Best Practice for Portable Home Directories

What are the 'best practice' directories to sync for Portable Homes - at login and in the background. I want to make my user experience a little better than it is now.
Login and logout take about 2 minutes - even over ethernet 100Mb, and longer using Airport, and 'background' home directory syncing seems to always suck all of my network bandwidth - making apps like Safari unusable - even though I have barely changed anything in the folders I am syncing.
My personal home directory is 1.5Gb, and I keep my Music, Pictures and Movies on the network - as Apple suggest.

I generally recommend the following for the least impact on user experience:
1. Put your server and clients that will use mobile accounts and portable homes on a Gigabit Ethernet switch. It's a small price to pay for much more customer satisfaction.
2. Put more RAM in the server, especially if you're dealing with a few users with large homes or several users with moderately-sized (less than 1.0GB) ones. This will also let you employ server-side tracking (for 10.5 server).
3. Only sync and login/logout. Use Workgroup Manager to define all portable preferences. Choose to manage login/logout sync, and specify the items to sync; for the whole home, use "~". Omit things like ~/.Trash. Choose to manage the background sync, but remove all items from the "sync these items" list. Choose to manage the background sync interval by setting it to manual. This way, the user doesn't accidentally configure a background sync: we've told it to sync nothing only we say it can.
--Gerrit

Similar Messages

Setting Custom location for Portable Home Directories

I'm using the Portable Home Directories to create a separate home on certain desktop machines for users to use on that machine only. These are not synced either way to the server.
Problem is I want it to create the homes on a different internal hard disk. Rather than in the users folder on the boot drive.
Is this possible, and if so how?
Cheers,
Mark

I've found this page which seems to do exactly what I want. Though I don't understand what a loginhook is and where I would put this text.
The site is http://blogs.cofa.unsw.edu.au/blog/nigelkersten/osxserver/2006/02/09/
Cheers

Tip - Hidden Keys for Portable Home Directories

FYI, the following info was posted by John de Troye on the Client Management mailing list.
hth,
b.
Buried inside the managed client properties are a set of keys that allow more overt control of the portable home directory (PHD) behavior. Many people have asked for a procedure to block the error message that pops up when users change computers (the "Your network home has changed..." dialog). Others have asked about being able to force a dominant direction for syncing the portable/local home and the network home directories. The keys noted below can be applied inside the Preference Editor in Workgroup manager for a set of computers, groups, or users using the Mobility settings. They can also be applied using the 'defaults' command directly at a standalone client.
In WGM, in the account (computer/group/user) that you are establishing mobility for, select the Details tab in the Preferences settings. Locate the "com.apple.homeSync" domain. It should contain various settings, such as "excludedItems-raw" and "syncPeriodSeconds". You can click on the 'Always' or 'Once' setting (your choice) and then on the 'New Key' button. You will then add the new keys as needed.
domain: com.apple.homeSync
key: "loginConflictResolution"
description: who wins login/logout conflicts
values (number):
1 = local home wins
2 = network home wins
comment: DANGER: this may also affect the first time sync;
key: "periodicConflictResolution"
description: who wins background/Sync Now conflicts
values (number):
0 = show conflict dialog
1 = local home wins
2 = network home wins
key: "periodicSuppressErrors" = suppress background sync error messages
values (boolean):
true = suppress error dialogs
false = show error dialogs
A key (no pun intended) point to be aware of is that you should rigorously test this out with some test accounts first. Finding out that your users lose all of their files because you decided to force the sync in one direction is not a good way to establish user vs support relations.
This material, with pictures, will be in the next Tips and Tricks doc.

