Kurt Shintaku's Blog

<taken from the Biztalk Product team Blog>

This  virtual .NET Developer conference will feature loads of great content and speakers including RD’s, MVP’s, and more!  Hosted by  SSWUG.org at  http://www.vconferenceonline.com/dotnet/.

To see more details and RSVP: http://www.facebook.com/n/?event.php&eid=18189163425

[These webcasts are being delivered by Microsoft Partner “Neudesic LLC"]

Microsoft Partner Neudesic presents:
Online Webinar: Office Canvas: Enterprise Mash-Ups for SharePoint
Tuesday, July 15, 2008 11:00 AM-12:00 PM Pacific Time

Description: As the volume of data increases, so have the demands on IT to build custom solutions that make sense of all this data. Providing tools that empower users to create views that pull in multiple sources of data is an important first step to ensure these needs are being met.

Using Office Canvas, a user has the ability to create sophisticated enterprise mash-ups that pull in various forms of data into a cohesive view. In this webinar, you will see how to leverage SharePoint as your enterprise mash-up server.

Find out more and register today.
https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=127842

Business Intelligence 2.0: Bringing All Pieces Together for Full Customer View
Wednesday, August 13, 2008 10:00-11:00 AM Pacific Time

Description: Your customer, whether internal or external to your organization, is your most valuable commodity. Do you have the visibility you need to keep them loyal? Are you meeting all of their expectations or are you exceeding them?

Learn how to get a 360-degree view of the customer utilizing CRM and Business Intelligence on the Microsoft Platform. Attend and gain insight into tools you need to collect data and use it to effectively drive satisfaction and profit for your organization.

Find out more and register today.
http://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=129687

“You Did That with SQL Server Reporting Services?”
Tuesday, August 19, 2008 11:00 AM-12:00 PM Pacific Time

Description: During this fun session, Mark Breen will demonstrate some of the unusual ways that SSRS has been used to solve actual business needs … from coordinating on-demand data loads; very precise fact sheets; letter generation; database updates for match-merge routines; to storing specific user profiles on how they want to see their customized report filters.

See the presentation ranked “number 1 at the Denver MSDN Microsoft Master Series. The best scores and presenters at this particular event to date!  ~Senior Architect Evangelist at a Global Software Company

Find out more and register today.
http://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=129104

BI 2.0: Solve the ERP Data Intelligence Puzzle
Wednesday, September 10, 2008 1:00-2:00 PM Pacific Time

Description: With the plethora of data available in your ERP system, are you able to sift through it and gain valuable insight needed to make key decisions? Are you managing your resources effectively? Do you have key financial metrics available at your fingertips to respond appropriately to changing markets and strategically plan?

Learn how to arm key decision makers throughout your organization with the visibility into their operations that they need to be effective and proactive. Over-utilize your resources; make your ERP data work for you.

Find out more and register today.
http://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=129688

Description: SharePoint and MOSS have changed the way workers share information and collaborate. In today’s very competitive world, leveraging existing investments to increase productivity is the most rapid path to a return on your investment.

Join us on September 16^th as we discuss the top 10 reasons SharePoint projects fail, and how you can ensure your portal doesn’t go down in flames.

Find out more and register today.
http://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=129648

OMG!  The Windows Mobile 6.1 upgrade appears to be available for the Samsung i760.

• https://techtrain.samsungwireless.com/tekweb/techpage/Support/Downloads/vzw_i760/SCH-i760_WM_6_1_Upgrade_Tool_For_Vista.zip
• https://techtrain.samsungwireless.com/tekweb/techpage/Support/Downloads/vzw_i760/SCH-i760_WM_6_1_Upgrade_Tool_For_XP.zip

(as found on PDAPhoneHome at http://pdaphonehome.com/forums/743198-post275.html)

What’s New: (as per the forums of 7/14/08)

We officially agreed to acquire Zoomix, a company that focuses on “data quality technology”. 

Data quality is the concept of automating the process of ensuring data stored in repositories across multiple locations is accurate to allow for quality decision making.

