cc.dd]
In this case the website is held at the web hosting company and this school should be using the DNS service option with Capita.
School B
C:\Users\mike>tracert www.*****.leics.sch.uk
Tracing route to web2.embc.uk.com [92.43.65.24]
Unless I’ve got this wrong, this school is paying the web company for hosting AND will need to also pay Capita for hosting. Not a satisfactory situation for a small primary school who are desperate to make the best use of limited budgets.
| If I look after the e-mail, does this change? |
No – the domain would be registered with Capita and the web site (www. Part of the domain would be pointed to your web site)
| With Impero I am getting a certain degree of Webfiltering. Is this enough to dispense with EMBC Filtering? Would I need an additional black box if I dispensed with EMBC Filtering? |
Impero is a fantastic product but I believe that their filtering is a powerful extra feature of their system and Impero has not been designed to be a filtering system.