Office 365 administrators: make sure you have these details populated

Posted on By Mark Wilson

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my experience of resetting my Office 365 password/disabling password expiry after I became locked out. At the time I had some issues proving my identity because there was no ‘phone number on file for my account. I had added my mobile number to the user profile associated with my mailbox but that didn’t seem to be what the support team needed.

I’ve since learned that the crucial field is on the technical contact details for the organisation. A Microsoft Support Engineer wrote in an email to me:

“[…] the company information can be changed from the Online Portal. When you sign in and navigate to the admin panel, you should see your organization’s name in the upper left corner. When you click that, it brings up your organization’s information. The global administrator can edit these fields by mousing over them and clicking the small ‘Edit’ button that appears.”

Office 365 administration contact details

Interestingly, since my support incident, Microsoft has introduced self-service password resets for Office 365 but these seem to be reliant on two other pieces of information that are specific to an individual user account:

  • An alternate email address (one that’s not on the Office 365 system – I used a Hotmail account that is also a connected account so I still see service updates in my usual mailbox).
  • The mobile phone field in the user properties (i.e. the one that I had set on my account but which was not the one Microsoft Support were looking for!)
If you are the only administrator for an Office 365 system, it’s worth making sure that these details have been populated.

A workaround for iPad users/Three UK subscribers to access their mobile broadband bills on another device

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Three UK (3) has just been added to my list of mobile operators who haven’t got a clue about customer service.

For the last few months I’ve been using Three’s mobile broadband service on my iPad. The in-store service when I joined the network was pretty lousy but today that got a whole lot worse. I needed to store a copy of my bills and found that the My 3 portal was only available to me over Three’s 3G network from my iPad. Access from a PC, or over Wi-Fi needed a password. And resetting that password needed the ability to receive SMS, a capability that my iPad does not have…

So I called Three. Actually, I rang several numbers for Three, trying to avoid paying for the call (I can’t use their free number because I don’t have a phone on their network…) and I spoke to someone who understood the issue but couldn’t help because they were in the mobile dongle department. He transferred me to someone in the iPad team (approx. 10 minute wait…) who confirmed I could only access my bills on my iPad and when I asked how I could download them he suggested either dragging and dropping them to my email (what?!). At this point, I think he was well off his script and just making things up but he asked me if I have an iPhone 4S. I don’t, so he suggested going into store, putting my SIM into the store’s iPhone 4S, and getting the password sent by SMS to it…

[Thinking about the situation as I write this post, I don’t have an iPhone 4S but I do  have another phone that can take a micro SIM… but Three asked if I had an iPhone 4S]

My issues here are: having to pay to speak to a customer service agent and being kept on hold for a while; getting poor advice from the agent (unless Three can tell me how to drag and drop my bill from their portal to my email, on an iPad); and not getting an answer to my problem. Visiting a store is simply not worth the effort (20-odd mile drive, pay for parking, an hour of my time) – but could well lose Three a customer.

I did find a workaround though, for anyone who has Dropbox installed on their iPad…

  1. Disconnect from any Wi-Fi networks and open the My 3 portal on the iPad (My 3 loads in Safari without asking for credentials if you are connected to the Three network with a 3G connection).
  2. Navigate to Recent Bills and press/hold the PDF icon to open a bill.
  3. Once loaded, open the PDF in Dropbox – it will be saved as a file called viewInvoice.nocache, which is a PDF file, but without the correct file extension.
  4. Rename viewInvoice.nocache to add a .PDF file extension and open it as normal on any device you like.

Interestingly, O2 (whose incompetence caused me to switch my mobile broadband to Three in the first place, but who did later take steps to address the issue) still send me an email every month to say that my mobile broadband payment has failed… that suggests my account is still live… maybe with 5GB of data still loaded… perhaps I should search for that micro SIM and try it again…

The day I thought my Nokia Lumia 800 had died…

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Earlier today I noticed that my week-old Nokia Lumia 800 was switched off. I hadn’t charged it overnight and it had quite possibly run out of power, so I plugged it into the mains charger.

An hour later, it was still dead, and refusing to turn on.

First I panicked. Then I swore. Then I went to Google and found a Nokia support discussion forum post that advised pressing the volume down, power and camera buttons together to reset the phone… I guess that’s the ctrl-alt-del or sleep/wake-home of the Windows Phone world and it seemed to do the trick (at the time I had the phone connected to a PC).

Even though it showed a battery dead display (picture of a battery with a small amount of red inside it) when it turned on, it seems that the phone hadn’t completely run out of juice (or, if it had, then it was charging when it was plugged into the mains charger but needed a reset to take it out of a deep sleep) as it was at 70% when I disconnected it 10-15 minutes later.

