If you are trying to upgrade your DotNetNuke site and found that you are presented with the Welcome to the DotNetNuke Upgrade Page, but can’t login with your Host (SuperUser) account.

DotNetNuke Upgrade – Version 06.02.07

Current Version – 06.02.05

Welcome to the DotNetNuke Upgrade Page.

The first step is to choose the language you wish to use for the Upgrade.

You are about to upgrade your website to a more recent version of the DotNetNuke application. Applying upgrades on a consistent basis is the best way to ensure that you are protecting the integrity of your investment and the security of your users and assets. Before proceeding with the automated upgrade process please ensure that:

• you have made plans to first attempt this process in a staging environment
• you have documented your current installation characteristics including doing research on the compatibility of any third party modules which you may be using
• you have created the necessary backups of your environment so that you will be able to restore your website in the event of an unexpected upgrade failure.

Solution

Just simply close your browsers, or better yet, grab a browser that you have not accessed for some time. Then try hitting your URL and loggin in with the new browser session. While I did not bother to work out what the cache issue was, I did find it was cache related to an open browser session that was trying to authenticate to a previous session.

Easy when you know how~!

Usually this is a function of a program that will make these files encrypted for a reason. Security is usually the reason. But…

An interesting little bug in the process of creating a .zip file on a mac and moving it over to a Windows computer.

When a .zip file is created according to standards for .zip files found here:

http://www.pkware.com/documents/casestudies/APPNOTE.TXT

They specify that .zip archives include a tag informing about itself to the program trying to decompress the archive. This tag information is known as the “version made by” and as the name suggest, it would tag information about the program version of .zip and the files system in use.

 0 - MS-DOS and OS/2 (FAT / VFAT / FAT32 file systems)
          1 - Amiga                     2 - OpenVMS
          3 - UNIX                      4 - VM/CMS
          5 - Atari ST                  6 - OS/2 H.P.F.S.
          7 - Macintosh                 8 - Z-System
          9 - CP/M                     10 - Windows NTFS
         11 - MVS (OS/390 - Z/OS)      12 - VSE
         13 - Acorn Risc               14 - VFAT
         15 - alternate MVS            16 - BeOS
         17 - Tandem                   18 - OS/400
         19 - OS/X (Darwin)            20 thru 255 - unused

When the Mac system encrypts the files, it marks them with the attribute of being UNIX based files. Correct considering the Mac operating system is based on UNIX.

The problem arises at the Windows end. Because Windows is created by the most arrogant computer company in the world, it does not recognise that a .zip file could have been created with a computer that is not running Windows. It fails to correctly see the flag as UNIX and marks the files as Encrypted.

Leaving Files Encrypted

If the files are left as encrypted, you may find that there are problems if the files are shred on a network drive etc. Taking ownership will not change this flag, and resetting permissions does nothing.

The Easy Fix – Remove Encrypted Tag

Removing the incorrect Encrypted Flag on a green file in Windows 7, or Windows Server is really easy. Right click the file or files (holding the shift key to select multiple folders and files) then Click: Properties / Advanced / Un-tick the Encrypted Option

That’s about it. All fixed.

Question

A jpg image opens in Firefox but not Internet Explorer.

Answer

Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.0 dropped support for jpeg images saved as CMYK and now only supports images saved in RGB mode. Below is an example and easy way to verify this issue. In the below example, we have two images; one saved in CMYK and the other saved as RGB.

CYMK Image

RGB Image

If this issue exists, the CMYK image will appear as a red X or broken image in Internet Explorer. However, opening this page in Chrome or Firefox should show both images. If both images are visible to Internet Explorer, this is not the issue with your version of Internet Explorer.

Out suggestion would be to use just about any other browser that IE 8. Update to Chrome or Firefox and use that browser.

The services are available at fairly reasonable price. Especially, if you are using S3 then you are making a very good deal.

Since, the free usage tier comes with 750 free hours of Amazon EC2 for each month for a year I thought of giving it a try and running WordPress.

Here is a step-by-step guide to setting up and running WordPress on Amazon EC2.

Sign up / Log in to your AWS Account:

If you do not have an AWS account then you can signup for the free usage tier and login to your account.

Setting up our server:

After you have logged in to AWS account, click “My Account / Console”  in top right corner of the screen and then click on “AWS Management Console”. You will be presented with something like this :

Click on “EC2″ link and you will be taken to the EC2 Dashboard. Click on “Launch Instance” button to create a new instance. Follow the “Classic Wizard” as shown below :

Click “Continue” and on the next screen select “Ubuntu Server 12.04.1 LTS”

On the next screen, you can proceed with the default settings. Make sure that “Instance Type” is set to “Micro” because that comes free with AWS Free Usage Tier. Click “Continue”

Click “Continue” on the next screen :

Again, click continue on the next screen.

After that you can add a “Name” for your instance for better organization. I have named it as “WordPress”.

Now, you need to create a “Key Pair” so that you can connect easily with your server via SSH. Give an easy to remember name to your key pair and download the file. Keep the file in a place that you can remember. As you will need this file to connect with your server.

Next step is to configure the Firewall and make sure that only required ports are open for our server. Create a new security group. I have named it as “WP”. Now, click the dropdown for “Create a new rule” select SSH and click “Add Rule”. Repeat it for HTTP.

And we are done, setting up our instance. Click “Launch”.

Go to “Instances” page and you will see your new server being initialized and in some time it will be up and running. But, it’s not yet ready to run a WordPress site.

We need to setup the essential services to run WP : Apache, PHP and MySQL.

Connect via Terminal

Select the instance which we created above and click “Instance Actions”, in the pop-up menu click on “Connect”

Here you will need to enter the path of key file that you saved to your computer while creating the instance. Once that’s done you can click “Launch SSH Client”. If you wish you can also store key location in browser cache so that you won’t need to re-enter it every time you connect.

Setting up Apache :

Now, we are connected to our server. Next step is to setup Apache. By default, you will be logged in as user : ubuntu. Let’s switch the user to “root” so that we can get complete access. Use the following command to do so:

sudo su

view rawSwitch to Root userThis Gist brought to you by GitHub.

Use the following command in terminal to install Apache on your server:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

apt-get install apache2

view rawInstall ApacheThis Gist brought to you by GitHub.

After the installation is complete, look for Public DNS of your instance as shown below:

Copy this Public DNS and paste it in browser’s address bar. You will see a test page for Apache like below :

Installing PHP5

Our Apache is working and now we will install PHP5. For installing PHP5 use following commands in your terminal:

12345

apt-get install php5
 
apt-get install libapache2-mod-php5
 
/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

view rawInstall PHP5This Gist brought to you by GitHub.

Note: If your PHP installation fails with a message such as “Unable to fetch some archives…” then run the following command and repeat the above process:

apt-get update

Now, your web files placed in /var/www/ can be accessed in the browser via Public DNS.

Let’s create a test PHP file to make sure that we have PHP running properly. Use the following command to do so :

123

cd /var/www/
 
vi mytest.php

view rawPHP InfoThis Gist brought to you by GitHub.

This will create a new PHP file and open editor. Follow the following steps to add content to file :

1. Press i to switch to insert mode.
2. Type <?php phpinfo() ?>
3. Hit escape key
4. Type :wq to write the contents to file and quit the editor.

After creating the file run the file in your browser using the address as your-public-dns/mytest.php and it will show a page like below :

Now that PHP is running perfectly on our Apache. We need MySQL for creating database.

Install MySQL

Process for installing MySQL is similar to the process we followed for installing PHP. Use the following command in terminal to install MySQL :

1

apt-get install mysql-server

view rawInstall MySQL serverThis Gist brought to you by GitHub.

During installation process you will be asked to create a password for “root” user. Keep this password safe in your memory or computer because this will be required to access the database later on.

Since we need to run PHP5 with MySQL, we will also install PHP module for MySQL using the following command

123

apt-get install php5-mysql
 
apt-get install libapache2-mod-auth-mysql

view rawPHP5 MySQLThis Gist brought to you by GitHub.

After this we can create database and continue with setting up WordPress. But, it will be nice to setup phpMyAdmin visual interface. So, let’s go ahead with it.

Installing phpMyAdmin

Use the following command to install phpMyAdmin and make sure you configure it for “Apache2″ web server :

1

apt-get install phpmyadmin

view rawphpMyAdminThis Gist brought to you by GitHub.

Follow the instructions on screen and remember the password that you enter in each field. After the installation of phpMyAdmin is complete we need to configure our Apache to make phpMyAdmin accessible via browser.

Use the following command for configuring Apache:

123

ln -s /etc/phpmyadmin/apache.conf /etc/apache2/conf.d/phpmyadmin.conf
 
/etc/init.d/apache2 reload

view rawConfigure ApacheThis Gist brought to you by GitHub.

We restart the apache web server so that it picks up our changes.

That’s all done. Now, you can access phpMyAdmin in browser via your-public-dns/phpmyadmin

Enter username : root and the password which you created while installing MySQL.

Login to the admin and create a new database that we will use later for installing WordPress.

Now, we have all essential elements on our virtual server for running WordPress and everything is working perfectly. So, let’s install WordPress.

Downloading WordPresss

First  we will navigate to the home directory of our server and then download the latest copy of WordPress and extract it to /var/www directory by using the following command :

123

cd 
wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
tar -xzvf latest.tar.gz -C /var/www

view rawDownload WPThis Gist brought to you by GitHub.

By default, all the files will be extracted in a directory “wordpress” so your files are at /var/www/wordpress/ to move the files to root of web server and then remove the “wordpress” directory we will use:

123

cp -avr /var/www/wordpress/* /var/www
 
rm -rf /var/www/wordpress

view rawmove WP to rootThis Gist brought to you by GitHub.

Before we install WordPress we need to map our domain name with the virtual server so that the site is accessible easily.

Mapping Domain Name :

Now we have everything ready in place and all we need to do is map our domain with our virtual server. For this you will have to associate an IP with the instance and map the domain name to that IP.

Head back to EC2 console and click “Elastic IPs” in the left pane. Click “Allocate New Address”

Now, you will see a new IP address in the console. Click “Associate Address” to associate this IP with your instance.

Now, switch to back to “Instances” panel and you can check the attachment status.

You will need to connect to your server by IP address now. Your hostname (public DNS) will no longer work, and if you detach the IP, your instance will be assigned a different hostname (public DNS). So, it’s best to not to change IP or detach it.

You can map your domain name to this elastic IP and it will work perfectly.

For now, I am using IP to access and setup the site. I entered elastic IP in address bar followed by /index.php and it came up with WordPress installation page.

That’s all! Now, you can use follow the steps of WordPress installation, enter required details and setup the site.

Oh but wait! I came up with this :

This is because our current apache user doesn’t have rights to write to the file. To fix this error we will grant access rights to our current apache user. First connect to the server via terminal as we did in the beginning and then execute following commands :

12

sudo chown -R www-data /var/www
sudo chmod -R 755 www-data /var/www

view rawFile permissionsThis Gist brought to you by GitHub.

Here, www-datais the default apache user.

There is another issue left to be fixed. That is use of htaccess file and Pretty Permalinks in WordPrses. We will enable use of htaccess file and then enable the rewrite engine for Pretty Permalinks.

Enable htaccess and URL Rewrite

To make .htaccess files work as expected, you need to edit default apache file :

1

sudo vim /etc/apache2/sites-available/default

view rawEdit Apache default fileThis Gist brought to you by GitHub.

Look for :

123456

<Directory /var/www/>
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
    AllowOverride None
    Order allow,deny
    allow from all
</Directory>

view rawApache DefaultThis Gist brought to you by GitHub.

Press i to enable insert mode and replace AllowOverride None to AllowOverride All. Now hit escape key and type :wq to write the changes to file and exit the editor.

Restart the apache web server for changes to take effect.

1

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

view rawRestart ApacheThis Gist brought to you by GitHub.

Continue with WP installation

Finally! You are all set to run WordPress site on Amazon EC2. Proceed with the installation process and it will work.

Like I have it here:

Here comes the end to my tutorial. I am not a server administrator or a linux expert. This was a result of my hit-and-trial experiments. So, if you have any suggestions for improvement then please feel free to share your comments.

Sometime your ISP will block port 25 and prevent you from sending SMTP email on that port. Your email service provider may ask you to change the port being used to something other than port 25.

Most email programs have configuration settings like this:

Where on the Advanced Tab or similar depending on the email program in question there are settings for the outgoing SMTP server.

To change the SMTP port from 25 to 587 for example you just replace this:

Click OK and you are done.

Note:

It should be noted that the port number to use must be provided to you by your Email ISP.

This can be especially frustrating as both the CRM email queuing and tracking system and the Email router application are terrible to help you understand exactly what is going on with your CRM e-mail.

We mentioned some of the issues we have experience here:

http://www.interactivewebs.com/blog/index.php/server-tips/crm-2011-email-router-problemsshes-a-fickle-bitch/

Here are some basic setup tips for email in Microsoft CRM 2011

1. Out of the box, CRM does not send email messages. You need to configure an application known as CRM 2011 Email Router to have email messages send.

2. You also need a working SMTP (email server) that is configured to allow the relay of email messages from email accounts at your domain name. This can be achieved with Amazon SES message service or your own servers. We can assist you setup Amazon SES if you need assistance with this.

3. You should install and configure your Email Router. Some notes to help you may include these: http://www.interactivewebs.com/blog//?s=email+router

Recommended email settings in CRM 2011

1. Out of the box. CRM will only be able to send email messages to leads, contacts, and accounts. Until you change this setting found in the Admin / System Settings in CRM.

2. Avoid delayed email messages in CRM by Approve Email Address. In the Administration / Users. Go into each user and approve the configured email address.

There is a view of users who are Pending Email address approval to help identify who is needing approval.

Also uncheck the option for Process emails only for approved users and process email only for approved queues. Administration / System Settings.

3. Configure users email settings to use the email router for outbound email messages. (optionally inbound configuration too).

Our recommendation is to set the outbound processing for the email router. This will allow emails generated by the crm system to be delivered right away via the email router. This also means that you do need to install and configure the email router.

The above settings can be set automatically for all users by the use of a simpler out of the box workflow that runs on create of new users.

4. The next setting is recommended. Knowing that email can be tracked in CRM with the outlook client:

Email messages can automatically be tracked too.

5. The all powerful features of creating contacts in CRM when and email address is not known.

This is a great way to automatically get more leads or contacts (depending on your business) in crm. And depending on your business can also be a great way to pollute your crm full of contacts or leads that you don’t want.

Troubleshooting Tips

To troubleshoot an E-mail Router outgoing profile configuration, follow these steps:

1. Make sure that you follow the incoming profile configuration procedures in the E-mail Router Configuration Manager Help.
2. For more information about how to configure an incoming profile, see the E-mail Router configuration information in the latest version of the Installing Guide that is included in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Implementation Guide.
3. Refer to the following sections for information about how to resolve commonly encountered outgoing profile issues.

Test Access error

If there is a problem with your outgoing e-mail configuration, you may receive the following error message when you click Test Access on the E-mail Router Configuration Manager:

"Outgoing status: Failure – An error occurred while checking the connection to e-mail server EXSERVERNAME. The requested address is not valid in its context"

If you receive this message, follow these steps to troubleshoot the problem:

1. Run a telnet command to verify that connectivity is functioning between the computer that is running CRM Router and the Exchange Server. For example, start the TELNET utility and enter the following command:

   TELNET EXSERVERNAME PORT

2. Make sure that you have no antivirus services running on the Exchange Server computer that prevent connection by using port 25.
3. For information about how to configure the SMTP server to allow relay messages from Microsoft Dynamics CRM, see KB article 915827.

