Greener Pastures

in recent weeks i have been loading various sandbox released code on a test CRM environment and where applicable in our production environment.  I have to say, the possibilities are mind boggling!

First I loaded the Dynamics CRM SNAP.  That is a quite powerful tool, and with some time and focus on it, could potentially end up the single greatest tool in the Arsenal.  I've used it to create custome letters in word mostly.  Still learning about it, but it seemingly opens up a whole world of interop for users.  As for Lic. I believe it to be freeware, and only subject to CRM's user lisence, hence, no CRM user, no consumer of the CRM data.  Seems to me there could be a 'light user, or data access user lic.' that would allow a non CRM user to access the data in the database through a tool like snap or a developed InfoPath Form, or through RSS...

Which brings me to the next thing, RSS feeds from CRM.  recently I endevored to tackle this, in house.  It worked after much troubleshooting and reading the code.  It is quite cool!  Again though it appears that only CRM users can access the feeds.  which is ok for internal users, but say you wanna expose your feed to say a vendor, so they get a line into your business pipeline, does that require a user for each vendor you allow in?  based ont he security model, it would appear so.  This clearly limits the usefulness of the collection of all this data, certainly there may be other ways around such a thing, for example write a customer report that emails out at an interval, but then, that may not fit with business processes.  Oh well...I'll not be exposing any of my CRM feeds to suppliers or partners until I can get a better handle on this.

Lastly using a Hand On Lab on JohnzBlog, I was able to create a webform in Visual Web Dev 2005 Express Edition and have it flow, through CRM web services into the leads, just as the HOL described.  I know, big deal, right.  Well actually it is, because there are several places where I had to locate his references to his crm system and correct to my CRM's URL.  He forced me to read the code and figure it out.  He does specifically state that there is no support for it, and good luck, but he did not even put in comments where there might be 'variables' like replace with your CRM server's URL here!!!  It did force me to learn more asp.net than I did before, so that's a good thing.  Here, though, is another place that the lisencing is a bit dicey.  If I place this form out on the web on our public site, do I need a seperate licence to allow site visitors to fill out the form???  I think the Microsoft Answer is yes, and therefore it is only in a test internal environment.  But as a very small shop, the cost for an Internet License of CRM seems to be a bit extreme, especially for my tiny weblead application.  We currently have a form, that updates a DB and emails us when a person fills out a form online.  Very simple, and does basically the same thing, but the data does not flow into CRM directly and does not use CRM's workflow to generate thank yous and alerts and assignments of tasks etc...

This brings me to my final thought on all of this...CRM 3.0 SBE is on the edge of affordable for most Micro and Small Businesses.  Given the right fit and needs, it could probably go in at most shops.  It promises a TON of features and provides a ton of opportunities for Small Businesses to really grab hold and use technology, mine data and business processes more efficiently.  the problem I see, though, is that much of this functionality is not possible without additional lic. fees.  Those fees drive the solution costs through the roof, and ultimately the customer has already invested into ACT! or Goldmine, or does not care enough to invest in the level of integration that they otherwise would want to do.  So my question is basically this...Data is in a SQL CRM DB.  If there is a Web based application that uses that SQL CRM DB, and it is using it's own security model, not CRM's, not AD, then, what are the licensing ramifications?  I believe in paying the piper, but it seems that one of the core issues facing adoption of such a great product, set of products, is the extreme licensing measures/ambiguities in place.

The biggest driver of technology adoption is impact on the bottom line.  And, one of the biggest variables in that equation is integration.  If the cost to integrate is too high, why bother switching?  Sure it CAN do all this stuff, but if it costs too much to use that functionality, then why bother?  Microsoft offers up financing, ok, but that's just more headaches, more debt hanging over already skin tight operation.  So what's the time to return on investment?  2 months, 3 months, 1 year?  Sure we can do it, but with competition and the economy, can I pay for it, if things go south for us?  These are things I hear prospects say all the time.  It's not enough to be good at what you do, you have to have a business model that's preparred to take over the world, even if all you want is to sustain. 

