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I love Microsoft Virtual PC. I think it is a super-easy platform for day-to-day virtualization, especially when doing demos and simple testing. Sure Vmware has more features and options, but it is also more complex and nowhere as easy to install and start running with. I am curious when Microsoft plans on updating Virtual PC. Virtual Server R2 has been grabbing all the headlines and all the focus has been on Enterprise virtualization and Longhorn\Hypervisor. Will Virtual PC wither on the vine and die? I for one, hope not. Sure Virtual Server runs on Windows XP Professional, and is even supported for development environments. However, it is nowhere as easy to set up and get going with. Microsoft, please keep updating and supporting Virtual PC!
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If you like chocolate, and you like peanut butter – no wait, I mean if you like Flickr, and you like SnagIt, then these two tastes just got better together! I have always loved SnagIt, and use it almost daily when blogging or preparing “how-to” documentation. It’s a tool I just can’t live without. Flickr as well, has a warm place in my heart and beyond sharing photos with family and friends I also use it to “host” pictures I post to my blog. Now with Flickr integration in SnagIt I will be able to save some myself some considerable time. You can read more about it in this post from the TechSmith blog.
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My blogging experience from Word 2007 hasn’t been as smooth as it has for others. When I go to post I am presented with a &Password dialog box asking for a username and password. When I enter the credentials for my blog, it appears again. And again. And again. If I then select cancel it appears again. And again. If I select the large X in the upper right corner it appears again. And again. You get the idea. I am then forced to END TASK on Word 2007. Since OneNote 2007 passes its publish to blog on to Word, I can only assume the same thing will happen, except, when I have to END TASK on Word I won't lose my blog post!
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My blogging experience from Word 2007 hasn’t been as smooth as it has for others. When I go to post I am presented with a &Password dialog box asking for a username and password. When I enter the credentials for my blog, it appears again. And again. And again. If I then select cancel it appears again. And again. If I select the large X in the upper right corner it appears again. And again. You get the idea. I am then forced to END TASK on Word 2007. Since OneNote 2007 passes its publish to blog on to Word, I can only assume the same thing will happen, except, when I have to END TASK on Word I won't lose my blog post!
Apparently, the fault was mine, although not entirely! When Word created my provider account, it created another account as well, but the name was a string of numbers similar to a GUID. I finally got the idea, before posting, to tap the drop-down menu and low and behold, there was another entry as I had named the profile. Once I selected it, Word posted the entry without a hitch. In OneNote, you can also post to your blog! It simply passes the selected items on to Word but I like that I can still proof, format and compose my blog entries in OneNote as well as keep all relevant information and original entries in one place. This rocks! PS SnagIt 8. Best screen capture utility. Ever.
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Once again, all the good breakout sessions (IMO) are at the same time. And the “repeat” sessions are never the ones I would have repeated, that’s for sure. I know this is more art than science, but I have a suggestion: leave half of Thursday and all of Friday open. Then, based on a web feedback form, survey or some other Microsoft-research-based-method, fill that schedule with the most attended or popular breakout sessions. I don't think it is too critical to know exactly which session you will be attending 48 hours in advance. Put the winners up on ComNet the night before and we can all decide then.
I also really hope the ILL sessions will also be redundant. Already they are all booked up solid. I didn't see the value in blowing off work to fill out my session schedule a month in advance and now I am locked out. I don't know how strictly they will adhere to who registered – will there be a bouncer and all? I assume it says “sold out” for a reason . . .
And I don't see my suggested Windows Vista Loadfest on the schedule. I will also go out on a limb and say we wont be getting any Office 2007 Beta 2 or Windows Vista Beta 2 DVDs either. I think they were too busy burning them for the WinHec keynote, attendees and Microsoft employees.