E-mail error when message sent from the Web application

Symptom: When a user sends an e-mail message by using the Web application, the user might receive one of the following messages:

This message has not yet been submitted for delivery. 1 attempts have been made so far.

The message delivery failed. It must be resubmitted for any further processing.

Resolution: For information about how to resolve this issue, see KB article 915827.

Load Data error

When you click Load Data in the E-mail Router Configuration Manager, you receive the following error:

The E-mail Router Configuration Manager was unable to retrieve user and queue information from the Microsoft Dynamics CRM server. This may indicate that the Microsoft Dynamics CRM server is busy. Verify that URL ‘http://OrganizationName‘ is correct. Additionally, this problem can occur if the specified access credentials are insufficient. To try again, click Load Data. (The request failed with HTTP status 404: Not Found.)

To resolve this problem, follow these steps:

1. Make sure that the user account that is running the E-mail Router Configuration Manager service is a member of the Active Directory PrivUserGroup security group.
2. The account that is specified in the Access Credentials field on the General tab of the E-mail Router Configuration Manager must be a Microsoft Dynamics CRM administrative user. If the access credentials are set to Local System Account, the computer account must be a member of the Active Directory PrivUserGroup security group.
3. Make sure that the URL is spelled correctly. The organization name in the URL field is case-sensitive and must be spelled exactly as it appears in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM server. To view the organization name as it appears in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM server, start the Web application. The organization name appears in the upper-right corner of the application window.
4. The DeploymentProperties table may have incorrect values if you have modified the port or hostheaders on your Web site. To update the DeploymentProperties table see, KB article 950248.

Pending Email warning

On the Email Router, configure:

1. Check event view for Email Router related errros

2. Change the send email

3. Restart CRM email Router service

4. Reduce the pooling time and conneciton timeout

Automatically Resending Failed Email Messages

The Advanced find can be used to find email messages that have not sent. A workflow can also be created to resend messages automatically. However constant failures is going to indicate a problem some other place. So the use of this automatic workflow should not be introduced in place of fixing your sending issues.

Steps to create the workflow to re-send failed e-mails:

1. Create a new Workflow in CRM | Processes on the E-mail entity

2. Set the workflow to be Available to Run “As an on-demand process”, Change the scope to Organization and uncheck “Record is created”.  This will make the workflow available to run On-Demand, function for all e-mails in the organization and also not run when every time a new e-mail is created as we just want to use this when needed on specific e-mails.

3. Click “Add Step” and choose “Change Status”

4. Set the E-mail to a status of “Pending Send”

5. Click Save and then Activate in the toolbar.  Click ”OK” to the message to confirm you want to Activate the workflow and then click “Close” on the workflow.

Advanced Find to see how many e-mails are in a failed status:

1. Open Advanced Find by clicking the “Advanced Find” button in the CRM ribbon

2. Select “E-mail Messages” in the Look For option set and then select “Status Reason” and set it equal to “Failed”. Then click the Results button in the Advanced Find ribbon.

3. You can refine the results using the filter criteria from here as well in case you do not want to re-send all of the e-mails. Once you are done, multi-select the e-mails you want to re-send and then click the “Run Workflow” button in the CRM ribbon.

4. Select the e-mail workflow that you created using the steps above and click OK.

The workflow will then run and change the status of all the e-mails you had selected back to “Pending Send”.  This is an asynchronous process, so it may take a few minutes depending on your current asynchronous workload in CRM.  Then the CRM e-mail router will process them again and send them out through SMTP as expected.

Still Need Help?

Here at InteractiveWebs we know how terrible this component of Microsoft CRM is. Actually, in our opinion, it is difficulties like these that really shows Microsoft is not at all interested in giving it’s customers a good experience. Much of the multitude of steps and better monitoring could be fixed with very little effort from Microsoft, yet after years of CRM, much remains the same.

In any case, if you need paid administration assistance to get your email working on your CRM system, be it Cloud Microsoft Hosted, IFD, or On Premises, we are available. Please contact us at: http://www.interactivewebs.com by submitting a support ticket.

Download

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36229

This update is the long awaited one that is doing the UI update that will add the support for multiple browsers apart from Internet Explorer.

The image above depicts the functionality included in Polaris. I will now touch upon some of the key ones in a little more detail, hopefully in plain English!

• Flow User Experience – this is a whole new UX development approach for CRM to remove the number of screen pops that occur during a standard process. In the case of Polaris, Lead and Opportunity and Case management processes will be included. It is important to note that this feature will be turned off for existing online customers, but can be opted into and for new online customer post the release this will be on by default but can be turned off. Flow UX will not be configurable for any other entity other than the Lead, Opportunity and Case in the first release. In the Q2 2013 we would expect that this will be more configurable for custom entities. This is a big step forward on UX development and cements the user experience expected on mobile devices
• Browser Flexibility - This will enable CRM to be run on a number of browsers including Safari on the IPAD.

• Yammer Integration – Tighter integration between CRM and Yammer beyond the current embed functionality. This will enable features such as Like, Follow, visible from within CRM or Yammer and the ability to do global search from yammer to CRM. Yammer will become the future Activity Feeds.  Aligned to this was the recent announcement of pricing plan changes that can be found here https://www.yammer.com/about/pricing/ making it very affordable to organisations to adopt.
• Skype integration – As per my previous blog this is a great new feature and will change the way we communicate with our customers from within CRM.
• Bing Maps – The updated new UX will include native integration to Bing Maps for Contacts and Accounts for free.
• Pre Defined sales and Service processes – So what is this? Well rather than you telling your partner your processes, your partner will be able to present a best of breed sales process as a starting point from which you can edit and tweak. This will save time in deployment and provide a greater starting point than just rich functionality to configure.
• Enhanced Complex Deal Management – Microsoft Dynamics CRM will provide additional capabilities to track and manage stakeholders, competitors and pursuit teams for leads, opportunities, contacts and accounts via the new UX capability.

Where did it go? Update 16/01/2013

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 12 (UR12), which was readied for availability on January 10 and made available on January 12, has been withdrawn by Microsoft, citing ” an issue that could potentially impact a customer’s database”.

Writing in a blog post on the Microsoft Dynamics community site, CVP for Dynamics CRM Bob Stutz explained that an issue discovered in the “UR12 Server bits” could impact customer databases, so the software download was removed from the Microsoft Download Center.
A new version of UR12 will be made available within the week, according to Stutz.
Dynamics CRM forum members discussed the missing server software for UR 12 on Friday, January 11.  One person notes that she downloaded it on the 9th, discovered issues, and saw that it had been pulled down soon after:

“I grabbed the server component around 10:00 PM eastern on the 9th, and they pulled it down about an hour later. I installed it in my environment and it had a few bugs, maybe MS pulled it down and are frantically fixing?”

Another forum member puzzled over the lack of communication on the missing software:
“Seems wierd [sic] that they were there one moment and gone the next.  Always amazes me that there’s multiple posts when it’s released, but nothing but silence when it gets pulled.  SImilar to UR 10 and UR 11 which both had V2′s (and niether [sic] of which were really fixed).”
This is not the first update rollup to be withdrawn because of undiscovered issues.  UR10 had to be re-released in October 2012 due to several issues.  UR11 was similarly re-released several days after the original due to user-reported issues.

Stutz’s blog post does not elaborate on the problems, but Stutz acknowledges that another consecutive withdrawn update to Dynamics CRM hurts the product’s QA and release processes. He concludes with an assurance: “We have taken measures to improve our engineering processes and methodologies going forward, and we take your feedback very seriously. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.”

After playing around with the new (totally disappointing) Outlook 2013 I found that the ribbon would keep hiding.

While that is annoying enough and I wanted to turn it back to how it was by default, what was really ticking me off was that someone else inadvertently made this happen while on my computer and could not tell me what they have done to set it that way.

So I set about working it it.

I couldn’t with out help.

So I set to Google for assistance. Found nothing, hence I’m writing this.

Steps

Click a Message in your mail view.

Click HOME (the ribbon should appear)

Then on the far right of the ribbon, is a little drawing pin icon. In this location

That when clicked will turn to the indication above. This pins the ribbon in place.

For the record… I am disappointed by the new Office. There is nothing new that impresses me after 3 years of additional development time, and plenty of little traps like this that just suck time and annoy you!

Watching Microsoft fall from grace by their own hand is slow and painful for all of us!

Zendesk KB Import Tool / Sync

We have created a tool that allows the importing of Microsoft CRM (IFD) into your Zendesk setup.

The simple tool will look at your Microsoft CRM 2011 Articles (also known as KB articles) and draw them into your Zendesk support portal.

This is powerful if you have an existing CRM system with useful client data that you wish to expose to your support portal as a way of helping your customers find answers to their questions before they directly lodge a support ticket.

Additionally, the tool is smart enough to remove duplications. So if you run it against more than one instance of CRM, you can import KB articles without the fear of duplicating up on KB articles.

At the Zendesk end, the KB articles import something like this:

From original articles in CRM like this:

Versions

We have at this stage only release a version that runs as a Windows installable program, and connects to an IFD deployment of CRM. This is because we don’t anticipate a huge demand for the tool, and the only need we had was for this type of setup.

We are releasing the Source Code for the program, so that others can update it to their needs. Alternatively we would be happy charge a small amount to customize it to other particular needs.

In the near future we are going to update the tool to convert WordPress posts into Zendesk Knowledge Base Articles.

Please feel free to give feedback and or ask questions on what you would like to see in this too.

After upgrading a DNN website, we received this error message.

The underlying cause of the problem is sloppy release version upgrades of the DNN core product.

The issue is that the release.config file in the update versions of DNN references older versions of the Telerik.Web.UI .dll file in the /bin folder of the install versions of DNN. This means that the settings in your newly updated web.config file are referencing an old version of the Telerik file.

The fix is easy

Right click on the Telerik.Web.UI.dll file in your sites /bin folder.

If the file is not there, then download the install version of your DNN site package from http://dotnetnuke.codeplex.com

Then extract the file to the /bin folder.

Look at the version number of the file.

Edit your web.config file to match this data:

Save and you are done.

The solution is easy.

Look for the file found here:

\Providers\HtmlEditorProviders\Telerik\Config\ConfigDefault.xml

Edit it to add this line:

<property name="CssFiles">~/Providers/HtmlEditorProviders/Telerik/Config/EditorCustom.css</property>

Looking like this:

Then edit this file:

\Providers\HtmlEditorProviders\Telerik\Config\EditorCustom.css

To look like this:

body
{
  background-color: white;
  background-image: url(image_path);
  color: black;
}

That’s about it.

1. Files downloaded from iStockphoto (including yours once you pass this test) are offered with a royalty-free license, which describes how the image can and cannot be used: – TRUE
   When iStock clients download an image they must first agree to our royalty-free content license agreement.
2. iStockphoto images are downloaded under two different kinds of royalty-free licenses: our "standard use" license, which allows for all kinds of commercial, personal, and editorial uses, and our "editorial use only" license. – TRUE
   iStock now has an editorial use only license in addition to our standard content license agreement.
3. All recognizable faces in images with the standard use license require a model release, including those in crowds: – TRUE
   All recognizable human faces require a model release, including public areas, crowds, self portraits and vintage photographs.
4. Logos are acceptable in wide angle photographs under the standard use license: – FALSE
   Any visible logo should be removed in royalty-free stock photography.
5. Identifiable design marks, such as the 3 stripes for Adidas or the Nike swoosh, are allowed in images under the standard use license if the name is removed: – TRUE
   All design elements that are recognizable to a company may also be protected by trademark, and should always be removed for royalty-free stock photography.
6. Landmark buildings such as the Sydney Opera House require a property release to be used in images offered with the standard use license: – TRUE
   Famously recognized buildings and modern architecture may require a property release. Questionable buildings should be researched prior to uploading.
7. A model release is required for a self portrait: – TRUE
   All recognizable human faces require a model release, including public areas, crowds, self portraits and vintage photographs.
8. The photographer can witness their own Model/Property Release: – FALSE
   A model or property release cannot be witnessed by the photographter
9. A simple snapshot is acceptable; iStock does not require quality in composition: – FALSE
   The iStock collection is a selection of the highest quality, both creative and technical, images submitted. Simple snap shots will not be accepted.
10. It is acceptable to protest a rejection in the iStock forums: – FALSE
    To protest an image, it should always be addressed through "Scout", located in the Support section.
11. It is acceptable to copy the composition of another photographer`s work – FALSE
    iStock respects the creative value of each original image and does not condone mimicking the work of others.
12. Photographs should be upsampled or interpolated to the maximum XXL size: – FALSE
    iStock will not accept images that have been upsampled or interpolated above their native resolution.
13. The above example contains: – COMPRESSION
    Compression can be spotted in a photograph by the "chunking" of colors.
14. The above example is: – UNACCEPTABLE
    Harsh light or distracting shadows unintentional to the composition will be declined from the iStock collection.
15. The above example is: – UNACCEPTABLE
    The use of noise reduction should never create a "watercolor" or overly smoothed appearance.

We have been using opencart Version 1.5.3.1 with a custom template or skin. We found that the skin had some coding that stepped users through the “cart” step of the checkout, directly to the checkout process.

The stops the “voucher or coupon” step being available to the end user during checkout. (Unless they had more than one item in their cart).

The problem appears to be that the template is using the code:

<a href="<?php echo $checkout; ?>"

rather than:

<a href="<?php echo $cart; ?>"

You see the difference is the word “checkout” vs “cart” in this string.

This means that when you click on the:

icon for checkout, you are directed to:

domain.com/index.php?route=checkout/checkout

where you need to go to get the coupon option is:

domain.com/index.php?route=checkout/cart

Things to check first

1. Ensure you have added coupon codes!

The first obvious check is to ensure you have added voucher (discount) codes to your storethrough OpenCart’s administration panel, in Sales > Coupons.

2. Ensure Coupons are enabled in OpenCart

Next, we need to check the coupons feature is enabled in OpenCart. In OpenCart 1.5+, this is located in the Extensions > Order Totals menu in the administration panel. Make sure that the Coupons feature is enabled (it should be by default).

3. The Fix

Use a program that will search all files in your website structure looking for the phrase:

<a href="<?php echo $checkout; ?>"

and replace it with

<a href="<?php echo $cart; ?>"

What you will probably find is an error when you then try to proceed from the “Cart” to the correct “Checkout”

We found that the find and replace we did, broke the actual button found here:

But the good news was that the fix is really easy.

If you hover on that link / button you will find that the error message appears that says something like: Undefined Error in (and lists the file) and the line number.

Just open that file, find the correct line number, and replace the word “cart” with “checkout” in that once instance.

The net result being that you are changing all but one of the instance of the <a href="<?php echo $checkout; ?>" string.

Windows 8 is an interesting beast

It gets really easy as I get older and the Blamer years draw to a close, to actively dislike most of the innovations coming from Microsoft. You can only feel sorry for them really as peoples user experience with other technologies makes consumers realise what a mediocre user experience the Windows years have been.

Mean time, Microsoft have woken up to several facts that clearly have influenced the Windows 8 product.

1. People like the new technologies like iPads, iPhones and Android devices.

2. People like the new experience they have with company relationships with Apple, Google, Amazon, where they can single click and purchase information, apps and media super easily.

3. The alternatives to Windows are a LOT better then they used to be.

4. Microsoft has been dragging the chain with User Experience it’s entire life!

So knowing and understanding this, it becomes clearer as to what Windows 8 is trying to be.

Simply, they are trying to close the gaps that Windows has to the multitude of great User Experiences to be found on other devices and operating systems.

The Big Question is…. Does it do this?

