Fronter - is moving to Oslo

Submitted by jmc17 on Thu, 15/03/2012 - 11:28

Background
On Monday 2nd April 2012, the way in which the Fronter learning platform is managed and hosted changed.

Full details were provided in a letter from John Slater (Service Director, Education Standards and Inclusion) which was posted to Wired (LA Communications) on 13th December. This advised schools that the hosting of the learning platform was transferring from the LA to Fronter on 2nd April 2012.

John Slater's letter also explained that schools wishing to continue using the Fronter learning platform after 31st March 2012 were required to complete an expressions of interest form by 3rd February and subscribe to the learning platform with Fronter directly. If your school hasn't done this yet, it's not too late but you are advised to respond as soon as possible.

New web address and support number

Fronter was successfully migrated to Oslo on the 2^nd April. Please ensure that the new address www.fronter.com/nottsslp replaces any old bookmarks/favourites in your browser.

Please contact the Fronter Help Desk on 0845 450 1948 if you have any queries.

Fronter Y11

The installation will be upgraded from Fronter Y10 to Fronter Y11 on the morning of Friday 13th April. To complete the upgrade schools must apply user templates to their ‘All Staff’ and ‘All Student’ groups in order to allocate appropriate stylesheets to complete the ‘new look’.

There are two choices: ‘Play’ (a more child friendly look and feel) and ‘Classic’ (a more mature interface). Fronter will provide to all schools with this process. Premium and Premium Plus schools may request that the work is done by Fronter on their behalf. The Fronter Helpdesk number is 0845 450 1948.

License Agreements and Associated Storage Costs

The cost of storage on the Oslo platform is £10/GB; the first GB is free of charge. Schools have until the 20th April to complete any storage reduction before license agreements and invoices are issued. The contents of Recycle Bins are included in the storage charges. Although the Recycle Bins for the entire Notts installation will be emptied on the 3^rd April, it is strongly recommended that schools check their recycle bins and empty any newly deleted items before 20^th April. Instructions can be found in the Subscribers Final Housekeeping Guide

Connectivity

The first time users log in to Fronter following the migration, performance can sometimes be slower than expected. If this is the case, log out of the building then log back in. Speed should then improve.

Importing Rooms

Rooms exported as zip files from the locally hosted platform prior to the move e.g. the Notts Phonics Room, will not now upload successfully to the Oslo platform. Fresh copies of the rooms should be exported from their new location (e.g. www.fronter.com/nottsslp

username: readyrooms password: password) to ensure a successful import.

All ‘Ready to Go Rooms’ available from www.fronter.co.uk which were previously unavailable to Nottinghamshire schools, can now be freely downloaded and imported.

Room imports now require an email address to send confirmation that the room import is complete. Anyone wishing to import a room must add a current email address to their contact card. The following warning will also be given: ‘Note: Selecting one of the options below may take up to 24 hours to process. This is a maximum timescale and is only likely in times of high demand e.g. Fronter Start of Year.

Scorm Courses

Scorm courses uploaded whilst Fronter was hosted in Nottinghamshire will not run on the Oslo servers. The inactive links have been retained as a reminder of previous content so that the courses can be re-uploaded to the Oslo platform.

Open, Edit, Save (OES)

Schools making use of the OES online document editing facility must install the updated version of the OES Active X Plugin before the feature becomes fully functional. Information can be found at http://frontersupport.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=397%3Anew-release-of-open-edit-save&catid=21%3Achanges-to-fronter&Itemid=7&lang=en

Flash Menus

Any schools using flash menus, similar to the menu in the Notts LA Portal, for navigation will need to recreate the menu, replacing the room IDs to reflect the address of the new building.

Fronter App

The Fronter App can now be downloaded for iphone, ipad and android devices. This enables users to access calendars, news and resources on the move.

Housekeeping tasks - for all Fronter schools (including those that have chosen not to migrate)

Whether your school has chosen to subscribe to the new Fronter service from April or not, various tasks should be completed to ensure that you do not incur unnecessary, additional charges for storage (subscribing schools) or lose valuable content (non-subscribing schools).

Schools that have subscribed to the new service – Subscribers Final Housekeeping Guide

Schools that have not subscribed to the new service – Non Subscribers Downloading and Removing Files from Fronter