I've found this page which seems to do exactly what I want. Though I don't understand what a loginhook is and where I would put this text.
The site is http://blogs.cofa.unsw.edu.au/blog/nigelkersten/osxserver/2006/02/09/
Cheers

Best Practices for viewing home video on my Mac

Come on people - THERE HAS TO BE A BEST PRACTICE out there for storing and viewing family video!!
I'm the typical dad out there taking photos and video of my kids playing soccer, family trips ect ...
When I get home I hook my camera up to my MacMini (which is hooked up to my Plasma TV - and backed up to an external HD) and within mere seconds, my photos are nicely captured in iPhoto. Friends and family come over, I flip on the MacMini, select iPhoto (or Front Row) and we enjoy great slide shows.
I want to be able to have the same easy access to my videos -flip on my MacMini, start Front Row, view my various home movies, pick one and enjoy the show.
What is the best way to do this?
Current Technology
Canon HV20
iMovie 08
iPhoto 08
Front Row

Thanks for the welcome WC! And thanks for the initial help.
I have never exported video before (sad but true), so I have a couple "Workflow" questions for you or anyone else that knows this stuff
1) Should I assume I just hook my firewire up from my Canon to the MacMini and everything just starts to export?
2) Once exported into iMovie, I assume I can edit out some of the garbage (example - my wife sometimes forgets to turn off the camcorder and she'll video her leg or the ground for minutes at a time - I'd like to trash that.
3) Once edited, how do I move it into iTunes?
I will probably need to take an iMovie class ...

NFS for portable home directories not working

I just recently tried to move our PHD's over to NFS instead of AFP to allow for fast user switching and some other reasons.
However it doesn't work at all... The automount seems to work fine, as I can browse to /Network/Servers/servername/Users/ fine, but when the user tries to sync, a dialog pops up:
The sync could not complete because your network home at "nfs://servername/Users" is currently unavailable.
Try again later when it is available.
and then in the console it shows:
com.apple.SystemUIServer.agent[14236] mount_nfs: /Volumes/Users: Operation not permitted
HomeSync[14369] HomeSync.syncNow: Unable to mount server URL at 'nfs://servername/Users', status = 65.
com.apple.SystemUIServer.agent[14236] HomeSync[14369:903] HomeSync.syncNow: Unable to mount server URL at 'nfs://servername/Users', status = 65.
It seems like its trying to mount it at /Volumes/Users, but it can't (because a normal user can't mount nfs volumes?(..as far as i know))...and furthermore I don't know why it needs to mount it at /Volumes/Users when it's already automounted at /Network/Servers/servername/Users

I just managed to get my first sync to work.
My server exports /opt/home/<user> but not /opt/home since each user has a separate lvm volume. What worked was the following:
dscl . -delete /Users/<user> dsAttrTypeStandard:OriginalHomeDirectory
dscl . -append /Users/<user> dsAttrTypeStandard:OriginalHomeDirectory "<homedir><url>nfs://find/opt/home/<user></url><path></path></homedir>"
This is similar to what I saw on http://managingosx.wordpress.com/2009/02/19/leopard-mobileaccounts-and-nfs-homes / except putting the users name (in place of <user> as part of the url instead of part of the path.
The value for dsAttrTypeStandard:OriginalHomeDirectory was formerly /Network/Servers/<server>/opt/home/<user> which is a perfectly good directory, but not a url. I don't know why it wouldn't use the directory and manufactured a url instead.
By changing the value back to default and making my server export /opt/home, I'm still able to sync. Naturally I like this solution much better.
Doesn't seem like this solution will help you much if a given user can sync on some machines and not others, unless maybe you have different export rules to different machines in your network.

Very slow login/logout with Portable Home Directories

I've set up Portable Home Directories for our department so that people can work from different computers if need be (also, I think our network is too slow to use network home directories). However, the login times are excruciating - some users report average 45 minute login times. None of these users are moving huge files or anything, and even if I just log someone out (completing the sync) and then log back in, the login will be very slow.
If I disconnect the computers from the network, obviously it logs in quickly because it can't connect to the server, but I don't want to do that (or disable login/logout sync altogether). I tried removing things from the login/logout sync rules, but often the sync takes time just on 'Finishing' or 'Stopping', so I don't think that it's any particular files that take a lot of time.
On a possibly related note, for some reason our computers all take perhaps 30 seconds to get an IP address when starting up, waking up from sleep, etc. Is there any reason why the computer would need to be doing this repeatedly? Especially on logout, this wouldn't seem relevant, but I've seen that mentioned in other threads.
Thanks in advance for any advice,
Greg

Apple Discussions has a special forum just for Portable Home Directories, you might want to search and/or post your question there:
http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1249

What are best practices for managing my iphone from both work and home computers?