So a few weeks ago, I downloaded the code sample from Johnz Blog for 'An ASP.NET Service Portal - Level 300'

One thing I am not is Level 300.  I am maybe a Level 200 programmer on a good day.  So I download it, and set it up.  If there's one thing that's lacking in it, not that I am complaining, because it forced me to read the code carefully, was a lack of documentation.  there's a number of places that has http://localhost or http://crm01 followed by various suffixes throughout the code pages.  Well after fixing all that, took me a couple oof weeks of off and off debugging, I finally got it running.  VERY COOL.  One other issue, the code that came with it provides not way to 'create' a case.  There is a code in there to read open cases and to add notes to exisiting cases, however, here is where my non Level 300 programmer skills have shown their ugly side.  I cannot seems to write the code for 'creating a case' and apply it to the button already there.  Oh well, I'll keep working on it, but I refuse to spin too many cycles on it, we are not licensed for external user access, which is what the concept is...to allow clients to create cases in the CRM db and allow CRM workflow to take over.  If I ever get it going we may look into licensing CRM properly for this, until that time, I'll keep testing it trying to get it to work.

-bill

Is this out there somewhere???

Perhaps in the next release of SBS (no not R2!).  The exchange team seems to be working on the whole unified messaging thing and may have it ready to go for the next exchange realease.  Now this will be COOOOOOOL!!!!!

My wife had a cell phone, oh the many years ago, that had unified messaging.  VMail, EMail, Fax from a cell phone, with outlook and webmail interface.  It was really cool.  but the service provider was gobbled up by one of the bigger services and she lost all those features.  Then we moved and never got back to that.

Seems to me though, this is a ripe thing for the next SBS release.  It already has email and fax.  Lump into that Instant messaging, VoIP, and Voice Mail and Video Mail, all natively on an Outlook client and the possibilities sky rocket.

This is a call to action to the SBS product management team.  Let's get this to work for Small Business.  Imagine, a USB handset/headset, that works inside Outlook to provide VoIP  routed through the SBS server in exchange with Voice Mail/EMail integration.  Add a usb camera and now video mail is on there.  Add Instant messaging with the communicator client integrated into outlook and, well, U C where I am goin'.

-bill watters

Recently, in my local SBS User group someone posed a question about 3rd party faxing utilities.  This got me to thinking...(bad idea, I know).  SBS Fax seems like the step child of the SBS world.  We love to talk it up as a big selling point, but, because most techies just plain old don't fax stuff, it's deployment goes by the wieghside.  Some businesses depend on Faxing to their client base for survival.  Still others occasionally 'need' this but do the old fashioned thing of printing and walking over to the fax, it gives them a break from the PC.  Some like to hear the fax ringer and the melodic tones of a data on analog phone lines...

So, for any of you techies out there, SBS Fax is a full featured faxing solution.  It has a tremendous feature set, that is mimicked my many at an enourmous cost.  There are several things one should know about the Faxing solution in SBS.

1) use the SBS Fax tools from the Server Management Screen.  In this case Wizards are your freind.  They enable some really good automation.

2) add the outlook 'account' Fax Mail Transport to the list of email accounts.  This is located in the 'Third Party section' of the email accounts addition wizard.

3) set dialing rules on the server to factor in 10 digit local dialing...

4) test and then train your clients.

Anyone using/selling 3rd party faxing applications without a justifiable reason, should be sent to the Principal's Office.  It's extra cost that clients just don't typically need.

k, so this is a proxy post.  My Brother got a new machine from dell and used Aloha Bob to transfer stuff over to the new machine.  He has full box products of Windows XP and Office 2003, and was preparring to canablize the old machine.  So he runs the utility and it proclaims to do the trick, however when he boots up the new system, post transfer of stuff, Office won't run.  So he figures what the hey, I'll remove Office and re-install it.  Yea right!!!!

Apparently he had several pages of regedits to run simply to remove a reference to his old 'E:\' drive.  See the new system only had a single HD partition...'C:\' and no 'D:\' drive, and there was some reference buried in the registry that was looking for 'E:\'

Long Story short, Aloha Bob has some work to do before he'll ever use that thing again...