The answer is essentially yes. Microsoft have come a huge way in delivering what is in effect a lobotomised Windows user experience. It’s probably relevant that we introduce an understanding of what I mean by this.

I have some 20 something years experience in the aviation industry, and in that industry I have experienced moving from some of the oldest (steam driven) equipment to the newest and most advanced and computerised aircraft in the air today. Moving from flying the Classic 747 to the Airbus A380.

The old office (Boeing 747 Classic)

In the new office (Airbus A380 at Night over India)

The distinction here is apparent and startling, but the differences as an aviator are less apparent.

I’ll give you one User Experience difference that may help to draw the highlight between these two technologies.

Stall Speed.

The Stall Speed, without getting into too much technical details is the speed of an aircraft below which sustained lift is no longer generated sufficiently enough by the wings that the aircraft can continue to fly. (Not technically correct but you get the idea). Flying too slow = Bad. This is due to a whole bunch of complex interacting aerodynamics like, Angel of Attach, G force, Angle of Bank, Weight, Air Density, centre of gravity, Flap / Slat configuration… just to name a few.

As a pilot of a 747, you are well aware of your stall speed as a figure bug and mark on your speed dial.

As a pilot of an A380, you look at what the computer tells you is the slowest speed that it will let you fly the aircraft at. You know from your past experience that it has a direct relationship to stall speed, but there are literally too many variables taken into account that you could actually know what the figure is going to be. But you don’t need too, the computer tells you, and like some “Lobotomised” version of your former self, you believe the computer.

Hence the term “Lobotomised Windows User Experience”.

Makers of great operating systems no longer want you to understand file systems, gigabytes, hard disks, etc. They want you to behave as a lobotomised users and think in terms of:

• Share this
• Work Offline
• Synchronized

Just simple, dumb end user experience stuff, and frankly this is a long login overdue approach.

“Why should my mum have to know what hard disk to save something too.”

Windows 8 is the first big step in this direction from Microsoft, and it really is intending a big change from the end users who engage it.

It tries really hard to get you to engage it in simple ways to do simple bug fun things. The more common things that most users do.

So Should I load Windows 8?

If you are a power user, who smashes out a bunch of work from an existing multiple monitor, multiple program high speed connected computer. Definitely Not.

If you are a system admin, or programmer, or IT Professional. – Definitely Not

If you rely on mission critical work that has been working well for you to date – Definitely Not

If you enjoy steeling programs, games, loading programs, installing and tinkering (script kiddy) – Definitely Not

So Who Should Load Windows 8?

Anyone listed above who buys a new surface or purposed laptop or tablet, and…

Everyone Else

Any End Users who can sit back from the past, say I am ready for a new experience, and let Windows 8 run as it was intended. With the “hood down”. Just let yourself be a user, not an admin. Have a quick Lobotomy!

I will be running Windows 8 on purpose devices. Probably a Surface and or other tablets. I will also have a virtual machine of it on my Mac to play with when the need arises to test and play.

I fully expect to enjoy the experience when on the purposed devices, and I am dead certain that I will never use a Windows 8 environment as a Power User Machine, I also have no intention of being a Windows 8 expert, of ever running it as a network administrator, or being the IT “go to” guy” for friends and colleagues.

I love being a Lobotomised User with OSX. I just flip the lid on my Mac Air, and smash away at apps and light weight work. A surface windows 8 environment would be interchangeable here.

Will Windows 8 Succeed?

Yes and No.

Yes Microsoft have dealt a hand that will keep them relevant and in business until the end of the Balmer years.

No it was not a great hand. It’s 5 years too late, and playing catch up to a far superior user experience over at Apple, plus they have kind of boobed up the mashing of light weight devices and desktops.

But it was they only hand they had to play with so it is here to stay.

Hopefully it will be the beginning of a new approach to Microsoft’s world. One where stuff just works like it should, and without any technical “object not set to an instance of an object”.

Lets hope for the end of The Blamer Years and an opportunity for someone with clear vision to have a crack with their massive resources.

Index #: 0

Recently while working with a DotNetNuke website, we found that attempting to login to the site generated this error:

SQL Exception
Error Details
File 
Error   Index #: 0
Source: .Net SqlClient Data Provider
Class: 17
Number: 1105
Procedure: AddEventLog
Message: System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: Could not allocate space for object ‘dbo.EventLog’.'PK_EventLogMaster’ in database ‘www.sitedatabase.com’ because the ‘PRIMARY’ filegroup is full. Create disk space by deleting unneeded files, dropping objects in the filegroup, adding additional files to the filegroup, or setting autogrowth on for existing files in the filegroup. at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection.OnError(SqlException exception, Boolean breakConnection) at System.Data.SqlClient.TdsParser.ThrowExceptionAndWarning(TdsParserStateObject stateObj) at System.Data.SqlClient.TdsParser.Run(RunBehavior runBehavior, SqlCommand cmdHandler, SqlDataReader dataStream, BulkCopySimpleResultSet bulkCopyHandler, TdsParserStateObject stateObj) at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.FinishExecuteReader(SqlDataReader ds, RunBehavior runBehavior, String resetOptionsString) at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.RunExecuteReaderTds(CommandBehavior cmdBehavior, RunBehavior runBehavior, Boolean returnStream, Boolean async) at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.RunExecuteReader(CommandBehavior cmdBehavior, RunBehavior runBehavior, Boolean returnStream, String method, DbAsyncResult result) at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.InternalExecuteNonQuery(DbAsyncResult result, String methodName, Boolean sendToPipe) at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.ExecuteNonQuery() at Microsoft.ApplicationBlocks.Data.SqlHelper.ExecuteNonQuery(SqlConnection connection, CommandType commandType, String commandText, SqlParameter[] commandParameters) at Microsoft.ApplicationBlocks.Data.SqlHelper.ExecuteNonQuery(String connectionString, CommandType commandType, String commandText, SqlParameter[] commandParameters) at Microsoft.ApplicationBlocks.Data.SqlHelper.ExecuteNonQuery(String connectionString, String spName, Object[] parameterValues) at DotNetNuke.Services.Log.EventLog.DBLoggingProvider.SqlDataProvider.AddLog(String logGUID, String logTypeKey, Int32 logUserID, String logUserName, Int32 logPortalID, String logPortalName, DateTime logCreateDate, String logServerName, String logProperties, Int32 logConfigID) at DotNetNuke.Services.Log.EventLog.DBLoggingProvider.DBLoggingProvider.WriteLog(LogQueueItem logQueueItem)

After a investigating the site and server we found that this was caused by the SQL server running out of room on the disk hosting the database connected to this DNN site.

The Solution

Free up more space on the SQL database disk.

After installing CRM 2011 Rollup 10 (not 9 as that is MIA) you receive an Invalid Argument messages as per the image above. This happens after you login to an IFD deployment.

For all we know it may happen on the CRM on premises but we have not managed to test that.

You may also have a CRM Platform Trace Error:

Crm Exception: Message: A non valid page number was received: 0, ErrorCode: –2147220989

CRM’s Fetch Throttling abilities have been disabled or modified from the default values.
Re-enable CRM’s default Fetch Throttling settings.

The solution

1. START | RUN | “regedit” | OK

2. Locate and select the registry subkey: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareMicrosoftMSCRM

Change the value on: TurnOffFetchThrottling

to 0

In fact if you find either MaxRowsPerPage or the TurnOffFetchThrottling registry keys set them both to 0 or delete them.

3. START | RUN | “iisreset” | OK

(This will restart IIS)

Login to CRM and you should be good to go.

Recently our client Totally Outdoors added a new cantaport shading system to their product list.

This Melbourne based builder now provides some commercial shading solutions that are excellent for both domestic and commercial designs.

Check out their website here: http://www.totallyoutdoors.com.au/products/cantaport-shading-system/

Cantaport shading system design benefits provides an exciting range of options particular for School, Sporting clubs  and Local Councils for uses such as Open Shelters for bikes, Bus, play ground and sports grounds. Totally Outdoors professional structure of Architectural designs, 20 years of providing installed outcomes combine to deliver known outcomes across a range of project types.

DotNetNuke jQuery Problems

Recently there was an update to jQuery that caused some problems with DotNetNuke. The problems include:

• Strange or missing popup effects in custom jQuery modules
• Admin menu hiding the menu items on Standard DNN Dark Knight Skin
• Modules using jQuery failing to function as desired

The Problem

The problem is associated with some bugs in the jQuery released and hosted googleapis. The bugs are not related to DotNetNuke directly but the jQuery used in many instances of jQuery.

The Solution

The solution is an easy one. You just need to login to your DotNetNuke website with a Host Account, and modify the jQuery settings under the HOST / ADVANCED SETTINGS to a more recent and bug free version of jQuery UI.

Pasting this URL: https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.8.23/jquery-ui.min.js into the “Hosted jQuery UI URL" and ensuring the “Use Hosted jQuery Version” is ticked.

After working with IIS server running PHP, we found the files uploaded through the web interface of the opencart CMS failed to inherit the correct permissions.

After spending weeks time to resolve this problem, believing that it was a glitch that required file permissions to be reset we found an easy solution.

The Problem

The problem lies with the PHP system running on IIS. When you use a web interface to upload files to your PHP CMS website, they are initially loaded to the PHP defined temporary folder. The temporary folder is set in the PHP.ini file.

To find this file and check the setting, you do this:

Open IIS and select PHP Manager

Then Check phpinfo()

Then search the php.ini file that opens for “upload_tmp_dir”

Notice that the default location (unless you have changed it) is: c:\windows\temp

Now navigate to that folder on your IIS server rick click and select Properties / Security Tab and find the IIS_IUSRS security group.

Edit the permissions there to match the permissions of your IIS website folder that is causing you the grief. Probably Read Write at least is needed.

Why the solution works.

As files are uploaded through the website interface, they land in the temp directory. Once there they inherit the temp directory permissions before being moved onto the website folders. By adding the website security to the temp folder, you allow the files to move across with the correct permissions set.

This would be applicable for WordPress running on IIS server, or Opencart.

WordPress 3.5 Manual Fix

Below is the manual fix you can apply to be able to get your WordPress 3.5 install working correctly, there are two options that should work.

1) In the file wp-config.php, add the following line before “That’s all, stop editing”

define( 'WP_TEMP_DIR', ABSPATH . 'wp-content/' );

or

2) In the file /wp-includes/class-http.php comment out lines 144 and 145, which look like the following:

if ( ! is_writable( dirname( $r['filename'] ) ) )
	return new WP_Error( 'http_request_failed', __( 'Destination directory for file streaming does not exist or is not writable.' ) );

After applying one of the above fixes you should be able to add/upgrade your plugins and upgrade your themes, and will allow you to use the auto upgrade feature when WordPress version 3.5.1 is released.

The Problem

We ran into an interesting issue while playing with Opencart on IIS 7.5. The issue was around a common third party module being used called Magic Zoom Plus.

The error showed it’s self with the loading of some junk text at the beginning of many pages when loading.

The text looked like this:

Warning: file_put_contents(C:\inetpub\wwwroot\www.domain.com\admin\controller\module\magictoolbox/magiczoomplus.css): failed to open stream: Permission denied in C:\inetpub\wwwroot\www.domain.com\admin\controller\module\magictoolbox\module.php on line 171Warning: unlink(C:\inetpub\wwwroot\www.domain.com\admin\controller\module\magictoolbox/magiczoomplus.css): Permission denied in C:\inetpub\wwwroot\www.domain.com\admin\controller\module\magictoolbox\module.php on line 172Warning: rename(C:\inetpub\wwwroot\www.domain.com\admin\controller\module\magictoolbox/magiczoomplus

.css~backup,C:\inetpub\wwwroot\www.domain.com\admin\controller\module\

magictoolbox/magiczoomplus.css): Access is denied. (code: 5) in C:\inetpub\wwwroot\www.domain.com\admin\controller\module\magictoolbox\module.php on line 173Warning: file_put_contents(C:\inetpub\wwwroot\www.domain.com\admin\controller\module\magictoolbox/magiczoomplus.css): failed to open stream: Permission denied in C:\inetpub\wwwroot\www.domain.com\admin\controller\module\magictoolbox\module.php on line 171Warning: unlink(C:\inetpub\wwwroot\www.domain.com\admin\controller\module\magictoolbox/magiczoomplus.css): Permission denied in C:\inetpub\wwwroot\www.domain.com\admin\controller\module\magictoolbox\module.php on line 172Warning: rename(C:\inetpub\wwwroot\www.domain.com\admin\controller\module\magictoolbox/

magiczoomplus.css~backup,C:\inetpub\wwwroot\www.domain.com\admin\controller\module

\magictoolbox/magiczoomplus.css): Access is denied. (code: 5) in C:\inetpub\wwwroot\www.domain.com\admin\controller\module\magictoolbox\module.php on line 173Warning: file_put_contents(C:\inetpub\wwwroot\www.domain.com\admin\controller\module\magictoolbox/magiczoomplus.css): failed to open stream: Permission denied in C:\inetpub\wwwroot\www.domain.com\admin\controller\module\magictoolbox\module.php on line 171Warning: unlink(C:\inetpub\wwwroot\www.domain.com\admin\controller\module\magictoolbox/magiczoomplus.css): Permission denied in C:\inetpub\wwwroot\www.domain.com\admin\controller\module\magictoolbox\module.php on line 172Warning: rename(C:\inetpub\wwwroot\www.domain.com\admin\controller\module\magictoolbox/magiczoomplus

.css~backup,C:\inetpub\wwwroot\www.domain.com\admin\controller\module\

magictoolbox/magiczoomplus.css): Access is denied. (code: 5) in C:\inetpub\wwwroot\www.domain.com\admin\controller\module\magictoolbox\module.php on line 173Warning: file_put_contents(C:\inetpub\wwwroot\www.domain.com\admin\controller\module\magictoolbox/magiczoomplus.css): failed to open stream: Permission denied in C:\inetpub\wwwroot\www.domain.com\admin\controller\module\magictoolbox\module.php on line 171Warning: unlink(C:\inetpub\wwwroot\www.domain.com\admin\controller\module\magictoolbox/magiczoomplus.css): Permission denied in C:\inetpub\wwwroot\www.domain.com\admin\controller\module\magictoolbox\module.php on line 172Warning: rename(C:\inetpub\wwwroot\www.domain.com\admin\controller\module\magictoolbox/magiczoomplus

.css~backup,C:\inetpub\wwwroot\www.domain.com\admin\controller\module\magictoolbox

/magiczoomplus.css): Access is denied. (code: 5) in C:\inetpub\wwwroot\www.domain.com\admin\controller\module\magictoolbox\module.php on line 173Warning: file_put_contents(C:\inetpub\wwwroot\www.domain.com\admin\controller\module\magictoolbox/magiczoomplus.css): failed to open stream: Permission denied in C:\inetpub\wwwroot\www.domain.com\admin\controller\module\magictoolbox\module.php on line 171Warning: unlink(C:\inetpub\wwwroot\www.domain.com\admin\controller\module\magictoolbox/magiczoomplus.css): Permission denied in C:\inetpub\wwwroot\www.domain.com\admin\controller\module\magictoolbox\module.php on line 172Warning: rename(C:\inetpub\wwwroot\www.domain.com\admin\controller\module\magictoolbox/magiczoomplus

.css~backup,C:\inetpub\wwwroot\www.domain.com\admin\controller\module\magictoolbox/

magiczoomplus.css): Access is denied. (code: 5) in C:\inetpub\wwwroot\www.domain.com\admin\controller\module\magictoolbox\module.php on line 173

We knew immediately that it is a windows server permission error. However the strange thing is that we were pretty sure that the permissions were correct. We looked around at the settings and found them to be correct too.

