So the other day I wrote about setting default domain for OWA and I literally got as much feedback on it as I did for the bigger how-to SBS articles I wrote before. Which got me thinking… Exchange (and to a lesser degree IIS & Mobility) are my bag baby so are there any things that you would like to learn how to do? The reason I ask this was because the feedback came from some of the people that I work with closely (you know who you are) so if I can give you something that applies to you (oh my god, not another KB article) please post the question…

JJ Antequino hung out with us again at the OrlandoSBS meeting and just as he was about to leave during Blain’s presentation he dropped a huge bombshell about SBA: SP1 for SBA and BCM is out guys. I think half the room fainted at the suggestion that you can now store a BCM database on the SBS server. Here are some details and of course the download:

- We can now import Outlook Contacts into Business Contact Manager
- New Manual Payroll Check Tool – including the much anticipated Excel tool!
- Memorized Documents
- More flexible Cash Basis reporting
- Support for importing QB2005 data files:
* For importing master records only QuickBooks 2002 through 2005: Basic, Pro, Premier, Enterprise, and Accountant
* For importing all data QuickBooks 2004 and 2005: Pro, Premier, Enterprise, and Accountant
- New Accountants Import Wizard – allows a accountants database to be imported into the current database!
- New Reporting tool for jobs and time and materials
* Ability to report on job estimates versus actual
* Ability to report jobs progress; invoices versus quotes
- Import Bank File dialog box - You can use the Import Bank File dialog box to import bank transactions into Microsoft Office Small Business Accounting:
* If the financial institution that you do business with is not listed in the Select a Financial Institution for Online Services page in the Online Banking Setup Wizard.
* If you have accounts that you have not set up for online banking.
* Imported bank files must be in the .ofx file format.

So much for just getting started though. This is JJ’s second blong entry and he’s killed virtually 90% of the headaches posted in public newsgroups about BCM & SBA. JJ has been one of the biggest supporters of our Orlando IT Pro group and I just wrote a killer review of what he and the Microsoft team have done for us in Orlando. I’m on this global SBS Group Leads list and we have the best Microsoft backed group on the planet, bar none. JJ has brought us stuff from the WWPC in the past, driven 100’s of miles to attend remote SBS group meetings, helped partners at TS2 events he was not even presenting at. He is the TS2 guy as far as far as Florida is concerned. That is also the team that works with partners and actually takes feedback and makes things happen with it. Why do you think Action Pack will now include Visual Studio 2005, Virtual Server 2005 and Windows XP 64bit edition? TS2. These guys listen, they do stuff. Now do you see why I’ve been inviting you out to these shows for years?

Speaking of backing us, Blain Barton came over and held an excellent presentation on SQL Server 2005 for us at this months meeting. You can’t buy presentations like this folks. Blain went from defining the database and covered everything from Access up to SQL Server 2005 mirroring and SAC in 60 minutes. Blain usually presents Technet Seminars to enterprise/midmarket folks and I think everyone that attended would agree that I did not lie when I said that you will not find this caliber of a presentation for SBS/SQL anywhere. The versatility is key — I could have put together an overview of SQL 2005. But Blain was able to entertain people brand new to SBS and even field questions from the guy in the back of the room that spent the meeting in SQL 2005 and VS2005. Some things you just can’t fake.

So…. Time to move to Florida folks

This is the top 10 list of features in SharePoint v3 according to Lawrence Liu:

1. A “Global” Template that is applied/provisioned before any other template, and a Feature Framework that provides modularity for “additive” templates
2. OOB document review/approval workflow with support for digital signatures
3. Integration with Outlook — read/write access to SharePoint datetypes: calendar, tasks, contacts, discussions, and documents
4. All SharePoint Lists provide RSS feeds!
5. SharePoint Lists (e.g. Discussion Boards, Calendars, Document Libraries, Announcements) can accept incoming e-mail
a. Discussion Boards maintain e-mail threading and full HTML messages
b. Calendars process incoming iCals
c. Document Libraries map attachments to documents
6. File level security (i.e. access control) in Document Libraries
7. List item versioning that shows metadata changes
8. Complete control of site branding — apply custom master pages and page layout, define custom site navigation
9. Support for multi-lingual sites!
10. Policy based document archiving and records management with compliance reporting.