What are best practices for managing my iphone from both work and home computers?

Sync iPod/iPad/iPhone with two computers
Although it isn't possible to sync an Apple device with two different libraries it is possible to sync with the same logical library from multiple computers. Each library has an internal ID and when iTunes connects to your iPod/iPad/iPhone it compares the local ID with the one the device normally syncs with. If they are the same you can go ahead and sync...
I have my library cloned to a small 1Tb USB drive which I can take between home & work. At either location I use SyncToy 2.1 to update the local copy with the external drive. Mac users should be able to find similar tools. I can open either of the local libraries or the one on the external drive and update the media content of my iPhone. The slight exception is Photos which normally connects to a specific folder on a specific machine, although that can easily be remapped to the current library if you create a "Photos" folder inside the iTunes Media folder so that syncing the iTunes folders keeps this up to date as well. I periodically sweep my library for new files & orphans withiTunes Folder Watch just in case I make changes at one location but then overwrite the library with a newer copy from the other. Again Mac users should be able to find similar tools.
As long as your media is organised within an iTunes Music or Tunes Media folder, in turn held inside the main iTunes folder that has your library files (whether or not you let iTunes keep the media folder organised) each library can access items at the same relative path from the library folder so the library can be at different drives/paths on different machines. This solution ensures I always have adequate backups of my library and I can update my devices whenever I can connect to the same build of iTunes.
When working with an iPhone earlier builds of iTunes would remove any file not physically present in the local library, even if there was an entry for it, making manual management practically redundant on the iPhone. This behaviour has been changed but it will still only permit manual management with a library that has the correct internal ID. If you don't want to sync your library between machines on a regular basis just copy the iTunes Library.itl file from the current "home" machine to any other you want to use, then clean out the library entires and import the local content you have on that box.
tt2

Kernel: PANIC! -- best practice for backup and recovery when modifying system?

I installed NVidia drivers on my OL6.6 system at home and something went bad with one of the libraries. On reboot, the kernel would panic and I couldn't get back into the system to fix anything. I ended up re-installing the OS to recovery my system.
What would be some best practices for backing up the system when making a change and then recovering if this happens again?
Would LVM snapshots be a good option? Can I recovery a snapshot from a rescue boot?
EX: File system snapshots with LVM | Ars Technica -- scroll down to the section discussing LVM.
Any pointers to documentation would be welcome as well. I'm just not sure what to do to revert the kernel or the system when installing something goes bad like this.
Thanks for your attention.

There is often a common misconception: A snapshot is not a backup. A snapshot and the original it was taken from initially share the same data blocks. LVM snapshot is a general purpose solution which can be used, for example, to quickly create a snapshot prior to a system upgrade, then if you are satisfied with the result, you would delete the snapshot.
The advantage of a snapshot is that it can be used for a live filesystem or volume while changes are written to the snapshot volume. Hence it's called "copy on write (COW), or copy on change if you want. This is necessary for system integrity to have a consistent data status of all data at a certain point in time and to allow changes happening, for example to perform a filesystem backup. A snapshot is no substitute for a disaster recovery in case you loose your storage media. A snapshot only takes seconds, and initially does not copy or backup any data, unless data changes. It is therefore important to delete the snapshot if no longer required, in order to prevent duplication of data and restore file system performance.
LVM was never a great thing under Linux and can cause serious I/O performance bottlenecks. If snapshot or COW technology suits your purpose, I suggest you look into Btrfs, which is a modern filesystem built into the latest Oracle UEK kernel. Btrfs employs the idea of subvolumes and is much more efficient that LVM because it can operate on files or directories while LVM is doing the whole logical volume.
Keep in mind however, you cannot use LVM or Btrfs with the boot partition, because the Grub boot loader, which loads the Linux kernel, cannot deal with LVM or BTRFS before loading the Linux kernel (catch22).
I think the following is an interesting and fun to read introduction explaining basic concepts:
http://events.linuxfoundation.org/sites/events/files/slides/Btrfs_1.pdf

