May
28

Mail Merge in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 doesn’t sort contacts

Noticed when tested the next CRM rollup.

Consider this scenario:

1. Open Active Contacts view in CRM.

2. Select several contacts (ctrl + click, or shift + click).

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3. Start mail merge with merging selected records on current page.

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When we get a list of recipients, it is sorted randomly, as well as resulting letters:

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Then we are at risk to put wrong letters to envelopes.

Work around? Don’t forget to sort the list of recipients in mail merge dialog box before creating letters. No others’ experience found by now.

Luckily this didn’t happen with merging all contacts from saved Advanced Find views or from marketing lists. This is an advised way of working.

Posted by Viktor Bardadym | Leave your feedback

May
28

Search Server Express 2010 available

Microsoft unveiled Search Server Express 2010. This is a free download from Microsoft and is supposed to be a Google Mini Appliance killer. It’s main drawback compared to the full SharePoint Server 2010 Search is that it can only be used in a one server farm. But still with proper hardware it should be able to index and search about 3 million items with a sub-second response time.

See the compare chart:

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As the Search Server is based on SharePoint technology (so effectively comes on top of SharePoint Foundation) it appears the ideal solution for small deployments on premise compared to Foundation itself as that offers only very limited search capabilities: No cross site search, no refinements, no external source indexing. 

http://www.microsoft.com/enterprisesearch/searchserverexpress/en/us/default.aspx

Posted by Thijs ter Beek | Leave your feedback

May
26

Opening .msg files in Outlook from SharePoint 2010

Since we started using SharePoint 2010 we had trouble using it to store .msg (Outlook message format) in document libraries.

You can easily save your email from Outlook to a SharePoint location but opening it always gave a prompt dialog to save or cancel, not to open. So you were forced to store the email locally and then open it. Needless to say that this behavior is really annoying. I tried changing MIME types in IIS but it didn’t help and searching the internet I didn’t find a solution either.

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But then a colleague pointed me to a setting that changes the way SharePoint treats files opened from a browser. Its located in Central Administration > Manage Web Applications > Your WebApp > General Settings

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Changing this setting to permissive makes it possible to open .msg files in Outlook from SharePoint straight away. See screenshot below:

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Posted by Thijs ter Beek | 6 Comments

May
11

LifeSize videoconference: side-by-side comparison

LifeSize is a HD videoconference equipment market leader. They have a wide range of devices, and it can be confusing to understand the differences between them.

We made a comparison matrix that helps you select the right device for your scenario:

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Download the PDF compare sheet.

Selecting the right model for your needs

Here is how we help our customers selecting the right model for their needs:

  • We start by looking at an Express 220
  • If the customer plan to have meetings with 3 or more parties, we advise a Team 220 Phone or Room 220. These are multipoint devices:
    • The Team 220 allows for calls up to 4 parties: yourself + 3 other locations
    • The Room 220 allows for calls up to 8 parties: yourself + 7 other locations
  • If the customer is looking for a low-cost, portable solution, we offer the LifeSize Passport.
    • It’s important to understand the limitations of the Passport. The most important are:
      • You cannot send PC images from the Passport. From our experience, 50% of the videoconferences benefit from PC screen sharing. This issue can be solved by using a 3rd party software such as WebEx or LiveMeeting.
      • You cannot view video and PC content simultaneously on the LifeSize Passport. Imagine that you are in a videoconference with another party that has an Express, Team or Room. The moment they start sending PC content, you cannot see their faces anymore. It’s one or the other. This is very annoying.
    • Conclusion: the LifeSize Passport is a low cost alternative for people who do not need to share PC content often.

Notes

  • We do advise against buying the earlier 200 models. They are outdated and not will offer less compatibility with future products, such as the LifeSize Video Center
  • Once a customer selects the Team 220, we always advise to take the “Phone” version instead of the Dual Mic pod. The price difference is not that much anymore (700€ excl VAT), and having the phone comes in handy:
    • When you are not videoconferencing, you can use it as a high quality conference phone.
    • When you are in a videoconference, you can add audio-only participants by calling them up, or having them dial-in.
Posted by Olivier Mangelschots | Leave your feedback

May
05

SharePoint 2010: Social Features

Although Microsoft would claim that during the design process of SharePoint 2007 it invented social networking before Facebook and LinkedIn did, the times have changed somewhat since then and SharePoint 2007 wasnt really as social capable as we are now accustomed to.