I’ll be keeping an eye on this but hopefully it’s not a sign of impending battery issues.

[Update 31 January 2012: Be careful – volume down, power and camera is a hard reset and can result in lost data. Today, despite charging overnight, all night, and being fine when I went to bed, the Lumia was dead this morning. I used a soft reset instead (both volume buttons and power) to bring it back to life. There are more details, and diagrams, in this post at UK Mobile Review].

Deploying apps to an unlocked Windows Phone

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Late last night, I wrote about unlocking my Windows Phone using ChevronWP7. I’m not a software developer and my primary reason was to install an app that’s not available in the Windows Phone Marketplace: Screen Capturer.

I’m pleased to be able to report that installing packaged apps (in .XAP format) on an unlocked phone is a very quick process involving just a few simple steps:

  1. Connect the Windows Phone to the PC using a suitable USB cable.
  2. Open the Application Deployment tool from the Windows Phone SDK.
  3. Select Windows Phone Device as the target and supply the filename of the .XAP package.
  4. Click Deploy.

Windows Phone Application Deployment

The status should show Deploying XAP file… before, a few seconds later, it changes to XAP Deployment Complete and the app is available for use on the phone.

Unlocking my Windows Phone using ChevronWP7

Posted on By Mark Wilson

ChevronWP7 logoI’m not intending to turn this blog into one-man’s-attempt-to-reverse-microsoft’s-fortunes-in-the-mobile-sector but it’s kind of inevitable that a few blog posts will follow my recent purchase of a Windows Phone.

This one is about unlocking my phone to install non-sanctioned apps – either those that are not in an app store yet, or that are written by myself (maybe, one day).

Some people may recall that Rafael Rivera, Chris Walsh and Long Zheng developed a Windows Phone unlock (ChevronWP7) soon after the platform was launched.  Microsoft wasn’t amused but, cleverly, instead of outlawing them in a never-ending game of cat and mouse as Apple has with iOS “jailbreakers”, they brought the guys in from the cold and worked with them to ensure that their unofficial unlock tools for hobbyist developers use officially supported methods that do not encourage piracy.

The relaunched ChevronWP7 is the result of that process and, a few days ago (after some teething troubles last month), it was opened up again.  For $9 I purchased a code that then unlocks my phone and allows me to deploy applications directly to the device (instead of the $99 it costs via Microsoft) – although I’m not really sure why the app I needed (a screen capture utility described by both Long Zheng and Paul Thurrott) isn’t either a native operating system function (actually, I do know that answer – and it’s related to DRM) or available via the Windows Phone Marketplace.

So, what was involved in unlocking my phone?  And what’s the risk?

The ChevronWP7 site says:

“We believe Windows Phone development should be accessible to anyone. We are providing a Windows Phone developer unlocking service to developers across all skill levels and regions for just $9 USD per phone.”

On that basis, it’s pretty simple, for someone who is happy installing software on a Windows PC (i.e. a developer or an IT professional working with Microsoft tools).  This is what I did…

I headed over to the ChevronWP7 Labs and signed in with a Windows Live ID.

Once signed in, I downloaded the appropriate version of the unlock tool (32- and 64-bit versions are available – I used the 64-bit version).

The unlock tool has a number of pre-requisites but the only one listed on the site when I downloaded it was the Microsoft .NET Framework 4 (with a link to the full version).  I checked that I have this and found that I had at least a version of it (I’m not familiar with the difference between the client and full versions but both following the instructions in Microsoft knowledge base article 318785 and checking %windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework and Framework64 showed me that I had the v4.0.30319 client installed).

Before I could successfully run the unlock tool (ChevronLabs.Unlock.exe), I needed to install some other dependencies – the first of which, not surprisingly, was the Windows Phone SDK 7.1. Although this has a small web installer, it actually downloaded and installed 648MB of applications and data to my system before requiring a restart.

The next missing dependency highlighted by the ChevronWP7 unlock tool was the Windows Phone Support Tool v2, as detailed in Microsoft knowledge base article 2530409 (again, there are 32- and 64-bit versions available – the Microsoft Download Center links are in the knowledge base article).

With all dependencies installed, I ran the unlock tool again to confirm that my phone could actually be unlocked (some can’t, my Nokia Lumia 800 could). I then purchased a token from the ChevronWP7 Labs site and pasted the code into the unlock tool before hitting the Unlock button. My PIN kept getting in the way and I had to reboot the phone and retry the process at least once but eventually I found myself in a queue of devices waiting to be unlocked.

ChevronWP7, queued for unlock

After about 10-15 minutes I was presented with an unassuming Windows dialog that said something like “Your phone has been unlocked. Hooray!” and the unlock tool status changed to “Phone Unlocked”.

