Installing Microsoft Dynamics CRM without domain administrator rights

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 18 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

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.

Unconditionally contactable – no thanks.

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 18 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

This last week has been manic – hence the lack of blog posts… taking a day’s annual leave on Monday and then spending half of it catching up on my administration didn’t bode well, then there were two nights when I was up until 1am trying to write an infrastructure design document and the usual mix of travel, conflicting meeting requirements and trying to get some “real work” done.

“But Mark”, I hear you ask,”surely you use some of the technologies that I see you write about to improve productivity?”

The answer is that I do – I’m using Microsoft Office Communication Server 2007, the Office Communicator client 2007 and Live Meeting 2007 a fair bit – as well as our corporate conferencing service. Soon I’ll be linking all of that in to my voice mail to make use of Exchange Server 2007’s unified messaging capabilities. It’s a really good solution (especially when Communicator reads my calendar or Live Meeting status and sets my presence accordingly). But the technology is no panacea: sometimes something doesn’t work – I spent quite a bit of time this week waiting on a Live Meeting call as Microsoft struggled to get the audio working (they later postponed that particular meeting as even they couldn’t fix it); and other times there is no substitute for getting together in a room – like my main meeting on Friday which necessitated 4 hours travel (which could have been better spent doing something else) but resulted in the production of a migration strategy for a key customer’s messaging infrastructure – something which we had failed to do several times over the phone (and which I doubt even advances in video conferencing would have helped with).

As someone who struggles at times with information overload, and who was described by a friend and ex-colleague as “[sometimes] exhibiting workaholic tendencies”, I need to help myself to become more productive. As I already have a pile of books by the bedside, it’s probably time for an audiobook or two on Getting Things Done (or at least to check out 43 Folders from time to time).

As for unified communications (UC), Dave Bailey wrote an interesting comment for IT Week on the difficulties of getting away from it all – it was only a few days previously that, as I was busily IMing one contact, another team member started e-mailing me on the same subject and I had Outlook “toast” popping up as fast as I could type. Then I spent half of Friday afternoon this week reducing the size of my mailbox so that I could get below the system limits and send mail again (there is one simple answer – the delete key… but that’s not exactly productive either). As my colleague pointed out, it seems that UC really stands for “unconditionally contactable”. No thanks.

iPod Touch… or unlocked iPhone?

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 18 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Yesterday afternoon, Garry walked into the office and asked, “so, have you seen the new iPod then?”. I hadn’t and, after waiting and waiting, then finally getting a 5.5G iPod with video just a few months back I promptly stuck my fingers in my ears and said something like “na-na-na-na I can’t hear you” until he finished telling me about it. Later, when I was feeling a bit more rational, I checked it out and, apart from only having 16GB of storage (I’m presently struggling with 30GB) it’s looking pretty sweet – almost everything I’d asked for and more.

In his interview alongside Bill Gates at D5, Steve Jobs said that Apple was working on something special and he was not kidding. There is now an iPod for everyone, from the tiny (and low-cost) Shuffle, to a Nano with Video, the iPod Classic (now with 160GB on board… I had already been considering a hard disk upgrade for my 30GB), the Touch and the iPhone. Then there is Apple’s iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store tie-up with Starbucks (which is not limited to the iPod and iPhone, although it does appear to be limited to United States metropolitan areas for the time being with no mention of a global rollout any time soon).

But the more I think about it, the less I want the iPod Touch. It may be (almost) everything I wanted and I did previously dismiss the iPhone (the people at The Register were happy to hand theirs back) but now it appears to have been hacked and the price has dropped to $399 (which should translate to around £200 here in the UK, except it won’t, because we have extortionate 17.5% sales taxes and US products never sell here at anything like the exchange rate comparison price) – based on the pricing of other Apple products, I’d expect to see the iPhone sell in Europe at around €399 or £275. I won’t buy an iPhone with an O2 contract when it finally reaches these shores but if I was to unlock one and use my Vodafone SIM… (or just buy one in France, where Apple will be legally obliged to unlock it for me) now that would be good.