Zoomix makes a product called Zoomix Acceleartor that combines semantic & linguistic analysis with machine learning to “classify, match and standardize complex corporate data”.

Microsoft’s plan to add automated data-quality technology to its database product, especially to the data-entry workflow, could greatly help the overall quality of data and reduce errors and inconsistencies, Ptak said. "You want to correct it as early in the stream as you can," he said. 

Zoomix’s development team will join the SQL Server team at Microsoft’s research and development center in Israel, according to Zoomix.

Read more at Zoomix’s web site:
http://www.zoomix.com/pressreleases_article.asp?id=26

There’s a rather ancient tool out there called “Thread Compressor” for Outlook that allows you to automatically select a folder and rifle through all the running conversation threads, deleting all the middle discussion messages while keeping only the last response that contains the content of all the other previous replies.

DOWNLOAD:  http://www.exchange-mail.org/threadc4.zip

There’s an old article about it here:
http://windowsitpro.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=25119&DisplayTab=Article

The author was Ewan Dalton. He’s a friend of mine from the old days when I did Mobility and he’s got an explanation on how to make it work with Outlook 2007.
http://blogs.technet.com/ewan/archive/2007/04/23/thread-compressor-for-outlook-do-you-want-it.aspx

—————————–
“Functionally, the v4 version does pretty much everything the v5 one does (except for UI tidy up and the likes), as long as you make sure you’ve got the required VB6 controls installed on your machine, and have downloaded CDO 1.21 to install into Office (since CDO is no longer part of the Office setup).”

• Collaboration Data Objects, version 1.2.1
  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2714320d-c997-4de1-986f-24f081725d36&DisplayLang=en
• Visual Basic 6.0 SP5: Run-Time Redistribution Pack (vbrun60sp5.exe)
  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=bf9a24f9-b5c5-48f4-8edd-cdf2d29a79d5&DisplayLang=en

The instructions for installing the DLL are pretty easy:

• Right-click on this link and choose Save… then copy the DLL to your PC, under some directory where you can easily find it again and somewhere it won’t get easily deleted (ie don’t just put it on your desktop). I’d suggest C:Documents and SettingsusernameApplication DataMicrosoftAddins (that’s assuming you’re using Windows 2000 and it’s installed on your C: drive…). This is the default folder where Outlook expects Addins to be, so it’s as good a place as any.
• In Outlook, go to Tools, Options, click Other, then Advanced Options and then press the COM Addins button.
• Now select Add, and browse for the DLL you put on your machine and select it… bingo, you should have the Addin now loaded.

System Requirements
There are a few basic requirements:

• You must be running Outlook 2000, 2002, Office Outlook 2003, 2007
• You must have Collaboration Data Objects installed on your machine – if you get an error when you try to use the Addin saying that it couldn’t create an ActiveX object, you don’t have CDO installed.
• To install CDO, run the Office 200x setup, choose Add or Remove Features, and look under Microsoft Outlook for Windows. Check that Collaboration Data Objects is set to run from this computer… the installation default is "Not Available".
• There are various controls used in this new version which might not already be on your machine:
• TABCTL32.OCX
• COMDLG32.OCX
• MSFLXGRD.OCX

Although Exchange Management tools are invaluable for managing, monitoring and administer networks, computers, services, and other system components it does not provide a graphical view of user mailbox details. Administrators have to sift through a tree view to view the members of the Distribution Group in an organizational unit and use embedded data to figure out the details.

Microsoft Management Console (MMC) hosts administrative tools that you can use to administer networks, computers, services, and other system components. Exchange Management Console and Exchange Management Shell are used to administer and configure specific settings for Mailbox servers and create and manage Mailbox objects. The Mailbox server role hosts mailbox databases, which contain users’ mailboxes. If you plan to host user mailboxes or public folders, or both, the Mailbox server role is required.

This Microsoft® Office Visio® 2007 Professional Add-In makes it easy for Exchange administrators to visualize, explore, and communicate complex information. Instead of viewing single user data, administrators can create data-connected Visio diagrams that display data at a glance and dramatically increase productivity. You can diagram a Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 site topology, including sites, servers, and connections for an organization.