Help with Portable Home Directories and AD

Is it possible to implement "Portable Home Directories" without an Open Directory server, using just binding to an Active Directory Domain. (no "Golden Triangle")?
We are just starting to integrate Macs into our company (finally!) and I'm looking for the best way to allow Macbook Pro users to have their files sync'ed with their NW home folder and still available locally when they are offline.
I'm able to bind to AD successfully but can't find any documentation on how to make the sync happen.
Thanks

If you are putting Macs in a LARGE business environment then bookmark the site www.MacWindows.com. They do nothing then connect lone macs into Windows Domains. Pay attention to the links on side panel of the slash page to get to the section you want to read the reader reports.

Portable Home Directories in 10.8 Server?

I have a Mac mini Server running 10.6.8. Now that 10.8 is out, Apple will probably stop supporting 10.6 (as is their policy) and that means either slowly eroding security or moving to 10.8. I have been looking at the documentation and it seems underneath it all is still by an large the same basic unix-stuff like postfix, dovecot, a dns system, etc. Giving the lack of support for GUI-managing the more complex setups, I'll probably be doing it command-line (stuff like multiple virtual mail domains, multiple web domains, etc.). Not fun (and a business opportunity for some enterprising software engineer).
But what I haven't been able to see in the documentation or anywhere else is Portable Home Directories. In my current setup, I have a 10.6.8 Server and 10.7 clients. On these clients is a single local administrator acocunt and the rest are 'managed mobile accounts'. These are local acocunts. They work when away form the network on which the server is, but when in range of the server, the server may push settings and stuff. And on login/logout and when connected to the LAN and during work, the home directory of the user is constantly synchronized with a copy of the user's home directory on the server. This means my users can take any computer and get their own account and a synchronized copy of their home directory. They can also take a laptop off line for a while and when they return to my LAN (either physically or by VPN), any changes will be synced. This is a sweet setup and it works with 10.7 clients and 10.6.8 server.
But what I haven't been able to find if this will still work with 10.8 Server. I have looked at teh 10.8 Server documentation and haven't found anything about it. Will it still work somehow and if not, is there a good alternative?