Not sure that it would go down too well in the office though…

Nikon finally releases a full-frame DSLR

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 18 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

NikonWhen I switched my photography to a digital format I had too much invested in Nikon lenses to change manufacturers; however I do know that many professionals using DSLRs today have Canon equipment to make the most of a full-frame image sensor (and I bought my best Nikkor lens from a pro who made the switch to Canon). For years, Nikon has told us that their DX format is all we need (and the focal lengths of our lenses have grown by around 150% as a result) but this has a cost in the higher signal to noise ratio. It seems that, finally, Nikon has recognised this with their new “FX” format D3 (which can also use DX lenses, although it shuts down part of the image sensor to do so). At the wrong side of £3000 it’s too much for me but I like the sound of features like a self-cleaning sensor, dual CF-card slots, LiveView and virtual horizon adjustment. I also like the sound of a 12 megapixel sensor, 51 point autofocus, 3″ LCD and larger viewfinder (something I can only experience by shooting some rolls of film in my old F90x) although I’d like to see low ISO settings too (when shooting landscapes I find ISO 200 too restrictive and would like the option for slow-speeds in the ISO 25-100 range) and the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III already meets (or even exceeds) most of the D3 specifications (admittedly with a £6000 price tag). I had hoped that a prosumer FX format model would follow the D3 but it seems not – the new D300 is DX only. Regardless, I’d better get saving to replace my D70, which is still a fantastic camera but not quite in the same league – maybe by the time my piggy bank is full there will be a prosumer model with an FX sensor.

Rob Galbraith has a full review of the D3 at digital photography insights.

Recipe for (a few minutes of) peace and quiet on a Saturday morning…

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 18 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Picture the situation… it’s early in the morning, you’re in a hotel room en route to a holiday destination, were travelling until late at night, had a bad night’s sleep and your 3 year-old son wakes up his 1 year-old brother, in the process forcing the whole family to start their day.

Here’s a recipe that I recommend:

  1. MaplinTake one iPod with Video, loaded with Thomas the Tank Engine (or other suitable Childrens’ TV) MP4s, one Apple iPod AV cable and a phono to SCART adapter from Maplin.
  2. Plug the iPod into the hotel room TV using the cable (and adapter, if necessary), turn on the television and select the AV channel.
  3. Play selected MP4s from the iPod to the children whilst consuming a suitable caffeinated beverage in an attempt to regain some sense of normality.
  4. Start your day in a slightly better mood.

I knew there was a reason I’d spent so much time getting my iPod working with the TV a week or so back! I believe that my wife’s exact word was “inspired”.

(Just before someone calls the social services, I should point out that my children get lots of one on one attention and babysitting by TV is only used in extreme circumstances!)

Watch out for OCS filtering file transfers

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 18 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

I’m working on an Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 pilot right now and have started to use Office Communicator 2007. I’m really impressed (and will write something soon about the whole unified communications setup – including voice and e-mail integration); however two things that tripped me up were the addition of a _ prefix on URLs to prevent them from being clickable (just something to bear in mind when sending instructions to someone via IM) and the filtering of attachments during file transfers.

Neither of these are new features but the file transfer filtering caught me out twice when I thought someone had sent me a Windows registry (.reg) file (it had been turned into a text file contain the text “This attachment was removed.”) and then when another colleague sent me a compressed folder (.zip file) containing an ASP.NET website that I needed to deploy, only for me to find that even though the compressed folder had the complete file structure in its index certificates (.cer/.p7b files), .vb and .js files had all been removed and were not available for extraction.

I’m pretty sure that this behaviour can be changed if required (I’m not sure if it’s granular enough to change on a personal/team/company/public basis) but nevertheless it’s something to be aware of.

Mark’s (we)Blog 2.0

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 18 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Just under six months ago, I changed hosting providers and moved this blog from Blogger to WordPress. Ever since then it’s been tagged as Mark’s (we)Blog [v2.0β] but the time has come to remove the beta tag… after all I’m just one bloke doing this in his (limited) spare time so things are unlikely to ever be “finished” to the standard I would like!

So, after a few months of running the site on WordPress, were my initial impressions valid? Was it all worth it?

Yes, I think. It’s been hard work getting everything working the way I like it – I’ve had to edit every single post, categorising them and correcting markup issues (my own fault for not writing decent XHTML in the first place, although in the case of embedded video clips I’ve actually had to regress to a non-compliant solution).

Then, as I’ve edited every post there have been hundreds of pingback comments to approve (remembering to update the date and time on the comment to match when the post was originally published).