The Solution

We ended up going to the website root, and selecting permission (on the server with RDP) and resetting the entire folder and all sub folders permissions. This fixed the problems. Can’t explain why but this is the second time we have needed to do this while running PHP on IIS. May be time to change back to a real php server.

The Permanent Fix

We have done details here that explain how to stop the being necessary.

http://www.interactivewebs.com/blog/index.php/server-tips/opencart-on-iis-7-5-windows-2008-server-ftp-permissions-changing/

Setup Auto Reply (Auto-Responder) in SmarterMail

To configure Auto-Reply in SmarterMail, you login to the webmail account you wish to setup a reply for.

https://mail.interactivewebs.com

Login with the email address of the account in question, and the password provided.

Then Select Settings / autoresponder

Select the Enable auto-responder / then the Auto-Responder Message tab

Type your Subject / Message

Then click Save, and you are done!

A simple understanding of autodiscover is that it is the configuration necessary to allow advanced email programs like macmail and outlook to configure themselves with only an email address and password. No more telling clients all the server settings necessary to get them all setup.

At least that is the theory.

Exchange server has supported it for some time, but configuration under a multi domain setup is a total pain in the butt. Typical off MS to dream something up, then balls it up in the implementation.

SmarterMail does a much better job of it. Configuration is virtually non existent, it basically just works.

http://portal.smartertools.com/KB/a2415/set-up-auto-discovery-with-smartermail.aspx

But their article is a little skimp for the non server admins.. so this is a step through course.

Assuming that you are using Microsoft DNS server for your DNS hosting (and I realise that most probably don’t but it is the more difficult to configure), this is how you add the SRV records mentioned in the article above.

On the DNS server, select New other record on the domain in question.

Scroll down and select SRV

Type the name: _autodiscover

Change the port to: 443

Put in your mail servers address that will respond to an HTTPS request.

The resulted record looks like this:

If you click on the _tcp link, it will look like this:

Local Testing

On your local machine, bring up a command prompt “CMD” and type in nslookup:

Gives this:

Type in “set type=SRV”

Then type in :_autodiscover._tcp.dnnform.com  (replace dnnfrom.com with your domain that you just configured above) It should reply wiht the sver hostname matching the record you created in the DNS server above:

External Testing

Performing an external test of the SRV record, and the fact that the server responds with XML reply.

Navigate to: https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com

Select the Outlook Autodiscover from the list of services.

Enter an email address on the domain you have just set up with the service.

In the case above, we are using the domain “dnnform.com” so the test address we will use is: test.dnnform.com (it does not need to exist on the smartermail server)

The Domain \ User name: test\test (it will not be used)

Password: test (it will not be used)

Then perform test.

The result you are looking for when expanded looks something like this.

This shows that the request was directed to and received some XML response from the server.

All good.

Help

If anyone needs professional assistance with their SmarterMail setup or similar, please feel free to contact us on our website at: http://www.interactivewebs.com

500 – Internal server error.

There is a problem with the resource you are looking for, and it cannot be displayed.

While working with Opencart shopping cart on an IIS server, we encountered this while browsing to a static image file that was uploaded as a website logo file.

Solution

The problem turned out to be related to IIS permissions. The folder structure hosting the website needed: IIS_IUSRS(<servername>\IIS_IUSRS) – modify to include Modify permissions.

As per this article: http://www.interactivewebs.com/blog/index.php/websites/creating-a-new-opencart-deployment-on-a-windows-server-iis/

Once we fixed that the problems all were solved.

The Problem

We were receiving some really really strange behaviour with a dotnetnuke website.

The log files showed:

Event message: Forms authentication failed for the request. Reason: The ticket supplied was invalid. with EVENT ID 1315

The behaviour was this:

Login with Internet Explorer worked.

Login with some versions of firefox failed others worked

Login with Chrome failed.

When login failed, the browser would refresh and then show the page you were on before login.

Now in this instance we tried nearly everything we could think of. we tried different application pools different.net settings in IIS. and we hand we have a good idea of both server management and asp.net.

He also had is particularly confused that other DotNetNuke websites on this particular server were running just fine.

To cut a long story short the problem turned out to be very specific that site we were using.

Solution

We were in the process of migrating somebody else’s site to our servers, and we had exported their site and site content using the DotNetNuke template feature. Ordinarily this would work just fine, however in this case the user on the other website had defined the login.aspx page to have administrator only privileges. They had set the login link from the skin to automatically directed to the login.aspx webpage. In the site settings they had defined no page for the DotNetNuke login page.

What this meant was that as the user attempted login to the DotNetNuke website, the attempt to call the login.aspx page was made and the DotNetNuke automatic lockout protection system was called in to play. This lockout protection system will throw up the standard DotNetNuke login screen, if the page is either undefined or unavailable as with both the case with this website. It just so happens that this lockout protection system doesn’t work particularly well with chrome. That’s a whole not a problem and I don’t intend to solve.

The solution here was to login using Internet Explorer, enable permissions on the login.aspx page which in the DotNetNuke website was simply called login. I was then able to select this page as the login page in the admin/site settings page. Once the login page was correctly defined I then ensured that the login module that come standard with DotNetNuke was included on this page.

After making these changes to the settings, we stopped receiving the error message:

DotNetNuke Event message: Forms authentication failed for the request. Reason: The ticket supplied was invalid. EventID 1315

And the site continued to operate correctly from there. Now whilst this was a very particular configuration that was imported from an invalid template website. I have noticed that in forums discussing this event ID, nobody has come up with a solution suggesting to look for the validity of your login settings within DotNetNuke. Hence the reason for this blog post.

I hope that saves somebody a lot of time, as I blew nearly 2 days try to resolve this one.

If anybody needs assistance with this type of problem, please feel free to contact us on our website.

Tall Tails Mobile Dog Grooming Service Melbourne has a new website. This new site is a free website run using InteractiveWebs domain name hosting services and email services, but allows the owner to run the website management using the free content management system.

SERVER Log Error show: 1309

Event code: 3005
Event message: An unhandled exception has occurred.
Event time: 9/07/2012 12:09:59 PM
Event time (UTC): 9/07/2012 2:09:59 AM
Event ID: 50c7c9d7c3ba4b839bca7c72b9edf410
Event sequence: 51779
Event occurrence: 11
Event detail code: 0
 
Application information:
    Application domain: /LM/W3SVC/2/ROOT-1-129862684501956875
    Trust level: Full
    Application Virtual Path: /
    Application Path: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics CRM\CRMWeb\
    Machine name: VSERVER08
 
Process information:
    Process ID: 3208
    Process name: w3wp.exe
    Account name: NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE
 
Exception information:
    Exception type: SecurityTokenException
    Exception message: ID4175: The issuer of the security token was not recognized by the IssuerNameRegistry. To accept security tokens from this issuer, configure the IssuerNameRegistry to return a valid name for this issuer.
   at Microsoft.IdentityModel.Tokens.Saml11.Saml11SecurityTokenHandler.CreateClaims(SamlSecurityToken samlSecurityToken)
   at Microsoft.IdentityModel.Tokens.Saml11.Saml11SecurityTokenHandler.ValidateToken(SecurityToken token)
   at Microsoft.IdentityModel.Tokens.SecurityTokenHandlerCollection.ValidateToken(SecurityToken token)
   at Microsoft.IdentityModel.Web.TokenReceiver.AuthenticateToken(SecurityToken token, Boolean ensureBearerToken, String endpointUri)
   at Microsoft.IdentityModel.Web.WSFederationAuthenticationModule.SignInWithResponseMessage(HttpRequest request)
   at Microsoft.IdentityModel.Web.WSFederationAuthenticationModule.OnAuthenticateRequest(Object sender, EventArgs args)
   at Microsoft.Crm.Authentication.Claims.CrmFederatedAuthenticationModule.OnAuthenticateRequest(Object sender, EventArgs args)
   at System.Web.HttpApplication.SyncEventExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute()
   at System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously)

 
 
Request information:
    Request URL: https://auth.interactivewebs.com:444/default.aspx
    Request path: /default.aspx
    User host address: 124.189.39.157
    User: FSERVER4\Administrator
    Is authenticated: True
    Authentication Type: Negotiate
    Thread account name: NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE
 
Thread information:
    Thread ID: 15
    Thread account name: NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE
    Is impersonating: True
    Stack trace:    at Microsoft.IdentityModel.Tokens.Saml11.Saml11SecurityTokenHandler.CreateClaims(SamlSecurityToken samlSecurityToken)
   at Microsoft.IdentityModel.Tokens.Saml11.Saml11SecurityTokenHandler.ValidateToken(SecurityToken token)
   at Microsoft.IdentityModel.Tokens.SecurityTokenHandlerCollection.ValidateToken(SecurityToken token)
   at Microsoft.IdentityModel.Web.TokenReceiver.AuthenticateToken(SecurityToken token, Boolean ensureBearerToken, String endpointUri)
   at Microsoft.IdentityModel.Web.WSFederationAuthenticationModule.SignInWithResponseMessage(HttpRequest request)
   at Microsoft.IdentityModel.Web.WSFederationAuthenticationModule.OnAuthenticateRequest(Object sender, EventArgs args)
   at Microsoft.Crm.Authentication.Claims.CrmFederatedAuthenticationModule.OnAuthenticateRequest(Object sender, EventArgs args)
   at System.Web.HttpApplication.SyncEventExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute()
   at System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously)
 
 
Custom event details:

And you find an error in the login attempt that gives you a 401 error.

ID4175: The issuer of the security token was not recognized by the IssuerNameRegistry. To accept security tokens from this issuer, configure the IssuerNameRegistry to return a valid name for this issuer.

Cause

The likely cause is that the ADFS certificate rollover has happened. Basically the self issued certificate that is used and configured as part of your IFD setup with CRM and AD FS has issued a new certificate around 1 week before the expiry of the old one.

If you start the SD SF services and look under:

Service >> Certificates

You will notice a primary and secondary certificate.

The Fix

Basically the certificate automatically rolls over to a new one and ADFS won’t authenticate any more. Here are the steps that seem to fix this issue:

1. Open windows Powershell as administrator (right click runas)
2. Run the following commands:
3. add-pssnapin Microsoft.adfs.powershell
4. set-adfsproperties -autocertificaterollover $true
5. update-adfscertificate -urgent
6. Run the CRM deployment manager
   
7. Run through Configure Claims-Based Authentication Wizard (no changes)
8. Run through Configure Internet-Facing Deployment Wizard (no changes)
9. Restart the adfs service
   From a Command Prompt “cmd” Type
   net stop adfssrv
   then
   net start adfssrv
10. Restart the Microsoft Asynchronous processing service
    From Services Windows
    Click the Restart Icon while the Service is selected
    
11. run an iisreset from the elevated command prompt
    Start RUN “cmd”
    iisreset

From here you should be good to go.

If you need assistance with CRM IFD setup see this post: http://www.interactivewebs.com/blog/index.php/server-tips/microsoft-crm-2011-how-to-configure-ifd-hosted-setup/

NOTE: In our case, the running through of the authentication wizard had defaulted the names back to the server name. We needed to manually put in the address correctly as per the setup of the IFD explained in the link above.

Cleaning up the Event Log

On a system running the CRM 2011 IFD as described here: http://www.interactivewebs.com/blog/index.php/server-tips/microsoft-crm-2011-how-to-configure-ifd-hosted-setup/

You may notice in the Event Log some errors that look like:

The description for Event ID 17137 from source MSSQL$MICROSOFT##SSEE cannot be found. Either the component that raises this event is not installed on your local computer or the installation is corrupted. You can install or repair the component on the local computer.

If the event originated on another computer, the display information had to be saved with the event.

The following information was included with the event:

AdfsArtifactStore

The specified resource type cannot be found in the image file

The Solution

1) Open SQL server management studio.

2) Connect to \\.\pipe\MSSQL$MICROSOFT##SSEE\sql\query

3) Right-click on the database AdfsArtifactStore and select “Properties”

4) Click on the Options page

5) Set “Auto close” to False

ZenDesk Integration

http://www.zendesk.com/
Zendesk is an online ticketing system designed to manage support tickets through a website interface. Zendesk is one of the more popular ticketing systems available as a software as a service.

We have included within the advanced login module the ability to login to Zendesk using your DotNetNuke user database. This makes it possible to manage all of your user support tickets for your DotNetNuke website within the Zendesk software as a service ticketing system, without having to have a separate database if users.

Configuration of this system is extremely easy. There are two settings required one is within the Zendesk interface, and naturally requires you to have signed up for services with Zendesk.

The other is within that advanced login module for DotNetNuke.

Some background

Zendesk allows you to configure a remake URL that is referenced logging in. There should be a URL on your website that has an instance of the advanced login module installed on the page. That instance of the module needs to be configured to work with Zendesk.

When a user clicks on the login button at Zendesk they are redirected to the URL mentioned above. They login to the DotNetNuke website with the normal advanced login interface of your choice. They will then be redirected back to the Zendesk helpdesk having been authenticated through your DotNetNuke user database.

Setup a page with the advanced login module installed. We recommend that you use the page that is the default login page the DotNetNuke. We have explained elsewhere in the manual how to configure this page with an admin only view of the normal all standard DotNetNuke login module, and included in instance of the advanced login module. You can then define in the administrator settings of your website to use this to find page as the login page for your website.

This does not prohibit you from using the advanced login module with more advanced modes like slide down or pop-up effect on other pages of your websites, but it does ensure that should anyone be directed to the normal login page DotNetNuke that they are presented with an instance of the advanced login module. This is the instance that will be used to configure the Zendesk settings.

Some of the great advantages of using DotNetNuke as your authentication provider for Zendesk, include the ability to integrate deeply your Zendesk ticketing system directly into your DotNetNuke website without having to cross over your user database.

Additional information is available from our website in the support page user manual.

http://www.interactivewebs.com/advancedlogin/DNNLoginModule.aspx

DNN Google Authentication Login

Recently DotNetNuke launched the ability to configure Google authentication for login to your DotNetNuke website. This feature made its debut in DNN 6.2

we have updated the advanced login module to include the ability to use a token to display login options for the Google authentication system that is available in DotNetNuke 6.2 .

The utilisation of the token requires you to preconfigure your DotNetNuke website with the Google authentication provider. A good description of how to do this is available here:

How to enable or disable the DotNetNuke Google authentication system that allows users to login to DNN using their existing Google account to login to DotNetNuke.

Prerequisites. You will need to sign up for a Google Authentication account to complete this tutorial. This authentication system must be enabled by a SuperUser (see "Managing Authentication Systems") before it can be viewed and configured.

1. Navigate to Admin > Extensions - OR – Go to an Extensions module.
2. Expand the Authentication Systems section.
3. Click the Edit button beside DotNetNuke Google Authentication Project.
4. Expand the Authentication Settings section.
5. At Enabled?, select from these options:
   • Check the check box to enable Google authentication.
   • Uncheck the check box to disable Google authentication. Note that any ID and Secret information you have added will not be removed from these fields unless you manually remove them. This allows you to re-enable this authentication system at any time without reentering this information. Skip to Step 8.
6. In the APP ID text box, enter the information provided to you by Google .
7. In the APP Secret text box, enter the secret code provided to you by Google.

8. Click the Update Authentication Settings link. The Google login button is now displayed on the Login page and any Account Login modules.

Using the Token in Advanced Login

After you have correctly configured DotNetNuke to allow the Google authentication provider. You may use the new token within the advanced login module templating system.

The token is: [login_google_button]

Which simply places button on the login page indicating that the user can utilise the Google login system.

Nothing could be simpler.

