Exchange 2007 & Windows Server 2008 Poor Man’s Exchange Backup

I wasn’t sure of most people ran into the amount of issues I have with Exchange 2007 on Windows 2008 (x64) and backups. At Portal Dynamics we had Symantec BackupExec, until we flipped over to DPM and Hyper-V snapshots on the SAN. Backup Exec was 32bit, exchange and windows were 64 bit. We could never get the permissions right, or the client to run, and the BackExec server liked to crash a lot when we connected it to 64bit clients for some reason.

Customizing People Search

One of my previous posts was about XSLT Debugging. This link actually goes into detail on how to modify the search results in SharePoint to get the desired display.

http://www.sharepointology.com/development/customize-the-people-search-results-part-1

Microsoft Updating Competency Program, Changes Certification Impact?

I work in Microsoft environments, and companies that are Microsoft partners get an edge in certain business arenas. Microsoft rarely has engineers that they send out to do repairs, unless you are a giant like the government, and even then, it can be a pain to get support.  So the corporate world as we know it relies on Microsoft Partners and Engineers that come recommended, certified, etc.

Posting to WordPress from Word 2010

I have written a similar post to this on some corporate blog sites (SharePoint), about posting from Word 2007/2010 to SharePoint, but this seemed relevant to the content I have been posting today. I may be a nerd, but I get tired of doing tedious commands, code editing, etc. So I generally create tools, or find tools to do the work for me to take a lot of the effort out of it. If it’s easier, I am more likely to do it.

Is your information private? Not on Facebook.

It seems that every other day Facebook is leaking confidential information to some place or another. For some reason, this does not dissuade users from restricting what they put on their profiles. Its getting more and more like the wild west these days. There are ways to protect yourself, and stay online on social networking sites, but no one seems to care anymore.

What is Configuration Change Management?

Configuration Management or Change management is described as an umbrella activity developed to identify change, manage that change, ensure that the change is being properly implemented, report the change to others who may have and interest, and record the change for historical reference. It includes the technical and administrative direction and surveillance actions taken to identify and document the functional and physical characteristics of a configuration item, to control changes to an item and its characteristics, and to record and report change processing and implementation status. Configuration and Change management also provides a complete audit trail of decisions and design modifications. Having a proper Configuration / Change Management Board and process can help to eliminate a lot of the general issues seen in organizations without one, but can also create some new issues to the Information Technology team.

COOP and DRP: What is the difference?

 

Disaster Recovery Plans and Business Continuity Plans (more often referred to as (COOP) Continuity of Operations Plan) are major issues in the world of business today. The terms are often misused and intertwined so that its often required to explain the differences when they come up in general conversation, as well as in important business decision meetings. Although sometimes very costly, if a business neglects to invest in either of the crucial plans, it can result in serious consequences for the organization as a whole. It is often a crucial decision which can cost people their jobs.

Generating Random users in Development/Testing/Demo Environments

I have to build out development, testing, and demo environments on a regular basis. Almost every new client requires a fresh new deployment. No matter which stage of the SDLC you are in, it helps with development to have content to work with in the environment to see how things will function in true to life scenarios. The issue that I often run into when deploying whole new environments, is the creation of the user base, the establishment of a hierarchy in the Active Directory, establishment of mailboxes, and general user content. This might not be important in general application development, but when you are dealing with Active Directory integration, or integrating systems that rely on active directory, it helps tremendously to have those users.

Get List GUID from Name / URL using SharePoint WebServices (Console)

I had a requirement to map all user’s mysite private document libraries to outlook in a logon script / GPO User script setting. This is pretty simply done just by entering in a URL into a browser, and the mapping wizard will pop up and take care of the rest. The difficult part is doing it without user intervention, for all users on a network, or all users that share a logon script.

Quick way to set up MySites with a Logon Script

In most organizations, there are a bunch of web parts and workflows that work by using information in user profiles. A users mysite is also never created unless they go the the mysite host and its created of first access. This can be changed with a quick vbs script and adding a quick call to that from any logon script.