ChevronWP7, device unlocked

Was that all? After all those downloads and queuing the unlock process was really fast. The ChevronWP7 guys have done a really good job at providing an unlocking service that’s simple to use.

As for the risk of unlocking, in theory it’s small – you can lock it again (indeed that’s necessary to publish apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace, via Microsoft’s App Hub) and, because the tool uses methods that are sanctioned by Microsoft (i.e. Microsoft’s own tools), it shouldn’t brick your phone either. Having said that, I’m not responsible for any action that any readers take as a result of reading this blog post, including, but not limited to, “bricked” phones…

Windows Phone volume/silence/vibrate and alarms

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Those who follow me on Twitter may be aware that splashed out and I bought a Windows Phone last week (Nokia Lumia 800, unlocked, SIM-free). I’m planning a blog post about my first week with the phone (spoiler alert: some minor annoyances but, overall, I really like it) but one of the first items of confusion for me was how to (quickly) switch audio settings between ring, silent and vibrate. I could see it was possible in settings, but surely there is a quick way?

Windows Phone volume barYes, it seems there is (hit one of the volume rockers to bring up the volume bar at the top of the screen and then tap the icon on the right) but, bizarrely, you can either have vibrate or silent – not both…

My need for a silent phone was related to the fact that I use it as an alarm clock and don’t want to be woken by an assortment of messages in the night so I was concerned to read about “the Windows Phone alarm bug“. There’s even a Microsoft Answers post that says it’s not possible to set the volume to 0 and have the alarm sound.

Maybe this was a problem in earlier releases (that post is a year old) but it seems like a non-issue to me… I’ve set alarms with my phone on silent, vibrate, and with the ringer turned down to 0 and in all cases the alarm still works (thank goodness, after all, that’s what I would expect!).

[Updated 21:06 with screenshot of the volume bar]

A few things I tried to resolve my Humax PVR-9300T lockups

Posted on By Mark Wilson

A couple of years ago, I bought a Humax 9300-T PVR and, once a firmware update had been applied, it’s been a pretty solid piece of kit.

I had avoided applying any more firmware updates because for consumer electronics my approach is generally one of “if it works, don’t fix it!”. Unfortunately it seems the UK’s switchover to digital TV is working against me with what appear to be constant changes in the infrastructure and an increased number of system lock-ups seems to correlate to a retune. Over the last few months it’s been manageable (it was just happening when we watched Channel 5 – so we stopped watching it!) but yesterday it became worse, on all channels, with the clock on the device staying still and the remote becoming unresponsive within a couple of minutes of a reboot. Yesterday, I must have power-cycled my PVR on at least 10 occasions.

I found an interesting discussion post that seemed to suggest a reset to defaults and manual tune of the receiver might help:

“My 9300T has also started to lock up recently. I contacted Humax Support and they advised me to manually retune so that I only pickup the signals from my area […]. Instructions below:

Please find below the details you will need to follow to manual tune the receiver.

Press MENU
Select Installation
Enter your password (Default – 0000)
Select Default Setting
Select YES
Enter your password (Default – 0000)

The receiver will then take 30 seconds and will switch off and restart.

When the product loads up again it will enter the Automatic Search; please press OK to STOP the search before any channels are found.

If any channels are found and you are asked to SAVE the channels please select NO and press OK.

Press OK twice to access the Installation menu, and then follow below:

Select Manual Search and press OK

You will now need to enter the channel number for each of the 6 Multiplexes available to receive all of the channels. After you enter each of the numbers below select the Search box and press OK. When the channels on each Multiplex are found press OK to save.

Follow the procedure above to search all 6 multiplexes. You will be able to see the signal levels of each of the Multiplexes.

Please ensure that the Network Search option is disabled.

[…]”

The UK digital TV reception predictor gave me the information I needed about the multiplexes (MUXs) to use but, unfortunately, retuning didn’t solve the issue. So I had a rant on Twitter (cathartic, of course) and started to look for updated firmware. I found that an over-the-air (OTA) update is being broadcast this weekend but then I got a tweet from @michealcni to tell me that it was live already (looking back know, I could have found that from the Digital TV Group engineering channel over-air download schedule)!

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/michaelcni/statuses/147077603663167488″]

After following the update process, I repeated the reset to defaults and retune process (a manual retune has an added advantage that I can skip certain channels that an automatic tune picks up and I might not want the children, in-laws, or others to ask me about – I’m happy answering questions about Father Christmas or the tooth fairy but would rather avoid “Daddy, what’s Adult Filth?”).

It’s early days yet but the system has remained stable overnight so, hopefully, installing the latest firmware has fixed whatever was causing my PVR to crash. In the meantime, I hope the information in this post is useful to someone else!