Editing the template to suit my needs has been great fun (and has really helped bring on my CSS skills) – Andreas Viklund (who wrote the original template) was very helpful in providing me with his original photograph so that I could produce a larger version (with help from my friend Alex) after I increased the width of the content. Alex also helped me out with a cell spacing issue on the few occasions where I used tables (in a semantically correct manner) with a little-known piece of CSS (border-collapse: collapse;).

One of the great things about WordPress is the extensibility of the platform – there are hundreds of plugins available and it’s these plugins that have allowed me to extend the functionality of the site, adding features such as external link highlighting, category tagging and control over meta tags (although I have stopped using others, such as Adsense-Deluxe as I found I could achieve the same result by editing my WordPress template) – at the time of writing, this is the list of plugins that I’m using:

There were also some other sites that provided advice/material for the site’s development (but not plugins):

There’s also really good support documentation for implementing code changes such as conditional tags (e.g. to allow sponsors’ advertisements to only appear on certain pages); however getting meaningful responses on the WordPress support forums can be pretty sporadic.

Of course, there is a downside to running on a self-hosted platform (cf. WordPress.com, Blogger, etc.) – I need to patch the software myself. Luckily, my web hosting provider uses the Fantastico system for installing popular applications (including WordPress) and I can use that to apply updates too (although even Fantastico is not immune from some issues… as I found when I upgraded to WordPress 2.2 – more on that in a moment).

I’ve also learnt some tricks along the way and I think it’s only fair that I post them here:

  • Firstly, after importing a large number of posts, I wanted to change the author. I can’t do that in bulk from within WordPress; however I did find a reference to using PHPMyadmin to run a SQL query and change the author for all posts on the database matching certain criteria – the query I ran in the SQL tab was UPDATE wp_posts SET wp_posts.post_author = "2" WHERE (((wp_posts.post_author)="1"));, where “2” is the ID of the new author and “1” is the ID of the current author.
  • Another day, after making a mistake editing the comment submission code, I found that all of the new comments were being attached to one post. I needed to move the comments to the correct posts by browsing the wp_comments table and editing the corresponding comment_post_id.
  • I also wanted to display the allowed (X)HTML for comments and didn’t know the correct function call (it’s <?php echo allowed_tags(); ?>), then, to change the tags that are allowed, I needed to edit the kses.php file (and will need to keep that updated after WordPress upgrades).
  • I’ve also found that, although I had my permalink structure set to /%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.htm in order to maintain the links from the old (Blogger) site, the postname is defined by the slug and the slug must be unique for the entire site, so some posts have had -2 added to the end of their name (I used .htaccess redirects to manage this but didn’t spot the changes until after Googlebot had reported the links as not found).

It’s not all been plain sailing though.

  • For example, I found that not all of my comments had been transferred from the old site and had to copy and paste the missing ones manually, then go back and edit the author details, date and time. Then, there was a period of about a month when I couldn’t generate pingbacks (nor could certain friends leave a comment) – it turned out to be caused by a single comment which was accidentally dated in the future and once that was changed everything jumped into life.
  • Then, there is the blog spam, thankfully handled pretty well by Akismet although I no longer have time to check for false positives.
  • The built-in WordPress search function does not seem to work as well as the Google Search facility that I provided on the old site. I hoped that adding the full text search for the related posts plugin (ALTER TABLE `wp_posts` ADD FULLTEXT `post_related` (`post_name` ,`post_content`)) would improve this but it doesn’t seem to have helped.
  • Also, after the WordPress 2.2 upgrade, I noticed that characters like the UK currency symbol (£) were appearing as odd characters – a simple edit to the wp-config.php fixed that issue (commenting out define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8'); and define('DB_COLLATE', '');) – further explanation of this fix can be found at My Digital Life although I haven’t been brave enough to convert the character set and collation yet.

I got there in the end – all the posts have categories assigned and I’m pretty sure that most of the CSS bugs are fixed now so am glad to say that the site is out of beta. Out of beta – but never finished!

So, that’s v2.0 but what next? Well, there are a few bugs that I’ve not yet fixed:

  • The print stylesheet does not work consistently across browsers
  • Some graphics are wider than the main content column and need to be resized.
  • External link identification is not accurate with .co.uk sites (and Internet Explorer places the external link icon in the wrong place)
  • Some graphics used for tracking page impressions (for advertisements) need to be removed.