Additional information about the DotNetNuke advanced login module please visit: http://www.interactivewebs.com/advancedlogin

Advanced Login Module Single Sign-on Community Edition

today we are please to announce that the advanced login module for DotNetNuke includes the utilisation of the single sign-on feature that has previously only been available to the Professional Edition since DotNetNuke 6.1.

Now it is possible to add this feature to your website with one simple module, that as the feature throughout your entire website and child websites on a single DotNetNuke instance.

The idea is that you create a site group, specifying the master site and included child sites. Once the configuration has been created, a user will be able to login to either the Master site or any of the specified child sites within the group using the username and password details from the master sites user database.

We have included this feature within the advanced login module, and it works with the community edition. The feature can be found on the tab called site groups:

Name

This is a descriptive field only and is used to distinguish one site group from another. You can put anything you like in this field that will help you remember the details of the site review are creating.

Description

This is an additional descriptive field that allows you to put text that helps you explain the meaning behind the creation of the site group you are creating. This is a reference field only and can contain any descriptive text.

Master Site

The master site is the primary site that contains the user names and passwords that you wish to use to sign on to either the Master site or the child portals. It is vital that you select the correct portal to use as the Master site.

An example:

InteractiveWebs is a DotNetNuke website that has one master portal that we used to run the interactive webs website on, and dozens of child portals. Each child portal is used to represent one of the modules that we have created the DotNetNuke. There are lots of them.

When users register on the interactive webs website they are registering on our primary portal. When users visit the child portals information on a module or other service that we provide we do not encourage them to register as users on his child portals. As a matter of fact we had previously redirected the login buttons back to the primary portal so that anybody wishing to register or login is always directed back to the primary portal. This means we have an extensive user database on our primary portal.

So in this example we would definitely need to select the interactive webs primary portal as the master site as it is this site that has all of the thousands of usernames and passwords that we wish to use across all of our child portals.

Authentication Domain

The authentication domain is the domain name that is used primarily across all of the portals that the site group is using. In the case of interactive webs, we have utilised a conical redirection within the site alias settings to ensure that users of our portal remain on the same domain: interactivewebs.com even though we have multiple domain names pointing to the website.

For more information: http://www.interactivewebs.com/advancedlogin

Problem

while accessing Windows 2003 server today I experienced a problem with the system reported to me: Your current security settings do not allow you to download files from this location.

And gave me the following error window and security alert:

Knowing that Internet Explorer is too stupid to know that even though I have the username and password to connect to an FTP site , I don’t have the necessary security permissions to download files from the FTP site. as dumb as this may seem it is the default security settings are Internet Explorer early versions.

The solution

In this case the solution is actually quite easy.

1. Open IE

2. Open Tools > Internet Options > Security

3. Click on Trusted Sites then the sites button below

4. Enter the URL of the site you’re downloading from and click add

There is one really easy and surefire way to discover your Facebook ID.

Navigate to this URL: https://graph.facebook.com/interactivewebs

and replace in the URL interactivewebs with your own Facebook username.

https://graph.facebook.com/yourusername

When the page loads, you will see something like this:

{
   "id": "100000310593653",
   "name": "David Finley",
   "first_name": "David",
   "last_name": "Finley",
   "link": "http://www.facebook.com/interactivewebs",
   "username": "interactivewebs",
   "gender": "male",
   "locale": "en_US"
}

Your ID are the numbers in the inverted commas that follow the ID.line . so Sn this case. th TIT would be: 100000310593653

During the installation of the DotNetNuke Microsoft pivot module, it is necessary to several changes to be made to the web.config file. These changes allow the Silverlight pivot technology to operate on the DotNetNuke website.   
    
We have automated the installation process to automatically update the web.config file during the installation of the module.

Please remove the following things under <system.web>

<add verb="*" path="*.cxml" type="iwebs.Modules.Pivot.CXMLHandler,App_SubCode_Pivot" validate="false"/>

<add verb="*" path="*.jpg" type="iwebs.Modules.Pivot.TileHandler,App_SubCode_Pivot" validate="false"/>

<add verb="*" path="*.dzc" type="iwebs.Modules.Pivot.DZCHandler,App_SubCode_Pivot" validate="false"/>

<add verb="*" path="*userprofile.aspx" type="iwebs.Modules.Pivot.ProfileHandler,App_SubCode_Pivot" validate="false"/>

   Also the ones under </system.webServer>

<add name="CXMLHandler" verb="*" path="*.cxml" type="iwebs.Modules.Pivot.CXMLHandler,App_SubCode_Pivot" validate="false" preCondition="integratedMode"/>

<add name="JPGHandler" verb="*" path="*.jpgx" type="iwebs.Modules.Pivot.TileHandler,App_SubCode_Pivot" validate="false" preCondition="integratedMode"/>

<add name="DZCHandler" verb="*" path="*.dzc" type="iwebs.Modules.Pivot.DZCHandler,App_SubCode_Pivot" validate="false" preCondition="integratedMode"/>

<add name="ProfileHandler" verb="*" path="*userprofile.aspx" type="iwebs.Modules.Pivot.ProfileHandler,App_SubCode_Pivot" validate="false" preCondition="integratedMode"/>

<add name="TileHandler" verb="*" path="*_files/*/*_*" type="iwebs.Modules.Pivot.TileHandler,App_SubCode_Pivot" preCondition="integratedMode,runtimeVersionv2.0"/>

The Idea

All your email, calendars, contacts, and notes will reside on our mail servers. Your devices (computers, laptops, iPhones, and iPads) will link to our servers. This way, every device will see the same information at all times. If you view a message on one device, then you can see that message “as viewed” on all your other devices.

Limitations

We have elected to use the latest technology for this service. At this time the only software that connect to Exchange Web Services are:

Mac Mail – Snow Leopard, Lion and later

Outlook 2011 -  Mac and later

Outlook 2012 – Windows and later

How to setup Exchange Web Services Email

Follow these steps to set up Apple Mail to sync with Exchange Web Services

1. On your Mac, open System Preferences.
2. Click Mail, Contacts & Calendars.
3. Click Microsoft Exchange.
4. Complete the display name, full email address and password fields.
5. Click Next.
6. Type the root URL to your webmail. http://mail.interactivewebs.com
7. Click Next.
8. An account summary screen will display. Click Continue.
9. Click Add Account.

Apple Mail is now configured to sync with InteractiveWebs SmarterMail. Depending on how much data there is to synchronize, the first sync may take a few minutes.

iPhone and iPad Touch

The iPhone and iPad still use the IMAP connections to the mail server.

1. On the iPhone, tap Settings.
2. Tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
3. Tap Add Account.
4. Tap Other.
5. Tap Add Mail Account.
6. Complete the Name, Address (email address), Password and Description fields.
7. Click Next.
8. Ensure IMAP is selected.
9. Enter your incoming mail server information:
   • Hostname mail.interactivewebs.com.
   • Username is your full email address
• Password as provided.
10. Enter your outgoing mail server information:
    • Hostname is generally mail.interactivewebs.com.
    • Username is your full email address
• Password as provided
11. Tap Next.
12. The iPhone will attempt to establish an SSL connection to your IMAP and SMTP servers. If this succeeds, you will be done and can proceed to step 13. If this fails, you will see the prompt, "Do you want to try setting up the account without SSL?"
    • Tap No.
    • Tap Save.
    • When prompted, "This account may not be able to send or receive emails. Are you sure you want to save," tap Save.
13. Tap the account you just added (identified by your email address)
14. Scroll down and tap the SMTP button.
15. Select the server you just added, identified by the hostname from step 9.
16. Select OFF for Use SSL.
17. Select Password for Authentication
18. Select 25 for Server Port.
19. Tap the SMTP button to go back.
20. Tap your email address to go back.
21. Tap Advanced.
22. Scroll down to Incoming Settings.
23. Select OFF for Use SSL.
24. Select Password for Authentication.
25. Select 143 for Server Port.
26. Tap your email address to go back.
27. Tap Mail to go back.
28. Tap the Home button.
29. Tap the Mail App to check your configuration.

Options

Push Notifications

With the phone and iPad, it is possible to use a service that pushes email messages to your phone, rather than your phone being set to constantly run off and check for new messages. This saves on battery life, saves on data used on your monthly plan and ensures your email messages always arrive on time.

If it is important to you to have email messages when they arrive, then this service is what you need. Known as Active Sync, it can be enabled by us with a a small additional cost for each account. $5 per month.

Larger Mail Accounts

Because your email remains on our servers, it means that your accounts will grow and grow in size. This takes up resources on our mail servers (which is fine) but if you like to keep past history of mail sent, and all your arriving email messages, then you will need to extend the storage space of your mail account on our servers.

This can be done easily with a small monthly fee per account. $15 per month.

Please contact us to learn more: http://www.interactivewebs.com/ContactUs.aspx

Beginning with SmarterMail 6, SmarterTools began incorporating some very powerful tools into the SmarterMail e-mail server software which made the control of undesired SPAM much easier.

Prior to version 6 of the SmarterMail software, it was necessary to maintain blacklists, build complicated tables of undesired words, phrases, IP address, e-mail addresses, and domains – all of which changed almost every hour.

The spammers knew the ISPs and e-mail server operators were up against a wall and, in spite of new state and federal regulations being put into place almost daily, continued to churn out ever more junk mail because they were unconcerned with being stopped or caught. With the introduction of SmarterMail version 6, the tide began to turn in favor of the e-mail server operators.

Between the more frequent adaptation of SPF, the general requirement of large ISPs that mail server operators have both IN-ARPA [reverse DNS] AND PTR records pointing back at the HOST and MX records of their respective mail servers, and the new tools being coded into the SmarterMail e-mail server system, e-mail server operators finally began to accumulate an arsenal in the war of the spammers vs the mail server operators.

In July 2009, ChicagoNetTech converted from IMail to SmarterMail version 5. Within a week of our purchase and conversation, SmarterTools introduced the BETA of SmarterMail version 6, and with SmarterMail Version 6 BETA, a powerful new set of anti-spam tools which would change our relationship with our customers significantly.

As ChicagoNetTech began to work with SmarterMail version 6 BETA, and experimented with various anti-spam configurations, and soon found the tools introduced with SmarterMail version 6 beta allowed some very powerful capabilities in the fight against spammers.

After testing with one of our minor domains, we decided to “flip the switch” and ran the new anti-spam settings we were using on just one domain on all of the domains. Suddenly, instead of complaints about the large quantities of spam users previously received in their in-boxes, we were receiving compliments about how pleasant it was to open their e-mail in the morning and find that everything in those boxes was 100% related to business.

The spam was gone, the customers were extremely happy, and we have not looked back since then.

In July of 2009, after assisting many SmarterMail admins on the SmarterMail forum with anti-spam issues, I decided to publish my settings for the benefit of everyone’s SmarterMail installations.

Since then many have adopted and, to their surprise, have had similar results to those we experienced from the beginning.

Unfortunately the software used for the SmarterMail forums allows for a limited number of characters in each post. Thus it was necessary split the original post into two sections. The forum software also limits the number of images in any given post and that has resulted in many questions as to the implementation of specifics relating to the anti-spam settings effectively implemented on our and other SmarterMail server operators.

This document will restate those settings, in somewhat greater detail, along with IETF specifications relating to why they work and why you should make certain you are in full compliance with both IETF requirements and recommendations.

The antispam settings listed below are the settings currently used by ChicagoNetTech Inc, an ISP in Chicago Illinois, with client base consisting primarily of not-for-profit agencies, healthcare facilities, and small businesses. ChicagoNetTech runs SmarterTool’s SmarterMail Enterprise version 9 – latest available software release.

These settings are based on SmarterMail Enterprise Edition, Version 9. Non-Enterprise, as well as versions earlier than version 9 may have slightly different settings or screens. More information about the differences in SmarterMail versions is available on the SmarterMail Version Comparison Page.

Many thanks for the proofreading and editing assistance provided by Jim Murphy of Digital Webby who is also a user of, and a regular in, the SmarterMail forums.

1. Setup your primary GREYLISTING settings:

To do this, login as the primary ADMIN for the SmarterMail server and goto:

SECURITY è GREYLISTING è OPTIONS

- SELECT ENABLE GREYLISTING

- UNSELECT ENABLE USERS TO OVERRIDE GREYLISTING

- SET your BLOCK PERIOD – we use 4 minutes

- SET your PASS PERIOD – we use 360 minutes

- SET your RECORD EXPIRATION – we use 36 days

The Greylisting settings shown above reject an e-mail sent to your mail server by anyone who has not sent e-mail to your server for the past 36 days with a notification to the sending e-mail server that the message was GREYLISTED, in accordance with RFC 821. The Greylisting rejection message will include a notification that the sending server should RETRY the message again after a specific number of seconds.

In our case the GREYLISTING BLOCK PERIOD is 4 minutes or 240 SECONDS

When someone who has not sent an e-mail to someone hosted on our SmarterMail server SmarterMail checks to see if they have e-mailed the intended recipient previously. If they have, and the previous delivery timeframe falls within the record expiration period, the message is allowed to be delivered, provided it does not meet other anti-spam measures.

If not, the initial Greylisting rejection response issued by SmarterMail is:

“rsp: 451 Greylisted, please try again in 240 seconds”

If the sending mail server attempts to resend the original message prior to the 240 second wait period expiring, they will receive another ““rsp: 451 Greylisted, please try again in XXX seconds”, where XXX is the difference between the initial send time and XXX is the time remaining until the 240 second wait time has expired.

If they send the same message after 240 seconds, but do not wait longer than 360 minutes, then the mail server white lists the sending mail server’s ability to send to the e-mail address the message was originally sent to for a period of 36 days.

Greylisting works for two reasons:

A. Because most spammers attempt to send an e-mail message only one time. They have so many spam messages in their outbound queue that they want to send them out as quickly as possible, and;

B. Because the International Engineering Task Force [IETF] states that all e-mail server must retry to send an e-mail message for up to a minimum of four [4] days if the message is not deliverable the first time.

The specific IETF rules concerning redelivery attempts are located at: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt, http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3261.txt, and http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3265.txt.

For more information about Greylisting, please see www.Greylisting.org

NOTE: GREYLISTING WORKS ON A PER USER E-MAIL ACCOUNT BASIS. Just because jimbeam@sendingdomain.com has been Greylisted for jackdaniels@receivingdomain.com does not mean that jimbeam@sendingdomain.com is now Greylisted for oldfitz@receivingdomain.com. Each time a sending e-mail address sends to a receiving e-mail address on your server which has not received e-mail from the sending e-mail address within the timeframe of the Greylisting table established for your server, they will have to be Greylisted for the receiving e-mail address to which they are sending a message.

Some users will balk at the initial delay imposed on the receipt of messages from “new” senders. Remind them that e-mail is not instant messaging and Greylisting is only a momentary delay – amounting to a mere 4 minutes, under the settings used in our example. You can also remind them that Greylisting plays an important roll in ensuring their e-mail box is not overflowing with junk mail every morning. They will get over it.

To make certain your SmarterMail server installation is properly trying to resend messages which may be Greylisted by receiving mail servers, or otherwise non-deliverable on a temporary basis, you can check your RETRY INTERVAL settings.

SmarterMail’s RETRY INTERVAL SETTINGS are located under:

SETTINGS è GENERAL SETTINGS è SPOOL

IMPORTANT NOTE: YOUR SPOOL PATH MAY BE DIFFERENT THAN THE ONE SHOWN IN THE EXAMPLE BELOW. NEVER ATTEMPT TO CHANGE A SPOOL PATH ON A FUNCTIONING MAIL SERVER!

