ICT Solutions News Desk

We recently went out to tender for a telephony framework for Schools and Academies to purchase from to give you confidence in upgrading your telephone system, before the PSTN switch off in January 2027.

Each supplier will have had due diligence carried out on them and met certain standards for technical, financial, health and safety and pricing. More details can be found at the following link on our website - https://www.ictsolutions.norfolk.gov.uk/article/1879/Telephony

If you haven’t considered migrating away from your PSTN service, now is the ideal time to do so. We understand that Openreach will be increasing prices significantly over the coming months for their services and although ten months may seem a little way off, their resources will need to be factored in meeting the deadline.

For further information, please contact the Service Desk on 01603 475603 or ict@norfolk.gov.uk

We would like to remind you to remain vigilant if checking emails over the Easter holiday period. Cyber security is frequently in the news and there have been a number of high-profile ones in recent months impacting large companies, schools and councils. 

Phishing is when attackers attempt to trick users into doing 'the wrong thing', such as clicking a bad link that will download malware or direct them to a suspicious website. Attacks can install ransomware, sabotage systems, or steal intellectual property and money.

It can be conducted via a text message, social media, or by phone, but the term 'phishing' is mainly used to describe attacks that arrive by email. These types of emails can reach millions of users directly and hide amongst the huge number of emails that busy users receive. 

If something doesn’t feel right, it’s usually because it isn’t. Please think before you click!

We would like to ask schools to refrain from turning off the power to the core networking equipment over the forthcoming Easter holiday period. Core networking equipment includes routers, switches, and servers, often in a wall or floor cabinet. These devices are monitored by ourselves, Rydal and Schools Broadband and turning off the power results in false alarms. This could potentially result in you incurring a charge for an engineer visit.

Please can we also kindly ask those schools who house LoRaWAN gateways to leave these powered on over the holidays, as they serve the community. 

If there is no alternative to powering off the equipment, because of planned work, for example, please advise us in advance.

For more information, please contact the Service Desk on 01603 475603 or ict@norfolk.gov.uk

To maintain a high-quality and reliable experience for live Captions & Subtitles in the Microsoft 365 PowerPoint app, Microsoft is upgrading the backend service that supports this capability. As part of this improvement, older Office client versions will no longer be supported. Updating to the minimum required PowerPoint version ensures continued accessibility, performance, and reliability.

When this will happen

Upgrade by the end of September 2026

Who is affected

Organizations using Microsoft 365 PowerPoint app (Win32 or Mac)

Users running PowerPoint versions earlier than:

• Windows (Win32): 16.0.19426.20218
• macOS: 16.103.1207.4

What will happen

Users on unsupported versions will lose access to Captions & Subtitles after the listed dates.

There is no change for users on supported versions.

What you can do to prepare

Review PowerPoint client versions across your organization (Windows and Mac).

Update Office clients to:

• Windows (Win32): 16.0.19426.20218 or later
• macOS: 16.103.1207.4 or later

For more information, please contact the Service Desk on 01603 475603 or email ict@norfolk.gov.uk

The following only applies to users who use Microsoft Teams via a web browser. It does not affect Desktop and mobile Teams clients.

To maintain security, performance, and long-term compatibility, Microsoft Teams on the web will require modern browser standards. Beginning May 15th, 2026, Teams on the web will only be supported on browsers that are compliant with ECMAScript 2022 (ES2022).

When this will happen

• Now through May 14th, 2026: Users on unsupported browsers will see reminder banners.
• Beginning May 15th, 2026: Teams on the web will be blocked on non-compliant browsers.

All currently supported versions of Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Safari are ECMAScript 2022 (ES2022) compliant. Browsers that are out of vendor support should be assumed non-compliant. A browser is considered “out of vendor support” when its publisher no longer provides updates or security fixes; these browsers should be assumed unsupported for Teams on the web.

For more information, please contact the Service Desk on 01603 475603 or email ict@norfolk.gov.uk