Gerben Wierda wrote:
Or: you create the users anew in the network directory, you replace their home directories with the content of what is on the MacBook (TDM is your friend) and do the chmod. Easier still.
That way, I suggest the migration in that way; because, you can test everything out before the data gets moved over. There's nothing like something going wrong in the setup/migration, and you have to do it all over again.
Kirk, you can always put the Home directories/folder on an external. But if you do, you'll probably want to run this command in Terminal:
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/autodiskmount AutomountDisksWithoutUserLogin -bool YES
That sets the system-wide setting to mount external HDs on startup. The default behavior in OS X, probably around 10.3 onward (but Apple may have flip-flopped on this), is to mount externals on user GUI-login, not on startup like internal HDs. The default behavior is a huge problem with network users, whose home directories reside on the external, since the external on GUI login often mounts "too late" and new "phantom" home directories are created (along with warning messages that the home directory can't be found) and you sometimes get duplicate mount points. In short, the default behavior creates a bit of mess. To spare you some frustration, run that command, which will mount the externals on startup, so the home folders are always available.
It's also handy if you plan on creating other shares on the external; it prevents some flaky behavior.
Gerben's "general description" can be applied to Lion and Mountain Lion, although with Mountain Lion you have fewer tools, and you'll often be working in Server.app rather than some of the older tools like Server Admin.
Again, basically you need to:
(1) Setup file sharing, where you designate a directory/folder as a share to hold the network home directories. On the default install, Apple makes /Users a share, and you could (similar to what Gerben did) use that to hold not only local accounts' but also the network accounts' home directories. In that setup all users' home directories reside in the same place. All you have to do then is check the box "Make available for home directories over" and leave "AFP". See below; note the very last checkbox; that needs to be checked:
I preferred to keep the local and network users separate, so I actually use a different share for the network users, and not /Users. If you go that route, pay attention to the permissions, it's somewhat easy to get them wrong. I think I cheated and used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the /Users directory to another HD, then just renamed the directory. FYI you're actually not seeing this in these screen shots, since I'm using a "fresh install" virtual machine to make the screen shots.
Also if you don't need it, I'd probably uncheck "Share with Windows clients (SMB).
2. You need to setup Open Directory, so you can manage Network Users. Since you want portable home directories, then you might consider using Profile Manager (introduced in Lion Server), which is Apple's latest tool for that. You can also download separate Workgroup Manager as well. Not sure which is better, or exactly why there are both. I think the documention indicated for older pre-Lion OSes, Workgroup Manager is still around.
2a - If you go straight to Profile Manager, and set it up, it will first make you setup Open Directory, then the rest of the setup for Profile Manager itself.
2b - Or you can always "two-step", first setup Open Directory, then later if you want "Profile Manager".
3. Once you have OD (step 2), and the share setup for network home directories (step), you use Server.app to create the network users, and assign their home directory to the share not local. Note the entry "Home Folder"; use the pull-down menu to select your share. See below.
If you forget to set the Home Folder, you can always "edit" the user and change the Home Folder to the share, and not Local Only.
4. To get portable Home directories, I'm pretty sure you're going to have to setup and activate Profile Manager or use Workgroup Manager. Sorry not much details I can provide there, I've only played with it a bit, and was planning on upgrading my MacBook Pro to Mountain Lion before giving it a go again.

Home Sharing, Network accounts with Portable Home Directories, iTunes 10

I am using OS X Server an on that server is my account. I am also using a MBA with that same account using portable home directories (PHD). The MBA home directory does not contain my iTunes music, that is somewhere in /Users/Shared, because I do not want the added burden of encryption (the home dir is FileVault protected on the MBA, but not on the server)
Thusfar, I worked on the MBA with iTunes and used rsync to sync with the server. There are reasons I want to stop that route (which are not important for the question)
I have just upgraded to iTunes 10 before trying the following:
1. Enable home sharing on the server
2. Look for shared libraries on the MBA
And found out that my account on the server needs to be logged in permanently and iTunes running to use Home Sharing that way. That stops the ordinary syncing of PHD so that is not a solution. Besides, I do not want to have an account logged in all the time.
So, given the scenario that I want full two-way syncing of my iTunes library between my computers and that I prefer not to have an account logged in on the server, is there a solution?

I ended up creating a dedicated local account for iTunes serving on my mini server.

Best practices for office 365 SHARED CALENDAR for whole school / organization

hi
we need guidance on best practice for setting up SHARED CALENDAR on Office365 exchange server for entire organization (school)of150 staff.
Requirements
+ all staff should have read only / reviewer permissions on calendar
+handful staff should have editor permissions on calendar
+ the calendar should synchronise custom categories and colors
Current Solution
at the moment we have found that a shared mailbox is the best solution because;
- allusers can add the shared mailbox on outlook 2010as additional mailbox as readonly
- all the categories & colors for the calendarare automatically synchronised because the color categories are stored within this mailbox.
- you can edit calendar permissions in outlook to allow some users as "editor" of the calendar.Problem with Current Solution
the problem however is that the users also need to access this...
This topic first appeared in the Spiceworks Community