IETF retry requirements call for “shall retry for up to 4 days”, but they do not specify the frequency of the retry attempts. The sooner a message is delivered, the better. In reality however, technology does break down and is not always repaired immediately. Attempting to retry delivery too quickly might not allow a message to be delivered at all, so most ISPs have opted to try several times within the first couple of hours and then retry at longer intervals to allow the receiving ISP time to resolve non-receipt issues.

ChicagoNetTech has opted to run the following retry interval schedule: 15, 30, 60, 90, 120, 240, 480, 960, 1440, 2880 minutes after the initial attempt.

This schedule sets the first retry time for 15 minutes after the initial delivery attempt. If still not deliverable, message delivery is reattempted at 30, 60, 90, and then 120 minutes. After the initial schedule, the amount of time doubles for each successive retry attempt.

In all, the server attempts to retry the delivery for a little more than four days. This satisfies the IETF retry requirement of four days.

If you loose an incoming e-mail message because a server does not retry their deliveries after the first delivery attempt they are either a SPAMMER or non compliant.

If a sending mail server is non-compliant, you do not have an obligation to whitelist them because of their ignorance.

If the receipt of a blocked e-mail is important to you, and/or your client, you may want to try to figure out what caused the problem and notify the sending mail server administrator.

DON’T GET CAUGHT UP IN THE AUTOMATIC WHITELISTNG TRAP!

If a valid ISP has a problem sending e-mail to your server, take the time to find out what the problem is. Your logs will reveal many of the issues for you. You can also use outside DNS testing tools to make certain the sender’s DNS is properly configured.

ISPs and e-mail server operators have an obligation to know how to properly configure both their e-mail server software, firewalls, server operating system software and their DNS records.

NOTES:

Ø DNS records include “A” or “HOST” records, “MX” records, “IN-ARPA” records, and “PTR” records.

Ø PTR is always setup on the LOCAL DNS server.

Ø IN-ARPA record mapping to the e-mail host must always be done by the INTERNET SERVICE or “bandwidth” PROVIDER – the company who provides the connectivity and IP ADDRESS range assignment to the ISP.

Ø You should also setup IN-ARPA mappings for any e-mail domains on your local DNS server(s) by creating reverse DNS mappings for your IP ADDRESS range on your DNS servers.

Ø RFC974, RFC1034 3.6.2, RFC1912 2.4, and RFC2181 10.3 prohibit the use of C-NAME records in MX or mail server host names. All MX records must be mapped to “A” or “HOST” records directly.

Ø ALL IP ADDRESSES ASSIGNED TO PUBLIC E-MAIL SERVERS MUST BE PUBLIC AND AVAIALBLE ON THE INTERNET!

EXAMPLE: The only issue we have ever encountered because of GREYLISTING was with a vendor who does shredding for medical companies who was trying to send an e-mail to one of our customers. The vendor’s e-mail server was configured to attempt to send messages only once. It was not configured to retry if a message was non-deliverable.

When the sending e-mail server encountered the “rsp: 451 Greylisted, please try again in 240 seconds” message, they aborted the process and never resent the message.

When the client complained they had not received the message, we checked the logs and found the problem. The customer asked me to whitelist the domain and IP address and I said no, the vendor needed to fix the configuration of their mail server. I also told our customer I would work with their vendor to resolve the mail server’s configuration so it would not happen in the future.

After contacting our customer’s vendor and explaining the how Greylisting works, along with the requirements that their server must be compliant, the vendor resolved the issues with their mail server’s retry times and we have had no problems with delivery of their e-mail since. The customer’s vendor was unaware of the issue and glad to learn of the problem so it could be corrected.

Because our customer’s vendor’s mail server never attempted to resend the message never got past the greylisting.

2. Once you have configured the GREYLISTING SETTINGS, it is time to configure your ANTI SPAM according to the following settings.

These settings work because they IMMEDIATELY DELETE any incoming message which is found to be from a server that DOES NOT HAVE an IN-ARPA or REVERSE DNS ENTRY.

Messages received from any of the RBL or URIBL are IMMEDIATELY DELETED if they are on one of those lists. If you UNCHECK the column labeled ENABLE FOR SMTP BLOCKING, the CENTER column in the main antispam section, and run according to weights, these settings WILL NOT WORK and you will be back to fighting with spammers.

Protecting your e-mail server from spam depends on total server spam lockdown.

1. SETUP AN ACCOUNT WITH BARRACUDA CENTRAL and ADD THE BARRACUDA REPUTATION BLOCK LIST to your ANTISPAM settings.

Before you can begin to use the Barracuda Reputation Block List, you will need to setup an account at Barracuda Central. That account must be linked to the IP ADDRESS used by your e-mail server to RECEIVE e-mail. If you have multiple IP addresses for your SmarterMail server, as in a situation where you have hosted domains with dedicated IP addresses, you will want to list the IP address which is MAPPED TO THE HOST NAME OF THE SERVER ON WHICH SMARTERMAIL IS INSTALLED in your Barracuda account as that is the IP address which will actually contact the BRBL to do the lookup.

To setup your account go to http://www.barracudacentral.org/. Then go to the TOP OF THE PAGE and click on REQUEST ACCESS. This links to http://www.barracudacentral.org/account/register

Once your setup your Barracuda account you will need to configure your SmarterMail server to use it. To add your BRBL listing configuration goto:

SECURITY è ANTISPAM ADMINISTRATION è ADD RBL.

Configure your new RBL as follows:

Once you have entered all of your data into the configuration box, then click SAVE and you have added your new BRBL too to your list of Antispam measures.

B. NOW TURN ON the ANTI-SPAM SETTINGS per the SCREEN CAPTURES SHOWN BELOW:

Your SPAM CHECKS TAB is located at: SECURITY è ANTISPAM ADMINISTRATION è SPAM CHECKS

A note about the settings for each of the line items below:

v Depending on the version of SmarterMail you have, you may not have some of the items shown below;

v Depending on the version of SmarterMail you have, you may have more items than are shown below;

v There is no need to modify the REQUIRED LOOKUP VALUE in any of the items listed below. They all map to localhost addresses in the 127.0.0.X range, where X is always greater than 1, because 1 is always reserved as the LOCALHOAST address in the HOSTS files in Microsoft operating systems.

NOTES:

v By checking the ENABLE FOR SMTP BLOCKING [center] column, all weights are overridden and meaningless. Weights are only used when the ENABLE FOR SMTP BLOCKING column is NOT checked.

v URBL: MailPolice no longer exists and was eliminated in June 2010. SmarterMail was supposed to have removed the URBL for MailPolice in Version 7, but when we installed SmarterMail version 9 it magically re-appeared in the antispam list. Whether you are running pre-SmarterMail version 7, or a later version of SmarterMail, with MailPolice still in the antispam settings, it is easily removed by highlighting, right clicking, and hitting DELETE. Even if left in, it no longer does anything because they are out of business.

v There is no need to check OUTBOUND messages for spam unless you have known spammers on your server, in which case you have a much bigger problem. Most outbound spam is caused by someone hacking your server and sending via one of your hosted accounts. Secure passwords can go a long way toward prevent having your server hacked and hijacked by spammers and are discussed elsewhere in this document.

v Note that we ENABLE REVERSE DNS FILTERING. This checks to see if the sending e-mail server has a public IN-ARPA or REVERSE DNS entry which maps to the sending e-mail server’s HOST NAME and IP ADDRESS.

v While not REQUIRED by the IETF, RFC1912 2.1 says you SHOULD HAVE a reverse DNS for all your mail servers. It is strongly urged that you have them, as many mailservers will not accept mail from mailservers with no reverse DNS entry.

v With ENABLE REVERSE DNS checked in the ENABLE FOR INCOMNG SMTP BLOCKING column, anyone who does not have BOTH an IN-ARPA or REVERSE DNS AND a PTR entry associated with the IP ADDRESS of their primary mail server will be unceremoniously disconnected and their message will not be accepted by your mail server. This is an extremely important antispam setting as most spammers will not make the effort to, or will be blocked from, setting up an IN-ARPA address.

v Anything checked in the “ENABLE FOR INCOMING SMTP BLOCKING” column will UNCEREMONIOUSLY DELETE an incoming message which meets the criteria. Mail Servers are notified you are using SMTP Blocking with the following message:

“554 Sending address not accepted due to spam filter”

v These settings do not use content filtering. I strongly suggest you do not use content filtering in addition to these settings because the maintenance of any content filtering is a maintenance intensive, self-loathing task which is never done. Should you choose to enable content filtering in addition to the settings suggested in this document, you may run the risk of having your e-mail server tagged as a spammer by BACKSCATTER.ORG, BARRACUDA, and SORBS. You do not want to put yourself in that position.

To DISABLE BACKSCATTER, goto

SECURITY è ANTISPAM ADMINISTRATION è OPTIONS and make certain you have set CONTENT FILTER BOUNDING to DISABLED. It should be configured as follows:

Note: Your Auto-Responder, Spool Proc, and Catch-All settings may be different.

ü Your DomainKeys may be set to different values, ours are set as follows:

ü Your DKIM settings may be set to different values, ours are set as follows:

ü We have initiated some different settings for SPF records. Our SPF is set as follows:

C. FILTERING:

The FILTERING settings are available under:

SECURITIY è ANTISPAM ADMINISTRATION è FILTERING

We initially set our LOW PROBABILITY to PREFIX SUBJECT WITH TEXT [**** Junk E-Mail ****] to make certain we were not deleting legitimate e-mail.

Once you are comfortable with the new antispam settings, and are convinced you are not turning away legit e-mail, you can change LOW to DELETE if you like. If you are more comfortable with initially setting the MEDIUM or HIGH to PREFIX or MOVE, please feel free to do so.

In order to alleviate any confusion about what we show in the SMTP BLOCKING screen, I have include a capture from our SmarterMail setup below. Your settings may be different.

D. OPTIONS:

The following options are available under:

SETTINGSè DEFAULTS è DOMAIN DEFAULTS è TECHNICAL

You will also want to make certain that your PRIMARY IP ADDRESS is properly mapped to your SmarterMail host’s server name.

Because we run TLS on the mail server [available in the Enterprise edition only], and run SSL, we have ALL of our clients setup to use the IP ADDRESS which is bound to our SSL/TLS.

In the event of a failure of that IP ADDRESS, SmarterMail will automatically pick up with the primary IP ADDRESS of the NIC card, which is also bound to all domains, but not as a primary.

Our two MX records point to:

v SECUREMAIL.CHICAGONETTECH.COM, with a PRIORITY of 5, which makes that our PRIMARY e-mail server, running on an IP ADDRESS of 173.165.112.155, and;

v FIFI.CHICAGONETTECH.COM, with a PRIORITY of 10, makes that our SECONDARY e-mail server, running on an IP ADDRESS of 173.165.112.146

Make certain these are both setup in DNS, with the appropriate HOST NAME records, MX records, and PRT records pointing to the HOST NAME records.

The MX record number which is the LOWEST will always be the first to be attempted when e-mail is delivered to your server from outside your domain.

You will also want to have your internet service bandwidth provider, the company who allocates your static IP ADDRESSES, map IN-ARPA or REVERSE DNS entries back to those HOST NAMES for your MX records.

These settings are available under the SmarterMail primary ADMIN account via:

SETTINGS è PROTOCOL SETTINGS è SMTP OUT:

NOTES:

v The OUTBOUND IP is the DEFAULT OUTBOUND IP for all domains hosted on your SmarterMail server. If you host multiple domains with separate IP ADDRESSES assigned to those domains, or you have SSL setup to use a specific IP ADDRESS as would probably be the case if you have enabled TLS, then you may need to change this default IP ADDRESS for specific domains or services.

v If you run more than one domain on SmarterMail, remember to check the OUTBOUND IP address for each domain you host. This can be found by selecting the domain, EDITING the domain settings and then navigating to the TECHNICAL TAB and selecting the OUTBOUND IP address from the drop down box. If you should ever have to change IP address ranges, or add additional IP ADDRESSES to the server hosting your SmarterMail installation, it will be necessary to change the outbound IP ADDRESS in EVERY domain you host via these settings.

v DO NOT CHECK the DISABLE GREYLISTING box. If it is checked, UNCHECK it. Allowing users or domains to disable greylisting will override one of the most important aspects of your new anti-spam settings and result in your users, once again, being deluged in spam.

v The EXCLUDE IP FROM RECEIVED LINE was added in SmarterMail version 9. While this may be something which is perceived as being needed by some admins, I highly recommend NOT checking this box.

v In our case, we have TLS enabled. TLS is an encryption protocol which became available in SmarterMail 8.

v Beginning with the most recent versions of SmarterMail 9, TLS is available on a PER DOMAIN basis and is enabled or disabled only after enabling TLS on the SmarterMail server, via the TECHNICAL TAB under EDIT DOMAIN. TLS must be enable in BOTH AREAS for TLS to be available for a domain.

So, now that I have told you we have TLS enabled, you may wonder, what does TLS do and why is TLS important?

TLS enables the full encryption of e-mail, along every step of the message chain, from the desktop to the recipient, where the inter-transport e-mail servers also support TLS and an SSL encryption is used between the desktop and the SmarterMail server.

ü TLS uses PUBLIC KEY CERTIFICATES to verify the identity of the endpoints;

ü In the case of e-mail servers, these endpoints are the SMTP servers which interconnect to transport the e-mail messages;

ü TLS is the upgrade to the SSL protocol which is now partially depreciated.

ü Both work under SSL certificates;

ü Implementation of SSL in SmarterMail requires you run SmarterMail under IIS and disable the SmarterMail web server;

ü The full benefit of TLS is realized only if e-mail originates either via an SSL web interface or a TLS or SSL encrypted client, whether desktop or SmartPhone;

ü TLS is included only in SmarterMail Enterprise edition;

For more information about SSL/TLS, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Layer_Security.

For information on how to implement SSL/TLS in SmarterMail, see my post at: http://forums.smartertools.com/showthread.php/29845-SM-9-x-and-SSL-(Free-Version)

If you decide to implement TLS on your SmarterMail server you should then test your server to make certain your implementation is working properly.

To test either your SmarterMail TLS installation, or any other e-mail server which claims to be TLS enabled and capable, you can use the free testing tool at: http://www.checktls.com/perl/TestReceiver.pl

Once you have opened the testing website, use the drop-down and select CertDetail after entering a full e-mail address for the server you wish to test. Use the e-mail address of Test@CheckTLS.com to see demonstration output for a properly configured TLS e-mail server.

Here is the summary output for the test e-mail address:

TestReceiver

CheckTLS Confidence Factor for "Test@CheckTLS.com": 100

MX Server	Pref	Con- nect	All- owed	Can Use	TLS Adv	Cert OK	TLS Neg	Sndr OK	Rcvr OK
mail2.CheckTLS.com [204.225.38.195]	20	OK (1ms)	OK (4ms)	OK (1ms)	OK (1ms)	OK (207ms)	OK (6ms)	OK (78ms)	OK (4ms)
www1.CheckTLS.com [24.123.1.3]	30	OK (117ms)	OK (1,031ms)	OK (88ms)	OK (86ms)	OK (595ms)	OK (251ms)	OK (352ms)	OK (92ms)
Average		100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%

In the example above the e-mail address, test@checktls.com shows that the e-mail servers used by checktls.com are both capable of fully supporting the TLS encryption protocol and the SSL certificate is both valid, not expired, and properly installed on the server.

The CertDetail level test performed will also generate approximately 5 pages of test data showing all negotiations, results, and certificates used during the testing process.

If this test positively validates a TLS server, then the server is both capable of, and properly configured to use, TLS negotiations and encryption during the process of sending, and receiving, of e-mail messages.

