Things I Learnt Today

Sharepoint PSTs

Ding — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:17:21 +0000

Many EV customers are doing PST migrations, and this is something that you should be aware of, I think.

EV will scan machines for anything with a PST extension. It doesn’t really know at this point whether a file that it finds is truly a PST or not. There are two issues here :-

* EV finds a file that has a PST extension, and it’s not a PST.. opening it with MAPI will then cause all sorts of issues!

* EV finds a file that is in fact a PST…. but it’s a Sharepoint PST.

With Sharepoint 2007 you can synch document libraries to a “client”, ie Outlook. When you do that a PST is created on the client machine which contains hooks back up to the Sharepoint document library and things are kept in synch by Outlook. It’s really good, and it’s really bad.. for PST migrations.

The first issue above has been fixed in Enterprise Vault already (8 SP 2)

The second issue is to be fixed shortly. After working with Microsoft, we managed to get information from them about how to tell if the PST that is really a PST is a Sharepoint PST or not … See this link. http://blogs.msdn.com/stephen_griffin/archive/2009/09/28/detecting-sharepoint-psts.aspx

Now I’m sure there are other anomalies like this, if you’ve seen one… let’s hear about it.

Wallace and Gromit

Ding — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:17:09 +0000

Celebrating their 20th birthday …

http://happybirthday.wallaceandgromit.com/splash/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_and_Gromit

Uh-Oh to gmail

Ding — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 20:31:01 +0000

I hope it wasn’t me that broke it :

Sent Items

Ding — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 11:28:35 +0000

This is a boon for people who regular use a shared mailbox… Keeping track of the sent items in the “right place”, ie the sent items folder of the shared mailbox (rather than your own).

Check out the write up on this blog :

http://exchangeshare.wordpress.com/2009/07/15/shared-mailbox-added-in-outlook-profile-but-where-will-sent-item-be-saved/

Essentially with a hotfix (from KB 972148) you can add the following registry key to get the sent items kept in the shared mailbox :

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\Preferences]

“DelegateSentItemsStyle”=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\Preferences]

“DelegateSentItemsStyle”=dword:00000001

Geographs

Ding — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 16:25:51 +0000

I can’t remember now how I came across the Geograph web site, but the idea of it is something that I really like – to photograph every “square” in the UK, and from the in the square to outside the square. It’s great, and there is a ton of stuff in my local area that has already been photographed, but it doesn’t hurt to add more (called supplementals).

The main site is : http://www.geograph.org.uk

You can see my profile as http://www.geograph.org.uk/profile/27955

CPU Gadget

Ding — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 11:48:07 +0000

I’ve been looking at CPU gadgets off and on for a little while, but not found one that I truly like. Well I’m going to give this one a go :-

http://gallery.live.com/liveItemDetail.aspx?li=587ef54f-e121-418b-b258-e583e105a0d6&bt=1&pl=1

It looks pretty neat to me

Reading web.config setting

Ding — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 11:20:04 +0000

The other day I had cause to figure out how to read a value from a web.config file, and display it on the screen.

After searching for a bit, and using the help provided in this article (http://codersource.net/asp_net_web_configuration_file.html), I came up with the following :

In Windows Explorer, go to c:\inetpub\wwwroot
Create a folder there called TestFldr
Open IIS Manager, and right click on the Default Web Site, and create a new virtual directory as follows :

Alias : TestFldr
Browse to the path that you created before
Permissions: Read + Run Scripts

Create a simple web.config file in the EVTest folder :

Create a file in that folder called test.aspx, and put in it :






MyTestSetting is:

Now open Internet Explorer, and go to http://servername/TestFldr/Test.aspx

MSIEXEC logging

Ding — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 11:15:18 +0000

I always wondered how to get the logging enabled when you run an MSI and something goes wrong. I had thought it was amazingly complex to turn on, but in fact it’s not ! You can do it liks this :

MSIEXEC /i “MyMSI.msi” /L*v “c:\mylogfile.log”

That logs everything “verbosely” to the filename specified.

EV Connection Status

Ding — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:38:17 +0000

In the EV Outlook Client trace you very often see the Connection Status listed as a number.. well, what does the number mean ?

0 = Unknown connection. You sometimes see that near the start of a client trace.

1 = Online

2 = Offline

3 = No Exchange

4 = Disconnected

5 = Cached Mode, Offline

6 = Cached Mode, Disconnected

7 = Cached Connected, headers only

8 = Cached Connected, Full items

9 = Cached Connected, “Drizzle Mode”

These are of course the Outlook to Exchange connection states, and the EV Outlook Add-in often needs to know what state things are in so that various operations can be performed (or not as the case may be).

Gmail Add-On

Ding — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:33:03 +0000

I know there are about 10,000,000 different ones, but today I saw this :

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/46938

It’s pretty damn good if you ask me! Makes the real estate down the left hand side of gmail much more useful. Try it yourself, if you use Firefox with Greasemonkey