Hi Aleksei,
I think Inactive mailboxes in Exchange Online is the feature that you want. This feature makes it possible for you to preserve (store and archive) the contents of deleted mailboxes indefinitely.
A mailbox becomes inactive when an In-Place Hold or a
Litigation Hold is placed on the mailbox before the corresponding Office 365 user account is deleted.
But I'm afraid that it might be impossible to "easily share certain folders or even whole mailbox with people in the company". As can been seen from below articles, this only allows administrators, compliance officers, or records managers
to use the In-Place eDiscovery feature in Exchange Online to access and search the contents of an inactive mailbox:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn144876(v=exchg.150).aspx
http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2013/03/21/preserve-mailbox-data-for-ediscovery-using-inactive-mailboxes-in-exchange-online.aspx
Anyway, this is the forum to discuss questions and feedback for Microsoft Office client. For more details about your question, I would suggest you post in the dedicated forum of
Exchange Online, where you can get more experienced responses:
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/msonline/en-US/home?forum=onlineservicesexchange
The reason why we recommend posting appropriately is you will get the most qualified pool of respondents, and other partners who read the forums regularly can either share their knowledge or learn from your interaction with us. Thank you for your understanding.
Regards,
Ethan Hua
TechNet Community Support
It's recommended to download and install
Configuration Analyzer Tool (OffCAT), which is developed by Microsoft Support teams. Once the tool is installed, you can run it at any time to scan for hundreds of known issues in Office
programs.

Best practices for setting up projects

We recently adopted using Captivate for our WBT modules.
As a former Flash and Director user, I can say it’s
fast and does some great things. Doesn’t play so nice with
others on different occasions, but I’m learning. This forum
has been a great source for search and read on specific topics.
I’m trying to understand best practices for using this
product. We’ve had some problems with file size and
incorporating audio and video into our projects. Fortunately, the
forum has helped a lot with that. What I haven’t found a lot
of information on is good or better ways to set up individual
files, use multiple files and publish projects. We’ve decided
to go the route of putting standalones on our Intranet. My gut says
yuck, but for our situation I have yet to find a better way.
My question for discussion, then is: what are some best
practices for setting up individual files, using multiple files and
publishing projects? Any references or input on this would be
appreciated.

Hi,
Here are some of my suggestions:
1) Set up a style guide for all your standard slides. Eg.
Title slide, Index slide, chapter slide, end slide, screen capture,
non-screen capture, quizzes etc. This makes life a lot easier.
2) Create your own buttons and captions. The standard ones
are pretty ordinary, and it's hard to get a slick looking style
happening with the standard captions. They are pretty easy to
create (search for add print button to learn how to create
buttons). There should instructions on how to customise captions
somewhere on this forum. Customising means that you can also use
words, symbols, colours unique to your organisation.
3) Google elearning providers. Most use captivate and will
allow you to open samples or temporarily view selected modules.
This will give you great insight on what not to do and some good
ideas on what works well.
4) Timings: Using the above research, I got others to
complete the sample modules to get a feel for timings. The results
were clear, 10 mins good, 15 mins okay, 20 mins kind of okay, 30
mins bad, bad, bad. It's truly better to have a learner complete
2-3 short modules in 30 mins than one big monster. The other
benefit is that shorter files equal smaller size.
5) Narration: It's best to narrate each slide individually
(particularly for screen capture slides). You are more likely to
get it right on the first take, it's easier to edit and you don't
have to re-record the whole thing if you need to update it in
future. To get a slicker effect, use at least two voices: one male,
one female and use slightly different accents.
6) Screen capture slides: If you are recording filling out
long window based databse pages where the compulsory fields are
marked (eg. with a red asterisk) - you don't need to show how to
fill out every field. It's much easier for the learner (and you) to
show how to fill out the first few fields, then fade the screen
capture out, fade the end of the form in with the instructions on
what to do next. This will reduce your file size. In one of my
forms, this meant the removal of about 18 slides!
7) Auto captions: they are verbose (eg. 'Click on Print
Button' instead of 'Click Print'; 'Select the Print Preview item'
instead of 'Select Print Preview'). You have to edit them.
8) PC training syntax: Buttons and hyperlinks should normally
be 'click'; selections from drop down boxes or file lists are
normally 'select': Captivate sometimes mixes them up. Instructions
should always be written in the correct order: eg. Good: Click
'File', Select 'Print Preview'; Bad: Select 'Print Preview' from
the 'File Menu'. Button names, hyperlinks, selections are normally
written in bold
9) Instruction syntax: should always be written in an active
voice: eg. 'Click Options to open the printer menu' instead of
'When the Options button is clicked on, the printer menu will open'
10) Break all modules into chapters. Frame each chapter with
a chapter slide. It's also a good idea to show the Index page
before each chapter slide with a progress indicator (I use an
animated arrow to flash next to the name of the next chapter), I
use a start button rather a 'next' button for the start of each
chapter. You should always have a module overview with the purpose
of the course and a summary slide which states what was covered and
they have complete the module.
11) Put a transparent click button somewhere on each slide.
Set the properties of the click box to take the learner back to the
start of the current chapter by pressing F2. This allows them to
jump back to the start of their chapter at any time. You can also
do a similar thing on the index pages which jumps them to another
chapter.
12) Recording video capture: best to do it at normal speed
and be concious of where your mouse is. Minimise your clicks. Most
people (until they start working with captivate) are sloppy with
their mouse and you end up with lots of unnecessarily slides that
you have to delete out. The speed will default to how you recorded
it and this will reduce the amount of time you spend on changing
timings.
13) Captions: My rule of thumb is minimum of 4 seconds - and
longer depending on the amount of words. Eg. Click 'Print Preview'
is 4 seconds, a paragraph is longer. If you creating knowledge
based modules, make the timing long (eg. 2-3 minutes) and put in a
next button so that the learner can click when they are ready.
Also, narration means the slides will normally be slightly longer.
14) Be creative: Capitvate is desk bound. There are some
learners that just don't respond no matter how interactive
Captivate can be. Incorporate non-captivate and desk free
activities. Eg. As part of our OHS module, there is an activity
where the learner has to print off the floor plan, and then wander
around the floor marking on th emap key items such as: fire exits;
first aid kit, broom and mop cupboard, stationary cupboard, etc.
Good luck!