Logging in to Lync 2010 with the Windows Phone client

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Earlier today, Microsoft released the Lync 2010 client for Windows Phone (clients for Android, iPhone, iPad and Symbian are on their way).  And, as I’m an Office 365 user and I bought a Windows Phone last week, I decided to take a look.

Installing the app is straightforward enough but I was struggling to log in using the normal credentials that I use for other Office applications (like Outlook Mobile). From looking at the ratings on the app, it seems I’m not alone – with plenty of people saying “it doesn’t work”.

Microsoft’s advice for setting up Lync on Windows Phone is incomplete but the required DNS settings are documented in the Office 365 community wiki.  The missing piece of the puzzle came from Ben Lee – it’s necessary to specify a username (in the format user@domain.onmicrosoft.com) and an External Discovery URL of https://meet.lync.com/Autodiscover/autodiscoverservice.svc/Root.

Once those additional settings were configured, Lync jumped into life!

(For full client configuration details, with screenshots, check out Ben’s post.)

[Update 21 December 2011: It seems this also works with the iOS Lync client, except that also seems to need an Internal Discovery URL before it will allow sign-in (I used the same URL for both internal and external)]

Another press photographer with a tale or few: Arthur Edwards, MBE

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Recently, I blogged about an evening I’d spent watching and listening to long-time press photographer Ken Lennox. Ken had many tales that I couldn’t do justice in my blog post and another Fleet Street ‘tog who has covered the Royal Family is Arthur Edwards, MBE. Arthur recently featured on the BBC’s Desert Island Discs radio programme and it’s worth checking out the recording for some tales of life as a royal photographer.

Is there such a thing as private cloud?

Posted on By Mark Wilson

I had an interesting discussion with a colleague today, who was arguing that there is no such thing as private cloud – it’s just virtualisation, rebranded.

Whilst I agree with his sentiment (many organisations claiming to have implemented private clouds have really just virtualised their server estate), I do think that private clouds can exist.

Cloud is a new business model, but the difference between traditional hosting and cloud computing is more that just commercial. The NIST definition of cloud computing is becoming more and more widely accepted and it defines five essential charactistics, three service models and four deployment models.

The essential characteristics are:

  • “On-demand self-service. A consumer can unilaterally provision computing capabilities, such as server time and network storage, as needed automatically without requiring human interaction with each service provider.
  • Broad network access. Capabilities are available over the network and accessed through standard mechanisms that promote use by heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms (e.g., mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and workstations).
  • Resource pooling. The provider’s computing resources are pooled to serve multiple consumers using a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand. There is a sense of location independence in that the customer generally has no control or knowledge over the exact location of the provided resources but may be able to specify location at a higher level of abstraction (e.g., country, state, or datacenter). Examples of resources include storage, processing, memory, and network bandwidth.
  • Rapid elasticity. Capabilities can be elastically provisioned and released, in some cases automatically, to scale rapidly outward and inward commensurate with demand. To the consumer, the capabilities available for provisioning often appear to be unlimited and can be appropriated in any quantity at any time.
  • Measured service. Cloud systems automatically control and optimize resource use by leveraging a metering capability at some level of abstraction appropriate to the type of service (e.g., storage, processing, bandwidth, and active user accounts). Resource usage can be monitored, controlled, and reported, providing transparency for both the provider and consumer of the utilized service.”

and NIST’s private cloud definition is:

“Private cloud. The cloud infrastructure is provisioned for exclusive use by a single organization comprising multiple consumers (e.g., business units). It may be owned, managed, and operated by the organization, a third party, or some combination of them, and it may exist on or off premises.”

If anything, the NIST definition is incomplete (it doesn’t recognise any service models beyond infrastructure-, platform- and software-as-a-service – I’d add business process as a service too) but the rest is pretty spot on.

Looking at each of the characteristics and comparing them to a simple virtualisation of existing IT:

  • On demand self service: virtualisation alone doesn’t cover this – so private clouds need to include another technology layer to enable this functionality.
  • Broad network access: nothing controversial there, I think.
  • Resource pooling: I agree, standard virtualisation functionality.
  • Rapid elasticity: this is where private cloud struggles against public (bursting to public via a hybrid solution might help, if feasible from a governance/security perspective) but, with suitable capacity management in place, private virtualised infrastructure deployments can be elastic.
  • Measured service: again, an additional layer of technology is required in order to provide this functionality – more than just a standard virtualised solution.

All of this is possible to achieve internally (i.e. privately), and it’s important to note that it’s no good just porting existing applications to a virtualisaed infrastructure – they need to be re-architected to take advantage of these characteristics. But I’m pretty sure there is more to private cloud than just virtualisation with a new name…

As for, whether there is a long term place for private cloud… that’s an entirely separate question!