I may also provide options for alternative themes (I particularly like Dean Robinson’s redoable theme), I’d like to sort out the poor searching, there are some accessibility and user experience enhancements that I’d like to implement and I’m bound to spot more snazzy plug-ins to add to the site. I’d like to use my own photos in the masthead and I also need to do some code optimisation as the page load times are a bit high and my bandwidth usage is rising faster than planned (more visitors are a good thing and ascomi are always happy to help out when I get close to my bandwidth limit but I’d like to bring it back under control).

I always like to hear from people who use the site – feel free to contact me and suggest enhancements, or to provide feedback/bug reports on the site.

Now, if only I could think of a better name than Mark’s (we)Blog (which was only ever intended as a working title and more than three years later it still hasn’t been replaced)! Any ideas? How about “Confessions of an infrastructure architect: echo $HEAD > dev/web”?

Quick guide to getting video content onto an iPod

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 18 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Apple iTunes can play back a variety of video formats but the iPod (5th generation) and Apple TV each have their own limitations and only play videos that are created in specific formats. I understand that not all codecs will be available for all platforms but I’m a techie and it’s taken me a lot of time to work out what can and can’t work on my iPod. And yes, the the iPod may only have a 320×240 pixel QVGA screen but it can play back at larger resolutions using the iPod AV cable (or another cable if you can get it to work) – it might not look great on a high definition display but I only have standard definition TVs and it’s perfectly good enough for them (sure, there are a few compression artefacts but I get them with satellite TV too).

I’ve been fighting with video incompatibilities for a few days now and think I’ve pretty much got everything sussed, so, here’s my quick guide to getting video content onto an iPod (some of the software mentioned below is Mac-only and so Windows/Linux users might need to search for something else… sorry).

  • Firstly, (courtesy of Apple’s frequently asked questions about viewing and syncing video with iTunes and iPod), iTunes is your friend. Not only is it the centre of the Apple digital experience but it can convert files to iPod or Apple TV format. Simply select the video or audio content that you require, right- (or Ctrl-) click and select convert selection for iPod or convert selection for Apple TV as appropriate. This seemed to work for much of my video content that has come from an eclectic mix of locations using a multitude of codecs (the main changes seem to involve converting from QuickTime movie file to MPEG-4, using a low complexity profile and the H.264/AAC codecs) although I have a few files that seem to have lost their audio track along the way. For these files, I used iSquint to retry the conversion and it seems to have got around whatever the encoding issue was. Using iSquint’s default settings, content is resized to either 320×240 or 640×480 (depending on whether the output is optimised for iPod or TV) but I did find that by using the option to Optimize for TV there was a noticeable increase in the picture quality, even though the source file was only 320×240 (obviously the quality will not increase from the original but, when viewed on a TV, the 640×480 version that was optimised for TV had a noticeably clearer picture with fewer compression artefacts than the 320×240 version that was optimised for the iPod).
  • The tip above for converting content to an iPod/Apple TV format seems to be non-destructive, which is good but does require some management to ensure that only the correctly formatted content is synchronised (in order to avoid errors like the one shown).iTunes error message explaining that some of the videos in your iTunes library were not copied because they cannot be played. Also, note that the duplicates may not appear in the same location as the originals – some of my video podcasts have relocated themselves within iTunes to the movies section and whilst the video type can be changed (between movies, music videos and TV shows), I’m not familiar with any method to move the content into iTunes’ podcast section. Some video podcasts are available in alternative formats via different RSS feeds, but that’s a nuisance where you might want to watch a high-definition version on the computer but still have it available on the iPod when out and about. Consequently I have multiple copies of podcasts like Systm, where I have both the small QuickTime and large QuickTime feeds in iTunes and different episodes marked as played in each. I’ve yet to find a way around that particular issue and it is relatively minor.
  • Assuming that it is legal where you live, applications like HandBrake will rip DVDs into a format that can be transferred to the iPod via iTunes and videos look surprisingly good on the iPod screen (yes, really – certainly good enough for entertainment on a long train/plane trip). Add to that the potential to use an iPod connected to a TV and it’s an easy method for watching video content in the living room, hotel or even hooking the iPod up to a screen in the car to keep the kids amused without spending lots of money on an expensive in-car entertainment system (I haven’t tried it yet but I may do soon). Encoding video (and re-encoding via an iTunes conversion) is time consuming and also the quality will degrade with each conversion, so it pays to get it right first time – I had some difficulties using the previous version of HandBrake to rip a DVD using the HB-iPod preset but version 0.9.0 seems to be working well for me (although if it doesn’t work, some advice suggests ripping to disk before performing the conversion, using a tool such as Mac the Ripper). If the content is already on the computer, then QuickTime Pro may help with the conversion (although iTunes is based on QuickTime so I recommend trying the conversion in iTunes first).
  • Finally, for content producers, Apple provides a tutorial about creating video for iPod.