Best Practice for SRST deployment at a remote site

What is the best practice for a SRST deployment at a remote site? Should a separate router such as a 3800 series be deployed for telephony in addition to another router to be deployed for Data? Is there a need for 2 different devices?

Hi Brian,
This is typically done all on one ISR Router at the remote site :)There are two flavors of SRST. Here is the feature comparison;
SRST Fallback
This feature enables routers to provide call-handling support for Cisco Unified IP phones if they lose connection to remote primary, secondary, or tertiary Cisco Unified Communications Manager installations or if the WAN connection is down. When Cisco Unified SRST functionality is provided by Cisco Unified CME, provisioning of phones is automatic and most Cisco Unified CME features are available to the phones during periods of fallback, including hunt-groups, call park and access to Cisco Unity voice messaging services using SCCP protocol. The benefit is that Cisco Unified Communications Manager users will gain access to more features during fallback ****without any additional licensing costs.
Comparison of Cisco Unified SRST and
Cisco Unified CME in SRST Fallback Mode
Cisco Unified CME in SRST Fallback Mode
â¢ First supported with Cisco Unified CME 4.0: Cisco IOS Software 12.4(9)T
â¢ IP phones re-home to Cisco Unified CME if Cisco Unified Communications Manager fails. CME in SRST allows IP phones to access some advanced Cisco Unified CME telephony features not supported in traditional SRST
â¢ Support for up to 240 phones
â¢ No support for Cisco VG248 48-Port Analog Phone Gateway registration during fallback
â¢ Lack of support for alias command
â¢ Support for Cisco UnityÂ® unified messaging at remote sites (Distributed Exchange or Domino)
â¢ Support for features such as Pickup Groups, Hunt Groups, Basic Automatic Call Distributor (BACD), Call Park, softkey templates, and paging
â¢ Support for Cisco IP Communicator 2.0 with Cisco Unified Video Advantage 2.0 on same computer
â¢ No support for secure voice in SRST mode
â¢ More complex configuration required
â¢ Support for digital signal processor (DSP)-based hardware conferencing
â¢ E-911 support with per-phone emergency response location (ERL) assignment for IP phones (Cisco Unified CME 4.1 only)
Cisco Unified SRST
â¢ Supported since Cisco Unified SRST 2.0 with Cisco IOS Software 12.2(8)T5
â¢ IP phones re-home to SRST router if Cisco Unified Communications Manager fails. SRST allows IP phones to have basic telephony features
â¢ Support for up to 720 phones
â¢ Support for Cisco VG248 registration during fallback
â¢ Support for alias command
â¢ Lack of support for features such as Pickup Groups, Hunt Groups, Call Park, and BACD
â¢ No support for Cisco IP Communicator 2.0 with Cisco Unified Video Advantage 2.0
â¢ Support for secure voice during SRST fallback
â¢ Simple, one-time configuration for SRST fallback service
â¢ No per-phone emergency response location (ERL) assignment for SCCP Phones (E911 is a new feature supported in SRST 4.1)
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/voicesw/ps6788/vcallcon/ps2169/prod_qas0900aecd8028d113.html
These SRST hardware based restrictions are very similar to the number of supported phones with CME. Here is the actual breakdown;
Cisco 880 SRST Series Integrated Services Router
Up to 4 phones
Cisco 1861 Integrated Services Router
Up to 8 phones
Cisco 2801 Integrated Services Router
Up to 25 phones
Cisco 2811 Integrated Services Router
Up to 35 phones
Cisco 2821 Integrated Services Router
Up to 50 phones
Cisco 2851 Integrated Services Router
Up to 100 phones
Cisco 3825 Integrated Services Router
Up to 350 phones
Cisco CatalystÂ® 6500 Series Communications Media Module (CMM)
Up to 480 phones
Cisco 3845 Integrated Services Router
Up to 730 phones
*The number of phones supported by SRST have been changed to multiples of 5 starting with Cisco IOS Software Release 12.4(15)T3.
From this excellent doc;
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/voicesw/ps6788/vcallcon/ps2169/data_sheet_c78-485221.html
Hope this helps!
Rob

