Microsoft | 5 Limes Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Microsoft’

Visual Studio 2010 web publishing issue with the .browser files

Friday, May 14th, 2010

We moved a VS 2008 web site project to VS 2010, and when we did a publish using the “Publish Web Site”, somehow all the customised Adapter classes that we implemented within the .browser files didn’t get executed.

After a very thorough investigation, especially after we looked into the App_Browsers.dll assembly through a reflection tool, we found out that the publishing process altered the controltype attribute in the .browser files from this:

System.Web.UI.WebControls.Menu, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a

to this:

System.Web.UI.WebControls.Menu, System.Web, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a

It seems that App_Browser.dll file generator of VS 2010 is making a bad assumption even though the target framework is set to .Net 3.5. Because the web application is set to run on 2.0 framework, those control type is not matched.

Fortunately, we’ve figured a work around which is by deleting the App_Browser.dll and the related .compiled file out of the bin directory after publishing, and copy the uncompiled .browser files back into the App_Browsers directory.

No Comments

Apple iPhone won’t display in Vista’s Windows Explorer

Wednesday, May 13th, 2009

A quick post that may help a few people whose iPhone has suddenly disappeared from Windows Explorer. I use Vista Ultimate but I suggest this technique will work for XP and other Vista variants as well. Normally the iPhone appears like a camera to Windows Vista (albeit with a cute iPhone icon) which allows access to the phone’s Camera Roll.

I went looking to pull the photos off my iPhone this morning only to discover that it wasn’t showing up in Windows Explorer as a device anymore. Quite certain it worked at one point but what can you do.

The drivers that make the iPhone appear as a USB device are usbaapl.sys and usbaaplrc.dll. If your installing you should look for usbaapl.inf which is in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Apple\Mobile Device Support\Drivers. More about this later.

Connect your iPhone by USB, then open Windows Device Manager (right-click My Computer and select Manage). You may find your iPhone under “Universal Serial Bus Controllers”, where mine was, or possibly under “Portable Devices”. At any rate if your phone can sync with iTunes it will be in there somewhere. It should be called Apple Mobile Device USB Driver or something like that. When you find it, right-click and select “Uninstall” but don’t remove the files from the PC. There’s nothing wrong with the files (probably) it’s just the device registration that has become cactus.

Once uninstalled disconnect the device and reconnect again. After a minute you should see the device registered correctly, iTunes fires up and Windows Explorer shows your iPhone as a camera again. Job done.

My driver files were already in Windows\System32 directory cause that’s where drivers go, but the original files that ship from Apple can usually be found at C:\Program Files\Common Files\Apple\Mobile Device Support. If you deleted the files in the uninstall step when you shouldn’t have you can likely find them there, otherwise I would re-install iTunes cause I would guess they ship with the iTunes software though I can’t confirm that.

View Comments (28)

Microsoft Exchange 2003 Direct Push and the Apple iPhone 3G

Wednesday, July 16th, 2008

Like any good technophile I picked up a new iPhone 3G on Friday the 11^th and the very first thing I did when getting back to the office was to try to get my Exchange Server to do Direct Push. I have had some small frustrations from the wide distribution of documentation on the subject so hopefully this post will save someone some time.

For the sake of simplicity this article will deal with the simple case of:

Stand alone Exchange, i.e. not a front-end/back-end setup
No proxy server, e.g. ISA
Single firewall

Frankly if your setup is more complicated than that you probably already know how to do this and aren’t reading this anyway. Moving right along…

This is what you’ll need before you get started:

An iPhone 3G (it doesn’t work on the v1 phone)
Exchange Server 2003 SP2 or later
Access to your firewall/router
A fixed IP address on the internet
Access to your domain settings
A valid SSL certificate on your Exchange server – get one, they’re not that expensive
- http://www.completessl.com from USD$49
- http://www.instantssl.com from USD$65
- http://www.trustico.com.au from AUD$20

Background

Direct Push works because the internet is slow. That’s the headline.

Basically the iPhone will make an HTTPS connection to your Exchange Server’s “Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync” virtual folder (most likely on the default web site). It will hold each connection open as long as possible, or until some pre-configured timeouts occur. Should you receive an email during this open connection, Exchange will send notification down to the iPhone which will tell you that you have new mail. Simple as that. The reason it works is because the internet protocols were designed to not receive an instant response from the server when making a request (see “slow” above). Direct Push takes advantage of this extended open connection.

To prevent your battery from draining in 25 minutes flat the chatter on the connection is kept to a minimum. It’s very clever.