These techniques have allowed me to transfer most of the content that I want to access on the move to my iPod. There are a couple of issues to iron out (as mentioned) but I’m a lot further forward than I was a few days back. Please leave a comment if you can add to the advice.

Is this the latest method of boosting profits at bigcompany.com?

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 18 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

I’m starting to wonder if I’ve uncovered their latest method of boosting profits for a large UK-based retailer with an international presence. As much as I dislike the company in question, I’m familiar with their product range and they considerably less expensive than where I would prefer to shop. Every couple of weeks I place an order with bigcompany.com* and it feels like every time I have to ask for something to be refunded (not counting the normal substitutions, which they always deal with at the point of delivery). At this point I’m faced with calling them (at my cost, admittedly local rate, but last time I tried, I was placed on hold for 22 minutes before I gave up because the call had cost more than the mistake was worth) or e-mailing (and, confusingly, the order confirmation comes from customer.services@bigcompany.com but the online customer service desk is at online@bigcompany.co.uk!).

We’re not talking large sums here – typically between 1 and 3.5% of the guide price for my order but if extrapolated over many customers (who may or may not notice the error) the figures could potentially become quite large.

Order date Order value (guide price) Value of error Potential increase in bigcompany.com’s revenue (if I hadn’t spotted the mistake)
3 July 2007 £116.14 £1.94 (meat which went off before it’s use-by date, despite being refrigerated from the point of delivery onwards) 1.67%
17 July 2007 £215.22 £6.41 (mistakes with substitutions and multiple charges) 2.97%
14 August 2007 £180.46 £1.85 (missing bag of potatoes) 1.03%
29 August 2007 £113.98 £3.99 (missing box of breakfast cereal) 3.5%

To be fair to bigcompany.com, they always respond with an apology and a refund but at what point does a series of mistakes (which I may or may not have noticed) become a pattern? And when does a pattern of mistakes become accepted business practice?

Of course, this post is based almost entirely upon speculation (together with my customer experience) and I’m sure that such a reputable retailer would not seriously consider defrauding its customers but I don’t imagine there are many online businesses that could sustain such a poor inventory/delivery/billing effort.

* Name changed to protect the potentially innocent. Despite the preceding paragraph, I don’t fancy being sued for libel and the retailer in question’s resources to pay for legal representation are almost infinitely more than mine, so I’m avoiding using their name here; however bigcompany.com is a pseudonym for the online business of an extremely profitable company.

Connecting iPod with Video to the TV

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 18 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

A few weeks back, I was given an iPod with Video. It’s a huge step up from the iPod Mini that I had before – not least because of it’s video capabilities (which mean that I can store a few films on the iPod for playback in hotels/planes/trains etc. but I’ve been struggling to get it to output a decent signal to my TV. Apple sells an iPod AV cable to take the 3.5mm headphone socket output to red/yellow/white RCA (phono) sockets but I have a perfectly good cable that came with my Sony video camera so I wanted to avoid spending £15 on the Apple cable. After trying the well-publicised hack for using a normal cable with the connections swapped around I had a picture, but no matter how I tried it was always black and white (ironically I could get some faded colours with NTSC, even though my TV is PAL!).

Then last night I was in Tesco, where I visited the “Apple Store” (note the quotes as the Tesco Apple Store is not a patch on the real thing) and picked up the Apple iPod AV cable. Not only is is a much better quality product (the cables may not be as good as the Cambridge Audio interconnects that I use for my audio-visual equipment but they are a lot better than the thin black leads supplied as standard with most equipment) but it cured my black and white issues – I can now watch films (and video podcasts) in colour without the hassle of connecting a computer to the TV.