Netop School 6 to Netop Vision Pro - Deployment Headache

[CCTI]

Hello everyone,

I'm having an issue on understanding how to deploy Netop Vision Pro in the my environment.

A little history is needed:

In my school, I have more then 30 class. In the past year, I discovered Netop Pack N Deploy, which was a real big time saver. What I did was install Netop Teacher on a computer, configure the teacher the way I want it, then use netop pack n deploy to create a msi/mst with my teacher configuration file. Then, I would do the same with a student.

This gave me the following result: All student in each class connect automaticly to a specified netop teacher, without having them to select the class or accept a request. The teacher just had to open netop teacher, which started automatically a classroom that each computer connected to.

I only had 1 teacher and 1 student package. Since all class are isolated on separate vlan, I didn't had any problem with multiple class having the same name.

I used norton ghost solution suite to clone 1 computer to all the other in the same classroom. Teacher and Student have the same image, but the same image isn't used in different classroom due to different software. With NGSS, I used a task called "execute command" which run the msiexec.exe /q with netop msi and mst, student or teacher depending on the computer.

Now, with Netop Vision Pro, I can't find a way to do this. It seems I need to install the teacher, configure it manually, deploy to the student and have them select to connect to the class. Since I have more then 30 class and that I clone them everyweek, it seems like a full time job.

I need to have the teacher class to auto-accept all student that are already logged into windows, student should connect without having them to select the classroom they have to join.

Thanks

[Dean Johnson]

Dear Sir or Madam,

Vision's analog to the Pack 'n Deploy application is built into the teacher program and can be accessed from the classroom management screen by clicking install/remove. It allows you to remotely deploy the software from the teacher to the students if you've sufficient rights.

If you wish to create a MSI the executable installer allows you to do this, and embeds the answers to the installation prompts into the MSI which means you don't need a MST file.

The thing it doesn't do however, is allow you to associate students with a given teacher. Vision7 connectivity is different from School6's connectivity in that the teacher chooses which students to connect to unless you use 'open enrollment'(where the students pick their teacher). The students are not initiating the converstaions, the teacher does. In your situation, you could mass deploy the students as part of your image and then configure each teacher to only connect to the students that are a part of their classroom(s).

If you wish to find out more about the above options, feel free to create a case and we can provide more details regarding automating this.

[CCTI]

Can the teacher and student be install on the same machine?

I saw how it works by trying it in a lab, and saw that I can create a class with all student in it and when the teacher select "start class", all computer that were selected in the class start. Is there a way to save this class and have it into the installation package?

[Dean Johnson]

There is no way to build a classroom defininition into the install at this time. You can export classrooms via the program or registry and import them post install though.

[CCTI]

Ok. Where are the configuration saved for vision 7? In netop, it was file in the app data folder, but I can't find anything related to that with vision 7. What I could do is simply export each teacher configuration and then automated the import after the installation with a script (like I was doing before I saw pack n deploy for netop).

[Dean Johnson]

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Netop is where the global settings are stored, there is a current user equivalent for personalized settings like your current default classroom etc.

[CCTI]

Thank you, I'll try with registry export/import to see if it works.

On another note, just to tell you that the "remember me" function of the forum doesn't work. I tried various browser on different computer and I must log-in on each post. It seems there's an auto-logoff after x minutes.

[admin]

Hi CCTI,

We recently made a change to the forum that should correct the problem you experienced with the "remember me" function. It works in all browsers except Chrome, so users should not have to log-in each time they post. (We didn't purposely ignore Chrome - there is a bug in how Chrome itself works.) Hopes this makes the forum more useful for all users. Thanks for making us aware of this.