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I had noticed this and did a bit of poking around but didn't have time to find anything conclusive. When I installed Outlook and OneNote 2007 I was prompted to upgrade to Windows Desktop Search 3.0 beta so I would have search functionality across these two new programs. No problem I thought and installed WDS beta 3. I didn't notice it until I needed to search my desktop for something, but there was no search dialog box in the taskbar. There was no little “magnifying glass” icon in my systray. I thought perhaps something got uninstalled, but when I checked Add\Remove Programs, sure enough Desktop Search showed up. Then, as I was catching up on my RSS feeds (FeedDemon 2.0 rocks) I noticed this in Chris Pratley’s OneNote blog:
A bunch of people are surprised that Outlook and OneNote ask you to install the new Windows Desktop Search 3.0 beta, and that this beta of WDS does not have any UI (no search box in the task bar). Yes folks, that's how it is. Sometimes things just don't all work out the way we'd like. The good news is you get instant search in those two apps. WDS 3.0 will get its UI back next time you see an update from them. So if you can survive without desktop search for a couple of months you'll be fine. If you don't install WDS 3.0 you will lose a bunch of functionality from OLK and OneNote, so please do install it. Some people are reporting that OneNote search doesn't find anything after they install WDS 3.0. Give it time. The indexer is a little shy at first so it will not immediately index your whole notebook in this beta. If after waiting a day it isn't indexed, try making changes on a bunch of pages - you may have hit a problem where pages are not marked as "not indexed yet" so the indexer thinks it is finished before it has even started. Hey it's a beta - it will all be good before we ship.
Read the full post here.
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The Microsoft Exchange Team Blog (aka You Had Me At EHLO) has a sweet post on the new features planned for Outlook Web Access in Exchange 2007. Now, I love OWA 2003. The feature set is amazing, closely mimicking the MAPI client look. However, it still had the “app in a web browser” feel and there were things that happened, that reminded you of this – like accepting a meeting request, resolving user names in the GAL (Global Address List) and the “you have mail” alerts.
The new 2007 version is outright amazing! It is getting even closer to being a true desktop (MAPI) client replacement. Among the changes are:
- New email and folder counts stay up-to-date automatically and no longer require refreshes.
- New integrated reminder drop-downs. it isn't a pop-up so it wont be blocked and you wont miss your appointments.
- Auto-complete menu that remembers names for emails
- View message headers for email
- Conversation view in folders and
- much, much more!
See the article for the full rundown. I can hardly wait to see it in the wild. The OWA team is kicking butts and taking names!
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TechEd 2006 in Boston, MA from June 11th to June 16th has now sold out. You can get on the waiting list though! I think it sold out even quicker than last year ...
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Many were predicting that it would be delivered on May 22nd. Now Bink.nu NeoWin, among others, are saying it has been delayed slightly for some brief bug-squashing. He is reporting now that May 27th is a more likely date for public availability while the attendees of the WinHEC conference on May 23rd will also get a DVD with the Beta 2 bits as well as Beta 2 of Office 2007.
And I have to say again that if they can press DVDs for WinHEC, they can press ten thousand extra for everyone at TechEd a couple of weeks later in Boston. Really. Please.
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I have implemented several Exchange Lotus Notes Connectors, but never has one caused as much trouble as the one today did! Things started off just fine. The company I am managing this migration for is a small one, and as such don't have a wealth of resources (read: lots of spare hardware). They had two suitable Exchange 2003 servers – one for a front-end server and one for a back-end server. As the Notes connector requires the Lotus Notes client to be installed we decided we didn't want it on the back-end server where the mailboxes are housed. Normally I put the connector on a dedicated Exchange server, but that wasn't a possibility in this instance.
The connector installed without incident, and the directory sync went well. However, the MAPI queue for the connector on the server showed a status of “not available.” The x.400 queue looked normal. After working through many troubleshooting scenarios, I finally found a knowledge base article that pointed out issues running the connector from a front-end server. Apparently, due to a number of disabled services (DSProxy, Free Busy, etc.) present in front-end servers, things don't work right. Having never installed the connector on a front-end server I was unaware of this snafu. You can read the KB article here.