There is also a top 10 by Arpan Shah which outlines the following:

- Security/Auth “stuff” from supporting the ASP.NET 2.0 authentication provider model and security trimming to single item security. - Built on top of Whidbey - support for ASP.NET 2.0 web parts, nav/auth provider models, master pages :-), and more
- SPS/CMS integrated architecture from end-user to development and deployment
- RSS, Wikki and Blogging support.. the RSS support is especially great w/ the new version of Outlook… or any RSS reader really
- Content types - very cool and super useful.. define a content type that includes metadata and actions
- Recycle bin - IT orgs will love that
- Lists - things like eventing support, scalability
- Search investments - relevancy and User Experience are fantastic
- ECM investments - from content creation, sharing, searching, publishing to retaining
- Workflow based on Windows Workflow Foundation

Considering we have no access to this stuff, and probably won’t for quite some time these lists are quite impressive! If they keep even half of this we’ll be really well off.

Yes, this is a tech blog but I saw this story and it seems pretty interesting (anotherwords, take a moment to read it). Apparently, half of the bloggers blog as a form of therapy and keep in touch with family. But half of the people reading blogs do so as a form of entertainment. Out of everyone polled by AOL, only 16% were seriously interested in journalism. I guess that puts to rest all the arguments about citizen journalists taking over the “professional” journalists jobs. I would beg to differ with that statement in the single area - Information Technology. The only reason you would ever subscribe to PC World, PC Magazine and such would be to read op-ed. Thats all those magazines have — just some dorks opinion (Dvorak, etc) and more often than not, not a very valuable opinion at that. Today you can get these opinions in real-time, not just from the hobbyists but from people that actually implement these solutions (me) people that design these solutions (Microsoft) and then everyone else involved in the actual product, delivery and support. So whose opinion on IT is more valuable? That of the people actually developing, providing and supporting IT or some burned out journalist that could not make it as an IT professional? Not a flame starter, I just don’t think PC Magazine and company can continue to exist as an advertising pamphlet while not really providing much else.

So if you haven’t already… start a blog. I’ve been blogging with my buddy Pablo since the late 90’s before the “blog” really existed. You can take the trip down memory lane via WayBack machine to see the original Vlad blogs from way back when. Even my dog has a blog. Point being, if you have anything interesting or insightful to share with the world, please do. You would be shocked how many people will read what you have to say, especially if you are helpful. And you will definately meet interesting people, some half way accross the world. You can be world famous!!!!

This same subject has appeared enough times that it frankly puzzles me why I have not written an article on it yet. So here is a quickie:

If you applied patch 888619 you may find it difficult to log into your Outlook Web Access. However, you remembered the good old NTLM troubleshooting days and got in via DOMAIN\login just fine. The above breaks only SBS without SP1 (and if thats you… SMACK.. patch you fools) but here is how you set the default domain in OWA so you can login without putting in your domain every time:

Start > Administrative Tools > Internet Information Server (IIS) Manager
Expand your server > Web Sites > Default Web Site and select properties for the Exchange folder.
Directory Security (tab) and click on Edit under the Authentication and Access Control.

Something like the icon on the right shows up. Select the default domain, select the default realm (both will be your domain name) hit OK, Apply and you’re done. No more OWNCORP\vlad, just Vlad.

Care of Eric Ligman and Microsoft Small Business Community:
For anyone who missed yesterday’s Small Business Specialist Community Talk Series where we had Bob Lewis as a guest speaker to discuss MPAN and the opportunity to work with them as Small Business Specialists, the link to view the recorded session is now posted. Simply go to our site, http://www.mssmallbiz.com, click on the “Our webcasts” link in the upper center part of the page, and click the “View Replay” link next to yesterday’s session.

Yes, the title is misleading but it got your attention. This is actually regarding Lawrence Liu’s report from the Office 12 Curriculum Design Summit where Microsoft TS and consultants got together to review the new training material for Office 12. This product is a year out, is incomplete at best, so why should you care? Well, have you seen the screenshot? This is one of the most ambitious releases since 1997, with a completely new interface, behavior and look. If you’re in the SMB you know the folks that only know how to do things on their computer one way - and that one way is usually documented and taped to the monitor. If a new prompt comes up, or they get a question they can’t figure out they pick up the phone and call the IT department.