See the power of Data Visualization at work with this Visio Add-in For Visio 2007 Pro

DOWNLOAD:
http://visiotoolbox.com/downloads.aspx?resourceid=2&aid=547

INSTRUCTIONS:
http://visiotoolbox.com/downloads/VisioExchangeConnectorSetup_06-03-08-V1%5B1%5D/User%20Instructions-20080221.docx

Customize your 404 error pages with the Web Page Error Toolkit!

For large web sites with extensive amounts of content, 2 to 10 percent of traffic is looking for pages that either don’t exist or have been moved. Most web servers return a generic 404 error page or a sitemap when a user’s desired page cannot be found. These unhelpful pages often result in a dead end for users.

With Microsoft’s Web Page Error Toolkit, you can create dynamic 404 pages that contain customized error messages along with search results seeded with relevant keywords to help your users move past the missing page and find the information they need.  Below is an example of a screenshot of what the typical 404 error page looks like “before & after” the application of the Web Page Error Toolkit:

The Toolkit is a customizable ASP.net application that replaces the default error page on your IIS server. The Toolkit enables you to use Live Search (or any search engine) to return results for the specified domain and locale, control the number of results returned on your page, choose whether to offer spelling corrections, and customize your error message.

You also have the option of choosing from several keyword extraction strategies that are included with the install, or providing your own implementation.

DOWNLOAD: 
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=deca3e03-4f93-46d1-affc-493c0e02eb63&DisplayLang=en

Requirements:

• Windows 2000; Windows Server 2003; Windows Server 2008; Windows Vista; Windows XP
• IIS 5 or greater
• ASP.net 2.0 or greater
• VS 2005 or greater to customize the keyword extractor

Read more about the kit at:

• http://dev.live.com/blogs/devlive/archive/2008/06/03/339.aspx
• http://dev.live.com/blogs/livesearch/archive/2008/06/02/WebPageErrorToolkit.aspx

With the release of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft’s IT department produced a new whitepaper entitled “Identifying Server Candidates for Virtualization”.

The whitepaper is a detailed look at the criteria and tools that Microsoft uses to determine which servers to virtualized to maximize consolidation while minimizing risk and cost.

It goes on to explain Microsoft’s “RightSizing” initiative which not only identifies server candidates but also communicates the virtualization strategy to Microsoft’s business groups.

DOWNLOAD:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc700692(TechNet.10).aspx

Note:  This document is backed by another document called, “Virtualization Strategy Provides Tools, Processes, and Compliance Capabilities to Enhance Business Support and Drive Adoption”
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/Results.aspx?DisplayLang=en&nr=50&startDate=5%2f22%2f2006&period=30&sortCriteria=date

Microsoft headsets and webcams are optimized for Windows Live Messenger through the Call Button. Until now, there has not been a simple means to configure the Call Button to start Office Communicator.

The goal of the Call Button Integration Support kit (the kit) is to change that. The kit enables an organization-wide change in the configuration of Microsoft LifeChat (headset) and LifeCam (webcam) software so that the Call Buttons on the headsets and webcams start Office Communicator instead of Windows Live Messenger.

By setting a Group Policy and installing the kit, Microsoft headsets and webcams can be set up to start Office Communicator instead of Windows Live Messenger.

DOWNLOAD:
http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/digitalcommunication/officecommunicator/default.aspx

We just posted a really interesting whitepaper for SCCM2007 users – something to at least keep in your back pocket.

Once of the great capabilities of SCCM2007 is the ability to manage clients on the Internet that are not physically connected to the corporate LAN. Known as “Internet-based Client Management”, this capability requires some work on the ISA Server to provide SSL-pipes to secure I/O between the management servers and the Internet-connected client.

Think “loan officers” or “roaming laptop users that never-connect-back-into-the-corporate-network”.

How to Configure ISA SSL Bridging for System Center Configuration Manager Internet-Based Client Management
http://blogs.technet.com/isablog/archive/2008/07/03/just-published-on-technet-how-to-configure-isa-ssl-bridging-for-system-center-configuration-manager-internet-based-client-management.aspx