Before You Start

If you have a Wi-Fi connection active on the phone it won’t work. Direct Push only works over the air (the 3G connection). This is because the Wi-Fi radio will kill your battery. With Wi-Fi enabled I believe the phone reverts to a pull model, based on observation, but I can’t confirm that.

Setup

Is your iPhone’s Wi-Fi off?

Step 1. Router/Firewall Setup

Go to the “Port forwarding” or “Services” setup
Open port 443 on TCP to enable the HTTPS communication – do not be tempted to do this using HTTP. It’s possible, but don’t do it. You have been warned.
Make sure the endpoint is your Exchange server’s internal IP address
Restart the router/firewall

Step 2. Domain Name Setup

Add a new host to your internet domain called “exchange” and point it to your router’s fixed internet IP address – not absolutely necessary but it makes everything a bit clearer if you ask me.

Step 3. Exchange 2003 SP2 Setup

Open Exchange System Manager
Expand “Global Settings”
Right-click “Mobile Services” and select “Properties”
There are several options required to support older technologies but the ones you want right at the moment are as follows:
- Enable user initiated synchronisation – get the whole thing started
- Enable Direct Push over HTTP(S) – the bit we want
Optionally configure Device Security – I recommend it cause then if you lose the thing you can do a “remote wipe”. These are the settings I like:
- Enforce password on device – makes you enter a PIN to get into the iPhone which is a bit of a pain but worth it for the security. Do you want anyone who finds your phone to have access to all your email and contacts? Cause that’s what will happen.
- Wipe device after failed attempts – this means if you get the password wrong enough times the phone will wipe itself. Set this number as low as you dare.
- Refresh settings on the device – set this to 24 to ensure the security policy is checked for updates daily

Step 4. Configure Your Users

Open Active Directory Users and Computers on the Exchange server
Right-click the user to configure and select “Exchange Tasks”
Select “Configure Exchange Features” from the task list
Under “Mobile Services” ensure that “User Initiated Synchronisation” and “Up-to-date Notifications” are set to Enabled – the Enable and Disable buttons are cleverly hidden at the bottom of the Features grid

Step 5. Configure IIS

On the Exchange server open up Internet Information Services Manager
Locate the web site containing the virtual folder named “Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync”
Right-click the web site in the left pane tree and select “Properties”
On the “Web Site” tab enter 443 in the “SSL port” – note this may cause a problem if you already have an SSL site on the server
On the “Directory Security” tab setup your SSL certificate – setting this up is beyond the scope of this article but very straight forward. Google it. Remember: if you have been following along the server will be named exchange.mydomain.com and not www.mydomain.com. Make sure your SSL certificate has the correct name.

Step 6. Test Your Server Setup

Open a web browser and point it to https://exchange/OMA where “exchange” is the name of your Exchange server (mine is called exchange)
You might get a certificate error, that will be because the server name on the certificate does not match the server name – that’s OK when connecting to the server from the inside – just continue
Enter your network credentials (i.e. login) in the form DOMAIN\username for the “User name” field
You will probably get a warning page saying the device type is not supported, just click OK
If you’ve got it right you will see a text version of your mailbox – if not see Troubleshooting below

Step 7. Setup your iPhone

Turn Off Wi-Fi
Tap “Settings”, “Mail, Contacts, Calendars”
Under “Accounts” tap “Add Account…”
Tap “Exchange”
Enter your email address, username (in the form DOMAIN\username) and password
Ensure SSL is on
Set the “Server” field to exchange.mydomain.com (substitute mydomain for whatever your domain name is, obviously)

That’s it – should be up and running now. Send yourself an email and see.

Troubleshooting

In my brief time setting this up here are the places where you might come unstuck:

Router/firewall – make sure the you have 443 pointed at your exchange server
Exchange test failed? It did for me! – I got a bunch of errors the first time I ran the Exchange test. To resolve them check the following:
- The ASP.Net version on the OMA virtual folder is set to 1.1.4322 (the Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync can stay at 2.0.50727)
- The App Pool account (normally Network Service) has read/execute privilege on the appropriate Exchange folders (e.g. “C:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\OMA\Browse”)
- The App Pool account has read/write privilege on BOTH ASP.Net framework versions temp folders (i.e. “C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322\Temporary ASP.NET Files” and “C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\Temporary ASP.NET Files” )
DNS name – make sure you have allowed sufficient time for the new name “exchange” to have fully delegated. This can take 24 hrs.
Firewall problems – Some firewalls have an idle connection timeout that will need to be increased to at least 15 minutes (by Microsoft’s recommendations). This means that your firewall is disconnecting you – check your documentation or, as always, Google

Helpful Links

Some of the pages that helped me:

Microsoft – Enterprise firewall configuration for Exchange ActiveSync Direct Push Technology

Exchange Team Blog – Direct Push is just a heartbeat away

Brian M Posey (Exchange MVP) – Microsoft Exchange Direct Push Technology (seems to be broken)

Apple’s less that complete instructions (don’t worry, it’s Apple, it just works! Right?)