After removing the configuration check box for RPC over HTTP and Front-End Server I rebooted and the queue then began to behave as expected. Hooray! However, now the mail destined for the Notes Connector was just sitting in the queue — going nowhere fast. After checking all the usual suspects (9 times out of 10 it is a name resolution issue) I was thoroughly confused. I decided to build another Exchange server to run the Notes connector on as I didn't trust the state of the former front-end server after all the work done on it.
I brought up the third server, installed the Notes connector and all looked good. Mail was flowing from Notes to Exchange without incident. Again though, when sending mail from Exchange to Notes, the mail would just sit in the queue destined for the Notes Connector server. Again I checked all over name resolution front and back. Ping. NSLookUp. Telnet. And so on. Then, in the last minutes of the work day I found an obscure reference to Symantec Anti Virus on the Exchange server. I had told the client to exclude the databases and queues from the real-time scanner. However, I forgot to check that he disabled the Internet E-mail Auto-Protect. Once I unchecked the box to disable it, like magic all the mail began to flow.
From the Symantec knowledge base: “Additionally, the Symantec Anti-Virus server does not include the Symantec Email Proxy that is part of Internet E-Mail Auto-Protect. The Symantec Email Proxy monitors the standard mail ports by default, and can cause performance degradation or failure if installed on an Exchange server.” Here’s the article.
E-mail goodness once again.
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All kinds of new Exchange Server downloads were announced at the Microsoft download site. Here is brief overview. The download site is also RSS enabled so you can be alerted when new items are posted (semi-heavy traffic though – roughly 30+ items a day).
- Exchange Server Disaster Recovery Analyzer – The Exchange Server Disaster Recovery Analyzer programmatically collects configuration data and header information from databases and transaction log files. The tool analyzes all headers and creates a detailed list of instructions explaining what the problem is, and how to resolve it. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=c86fa454-416c-4751-bd0e-5d945b8c107b&displaylang=en
- Exchange Server 2003 RPC over HTTP Deployment Scenarios – Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003 and Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003, combined with Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003, support the use of RPC over HTTP to access Exchange servers. Using the Microsoft Windows RPC over HTTP feature to enable your users to connect to their Exchange mailbox eliminates the requirement for remote office users to use a virtual private network (VPN) to connect to their Exchange servers. Users who are running Outlook 2003 on client computers can connect directly to an Exchange server in a corporate environment from the Internet. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=f7d2d6e5-579f-4779-a6b8-7ef931ec02a5&displaylang=en
- Working with Active Directory Permissions in Microsoft Exchange 2003 – In many organizations, there are separate administrators for Exchange and Active Directory, which leads to a need to delegate administrative functions, so that distinct boundaries of administrative rights are maintained. In this type of model, known as a split permissions model, operations are decentralized in that two or more operation teams manage aspects of Exchange and Active Directory. For example, one operations team might manage domain and forest functions, while another operations team manages Exchange-related functions. In these situations, certain rights must be delegated to all personnel so that they may complete their job functions without compromising the operational and security boundaries. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=0954b157-5add-48b8-9657-b95ac5bfe0a2&displaylang=en
- Microsoft Exchange Server SMTPDiag Tool – SmtpDiag is a troubleshooting tool designed to work directly on a Windows server with IIS/SMTP service enabled or with Exchange Server installed. It utilizes the same APIs as Windows and Exchange in order to diagnose configuration and connection issues involving SMTP and DNS. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=bc1881c7-925d-4a29-bd42-71e8563c80a9&displaylang=en
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I have decided to take the plunge and start producing some blogcasts. My expertise lies in Active Directory, Exchange, Live Communication Server and ISA Server. I am looking for some suggestions on blogcast topics you would like to see. I am thinking about going through some Exchange 2003 topics like migrations from Notes and Groupwise and some administrative tips and tricks. Leave a comment, I am open to suggestions!