Technical support and IT maintenance for schools and colleges

24/7 monitoring: knowing before the school calls

PenwinEdu monitors schools' infrastructure twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, with automatic alerts when a component stops responding or behaves outside its usual pattern. The difference shows in the first minute of the morning: if an access point goes down at six, the alert arrives before the first student walks in, instead of the problem being discovered at nine with the classroom already full. Many issues are sorted out remotely before anyone notices, and those that need a visit are handled with the technician already knowing what to bring.

• Continuous monitoring of the availability of network components and managed services.
• Automatic alerts when a device stops responding or behaves unexpectedly.
• Historical context: how long it has been failing and what had changed around it.
• It also works outside school hours, at weekends and when the school is closed.

The support portal: sat.penwin.cloud

Issues are logged and tracked on our own portal, at sat.penwin.cloud (in Spanish): authorised school staff log a ticket, describe what is happening and check its status whenever they like, with the date it was opened, what has been done so far and how it was closed. The issue belongs to the school, not to a conversation, so any technician who picks it up can see what has already been tried. That history also helps with decisions: when the same classroom appears three times in the log, it stops being a support matter and becomes a design matter.

• Issues logged by authorised school staff.
• Status available at any time, without phoning or sending an email.
• History by school and by location, useful for spotting recurring faults.
• A record of what was done on each job and how it was closed.
• Included for schools with services contracted with PenwinEdu.

Service levels: what ‘response within 4 working hours’ means

PenwinEdu's commitment is to respond within four working hours of the issue being logged. Responding means that someone has read it, classified it and taken the first step: a remote check, a request for information from the school or scheduling a visit. From there, each type of fault follows its own course – a configuration change is closed remotely the same morning, an equipment replacement is scheduled as soon as the spare is confirmed, an issue with the broadband provider is documented with what the monitoring shows – and progress is recorded in the ticket, step by step, until it is closed.

The service is all-inclusive: there is no hourly billing and no call-out charge. A school does not have to decide whether a fault is worth the call, or discover on the monthly invoice that Tuesday's visit was charged separately. The scope – what it covers and with what priority each type of issue is handled – is set out in the school's service agreement, and there is an invoice breakdown portal where the client can see what each line relates to.

• Response within four working hours of the ticket being logged.
• First technical step within those four hours: a remote check, a request for information or scheduling the visit.
• All-inclusive: no hourly billing and no call-out charges.
• Invoice breakdown portal to check the items billed.
• Continuous twenty-four-hour monitoring and issue handling during working hours.

What maintenance covers

Support covers the services and infrastructure that PenwinEdu has deployed or manages at the school. That is the difference from generic support: whoever handles the issue knows the specific installation – how the network is segmented, where each cabinet is, what was changed on the last visit – and does not start the diagnosis from scratch every time an alert goes off.

Laptops and mobiles that students and families bring from home are handled through the school network, which is where the school is in charge: each one connects on its own segment, with its own credentials and the access policies that apply to it. For school-owned devices issued to students, the scope of maintenance is sized together with the rest of the fleet and set out in the service agreement. When a job involves accessing systems holding personal data about students or staff, the school is the controller and PenwinEdu accesses what is needed to deal with the issue, keeping a record of what was done, under the data processing agreement signed as part of the service.

• Infrastructure and services deployed or managed by PenwinEdu at the school.
• Knowledge of the specific installation: documentation, inventory and a history of past jobs.
• Remote support from minute one and an on-site visit when the fault requires it, as contracted.
• Devices students bring from home: managed through the network, with their own segment and access policies.
• Broadband provider or power supply issues: a documented diagnosis with the monitoring data, ready for a claim to the provider.

A provider that works around the school calendar

PenwinEdu specialises in education – publicly funded private schools (concertados), private schools, universities, business schools and vocational training centres – and that shapes the work: anything affecting teaching is dealt with when it happens, while migrations, network hardware changes and updates affecting several classrooms are scheduled for holidays, long weekends or free afternoons. Those windows are short and every school wants them at the same time, so the schedule of planned works is agreed with the school leadership months in advance, according to each school's own calendar. We cover on our blog how to plan network changes without interrupting lessons.

• Issues affecting teaching: dealt with when they happen.
• Scheduled works affecting several classrooms: outside lesson times.
• Migrations and large roll-outs: holiday periods, planned in advance.
• Monitoring stays active even when the school is closed.

Frequently asked questions