View Comments (41)

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Licensing

Tuesday, June 17th, 2008

With the release of Dynamics CRM 4.0 Microsoft has significantly changed their licensing model. The following information is a summary of the new facets as we currently understand them.

Server Licenses

There are 3 flavours of Dynamics CRM 4.0 server as follows:

Workgroup Edition – This version is limited to 5 licensed users and is designed to be installed on Small Business Server. There is no multi-tenancy (multiple organization) support in this edition.
Professional Edition – This version is for single organization deployments (i.e. no multi-tenancy) but has unlimited users.
Enterprise Edition – This version includes the multi-tenancy support as well as some features that allow Dynamics CRM to scale better in large deployments such as role-based services and multiple-server instances.

Client Access Licenses (CAL)

The CAL situation has become somewhat more complicated with CRM 4.0. Not only are there the normal variations for per-Device and per-User but there are now 3 flavours of CAL:

CAL – With no decoration to the name, this is the normal read-write client license required by all users of the system who wish to read and write data.
Limited CAL – The “limited” here is meant to imply “read-only”. Whereas in CRM 3.0 read-only users did not require a license, a “limited” CAL is now required. Note that this is in contravention to the statements in Microsoft’s own Dynamics CRM 4.0 Planning Guide which clearly states that a read-only client does not consume a CAL (don’t believe everything you read).
Full-use CAL – Despite the tricky name this is not what you might expect, a normal read-write license, but in fact is an upgrade to a Limited CAL for use when a read-only user needs to write as well.

Careful observation will reveal that a regular CAL is the same price as a Limited CAL + a Full-User CAL, so there is no penalty for starting with a read-only license and migrating to a read-write license at a later time.

External Connector Licenses

Dynamics CRM 3.0 had 2 licensed elements: server and client, but Dynamics CRM 4.0 includes a new element – the external connector. An External Connector is needed when a number of users are going to connect to the CRM system to read or write data by way of another system. 5 Limes is often called upon to created SharePoint widgets and web pages that extract data from or deposit data into Dynamics CRM. In CRM 3.0 we would have used a single CAL to achieve this, but in 4.0 an External Connector license is required. At the time of writing the a read-write External Connector license is roughly 5 times the price of a single read-write CAL and the read-only External Connector is roughly 6.6 times the price of a single read-only CAL. So if you have 5 external users or fewer you are better off licensing them individually, but if you want to connect Dynamics CRM 4.0 to your web site you will need the External Connector.

Server & CAL Packs

There is an option to buy Professional Server and 5 CALs at the same time, but there is really no difference in the price compared with buying them separately (at least there is negligible difference in the RRP).

A note on Action Pack Subscriptions

The version of Dynamics CRM that is made available through the Microsoft Action Pack is the Workgroup Edition. This edition is limited to 5 named users. In CRM 3.0 it was possible to purchase additional CALs when more users needed to access the system but in CRM 4.0 that is no longer possible. So if you are planning to deploy Workgroup Edition (through an Action Pack or otherwise) you should be aware that your 6^th user is going to be expensive.

View Comments (3)

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 Licensing

Wednesday, April 30th, 2008

A few pieces of interesting information regarding Microsoft Dynamics licensing that we have recently discovered:

If you have licensed Dynamics CRM 3.0 as part of an Action Pack subscription it is not possible to add more than 10 active users. This is because since the release of CRM 4.0 the FPP (or full packaged product) CAL that was required is no longer available and it is the only kind of CAL that came with a key. No key means no additional licenses.
If you have licensed Dynamics CRM 4.0 as part of an Action Pack subscription be warned you are only entitled to the “Workgroup” edition which has but 5 users. This cannot be extended.

Interestingly since Microsoft deems the “Action Pack” to be a subscription-based license you, as the client, do not actually “own” the license and therefore are not eligible for upgrade pricing either. When you hit the 6^th/10^th user (depending on your version) you will be up for the CRM Server license and as many CALs as you have users, since you cannot use the Action Pack CALs on a box product or volume license. This obviously makes the transition very expensive and while you can at least continue to use your Action Pack SQL Server it seems like this group have not been well catered to in the revised licensing model.

By the way – Action Pack users are generally Microsoft partners – not the group I would have chosen to upset, but then they have more money than me…

[UPDATE - With the recently released Microsoft CRM 4.0 there is all new confusion. See my new post on Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Licensing for more info.]

View Comments (1)

Blog