In the Future Ray, just use the transfer files and settings wizard, and reinstall your apps.

-bill

A couple of weeks ago, my OMA stopped working on my Sprint Phone.  It's a WAP enabled device, not yet up to investing in a Windows Mobile PC (drool)...

Anyway, I tried a bunch of stuff, but was really too busy to sink my teeth into it, so i gave up.  The only time i used it was when i was waiting in traffic or at a client's so it was not that big of deal.  Well, today i had had enough, and decided to check into it...  After much consternation and even a post to my local user group, I went looking on the Microsoft site

in MSN search:

OMA Error 1805 site:microsoft.com

I was getting the 1805 in the event viewer application log on the SBS machine.  Sure enough there was some info there...primarily this: http://support.microsoft.com/?id=817379 without following their instructions, screw that recreate the virtual directory, etc...I decided to check the settings on the virtual directory, in this case exchange-oma, seems to be important enough for them to point that vdir out in the tech article.  So I am walking through the permissions in my existing vdir...see method 2 steps 13 and 14:

13.	Under IP address and domain name restrictions, click Edit.
14.	Click Denied access, click Add, click Single computer, type the IP address of the server that you are configuring, and then click OK.

As it turns out, my server has 3 IP Addresses 

127.0.0.1

xxx.xxx.xxx.2

xxx.xxx.xxx.3

but low and behold, xxx.xxx.xxx.2 is not there!  WHAT THE F!!!!!! I add it back and into the list, and sure enough test it out.  WOW WILL YOU LOOK AT THAT, suddenly it works like a champ.

I love it! (again)

k, so a la casa there is a machine that my wife used primarily for surfing and bloggin.'  we kept some music and videos on it, no big deal.  Well, i guess about christmas or so, AVG stopped updating.  I did not think too much of it at the time, cause it ain't that important, and is rarely used anyway.  for the past couple of months I've been telling myself I'ld get around to fixin' it, but always found MUCH MORE IMPORTANT things to do, like shoving q-tips in my ear!

Anyway, the weekend rolls around, and I decide to check into this beast of burden.  NO, not my WIFE!!!  The COMPUTER is the beast of burden!!!  so to start with, I took both drives out and mounted them into an external HD enclosure, and scanned them for viruses.  both of them came up clean, once using Housecall online scanner, another time using AVG while mounted on another, faster PC.

So then, I placed the drives back into the original system, installed Windows Defender, and ran an update. rebooted and scanned the PC using the freshly installed Windows Defender.  Sure enough it found 3 items.  I removed them, and then tried to update AVG, sure enough, it ran like a charm!

The lesson, always use multiple layers of defense when you can.  I had used Spybot search and destroy as well as ad-aware and Webroot's anti-spyware, but none of those picked this stuff out.  Admittedly, I had not made a big deal to figure out the problem, and probably could have figured it out long before this, but laziness, uh I mean procrastination, is my middle name.

good day and good night,

Bill Watters

I have long been a fan of scripting, from batch files to 'psuedo-app' vb/vba scripts I pride myself in the ability to answer and opportunity by writing a script.  This was no different.

First off, I am by no means a pro at scripting, most of my work is hashed together by reading and using code snippets here and there, where I can.  That being said, I started looking for a script that could, as .vbs, traverse a directory of my coding and open all .doc's and update the page setup settings.  This quickly deteriorated into me banging on the keyboard and asking..."WHY! WHY! WHY!???" each time the code errored out.  So I returned to the search engines and user groups and soon enough someone posed the idea of using MS Word's macro engine, to do the 'Page setup' piece and then wrap that in another code for traversing the folder tree to open all .doc files.  Sure enough it worked!  I neglected to do a tally mechanism to report back the number of files that it converted, but it looks like it did somewhere in the region of about 900 files in about 2 minutes, that includes a network share and all it's overhead and running on an older Pentium IV 1.5 Ghz pc with 256MB ram.  It did pretty well, i'ld say. 

to say this code is sloppy would be an understatement, however, it works when run from a VBA window in MS Word.

