Technical
Dynamics CRM update brings shiny new features…
by Kris Sum on Oct.26, 2011, under Technical
The new November Microsoft Dynamics CRM update brings facebook and twitter style social feeds (activity streams, walls, etc) to CRM, better windows phone 7 support, tighter integration and more.. There’s also the promise of Firefox/Chrome/Safari support in the first half of 2012 (yippee!). Check out the video posted.
An alternative to Synergy for PCs on microsoft operating systems…
by Kris Sum on Oct.11, 2011, under Technical
Recently released was “Mouse without Borders“, a Synergy like program which lets you share one keyboard/mouse/monitor across multiple computers. The killer feature of MouseWithoutBorders is that you can copy&paste, drag&drop files (!), and lock/logon multiple workstations simultaniously. Unfortunately it only supports up to 4 devices, but it’s definately worth trying out.
Draytek Routers – get unencrypted config or decrypt config file..
by Kris Sum on Aug.25, 2011, under Technical
On site the other day, had a very strange problem where DNS requests from windows server boxes were not working. No firewall rules in the router, and nslookup still fails, but it would work absolutely fine from my laptop on the same network.
(continue reading…)Teach your kids to code using Codecademy
by Kris Sum on Aug.25, 2011, under Technical, Things we like
Codecademy is a new website which teaches basic programming concepts in a nice easy to use website. I imagine that they plan to add extra (more complex) courses over time, hopefully it will take off!
SBS 2011 Essentials – office365 cloud integration coming soon…
by Kris Sum on Jul.01, 2011, under Technical
From the SBS blog: “The integration module will enable small businesses to simply administer their users both local and cloud in one single place, for instance adding all local users into Office 365 and effortlessly using a single custom domain name for both SBSS 2011 Essentials and Office 365.”
Expect it sometime this autumn.
First look at Windows 8
by Kris Sum on Jun.02, 2011, under Technical, Things we like
Ars Technica has a first look at Windows 8, with it’s Metro (Windows Phone 7) touch interface.
Whilst I appreciate what Microsoft are doing, and it’s great for tablets and other touch based devices, I can’t see this bringing any benefits to the vast majority of office based workers who spend 90% of their time inside office applications and programming IDEs.
Useful Lync 2010 references…
by Kris Sum on Feb.03, 2011, under Technical
Some general references that i’ve been using whilst checking out Lync Server 2010
Configuring users from powershell
Enable-CsUser –Identity "Firstname Lastname" –RegistrarPool SERVERNAME -SipAddress "sip:email@domain.com"
Disable-CsUser –Identity "Firstname Lastname"
http://blogs.technet.com/b/csps/archive/2010/06/28/wtlenableuservoice.aspx
Changing port information
For some reason, even though in the topology builder I’ve setup the correct ports, clients were still using the wrong information.Get-CsService
This will return all current service information.
Set-CsWebServer [-Identity ] [-AppSharingPortCount ] [-AppSharingPortStart ] [-Confirm []] [-ExternalFqdn ] [-ExternalHttpPort ] [-ExternalHttpsPort ] [-Force ] [-InternalFqdn ] [-PrimaryHttpPort ] [-PrimaryHttpsPort ] [-PublishedExternalHttpPort ] [-PublishedExternalHttpsPort ] [-PublishedPrimaryHttpPort ] [-PublishedPrimaryHttpsPort ] ReachExternalPsomServerPort ] [-ReachPrimaryPsomServerPort ] [-UserServer ] [-WhatIf []]
Should be used to set the information e.g. PublishedExternalHTTPsPort – see http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/ocsedge/thread/ecca3513-0f52-4821-bf87-fd2f6c140e42 and http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg398759.aspx
DNS entries to setup
DNS SRV record for _sipinternaltls._tcp.contoso.com domain over port 5061 that maps to lyncserver.contoso.com
Useful URLs
- https://server-name/cscp – Management Address
- http://www.cjwdev.co.uk/Software/ADPhotoEdit/Info.html – AD Photo Editor
- http://blogs.technet.com/b/nexthop/archive/2010/11/22/microsoft-lync-2010-photo-experience.aspx – How lync gets it’s photo data
Windows Multipoint Server 2011 Release Candidate
by Hannah O'Neill on Dec.21, 2010, under Technical
Windows Multipoint Server is a solution to shared computing that is primarily designed to meet the needs of schools and libraries. It allows teachers and administrators to have control over the content that users are viewing and what they are accessing.By running Multipoint Server all stations when connected appear to run on Windows 7 so users can experience the most up-to-date Windows Operating System.
Google host new ‘teach your parents to use a computer’ website
by Kris Sum on Dec.15, 2010, under Technical, Things we like
Google have put up a website where you can send ‘care packages’ to an email address, showing them how to do things like copy & paste, resize pictures, attach files to emails and so on – pretty handy in this holiday season!
Check it out at www.teachparentstech.org
SBS 2011 Essentials loses Drive Extender tech
by Kris Sum on Nov.24, 2010, under Technical
In a recent blog post, Microsoft explain their reasoning for removing the Drive Extender technology which was to allow WHS style drive pooling and fault tolerance.
Whilst a lot of people will see this as a step backwards, I’m personally happy with this decision – drive extender tech makes it a lot harder for us ‘real’ sysadmins to determine where data lies in a disaster recovery situation, plus we’re much more familiar with RAID based solutions.