Enlightenment for Dynamics CRM
April 29, 2007
An interesting article and interview about a proof-of-concept ‘bootkit’ which provides a means to run arbitrary code with raised privileges in Vista, despite all the protected mode security and inability to change the kernel
April 10, 2007 2 Comments
Because of the way IE is implemented on Vista, you will find that the rich functionality of Outlook Web Access (OWA) no longer works as you are used to under XP.
As described in KB 911829 you may not be able to compose new or reply emails, create contacts or appointments, and other activities which are pretty essential. You can read your email, but you can do nothing else with them!
March 27, 2007
In this month’s MCP magazine, Greg Shields wrote about using clip.exe to get command line output onto the clipboard where you can easily use it by pasting into your favourite app, such as Notepad, OneNote or Excel (if you need to parse the results down).
“Like you, I’ve struggled with the multistep process to get data from the results of a command into a text file. If you want to run the runme.bat script and capture the results, you’d launch the command and copy and paste the results into Notepad or another text editor. Or, you might pipe the results to a file using the > character. If you’re particularly skillful, you could redirect both stdout and stderr to a text file with the text string:
runme.bat 1> results.txt 2>&1
But what if you simply wanted to pipe the results to the clipboard?
Way back in the old days, the Windows NT and Windows 2000 Resource Kit had a tool called clip.exe that allowed for this. Just run:runme.bat | clip
and use Ctrl+V to paste the results into your text file. With Windows 2003, the tool moved out of the Resource Kit and is now installed natively with the operating system. But there appeared to be nothing comparable for Windows XP, so I slowly forgot about it.
That is, until recently — when I realized that one could simply copy clip.exe from C:\Windows\Systems32 on any Windows 2003 Server to the same location on an XP workstation and rejoice for the happy return of Command Line Clippy!”
What Greg forgets to mention is that this functionality is also natively installed on Windows Vista, ready and available for easy use.
February 6, 2007
Similar to the offer in the US for T-Mobile hotspots, The Cloud have signed a deal with Microsoft in the UK to give early adopters of Vista a free trial of their WiFi services.
The Cloud operate a network of over 7,500 hotspots across the UK, ranging from BT payphones to cafes and pubs. You should not have to give any payment details to sign up for a the free trial period, which finishes at the end of April 2007 Read more of this post
February 5, 2007
At the Vista launch in the UK it was also announced that a collaboration with the British Library and Bill Gates will mean that two of Da Vinci’s notebooks are available for online viewing, as reported in the Register.
These and a few other selected books and excerpts are available online here. The software required to get access to this material requires Vista or XP sp2 with .Net framework 3
As David Overton describes in his blog the Turning the Pages application gets as close to a real book experience as possible – pages actually apear to move like paper as you turn them, and gold-leaf even appears to reflect and glint as the sheet moves. Is this what is meant by an ‘illuminated manuscript’ in the 21st century?
February 3, 2007 2 Comments
If you ever tried to use offline files and folders in Windows 2000 or XP to synchronise server-based files and use them when away from the network, you may have become frustrated that it never did exactly what you wanted.
There have been several improvements in the way Vista handles offline files, for me the most important being the simple separation of users so a user only ever gets to synch their own stuff. This simply makes sense, and certainly fixes lots of access denied errors. They also made it more bandwidth efficient and gave the user some control over whether to work online or offline (to check what is available offline before actually disconnecting).
One bug not mentioned in Jim Allchin’s article is the way XP would handle (or rather, not handle) new folders, as follows:
Basically the CSC database seemed to take a one-time snapchot list of all required folders, and would update this if you created something, but was not aware of anyone else’s actions. Ideally it should be scanning the actual folders you synch to look for new folder creation. I want to test this under Vista and see if it’s fixed, and post back when I do.
February 2, 2007
Jim Allchin is leaving Microsoft after more than 16 years. His recent work as head of the Windows team has finally delivered Vista, a good time to leave if ever there was one.
His last act as a Microsoft employee was to hit ‘submit’ on this post on the Vista Team blog, in which he outlines how he might see a typical day in the coming months. A great read, both thought provoking and laugh-out-loud funny.
January 31, 2007
Over at GPanswers.com, Jeremy Moskowitz has added another webinar to the collection of webcasts by him and other experts on Group Policy, Active Directory and other windows management topics.
Page of links for GPanswers.com webinars.
This one is entitled “Managing your XP and Vista machines”.
Are you still running around to each machine to do a little tweak here or manage a little setting there? Wouldn’t it be better to be more efficient and run around less to get more done? That’s the power of Active Directory (AD) and Group Policy (GP). In this session, the GP Guru, Jeremy Moskowitz will introduce you to what’s possible with GP and introduce you to some new features that come with Vista.
