Aaron Tiensivu's Blog

KB 912945 and the upcoming April IE patches will change ActiveX behavior due to a software patent ruling and so far the biggest application that has trouble with it are the Siebel CRM applications. Siebel is working on getting their software updated to get it to work correctly but you will most likely want to install the 'compatibility patch' that will be available as a manual download from the MS Download Center.

I have a feeling as Patch Tuesday hits, we will see a lot more applications having this sort of problem.

Speaking of the compatibility patch, here is some more info on it:
http://windowsconnected.com/blogs/jeff/archive/2006/03/31/1524.aspx

Great idea. Once I get better versed with CRM 3.0, I am going to use this quite a bit I believe.

http://blogs.msdn.com/mikemill/archive/2006/03/24/560334.aspx

Is it possible to use SQL 2005 Express with the CRM 3.0 'fat' client instead of MSDE? I'm tempted to try it but I'm also worried that it might break my install. I haven't seen much mention of it but I've been such a fan of SQL 2005 over SQL 2000 that I'd really love to give it a shot.

I can't seem to find much on the internet about people trying it.

Please drop me a line if you figure it out.

It looks like you can run the server portion of it on SQL 2005 according to this link:
http://thenorwichgroup.blogs.com/mscrm/2006/03/sql_2005_and_ms.html#more

No mention of the client.

A few years ago there used to be a freeware application from DABCC that would go through your event logs and make recommendations on printer driver mappings based on that. This new tool does the same type of thing and it's free too.

Printer drivers on TS are always a tricky combination so anything that can help map drivers is always a good thing.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=9AD27BE9-40DB-484F-862E-38A094EEEAF7&displaylang=en

My grandma, the one fighting stomach cancer, needed her brakes fixed on her car. All of her money right now is going towards medicine for cancer treatment. 2 guys at her office redid her brake system just for the cost of the parts.

Hearing about that really made my week. You don't hear about things like that enough these days.
So, the people at the Grandville office of Greenridge Realty get my thumbs up.

I've mentioned it in the past but the upcoming Internet Explorer update in April is going to surprise a lot of end users and unfortunately I am sure will end up with many help desk calls to various organizations. Thankfully, there is going to be a workaround available for the short term. My biggest concern is that instead of installing the (needed) updates, people are going to avoid them in order to keep their unsupported/unupgradable programs.

In an ideal world, this wouldn't be a problem but I know there are a lot of places that are required, for one reason or another, to keep older software working unpatched. If anything, I hope the end result is more software patent awareness.

You can read more about the changes and workarounds here:
http://blogs.technet.com/msrc/archive/2006/03/29/423560.aspx

Integrate Microsoft.Net MapPoint and CRM with this add-on:
http://www.cwrmobility.com/Products/MSCRMMapPointIntegration/tabid/56/Default.aspx

Spell checker add-on:
http://www.cwrmobility.com/Products/DynamicsCRM30SpellChecker/tabid/71/Default.aspx

Image add-on:
http://www.cwrmobility.com/Products/DynamicsCRM30ImageAddIn/tabid/67/Default.aspx

I haven't tried them out yet but most likely will be shortly once we complete our CRM roll out.

If you have a TechNet Plus account, you'll already get the beta content, but if you want to test drive these new programs, especially Exchange 12, you can sign up at the TechNet Pre-Beta Release site.

From the site:

Lead evaluations for new technologies and understand their impact on your IT environment and their potential for your company by pre-registering here. You will be the first to be notified when the Windows Vista, Office "12," and Exchange "12" public beta releases become available. Additionally, you will receive updates and information regularly through the Microsoft TechNet Flash newsletter, from the time you pre-register until the launch of the product.

Link:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/beta/preregister.mspx

As much 'bad press' as Internet Explorer gets, I think this is a step in the right direction to get known bugs and issues logged and tracked from the public. Great news for IE 7 and future versions.

File your bugs/etc here:
https://connect.microsoft.com/site/sitehome.aspx?SiteID=136

Cassandra found it and bought it first. I am in love with this tiny keyboard. It is originally made for the Playstation 2 but since it is USB, it is also a perfect keyboard for a desktop or X-Box.

It is smaller than an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of paper. The best part is that if you use Fn-Up and Fn-Dn, they will do Page Up and Page Down with the arrow keys just like a ThinkPad 240. Fn-Left is Home and Fn-Right is End. I always wanted a desktop keyboard that did that without remapping keys!

It comes with an 8 foot cord and doesn't have any annoying media buttons or F-Lock keys to deal with that normally drive me crazy.



Logitech's product information on it:
http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/products/details/US/EN,CRID=2282,CONTENTID=6636

Excellent little Python script that can 'phone home' and get a list of known bad IPs out on the internet.

http://denyhosts.sourceforge.net/

I haven't used it yet but it looks like a good way to keep the bad guys out. Of course, changing the default port always helps quite a bit too for the automated scripts out there.

SSHd Filter

One of the more interesting features discussed in a recent IIS chat was the addition of a command line tool that could sort of be thought as 'IISRESET on steroids'. It can do a lot more than IISRESET ever thought of.

Here are some examples for setting up sites and application pools (verbatim from the chat):

APPCMD list apppool “DefaultAppPool”
APPCMD list apppool /apppool.name:”DefaultAppPool”
APPCMD list apppools -autoStart:true
APPCMD list apppools -processModel.loadUserProfile:false
APPCMD add apppool /name:”MyAppPool”
APPCMD delete apppool ”MyAppPool”
APPCMD delete apppool /apppool.name:”MyAppPool”
APPCMD set apppool “DefaultAppPool” /autoStart:false
APPCMD set apppool “DefaultAppPool” -?
APPCMD recycle apppool “DefaultAppPool”
APPCMD delete site ”Default Web Site”
APPCMD set site “Default Web Site” /serverAutoStart:false
APPCMD start site “MySite”
APPCMD stop site “Default Web Site”

Nicest part, for me at least, is being able to restart a specific site without restarting the whole pool.

Also of note from the chat:

60% of IIS was rewritten to become IIS 7 and IIS Manager has been 'picked apart' and enhanced significantly over the version that is in IIS 6. The IIS and ASP.NET teams at MS have been merged so you will see a tighter integration with both components.

The IIS that shipped with XP was largely based off of the Windows 2000 IIS 5, and the IIS that you will see in Vista, even in the home edition, will be a lot better.

Eric Deily explains it better than I can so I'm quoting from him from the chat:

IIS7 is the next generation, maintaining the similar process model as IIS6, but shipping across both client (windows vista) & server (Longhorn server), and feature a merged IIS/ASP.net request processing pipeline and the ability to componitize functionality, such as determining exactly what you need (such as not needing Windows Integrated authentication, or static compression -> you don't have to install this) and only using those components, & a unified configuration system now that blends IIS & ASP.net configuration.

This build replaces build 2162, and has a few 64-bit specific fixes in it. If you are running SQL 2000, probably a good idea to stick this on your server.

KB 894905

You'll know that you are running the most up to date version of SQL 2000.

A recent OpenSSH version added support for TUN devices under Linux, Windows and I believe a few other operating systems. With VTLs, you lose a few of the features of the 'local' network like button status and other goodies. Since you can setup SSH to do layer-2 now, you could in theory have decent multi-site support that is encrypted across the internet through one port. It would bump up traffic going back and forth quite a bit between sites, but it just might work.

You could also do the same type of thing with OpenVPN, but I'm more comfy with SSH so far.