So get on the beta (mentioned how to get on it the other day) get training early and take a look at some of the PDC presentations to get a starting point:

# DAT315_Welcker_McKulka.ppt — Building Portals And Dashboards For Business Intelligence And Reporting Applications
# OFF308_Ammerlaan.ppt — Windows SharePoint Services ‘v3′: Creating And Defining Custom Templates, Sites, Features, And Solutions
# OFF310_Morton.ppt — Windows SharePoint Services “v3”: Developing Collaboration And Tracking Applications
# OFF313_Stocker.ppt — Web Content Management Application Development and Engine Extensibility
# OFF314_Lefferts.ppt — Developing Enterprise Document Solutions Using Office Client And Server Technologies
# OFF318_Lefferts.ppt — Developing Document Archiving, Records Management, And Policy Enforcement Extensions To The Microsoft Office System
# OFF320_Sherman.ppt — Developing With Microsoft Office System Search Technology
# OFF321_Burke.ppt — Surfacing Your Application’s Line-of-Business Data And Actions Within Enterprise Portals In Office “12”
# OFF405_Ammerlaan.ppt — Windows SharePoint Services “v3”: Using ASP.NET 2.0 Technology To Extend Pages, Sites, And Server Farms
# OFF409_Friesenhahn.ppt — Windows SharePoint Services: Advancements In Document, Content, And Data Storage
# OFF415_Hatoun.ppt — Windows SharePoint Services: Developing Custom Workflows

The more things change, the more they say the same. If you’ve gone to Firefox because you were tired of patching and getting hacked through Internet Explorer.. well, start patching. The Mozilla Foundation released FireFox 1.0.7 today in response to a very critical exploit that allowed hackers to launch commands on your system if you use Firefox as your default browser.

Pretty nasty, I’ve patched so hurry up and do so as well. It’s somewhat interesting that people are saying “the honeymoon is over” because of more exploits to Firefox. First of all, claiming x is more secure than y is just asking to become a target. Criminals behind worms and viruses, the folks that write them for commercial gain, are writing things for software they think will give them the largest deployment base. For the longest time, that was Windows XP and IE6. Well, with the new kids on the block, why not take advantage of the 10% install base that may not be hooked into Windows Update? After all, they think they are safe (ignorant) so they present a great target.

I’m sticking with Firefox because of additional functionality and their response to critical exploits has been more rapid than Microsoft. Thats just the nature of the beast, its open and easilly distributable. But if you aren’t patching, you’re really not any better off than Windows 98.

Point being: you’re not really safe, the best you can do is take care of your systems and patch the software you cannot proactively secure.

So today has been my first official back-to-work day and I started it off by pruning the two weeks off my Dilbert desk calendar. In a somewhat appropriate event (as a followup to PDC) I found a strip that definately reminds me of working with my bestest artist in the whole wide world (I have to kiss her ass because she works for eBay merchandise):

As a programmer, developing an interface is a hard and almost impossible task. You design the guts way before you design the look and the input — and you assume that the user will be able to fill-in-the-blank the remainder of the puzzle. Then you have two options: Hope its intuitive and simple enough (so you label an input field with an acronym nobody outside your industry understands).. or you do what I do - write a paragraph, fully knowing that nobody is ever going to read or even understand your hyper-extended run-on sentance.

Thank you Scott Adams!

P.S. You could buy the iMate JasJar for $149 at the PDC during the keynote. You don’t want to know the retail price.

Just got an email from Culminis confirming that Orlando IT Professional Association & OrlandoSBS will have a table at the biggest software launch of 2005 in Orlando on December 8th, 2005.

Sponsored by Microsoft executives, the nationwide tour of 15 U.S. cities will be held between November 7, 2005 and January 11, 2006 to celebrate the launch of SQL Server 2005. The list of cities and dates for this tour are:

San Francisco Nov. 7
Detroit Nov. 8
Chicago Nov. 10
New York Nov. 22
Atlanta Nov. 29
Seattle Nov. 29
Dallas Nov. 30
Denver Dec. 6
Anaheim Dec. 6
Houston Dec. 6
Orlando Dec. 8
Philadelphia Dec. 13
Minneapolis Dec. 14
Boston Dec. 15
Washington D.C. Jan. 11

The all day event offers an opportunity to learn how Microsoft’s application platform offerings enable organizations to gain better business insight and deliver faster results by easily connecting people, processes and information