Best Practice for Conversion Workflow

Hello,
I'm converting video files from our "home grown" virtual media reserve to iTunes U. Some of the files are in RM format, some are already compressed .mov's (not H.264) and some I have the original DV files for.
Anyone out there have a best practice for converting these file types for posting to iTunes U? I have Final Cut Studio (Compressor), QT Pro and Squeeze available to me.
Any experience you have with this would be helpful.
Thanks,
Jeana

For converting old files to a podcast compatible video and based on the machine you have, consider elgato turbo.264. It is a fairly priced "co-processor" for video conversion. It is comprised of an application and a small USB device with a encoder chip in it. In my experience, it is the fastest way to create podcast video files. The amount of time that you will save will pay for the device quickly (about $100). Plus it does batch conversion of any video that your system currently plays through QuickTime. it has all the necessary presets and you can create your own. It has a few minor limitations such as not supporting (at this moment) enhanced podcasting features such as chapter markers and closed-captions but since you have old files for conversion, that won't matter.
For creating new content, the workflow varies a lot. Since you mention MP3s, I guess you are also interested in audio files. I would stick with GarageBand, especially if you are a beginner plus it supports enhanced podcasts.
In any case the most important goal is to have the simplest and fastest way to go from recording to publication. The less editing the better. To attain that, the best methods will require the largest investments. For example, for video production the best way is to produce the content live so when you finish recording it is only a matter of encoding and publishing. that will require the use of a video switcher that can ingest at least one video camera and a computer output to properly capture presentation material. That's the minimum. there are several devices that can do this for you. Some are disguised PCs and some connect to a PC for tapeless recording. You can check the Tricaster, which I like but wish it was a Mac and not a Windows Xp PC. Other routes may include video mixers from manufacturers like Edirol, Pansonic or Sony connected to a VTR or directly to a Mac for direct-ti-disc capture. I f you look at some of the content available in iTunes U, you will see what I explain here. This workflow requires preparation and sufficient live support but you will have your material ready for delivery almost immediately after the recorded event. No editing required. Finally, the most intensive workflow is to record everything separately and edit it later, which is extremely time consuming.

Best Practice for Portable Home Directories

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