A few Live Meeting tips

Posted on By Mark Wilson

I’ve just spent the last couple of hours listening/watching a Live Meeting webcast. In recent weeks I’ve found that I’m attending more and more of these as part of the various Microsoft beta and technology adoption programmes that I’m participating in and frequently I need to take notes using Microsoft Office OneNote 2007 on the same PC that I’m using to view the slides and listen to the audio. Today I decided to try and connect to the webcast simultaneously from my Mac (i.e. using a second computer to view the slides whilst I write notes on the first) and I’m pleased to say that it worked using Microsoft Office Live Meeting Web Access (unfortunately the full Live Meeting client is required for VOIP audio but all I needed to do in this case was view the slides).

Although Live Meeting supports a pretty wide selection of browser and Java VM combinations, Firefox 2.0 on Mac OS X is not a supported browser/platform combination – the workaround is to use Safari and Apple Java (at least v1.4.1).

Here’s some of the advice and guidance that I’ve accumulated as I’ve been working on local (via Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007) and hosted Live Meeting calls over recent weeks (this is just what I’ve found and is not a comprehensive list):

  • The Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007 Client can be downloaded from Microsoft Office Online.
    If the link in the meeting invitation doesn’t work, try launching the client and entering the details manually.
  • If colleagues can’t hear you on the meeting, check that your microphone is unmuted (the default is muted), that (if you are using a webcam) the microphone is close enough to pick up your voice and don’t assume that your notebook computer has a built-in microphone (this one stumped me for a while until I plugged in a microphone and everything jumped into life)!
  • (Microsoft Connect users may find the Live Meeting audio issues FAQ useful.)
  • The Live Meeting support website features a knowledge base for troubleshooting issues with Live Meeting.

Installing Microsoft Dynamics CRM without domain administrator rights

Posted on By Mark Wilson

I recently inherited the task of designing the infrastructure for a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 implementation. After being briefed by the consultancy partner that we are using for the application customisation and reading Microsoft’s implementation guide I was fairly comfortable with the basic principles but I was also alarmed that the product seems to require installation to be carried out using an account with Domain Admins permissions. There’s no way that I will be granted those rights on our corporate Active Directory (and nor should I be) – too many applications seem to require elevated permissions for service accounts and it makes life very difficult when trying to define a delegation policy for Active Directory administration.

Regardless of the assurances I was given that Domain Admins rights are only required to carry out the installation (and subsequent updates) and that the account can be relegated to a standard domain user afterwards, I felt that there must be a way around this – surely the groups that the CRM installation creates can be pre-staged somehow, or that a organizational unit can be created with delegated rights to create and manage objects?

It seems the answer to my question is yes – I’ve now been pointed in the direction of Microsoft knowledge base article 908984 which describes how to install Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 as a user who is not a domain administrator by using the minimum required permissions.