In this post I would like to give an overview of all the cool new social features which I think will make SharePoint that much more interesting from a knowledge management perspective.

Tagging & Noteboard

In my previous post on SharePoint 2010 Term store and other metadata enhancements - Orbit One Blog I talked about the new tagging possibilities in SharePoint. The cool thing is that this functionality is present on all pages within SharePoint at the top right of the page.

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So by clicking on these buttons you can quickly tag en note pages that you see within SharePoint but even nicer is to  put a button on your favorites bar to tag and note stuff on the internet as well

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– Well for that just press the button once on a SharePoint page make the link on the screen a favorite.

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The tagging function works with autocomplete which is nice and on the same screen you see recent activity on the item.

SharePoint profiles

Already since SharePoint 2003, users of SharePoint have had a profile with information about themselves. Normally these profiles get stale from the moment it got first updated on the first working day of a new employee :-)

The new version of SharePoint offers some new features that might be interesting in this respect:

Integration of the Microsoft Knowledge Network

The Microsoft Knowledge Network was introduced by Microsoft as an add-on for SharePoint 2007. It automates the discovery and sharing of undocumented knowledge and relationships, mining your communications for keywords and relationships within Outlook and updating your SharePoint profile accordingly. This way enabling you to quickly locate who knows whom and who knows what within your constantly changing organization.

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Now the combination of Outlook 2010 and SharePoint 2010 gives you the opportunity to do just that out-of-the-box. It’s called Colleague and Outlook Social Connector

Sync SharePoint profile with other systems (social networks, Active Directory)

It is now possible to sync your SharePoint profile back to Active Directory including your profile picture. This way it will be easier to maintain data in your Active Directory. Another cool opportunity would be a Business Connectivity Services (BCS) connection that would sync your SharePoint profile with your profile on a social network, for instance LinkedIn?

 

So now that you are tagging, noting inside and outside of the firewall and your SharePoint profile is always up to date how will you other people within your organisation benefit from all this data?

Newsfeed

Well with a newsfeed just like you have on common social network sites:

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Within your profile you can set the types of updates you want to get in your newsfeed. See the following screenshot for the out-of-the-box settings. Developers can customize the activities that can be followed so you can track custom actions happening in SharePoint as well.

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That is it for the new and interesting social networking features in SharePoint.

Posted by Thijs ter Beek | Leave your feedback

May
05

SharePoint 2010 mixed Authentication

We have deployed several intranet/extranet applications on SharePoint 2007 that required a mixed authentication scheme. Windows Integrated authentication for domain user and forms based authentication for extranet users.

In SharePoint 2007 this was possible by extending a web application and using different authentication schemes for the different sites. This worked somewhat nice, but there were several problems with it.

  • There are really separate websites running on the same content database. Some customisations need to be deployed twice, for example Smart Parts.
  • There are two url’s, for example extranet.example.com and intranet.example.com.
  • Rich Client Integration has lots and lots of problems when using forms based authentication
  • The possibilities of the People Picker are somewhat limited.

 

SharePoint 2010 was announced to have Mixed Authentication, which would solve all problems!

Setting up Mixed authentication in SharePoint 2010

  1. Create a new Web Application with Claims Based Authentication
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  2. Select Authentication providers

     

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    Note: As you can see the last option is “Trusted Identity Provider”

    This option is only available if you have configured Trusted Identity Providers. To do this the certificate of the trusted party needs to be installed first.

  3. Select Sign In page.

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    here you can specify a custom login page. The default Sign In pages offers a drop down list with the configured authentication types.

  4. Create a site collection for the new web application

    The web application needs a root site collection

  5. Select a site collection administrator


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    The people picker is much improved. Search results are linked to the membership provider and it is possible to search only for a single provider.