Failure to encrypt e-mail in today’s hacker rich environment can cause unwanted and undesirable results in today’s hacker and corporate raider environment. Every e-mail server operator should consider upgrading their mail server to support TLS and SSL. Read on, McDuff!

RESULTS FROM A NON-TLS COMPLIENT E-MAIL SERVER, or How the FBI and Scotland Yard Shot Themselves In the Foot:

For an interesting sidebar on how the lack of TLS got the FBI and Scotland Yard into trouble with the nefarious group Anonymous, see the following blog:

http://networkbastion.blogspot.com/2012/02/anonymous-vs-fbi.html

Here is the FAILED TLS test from the FBI’s e-mail server:

It was not just the FBI’s e-mail server which failed the TLS testing, but the e-mail servers of intelligence groups the United States deals with on a day-by-day basis as we attempt to prevent infiltration of government, military, corporate and personal e-mail communications.

Had TLS been properly installed and tested on the e-mail servers of the various intelligence communities involved, the incident outlined in the blog would probably never have happened.

Out of the six intelligence agencies involved, only three passed the basic TLS encryption security capabilities on their e-mail servers.

NOTES:

v E-Mail servers which run Greylisting may require a second test after a few minutes to display completely accurate results.

v Failure to validate an e-mail address as part of the test does not mean the TLS enabled e-mail server has failed the TLS testing.

E: SETTINGS è PROTOCOL SETTINGS

Make certain you are not an open, or partial open, relay: [Your SMTP BANNER may be different. I keep ours up to date with the current VERSION information whenever we update.]

F: PASSWORDS – the Bain of Every Administrator:

To check your password requirement settings, goto

SECURITY è ADVANCED SETTINGS è PASSWORD REQUIREMENTS

and modify your password settings as necessary.

We currently require passwords to be a minimum of EIGHT [8] characters in length with at least ONE UPPERCASE LETTER, 1 NUMBER and 1 SPECIAL CHARACTER in the password.

We do not allow any exceptions to the password rule. This prevents a lot of headaches because it eliminates short and simple passwords and prevents having our mail server hacked.

Note that setting a minimum of 8 characters does not preclude longer passwords as SmarterMail does not check for a maximum password length. This is actually a good thing because it allows your users to use PASS PHRASES.

So, with the settings show above, both: “rG#34_1@4b” and “meYe d0Ggi3 hA$ f133Z” are acceptable passwords – with the second actually being a pass phrase, which is longer, and easier to remember than the first. They both meet the secure password requirements shown in the password configuration screen below, and they are both secure.

Generally speaking, the longer the password or pass phrase, the more secure it is, and the less likely it is to be hacked by spammers, and the safer your SmarterMail installation will be:

NOTE: leaving the DISABLE PASSWORD STRENGTH FOR EXISTING PASSWORDS box checked will allow users to keep passwords which DO NOT meet the defined password requirements.

Leaving this blank will force everyone to change their passwords to meet the new requirements.

G: FURTHER PROTECTING YOUR SMARTERMAIL E-MAIL SERVER REPUTATION

To help protect your SmarterMail installation, you can do a couple of additional things:

Ø Setup an SPF record which points ONLY to the IP ADDRESS or IP ADDRESSES authorized to send messages from your e-mail server(s). Do NOT use a range. Setup specifically for the e-mail server, or servers, allowed to send. For more information see: http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/safety/content/technologies/senderid/wizard/

Ø Setup both DOMAIN KEY and DKIM signing:

NOTE: DOMAIN KEYS ARE SPECIFIC TO THE DOMAIN. EACH DOMAIN MUST HAVE A UNIQUE DOMAIN KEY CERTIFICATE.

v These keys are setup on a PER DOMAIN BASIS via the MANAGE tool for the domain.

v To setup DOMAIN KEYS:

Ø SELECT THE DOMAIN FOR WHICH YOU WISH TO CREATE THE KEY

Ø SELECT MANAGE

Ø SELECT SETTINGS è DOMAIN SETTINGS è ADVANCED SETTINGS è MAIL SIGNING è OPTIONS.

v Enable BOTH ENABLE DOMAIN KEY SIGNING and ENABLE DKIM SIGNING

v Then click on the tabs CERTIFICATES, DOMAIN KEYS SIGNING, and DKIM SIGNING, and complete the forms according to the HELP FOR THIS PAGE from SmarterMail. They have done a pretty good job with this section of the help files.

Here is a picture of the process of generating the certificate required for DOMAIN KEYS. Note that the KEY SIZE can be selected as 512, 768, and 1024. Shorter keys require less work on the part of both the sending and receiving e-mail servers but are less secure.

The longer the Domain Key certificate, the better.

Most modern e-mail servers can handle 1024 bit keys without any problems.

v Note the TXT record name? Domain Keys are added to your DNS as TXT records.

v First enter a SELECTOR to differentiate your domainKey and give it a name.

v Now Generate Key. This will both create the TXT Record Name and the TXT Record Value.

v When you add them to the DNS record, the only portion of the TXT RECORD NAME you enter into RECORD NAME portion of the DNS is, according to the example above, is “CNT.domainKey”. [without the quotes]

v The Microsoft GUI DNS tool will automatically append your domain name to the TXT record and create your domainKey certificate record.

v If you are using DNS other than Microsoft’s DNS, consult your DNS to see how to add a TXT record.

v The TXT Record VALUE is your actual certificate and goes into the TXT box of the TXT record. Save both the new TXT record value in SmarterMail and the newly created TXT record in your DNS for the domain, and you should be able to click on the TEST DNS and receive a PASSED notation at the top.

A test of a successful generation, and DNS install, of your domainKey certificate will look like this:

An explanation of DOMAINKEY SIGNING and DKIM SIGNING can be found in the SmarterMail KB at http://help.smartertools.com/SmarterMail/v9/Default.aspx?p=_SA&v=9.0.4408&lang=en-US&page=domainadmin%2ffrmdomainkeys

For more information on DOMAIN KEYS see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DomainKeys_Identified_Mail and http://www.dkim.org/

H: TEACH YOUR USERS NOT TO RESPOND TO PHISHING E-MAIL MESSAGES!

Sorry if I appear to be shouting, but the long, ALL CAPS, bolded title was deliberate.

General rule of thumb: If you don’t recognize the sender, or were not expecting an attachment, DO NOT OPEN THE MESSAGE – DELETE IT!

Phishing e-mail responses cause more problems with compromised e-mail accounts, identity theft, and compromised business networks and workstations than all other problems combined.

No matter how much you secure your e-mail server, no matter how well you protect your network, no matter how good the tables in your firewalls are constructed, all it takes is one hair-brained user sharing personal information with a total stranger to undo all of your hard work.

The FTC has published an excellent article on Phishing scams, which is available as a FREE PDF from their website, in both English and Spanish, that is both well written and easy to understand.

The FTC’s Phishing Scam article is available on the FTC website at:

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/alerts/alt127.shtm

A downloadable, and re-distributable, PDF version is available at: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/alerts/alt127.pdf

If you are an ISP, make this available for download, via a link from your website or e-mail FAQ page, so that every person who you provide services for has an opportunity to read it.

For your business customers, you have an excellent opportunity to help them run a tighter workplace by making this available to them for distribution to their employees.

If you are a business, you might consider making the FTC’s PDF part of your employment or IT security manual which you distribute to all employees when they are hired.

I: SUMMARY

Once you have your new antispam settings configured you will be able to monitor your server and see the actual results of your efforts.

First, you will have to make certain your logs are set for DETAILED recording of all log data. To do this go to SETTINGS è LOG SETTINGS and make certain you have your logs set to DETAILED for both DELIVERY and SMTP.

Once you have your logs set for detailed logging you can search. Logging can only be performed by SmarterMail admins. To view your SmarterMail logs, go to

MANAGE è VIEW LOGS.

Ø Search both the DELIVERY LOGS and the SMTP logs [be certain to check the ENABLE RELATED TRAFFIC BOX] for

v "rsp: 554 Sending address not accepted due to spam filter".

v The results will show you which messages were denied messages because of spam and why they are being denied.

Ø You will also be able to see both the spam tests, and results, for the delivery of all other messages processed by the server.

Ø [NOTE: We designed our servers with enough capacity to keep all logs for a minimum of FIVE [5] years because of our medical and healthcare clients. This is in compliance with the new HIPAA / HITECH Agency requirements which were made law in October 2011.]

Ø By using these settings we have close to ELIMINATED our spam problem. It CAN be done and it does not take a lot of effort or extra cost.

Ø Get rid of content filtering. It is a pain to maintain and will drive you crazy trying to stay ahead of the spammers and hackers as they come up with new ways to get around your content filters.

Ø Do not use the wizard. Use the capabilities of the built in antispam tools in SmarterMail to your advantage.

Ø LIMIT WHITELISTING. A well created and properly setup e-mail servers should not have to be whitelisted. Poorly designed and improperly setup e-mail servers are not our problem. They are indicative of someone who does not know what they are doing who should not be running an e-mail server in the first place. It doesn’t cost a lot of money to setup an e-mail server properly.

Ø If you encounter a problem you would normally whitelist, search out the real problem and inform of the administrators of the domain with the problem about the issues.

Ø Ask the administrators with improperly setup e-mail servers and/or DNS servers to correct the problem on their end. There are several free and paid DNS testing tools available via searching the Internet which can assist you in troubleshooting those issues.

Ø Run REPORTS:

v Go into REPORTS è SPAM AND VIRUS REPORTS è GREYLISTING and set a date range to see how many e-mail servers never re-send because they are spammers.

v Reports can also be created on both a SERVER and DOMAIN LEVEL. You can also create custom reports and have them e-mailed on a regular schedule.

v Other reports are available as well. Experiment with what is already built into SmarterMail and see how well your server is doing and what resources your customers are using.

Once you have configured these settings, monitor your server for a while. You should see a huge improvement in the amount of spam you process immediately.

Will these settings completely eliminate spam? No. Even with these new antispam settings in place on your SmarterMail installation you may, occasionally, see some spam creep through and end up in user’s mail boxes.

You can help prevent this from happening by making certain you do not allow your users to override greylisting or spam settings. Doing so will both allow spam to start to come through again and will also cause you hours of support headaches and ill will with our customers and users.

Spammers make large amounts of money off the relatively small percentage of people who respond. In the case of identity theft, the result is often years of working to resolve unauthorized charges on credit cards, money stolen from bank accounts, and ruined credit. As SmarterMail operators we have an obligation to protect our users from all kinds of spam.

Even with these new antispam settings in place on your SmarterMail installation you may, occasionally, see some spam creep through and end up in user’s mail boxes. Using these settings provides no guarantee that you will not have any spam.

Much of what you are likely to encounter is joe-jobbing, for which very little can be done except to ride out the storm.

You may also encounter spam from spammers who have setup e-mail servers which meet all of the requirements set forth by the IETF and are not trapped by these filters.

You can help prevent this from happening by making certain you do not allow your users to override greylisting or spam settings. Doing so will both allow spam to start to come through again and will also cause you hours of support headaches and ill will with our customers and users.

Finally, and I cannot impress this frequently enough, make certain you enforce SECURE passwords. Secure passwords are at least eight [8] characters in length, and require a combination of UPPER and lower case letters, numbers, and special characters. This will eliminate insecure passwords; eliminate the possibility of your users from using the names of family members, pets, and friends; and will also eliminate words which are in the dictionary.

J: NEED HELP?

IT has changed significantly in the 40-plus years since IBM was kind enough to underwrite the classes I initially attended while in high school. It is no longer about plugging cables into boards on accounting machines or writing code with a 16K limitation on available memory. We no longer enter data via 80 column punched cards and read the results off of printed paper, and we don’t have to wait hours or days to see a result.

The best thing about working in IT is the fact that our field is constantly changing – and constantly challenging.

The SmartPhones we now carry around with us have more than 100,000 times the computing power of the computers sent up in the original Mercury and Gemini space programs and 10,000 times the computing power of early mainframes.

Even for an experienced IT tech: someone who has come up through the ranks, answered the calls on the help desk, can troubleshoot PCs, Macs and printers, in his or her sleep, giving tech support via a hands-free cell phone call while driving down a busy expressway; setting up an e-mail server, even an e-mail server with the reliability and integrity of SmarterMail, can be a daunting endeavor.

The devil is always in the detail! The detail required to properly setup modern IT has so many different aspects to it that locating something that is “not quite right” can completely disable the proper operation of many different aspects of a network but improper configurations are especially significant where e-mail is concerned.

A forgotten HOST entry, selecting the wrong IP address, forgetting to map an MX record to a HOST NAME, not mapping DNS to the DNS servers setup when a domain name was purchased, wrangling with DNS for e-mail and IIS when having to maintain the integrity of DNS for Active Directory, failing to setup IN-ARPA – all of these have a potential to disable any e-mail server’s ability to send and receive e-mail properly.

SmarterMail users are exceptionally fortunate to have an incredible community of users who participate in the forums provided at http://forums.smartertools.com/forumdisplay.php/14-SmarterMail.

If the forums cannot provide everything you need, then the SmarterTools Knowledge Base is available for further research at: http://portal.smartertools.com/KB/browse.aspx

Remember, SmarterMail gives two free support tickets with the purchase of each product. Those tickets can be used to open support cases with SmarterMail, and, if your trouble turns out to be a bug, the cost of the ticket is refunded back into your account. This is a HUGE benefit of using SmarterMail over some of the other products on the market.

Finally, if you are just setting up a new SmarterMail installation, you can always request support from one of the members of the forum. Simply click on the member’s screen name and select the option to send a private message.

This includes a comprehensive listing of the Time Line for the History of the Internet.

Check it out.

We first researched the hits for “The History of the Internet” as a search term in Google.

What we found is that there are 450,000 searches each month for this term. We hope to capture some of that traffic.

1. Registered the Domain Name: the-history-of-the-internet.com

We did this at: http://domains.interactivewebs.com/

So we registered the domain name, and set Domain Name Servers to:

fserver2.fserver2.com

fserver3.fserver3.com

2. Next we setup DNS servers for the domain name.

and pointed the www.the-history-of-the-internet.com to the weebly website IP address that we have been assigned.

3. Then we updated the site settings in Weebly to accept the new domain name.

4. Then we setup a Google Analytics tracking code.

and pasted that to the Weebly settings so that every page would be tracked.

5. Then we added meta tag and page description data to every page of the website.

6. Next we blogged the site and linked to the URL, in an attempt to bring the page ranking and linking index up for the domain: http://www.the-history-of-the-internet.com/

7. Once the site has some hits from the 450,000 lookups each month, we plan to introduce some paid advertising to help cover the cost of the domain name registration.

CRM Anywhere Q2 CY 2012 Service Update Now Live

Preview some upcoming features in Q2 "R8" such as mobility, BI and Analytics enhancements from Reuben Krippner a MSFT Technical Product Management Lead in this video.

One of the most talked about improvements in CRM Anywhere is the introduction of a new mobility component dubbed Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile.

Cross-Browser Support

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile isn’t the only reason Microsoft is calling the coming update CRM Anywhere. Users of CRM Online 2011 will now be able to access the application using the following browser versions (see below).

To understand why this is so important for CRM Online 2011, let’s turn to a few third-party statistics on browser usage around the world. The following table compiles several different studies for easy comparison.

You should notice that while Internet Explorer is definitely in the lead, other browsers remain popular. Since users of Firefox, Chrome, and Safari cannot use CRM Online 2011 now, CRM Anywhere will literally double the potential user base of CRM Online 2011.

CRM Anywhere

Are you beginning to understand why Microsoft named its latest update CRM Anywhere? CRM Online 2011, already a versatile application, is being fully extended to mobile devices and all major browsers! When you include the social-media enhancements, you start to see why we think CRM Anywhere is so important.

