ICT Solutions News Desk

We have been advised of some essential infrastructure upgrades that will be carried out.

This will involve work at the following exchange(s):

December 10th (From 21:00 hours) - December 11th (Until 05:00 hours) 

* Dereham

* Gorleston

* Hunstanton

* Norwich North

It does mean that during this period, any Schools connected to these exchanges may lose internet connection. This should equate to no more than 30 minutes and will occur between the times shown above. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.

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

We have been advised of some essential infrastructure upgrades that will be carried out.

This will involve work at the following exchange(s):

December 3rd (From 21:00 hours) - December 4th (Until 05:00 hours) 

* Cromer

* North Walsham

* Swaffham

* Thetford

It does mean that during this period, any Schools connected to these exchanges may lose internet connection. This should equate to no more than 30 minutes and will occur between the times shown above. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.

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

As per previous years, there will be a Change Freeze taking place over the Christmas and New Year period (December 16^th 2022 at 17:00 to January 6^th 2023 at 17:00), to ensure the stability of systems and network for everyone.

Only changes deemed an emergency or if a change is necessary, because of a major outage, will be implemented. We would therefore advise you to submit any changes to Routers/Firewalls well in advance of December 16^th to ensure they are completed.

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

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

Services Affected:                           Schools Internet, email and any service accessed via the internet

Services Not Affected:                    All other school systems which do not access the internet

When:                                               16th December 2022 - 3rd January 2023

What You Need To Do:

If there is no alternative to powering off the communications cabinet and core equipment then please contact the Service Desk to advise us in advance

For More Information:

Please contact the Service Desk on 01603 475603 or ict@norfolk.gov.uk

Further to Microsoft's communication in August 2021 (MC278815), apps and services support for Internet Explorer 11 has ceased.

Beginning mid-January, 2023, access to SharePoint Online and OneDrive from Internet Explorer 11 will be hard blocked for all users. Users should access these services through a modern browser, such as Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, FireFox etc.

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

Microsoft have announced that Office 2013 will no longer be supported after 11th April, 2023. We recommend that anyone running this version starts upgrading to a later version of Office, such as Microsoft 365 Apps, which includes the Office apps you are familiar with (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook). Microsoft 365 Apps are designed to receive regular updates and will help you stay current by getting security updates and the latest features.

Further details can be found at - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/announcements/office-2013-skype-business-end-of-support

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

ICT Solutions are pleased to announce the launch of a new 4 year Refresh and Enhancement Programme, which can act as a one stop shop to manage all your ICT Requirements.

This includes:

We recognise that with the constraints on budgets, not all of these items can be dealt with at once and being able to plan your budget for such items over a 4 year period is beneficial for managing finances, so that a full roll-out of services can be achieved.

If you would like to learn more, please visit here

For more information, please contact the Service Desk on 01603 475603 (option 2) or ict@norfolk.gov.uk

We have been notified of an upgrade from Google Hangouts to Google Chat, commencing Tuesday, November 1^st, 2022. Should you try and access Hangouts after this time you will be redirected to Google Chat

If you have any conversations that you would like to keep a record of, we recommend you copy & paste them to a Google Doc or similar document as soon as you can. Furthermore, from January 1^st, 2023 all Google Hangouts conversations will be deleted by Google.

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