  6. Configure the providers

    Add the Membership and Role provider to the web.config of the web application we just created

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    for simplicity’s sake I used an XML Membership and Role provider from Codeplex

  7. Sign in using Forms Authentication

    Trying to access  the web site now presents us with a Sign In page where we can choose how we authenticate

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    With windows authentication we can log in with our domain account

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    with forms authentication we get a login form

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    However, trying to log in with forms authentication will give a yellow page of death: A WCF FaultException telling us we can’t see the real error.

  8. Configure the Security Token Service

    Digging through the SharePoint logs reveals the following error message:

    Cannot get Membership Provider with name XmlMembershipProvider. The membership provider for this process was not properly configured. You must configure the membership provider in the .config file for every SharePoint process.

    It turns out the SecurityTokenService tries to access the membership provider directly, but is not configured to do so.

    After adding the Membership and Role provider to the web.config of the Security Token Service everything starts working. The web.config can be found here:
    C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\WebServices\SecurityToken

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  9. Sign in using forms authentication

    We can now sign in using forms authentication. Make sure to add the forms authentication based users to a SharePoint Group, or they will get Access Denied the moment they log in.

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Rich Client Integration


Office integration works great for both windows and forms authentication now. If you didn’t click “remember me” on the Sign In page you will be presented with a log in page that is actually usable. After clicking “remember me” all authentication will be transparent, and you can open the document for editing straight from SharePoint.

Posted by Mel Gerats | 4 Comments

May
03

The New World of Work (Het Nieuwe Werken) @ Orbit One

Concept

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The New World of Work is a new flexible way of working and collaborating with co-workers, partners, customers etc. This new kind of working is funded on three pillars: People & Organisation, The Office and ICT.

People & Organisation

In order to stay competitive organisations need to hire and retain the best staff. To be an attractive employer for talent you need to challenge them and make them responsible for the results they deliver. In this culture of openness Managers control less and support more.

ICT

ICT is the underlying enabler of the “New World of Work” because it makes it possible for people to work from anywhere, at any time, with anybody. We use solutions as video conferencing, presence and virtual workspaces on a daily basis and feel it is key for working in the “New World of Work” 

The Office – Workplace

The office & its workplaces need to invite and stimulate people to perform different types of work in the most effective and pleasurable way. People spend more and more time collaborating with others (co-workers, partners or customers) so setup workspaces specific for these types of activity: meetings, brainstorms, video conferences, chats and of course some relax spaces to play and have fun.

Orbit One and The New World of Work

Within Orbit One we wanted to know where we stand in ‘the new world of work’ so we did a survey originally created by Dik Bijl in Dutch and translated it into English because in our team of 17 enthusiastic employees that is the working language :-)

If you want to do the survey yourself please download it and use the excel template analyzing the results.

 Culinair team at work by Orbit One.

Results

Here is a graph of the results of the survey focusing on the different aspects of ‘the new world of work’

Results survey new world of work

The results of the survey told us that we are doing reasonably well but as always there is room for improvement! We started on our physical work environment: The Office.

Come and experience One Office

With the survey in mind we started with the upgrade of our Office in Gent to be ready for the ‘New World of Work’.

We rent out part of our office so if you want to take advantage of this highly productive and fun working environment or if you just want to have peek inside, don’t be shy, come and visit us in Gent!

For more info on one office flexible workplaces see our website “One Office” Kenmerken

What can Orbit One offer you?

Orbit One is a Internet Solutions provider that assists clients in becoming more efficient using technologies such as: SharePoint, Office Communications Server (OCS), Exchange, Direct Access and SSL VPN. With these technologies we create an integrated environment for your people (employees, partners and customers) that simply works and will boosts their productivity!

Find out more in our presentation on slideshare

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Downloads and other related stuff

If you’re interested contact us we can give a presentation/demo of how we work in the new world of work and how we can make you work more productive as well

Posted by Thijs ter Beek | Leave your feedback

Contact us - Raas Van Gaverestraat 83, 9000 Gent, Belgium - Tel. +32 (9) 330.15.00 - Privacy Statement - Sitemap - Sign In Developed with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007