January 19, 2007
Exchange 2007 Technet Webcasts
(first one is today, 19th Jan at 11:30 am Pacific Time)
January 18, 2007
Microsoft’s BDD 2007 Workbench claims a host of features to help you create an inventory, create and manage system images and deploy these to your machine in a highly managed environment (“Zero Touch” using SMS) or less managed (“Lite Touch”, no SMS) manner.
The workbench includes all the tools you need for this in a single edition (so you get all the same features and guidance, you just choose whether to buy and use SMS) and one download, which also has self-updating features so you don’t miss out on future goodness.
You can create images for Windows XP and Vista, as well as Office 2003 and 2007
Read more on the MS desktop deployment homepage or go straight to the download for BDD 2007.
January 16, 2007
This article over at the Exchange Team Blog describes how Exchange 2007 Email Address Policies (EAP) work. This is the replacement for Exchange 2000/2003 Recipient Policies and the way that the Recipient Update Service worked (or rather, did not).
Essentially, when you make policy changes in 2007, they get applied. This is what you would want out of a policy, hence the name. If accounts fall in or out of scope, their address list changes. If you change the primary address for a policy, it gets updated. You can still exempt accounts individually from being affected through ADUC (or use a script), but basically, it now does what it says on the tin.
January 12, 2007 1 Comment
Today I passed 70-284 Exchange Admin exam after a judicious bit of self study (and several years of looking after Exchange 2000 and 2003).
I found one particularly useful site worthy of being given the credit for some great Microsoft exam cramming notes – all for free and completely altruistic. That in itself makes me feel there is still some good in the world, the fact that it helped me to pass is just a bonus.
January 7, 2007
Following on from previous security guides with information about best practice, Microsoft have made the Windows Vista Security Guide download available.
The Windows Vista Security Guide provides guidance and tools to further protect Windows Vista against real-live threats such as malware and information theft. This solution accelerator recommends the Enterprise Client (EC) configuration for organizations of all types. Only in extreme security situations does the guide recommend the Specialized Security – Limited Functionality (SSLF) configuration, which considerably limits client computer functionality. The Solution Accelerator includes recommendations about how to use new and enhanced security technologies in Windows Vista to better defend the client computers in your organization against malware. The guide also provides recommendations and best practices on how to use encryption and access control technologies in Windows Vista to protect corporate data.
January 2, 2007
Registration is not open yet, but as advance warning, the next CRM User Group meeting for the UK is planned for:
Click to add the next CRMUG meeting to your Outlook calendar
Agenda is yet to be confirmed, but loosely speaking will be a 9:15 registration and coffee for a 9:45 start.
After a mid-morning coffee break we plan to have two parallel speaker sessions for people to choose the topic of most interest to them. At least one of these will be followed by a related “round table” discussion of Q&A and audience participation.
After lunch we will all get back together for a further general session before “The Marco and Cass Show™” – also known as the Microsoft CRM Roadmap presentation. Given the planned release time frame for “Orion” this session alone is probably enough reason to travel all the way to London for this CRMUG meeting.
We will round the day off with an Experts Panel to try and answer any questions which have occurred to you during the earlier sessions, before closing at approximately 4pm.
Microsoft UK
Cardinal Place
80-100 Victoria Street
London
SW1E 5JL
That’s a 2 minute walk from Victoria tube station, serviced by the Victoria, Circle and District Lines.
Of course I will post once the official page for registrations goes live.
Following our recent CRMUG UK committee meeting, I took on the role of “Vice Chair for Programme” so I need to figure out what things our members want to get out of our events, what sessions will be of most interest, general applicability and so on.
What do you want to “share and learn” at the CRM User Group? Are there any topics you particularly want to hear about?
Do you have a great customer story to tell, with some inspiration or ideas for others to take away and use to get more out of their CRM system? Could you / would you speak for 30 – 45 minutes about your CRM deployment project and what you got out of it?
If you have something to share, or want to find out about a particular aspect of using Dynamics CRM, please let me know in the comments so I can start to assimilate ideas to put together another great event, for users, by users!
January 1, 2007 25 Comments
DSMOD foundation course 101
I originally wrote this as an email reply to a colleague’s question about updating many Active Directory objects in one go, and later thought I could write it up “tutorial style”. I still think the DSQuery, DSGet, DSMod functions are underused by even fairly knowledgeable administrators, so here is a beginner’s guide to getting the most of these tools.
This is intended to show the principles for changing many AD objects’ properties in one go. There are lots more clever things you could do with this – like a lot of command line stuff, the principles are very simple but can be strung together to very powerful end results with a bit of thought and a step-by-step logical approach.
Basically, DSMOD allows you to change many (not all) of the AD properties of an object, usually a user, computer or group. This tutorial discusses users specifically, but the principles extend to other objects. Read more of this post
CRMguru 