While this code, I would probably never need again, shows the effectiveness of scripting to answer some of the PC worlds toughest challenges.  In this case I spent roughly an hour of time identifying the problem, then about another 1.5 hours researching and writing a script and then running the script.  This customer is under a contract for monthly labor, so from them I get $500/month for up to 16 hrs per month, otherwise I would have charged $100/hr, so therefore @$250 to correct this problem.  Now, to do roughly 900 files manually would have taken me @ $100/hr about 12 hours of mind numbing delrium or $1200.  for me to teach them to do it, and them to actually do it, probably close to $900 in lost productivity and training time.  And even then, I could not say for sure that it was completed correctly.  So in this case, the client saved anywhere from $950 to $650 to correct this issue, becuase of the power of scripting.

It should go without saying, but I will anyway, always use a GREAT ANTI-VIRUS.  Also, I disable scripting and macros when I am not actually the one creating/writing the macro/script and running same.  for some power users, I will enable macros and scripting solutions, but only after putting forth all due dilegence and investigation into the nature of the scripts and macros as well as the AV situation.

That being said, happy scripting!

I have an XP machine with word 2003? installed.  It is having a problem printing to a new Dell 3000 Color LaserJet, in that, whenever a doc is created or openned and then printed to that particular printer, the printer asks to 'load legal in MPF.'  Now this issue does not happen when printing similarly from other machines, same build and SP of Word.  On the other machines, if I open and print a doc that was originally created on the problem machine, same issue occurs. This does not happen when printing to other printers on the LAN. This leads me to believe that there is something in the Word config on that machine that is causing this issue.  Apart from my desire to avoid searching for a needle in a haystack, I am just plain lazy, and was hoping that there is a 'global reset of options/properties' in Word.  So if anyone knows of such an animal, please advise.  Also if you have ever experienced similar issues, please advise.
btw, I have replaced the Normal.doc, and run through a variety of AV scans.
TIA, Bill Watters

Action Pack April updates apparently shipped, and now the wait is on.  I feel like I'm in 'The Music Man:'

..."yes the Well's Fargo Wagon is a comin' down the street, oh please let it be for me"...

From what I can tell there will be nothing major in this release, but I wanna get my hands on that Technical Demonstration toolkit.  To me that's the best part of Action Pack.  Hopefully the door bell will ring tomorrow.

This just popped up in my RSS reader...

Microsoft announced at LinuxWorld on Monday that it is making the enterprise version of its Virtual Server 2005 R2 product available as a free download, and that it is planning to offer support for Linux as a Virtual Server guest operating system.

http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,1995,1945404,00.asp?kc=MWRSS02129TX1K0000535

I have long touted the virtues of living a virtual server room.  With today's hardware so powerful and so cheap, it's hard to justify telling someone to get dozens of server, even for redundancy's sake.  Taking a couple of boxes and creating a virtualized environment for the whole thing is the way to go for many small businesses.  We'll see where this leads, but if there is one technology that will have a more direct impact on IT budgets or trends over the next 5-10 years, I'ld be interested to hear about it.

Had a great weekend, saw FC Dallas beat the Chicago Fire 3-2 on Saturday (take that RAY :-)).  It was a great game, took my daughter and we had a BLAST!.  Followed that up with a win, I scored the last goal for a 3-0 victory, on sunday!  The events we led middle of last week provided a fair number of contacts, so I am on the phone and email all day today!  It'll be fun, no doubt.  We gave away some office tips, a copy of One Note, Small Business Accounting 2006 and some other swag.  Abbie and I both love to do these events, speaking to people, teaching, and learning from others really gets the blood pumping.  It's great to see the light bulb suddenly go off over someone's head when they get it.  We were showing one lady about one note, and she was like 'yea, so?'  and I'm trying to show her how she can take 'snippets' and complile that into a larger doc, and suddenly she's like 'WOW, that is really cool!'  I asked her if I could quote her, she said 'absolutly. I'll be telling everyone I know about this!'  Now THAT's really cool!