Information Technologies: Microsoft

Showing posts with label Microsoft. Show all posts

Sunday, January 11, 2015

Porting OCS contacts over to Jabber

We are moving from Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2 to Cisco Jabber. The bad news is that we were told that contacts in our OCS will not be migrated to Jabber. We were asked to re-create our contacts in Jabber. With 100 over contacts to recreate, I started to look for solution which I can do it at the client’s side but without any luck.

But I do notice that Jabber has the function to import contacts from a XML format specified by Jabber. Below is the XML format. More information about the XML structure is explained in http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/vxc/english/vxme/9-3_jabber_adv_fg/VXME_BK_A14F54E9_00_advanced-features-guide-for-cisco-jabber/VXME_BK_A14F54E9_00_advanced-features-guide-for-cisco-jabber_chapter_010.html.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<buddylist>
  <group>
    <gname>Group Name</gname>
    <user>
      <uname>IM Address</uname>
      <fname>Display Name</fname>
    </user>
  </group>
</buddylist>

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Microsoft Surface Pro

I was asked to configure a Microsoft Surface Pro for office use. The Microsoft Surface Pro running Windows 8 Pro is powered by 3rd generation of Intel i5 processor. It weighs about 900g which is about 240g heavier than the Dell Latitude 10. The dockable keyboard sold separately is an useful accessory to have. There is no SIM slot for Microsoft Surface Pro so WIFI is needed to get on to Internet. The maximum configuration comes with 128GB storage which is double of Dell Latitude 10 maximum configuration. It is quite a nice tablet but it will be good if it can “slim” down reduces in weight.

As part of the setup, I joined the Microsoft Surface Pro to our Active Directory domain. After joining to the domain, the swipe up to get to the logon screen was disabled. There is a message on the upper left corner which read “Press and hold the Windows button, and then press the power button to sign in.”. This is different from Dell Latitude 10 which is a combination of volume up button plus power button.

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Upload Failed You are required to sign in to upload your changes to this location

I checked out an Excel file from a SharePoint 2010 document library. After the Excel file had been checked out, I proceed to edit it with Microsoft Excel 2010. I saved the Excel file after editing but when I tried to check in the Excel file, it failed!

The error message is Upload Failed You are required to sign in to upload your changes to this location.

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Windows Server 2012 DC Promote

I was trying to promote a Windows Server 2012 to a Domain Controller in my test environment. I typed in dcpromo.exe in the command prompt and hit the enter key. The next moment, an information message popped saying that the Active Directory Domain Services installation wizard has relocated to Server Manager.

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Microsoft New Logo Unveiled

Microsoft is unveiling a new company logo today.

Segoe font will be used in the new logo, The same font will be used in their products and marketing communications. The symbol’s squares of colour are intended to express the company’s diverse portfolio of products.

You can read more about the new logo on the technet blog http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2012/08/23/microsoft-unveils-a-new-look.aspx.

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Saturday, August 18, 2012

SQL Server Splash Screen Timeline

When SQL Server 2005 was released in 2005, Microsoft replaced SQL Server Enterprise Manager with Management Studio and its splash screen. Not a big deal and in fact some people do not like the splash screen because it slows down the launch of Management Studio a bit. To me it serves as a confirmation that I have double clicked the Management Studio properly and it is in the process of launching Management Studio.

I like to look at the design of splash screen (of course when nothing bad is happening). As I was installing SQL Server 2012 recently, I decided to do up a splash screen timeline for SQL Server. Here you go.

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Avoiding the Windows Server 2012 Gotcha

By now most people are aware of the licensing changes when Microsoft launches Windows Server 2012. If you are still not aware of the changes, I would encourage you to read the following two pdf files from Microsoft.

For enterprise customers, here are some points to take note.

No more Enterprise Edition. There are only Standard and Datacenter Editions.
No feature different between Standard and Datacenter Edition. All features in Datacenter Edition will be available in Standard Edition.
The difference between Standard and Datacenter Edition is the level of virtualization density. Each Standard licence let you run two virtual machines while Datacenter let you run unlimited virtual machine.
No more Server + CAL licensing for Standard Edition. The licensing will be based on Processor + CAL.
Each licence (Standard and Datacenter) will come in two processors package. You have to use the licence on a server as a whole. You cannot split the two processors into two licences and use it on two servers.
Cannot buy licence for virtual processor. The licensing is based on physical processors.
If you are on Software Assurance (SA), you can upgrade Datacenter to Datacenter, Enterprise to two Standard licences and Standard to Standard.
Version downgrade is possible but the new Windows Server 2012 rules still apply.
The cost of the new Standard licence will be slightly higher. The cost for Datacenter should remain the same.

The list will probably get very long if I continue since every company will have different scenarios to cover. But I guess you get the general ideas of “charging by computing power”.

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Friday, July 13, 2012

SQL Server 2012–improved validation on setup account privileges

I was installing few days ago and I have forgotten to grant my account the “Debug programs” and “Generate security audits” rights on the server. All our servers have been harden so even the local administrator group does not have the two rights.

I went ahead to start the installation and it failed at the “Setup Support Rules” step.