When CRM Anywhere is released, you will be able to download it either through Windows Update, or at the Microsoft Download Center. Stay tuned here and we’ll provide you with all of the information you need to update when the time comes.

Multiple browser support

• IE on Windows 7
• Safari 5.11 + on Mac OSX and iPad 2
• Firefox 6+
• Chrome 13.x

Enhanced Activity Feeds

• Builds on current foundation
• Adds Likes/Dislikes
• Improved filtering of activity feeds

It sounds like this release will still only expose Dynamics CRM records on the activity feeds “wall”, but that the Q4 2012 Service Update will extend this to external communities.

new features and improvements in SQL 2012

If you’re attending Convergence you’ll probably want to attend some of the sessions on this important topic.

• Performance improvements
• Next-gen BI with Power View (Crescent)
• Pre-defined Power Pivot models for CRM
• Pre-defined Power View reports
• Available on marketplace as a Microsoft Labs solution

Using RDP from windows to access a remote server of Windows 2003. The problem sometimes appears that you cannot connect with an error reported as:

ERROR The terminal server has exceeded the maximum number of allowed connections

The Problem

The cause of this is that you have remote sessions that have not exited correctly. Either the connection to the server was lost, or the user simply clicked the close X at the top of the session.

AND

You have your settings in Terminal Server set to hold dropped or inactive sessions either for a period of time or forever.

To Solution

At the Start Button on the computer where you would normally run Remote Desktop Connection from.

Click Start

Run

Type in “mstsc.exe –admin”

Then enter the connection details that you would normally use, and away you go.

We are assuming that the server is setup to run IIS websites, and that you have some general idea about running websites in general on IIS. If this is not the case and you are learning from scratch. Better to learn on Linux server.

Assuming you want to get OpenCart running on IIS.

Step 1 – Web Platform Installer

Install the Microsoft Web Platform Installer on the server from this link.

http://www.microsoft.com/web/downloads/platform.aspx

In Windows 2003 you need to:

Go to the directory on your server: C:\php

Find the file: php.ini

Edit the file in a text browser, finding the following lines:

extension=php_curl.dll

extension=php_gd2.dll

extension=php_mysql.dll

And remove the ; before each line:

Then save the file.

Start a Command Prompt “cmd” and type “iisreset”

This enabled MySQL, GD, and cURL,

Step 2 – Setup PHP on the server.

Start the Web Platform Installer and search PHP in the top right of the search window.

Select and install the latest version of PHP from the list.

Step 3 – Install MySQL on the server.

Also from the Web Platform Installer, search “MySQL” and install that.

During the install, you will be asked for a password for the –root- user. This is the Administrator account and the password should be very well guarded and complex.

Step 4 – Create a Database in MySQL.

Open the My SQL Command Line Tool and enter the –root- password selected above.

Modify the following script to replace the database name, user name and password.

create database mydb;
 
CREATE USER ‘myuser’@’localhost’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘mypassword‘;
CREATE USER ‘myuser‘@’%’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘mypassword’;
 
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON mydb.* TO ‘myuser‘@’localhost’;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON mydb.* TO ‘myuser‘@’%';
 
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Enter your own values where highlighted above.

Copy and paste that line by line into the MySQL Command Line Window. You only need to run one from the first two, then one from the second two.

If you need to change a password.

SET PASSWORD FOR 'myuser'@'localhost' = PASSWORD('newpass');

SET PASSWORD FOR 'myuser'@'%' = PASSWORD('newpass');

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Step 5 – Download and unzip to Web Located Folder the contents of OpenCart

Download here: http://www.opencart.com/index.php?route=download/download

The contents of the download package is in a folder called “upload”

Extracted in our case to a folder we called: opencart.interactivewebs.com

Step 6 – Create an IIS instance to hit that directory.

Using the IIS skills that we suggested you should have. Create a new site that hits the directory you dropped the Upload contents to above.

For Windows make sure the following folders and files permissions allow Read and Write.
image/
image/cache/
cache/
download/
config.php
admin/config.php

Step 7 – Set the permissions for IIS.

From the Exploring, Right click the folder with the web files in it, and select Security Tab. Modify the permissions for:

IUSR – Modify (you will probably need to add this)

IIS_IUSRS(<servername>\IIS_IUSRS) – modify

Step 8 – Visit the home page.

Visit the store homepage
e.g. http://www.example.com or http://www.example.com/store/

Accept the license

Check the permissions you need.

Fill in the following details with the relevant information.

Using the MYSQL database settings you created above.

As per the instruction above, you need to delete the Instillation directory.

Step 9 – Deleted this directory.

Restart IIS from the command prompt again. “iisreset”

Common problem if permissions are not set correctly.

http://www.opencart.com/index.php?route=documentation/documentation&path=7_57

We were receiving this error constantly when trying to run either the Microsoft Update service or Windows update service.

Read more about steps you can take to resolve this problem (error number 0x80072EE7) yourself.

Solution (fix)

As you would expect, there is no help from Microsoft here.

We found that the DNS server for the internet connection on this machine was pointing to a local server of ours. We changed this to the Google free DNS service:

IP 8.8.8.8

IP 8.8.5.5

And ran the update process again. We found that it worked right away.

The likely cause relates to the DNS server we host being unable to look up something Microsoft correctly. We will fix that by updating the way that the server references Microsoft resources. But for now, it is handy to know that the error above was related to a DNS problem.

The issue is that not all fonts will work on all browsers on all computers. Here is the reason why.

Web-Safe Fonts

There are an awful lot of fonts in the world! For years, no doubt, you’ve been using a ton of them in word processing documents, party invitations, banners, etc. But have you ever noticed how few of them are used on the web?

There’s a really good reason for this. When a web page loads, the browser is told to write text onto the screen using a specified font—one that is stored on the computer that the browser is running on. Therefore, if the web page’s code is calling for a font that a user does not have installed on their computer, it won’t show up! What that person will instead see is a default font, which might look a little ugly.

Now you might be wondering why this will happen so often if there are so many fonts installed on your computer. Well, here’s the problem: the two most widely-used operating systems—Windows and Mac OS X—each come installed with a different set of fonts. Awesome!

To illustrate this point, here’s where the fonts are stored in Windows 7:

And here’s where they’re stored on Mac OS 10.6:

Right away, we can see that only one of the displayed fonts overlaps: Arial. None of the Calibri orCambria fonts are available on the Mac, and the Mac has at least a dozen just on this page that aren’t available in Windows!

In fact, between these two systems, there are only ten fonts that overlap:

Those fonts that fall into that middle area, covered by both operating systems, are what we callweb-safe fonts. If you use Calibri on your webpage, Mac users won’t see it; if you use Andale, Windows users won’t see it; but if you use Georgia, you can rest assured that users of both systems will see the it.

Now there’s a bit of grey area here. Users of older operating systems don’t have some of these fonts we’ve declared web-safe. For example, Windows XP users don’t have Palatino or Trebuchet MS. Even worse, users of Android mobile phones don’t have any of these fonts.

So to be clear, there are only five fonts that are considered universal:

• Arial
• Courier New
• Georgia
• Times New Roman
• Verdana

Feel free to use these fonts all you want! Even if you dug up that old Packard Bell you had back in 1997 and it didn’t explode when connected to the modern web, you’d be able to see these fonts rendered as intended. Those Android users will just have to fight for themselves.

Web Safe Fonts Table

*The green marks show very common fonts, the yellow shows not so common but all are generally accepted as web safe.

So, what happens when the font fails?

Your text will still be visible, but the browser will use whatever default font it supplies for situations like this. This means that you may have intended to use a cute, scripty font, but what you get is

Your text typed in a regular serif font.

This is good because your content still goes through, but your design might be compromised. Therefore, you should always specify fallback fonts and a category that the font falls into. Let’s say that you want to use Helvetica, but you’ll settle for Arial. Since both of these fonts are considered to be sans-serif fonts, you can write a CSS declaration like this:

{ font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; }

The browser will first try to use Helvetica, and if it’s not installed, it’ll attempt to use Arial. If even that font is not available, it’ll use whatever default sans-serif font the browser likes, but at least it’ll be the correct type of font!

For more information about coding fallbacks, alternative methods to using non-web-safe fonts, and everything typography related, you can pick up a copy of our Web Typography Handbook. It’ll tell you everything you need to know.

Verandahs | Pergolas | Patios | Alfresco | Designs Kits Melbourne Builders

As a supplier of:

Centenary Pergolas & Carports

Eclipse – Louver Roofs

Solarspan Roofing

Totally Outdoors are one of Australia’s premier supplier and builder of outdoor roofing needs.

We are please to be providing services to them, and welcome them on board the InteractiveWebs team.

http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Resources/Forums/forumid/112/threadid/451288/scope/posts.aspx

“is there anyone who is not trying to sell me their product, that has done something interesting with CRM and Silverlight?”

Well yes there is…

InteractiveWebs have done several interesting projects with Silverlight as an interface to Microsoft CRM.

One of the most interesting of these is a Silverlight membership login system for a grain trading company based in Australia. The business is an organisation that trades produce in a similar way to how shares are traded in the stock market. The difference being that the commodity being traded has been grown by “growers” (farmers) and represents the produce that their farm has for sale in the open grain trade market.

Interestingly, Microsoft CRM is being used entirely for the backend management of this trading. This is quite complex in it’s design as you can imagine would be the case if you were running a stock exchange using CRM.

Entities are being used to track the bidding for sales and purchasing of hundreds of different qualities of different grains, at different locations over an entire country.

Of note to the Silverlight interface, is the fact that there are an ever increasing number of records within this system in the order of 65,000,000 records of some CRM Entities.

About the Silverlight Interface

In it’s simplest function, the Silverlight interface is a membership system.

Allowing users to login and manage the buying and selling of commodities. Very similar to how users of a Stockbroking system would login and buy and sell their shares. But of course the user data is all being driven from a CRM backend running CRM 2011 with IFD.

The membership login is using custom attributes within CRM Contacts to authenticate and allow login.

Once logged in the user can modify personal details that are saved back to the CRM Contact entity.

Data is retrieved live using XRM to interface with CRM on the fly. Silverlight gives a clean and robust interface for users.

Other Types of Data Retrieval

Just like with the sale of share, there is some paperwork generated with the buying and selling of commodities. Broker Notes, Freight Invoices, and Monthly trade Statements are example of just a few. Originally the thought was to interface with a Microsoft SharePoint server to store the related .PDF documents generated for these items. Instead we took the simpler approach of attaching the .PDF documents to the relevant records in the custom entities that are used to track each trade.

This data is simply stored as CRM Notes with Attached Files (.pdf) to the custom Entities.

Then in the Silverlight interface we allow users to open (on the fly) these notes and attached .pdf files to view the “paperwork” associated with each sale.

Summary data is presented that is referencing custom attribute data, and able to be exported live from Silverlight to Excel.

Or clicking on the PDF icon, will open the associated attached note from CRM and open the .pdf record live.

Example of PDF data.

Creating CRM Records from Silverlight with XRM

Growers of commodities can create new stock records, listing the gran they have, quality, quantity, location etc in a simple user interface.

Listing too the price they wish to achieve in order to sell the produce.

Doing this creates a new record in a custom Entity in CRM directly, and this data is used in the bidding and selling process.

The data is available to Silverlight users in their record of stock.

Similar in concept to a statement of shares for a stock market trader.

Where is Gets Cool

So far, these are reasonably simple interfaces using XRM to CRM. Reading, writing, opening attached files etc. Where it gets interesting is in some real time graphing that we do to show bids on stocks / commodities.

For this we are needing to access tens of thousands of records that represent different bids for different commodities and work out on the fly the best or highest bid, and show that to the client in a fast loading graph.

This is where Silverlight and some cleaver XRM calls to some cleaver processes in CRM delivers a great result.

With the great graphing tools in Silverlight, the graph draws in real time and animates the loading of data. It has a full screen mode:

And is really a great use of Silverlight for this particular task.

Best of All it Runs Out of Browser

One of the features we built on this interface is the ability to “Run Out of Browser”. So the client can right click the interface and select to “Install to this computer”.

This adds the project to an Out of Browser Silverlight experience that can be launched as any other application or program from your computer.

This feature of Silverlight can run on a Mac or PC, and delivers an experience for end users that is very similar to having a membership program installed on your computer.

The project will auto update if we modify the web based source version with a new release automatically.  The client is promoted with a messaging saying the program will close to update, then opens with the new version automatically. Truly using the best experience that Silverlight has to offer.

Uninstalling the out of browser app is as simple as a right click in the app, and selecting from a dropdown “Remove this application”.

Kind of like a windows 8 experience with any pc.

Thoughts on this and Silverlight for Microsoft CRM.

Silverlight… ahhh what to say about Silverlight….. where to start.

1. We drank the Kool Aid. Microsoft told us how great Silverlight would be, how it would segregate the design team from the development team and deliver the benefits of keeping people within their specializations.

2. We spend years of time investing in Silverlight development. We get it, we can work with it and we can do amazing things with it. This and other cool projects including a MS Pivot interface to DotNetNuke and Microsoft CRM data.

MS Pivot and CRM – http://demo.interactivewebs.com.au/dnnpivot/dnnpivot_demo.htm

3. We kicked it’s butt. We were able to deliver anything we wanted using Silverlight and made it interface with a multitude of data sources at multiple times using XRM and other web services to pull data from both CRM and other data sources.

And after all that… I can say with some authority. Silverlight is dead!

We get it, we can do it, we hate it and we regret the time we wasted after Microsoft mislead us into their Silverlight sphere.

Microsoft Silverlight Evangelist – We drank the Kool Aid

Silverlight never came close to delivering on any of the promises that Microsoft made about it.

It is tricky to develop in, it is poorly supported by even Microsoft, design tools are definitely lacking greatly, the development experience was a mine field of poorly documents bugs and broken features that required time and commitment to untangle the crap that Microsoft produced.

It was amazing to us how many things we were doing and solving that literally no one else was talking about. We felt like the first team walking on the Silverlight moon at every step of the way.

The end result is something that we are proud of. There are some cool features that we think make the project example above shine. But for all the time, and trouble invested to deliver it, it is just not worth it!

If looking at this and other similar projects again, we would use other technology to more quickly develop a very similar experience. There quite simply is nothing in Silverlight in interfacing with CRM that we can do easier other ways.

Final Thoughts

So there you have it. A good example of Silverlight with CRM, and the reason why we would suggest you use other technology yourself.

And check out that Silverlight Pivot link above. It is actually very cool too in what it does and how it does it. We have rigged this to work against any internet facing CRM environment including the Microsoft Hosted CRM.

Contact Us for CRM Development

We wrote this to help someone asking for a non commercial plug for a Silverlight in CRM example. We hope the above meets the requirement of that… but we are a development and CRM business, so we need to mention that if you need some cleaver interfacing with CRM. Then please contact us here http://www.interactivewebs.com/ContactUs.aspx.

We have other examples to show too.

Of particular interest on the site is a new module or ours soon to be released to the DotNetNuke Community called Mushroom Video Module.

The module will feed Youtube Play Lists from youtube.com directly into your site in an easy to manage and easy to use video feed.

The end result of the feeds looks like this:

http://www.networkyou.org/Network/GlobalVillage.aspx

With the video feeds being selected directly from a play list selector button that referenced a YouTube account name.

The module also uses the template system developed by InteractiveWebs for the display system that allows simple to load templates to be customized to the users requirements.

An example of the module with multiple feeds onto a single page is this one: http://www.networkyou.org/Network/Professionals/VideoTopics.aspx

We will be releasing the module to the public in the next few weeks. We would love to hear any comments!