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HMC CreateFolder

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 20:38:39 +0000

Today I had the chance to get back to some code for CreateFolder which creates a public folder within our Exchange 2007 environment support by Microsoft’s Hosted Messaging and Collaboration frame work. I’ve been highly critical of Microsoft’s code before, and today has taken that to a new level.

Here is what I’m dealing with. First, let’s go to the documentation on TechNet:

Pretty clear that we have a few required parameters and a few optional ones to set some quotas. These optional parameters are what will soon drive me to uncontrollable rage.

OSX Lion + LiveMeeting

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 03:00:46 +0000

Today marked the first time that I had to attend a live meeting after I recently upgraded my primary workstation to OSX Lion. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the smoothest experience.

Typically, Safari renders these meetings the best so it is my go to browser for meetings. Unfortunately, I would get the prompt for trusting the java app and a window would load with nothing happening. Same with Chrome. Firefox actually rendered the window with a Java loading icon spinning for all its worth, but never actually loading the meeting.

Updated: OS X BUG – Formerly Communicator Bug

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 02:50:01 +0000

UPDATED: Check out the comments for where the bug really lies.

I have checked the “Always Trust” checkbox on this window EVERY time I have launched this app. Yet, it really doesn’t think I trust it. Thanks Microsoft!

Bing!

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 13:00:11 +0000

Recently we had a pretty funny conversation with our Microsoft premier support tech. It was clear that a memo had gone out from up above and he was doing his part to push bing out to everyone that he could. Unfortunately, he forgot he was talking to engineers. We’re smart ass bastards and he should know better.

The conversation went something like this.

Tech: Have you guys tried Bing yet?

Us: Yeah, but I don’t see us switching anytime soon. Google is still the better search engine.

HMC Resource Management

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 12:00:32 +0000

Today I’m going to talk about the wonderful thing that is the Resource Manger for HMC (Hosted Messaging and Collaboration), the wondering framework from Microsoft for provisioning users for Exchange, OCS and SharePoint automagically.

Now, we tend to do things a bit differently at my current job. For example, I’m pretty sure I’m the only developer in the US that is hitting HMC (again, a Microsoft product) with PHP hosted on our linux based customer portal. That’s right, the Unix guys is the lead developer hitting a very Microsoft-centric product. Normally this would be done by a .Net developer.

Windows 7 Failure?

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 02:20:46 +0000

So I was checking out CNN today and I found this article titled Mac share grew after Windows 7 debut.

In the article, you’ll see some gems such as this:

If Microsoft (MSFT) was hoping that the launch of Windows 7 would halt the erosion of its operating system market share — and curb further inroads by Apple (AAPL) — there is no evidence that it’s working yet.

In fact, preliminary data released overnight Sunday by Net Applications show Mac OS X’s Internet share growing by 2.73% in October, from 5.12% to 5.26%.

A device attached to the system is not functioning

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 04:19:02 +0000

As you’ve read before, I’ve had a variety of battles with the Hosted Messaging and Collaboration framework from Microsoft.

Today was another day for battle. And an interesting battle it was.

So here is the situation that I was running into. Within my code in the customer portal, I have a notification that is sent out that has a full back trace of what happened on the system, what was inputted and what was the error message that was returned. I of coarse try to give the user a friendly version of the error message to the screen before sending off this plethora of valuable detail. Out of this pile of data, I find the following error message has been returned:

How are they making money?

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 03:42:47 +0000

Ready for some numbers this morning? Some scary, scary numbers for Xbox 360 gamers? Game Informer, current king of the smoldering ruins of the print gaming magazine empire, polled about 5,000 of its readers to get a feel for their gaming experiences, including just how many of them had unlocked the fabled “Red Ring of Death” achievement. We’d heard estimates ranging from 16 to 30 percent, but even the most pessimistic guesses don’t line up with the survey’s findings of a staggeringly high 54.2 percent failure rate. That’s five times higher than the PS3’s 10.6 percent, with the Wii coming in at 6.8 percent. Mind you, the Xbox 360 was the most played console, with over 40 percent of Xbox gamers button mashing for three to five hours a day, compared to 37 percent of PS3 gamers, and less than an hour’s worth of gaming per day for 41.4 percent of Wii owners. However, game consoles should be designed to shrug off marathon sessions and just keep on spewing polygons, something that the first revisions of Microsoft’s baby obviously couldn’t manage.

Google Apps Sync

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 05:01:56 +0000

I’m not sure how many people have picked up on an announcement that Google made last week, but it definitely caught the attention of my dev team. (For those that may be new to this blog, I work for a company that offers Hosted Exchange and Hosted OCS services.)

Here’s the announcement.

Google has developed a way to help companies move onto Google Apps–and away from Microsoft’s Exchange e-mail software–without forcing a migration to the Gmail user interface.

Business as usual

Sun, 31 May 2009 14:06:56 +0000

Over the past couple of years, I have been able to tolerate Microsoft a bit more than I used to. When your primary income relies on people purchasing Exchange and OCS accounts that you provide the back end provisioning and automation for, you quickly realize where your bread is buttered.

But this sort of crap really needs to stop. Yes, its their operating system. But that doesn’t excuse installing add-ons to 3rd party applications and disabling the uninstall options. I’m with the writer of this article, this is a great way to get your customers to not trust you and precisely the reason I haven’t had windows on my desktop for 8 years.

Greedy Bastards

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 12:00:49 +0000

I’m not a windows mobile developer. And why would you want to be. Seeing this latest article from CNet News, I can’t think of a reason I would want to play in the Micro$oft world of endless, confusing licensing agreements.

Microsoft plans to charge mobile-application developers $99 to release upgraded versions of applications they submit to the Windows Mobile Marketplace, and will also charge them for minor updates unless they are released within seven days of the application’s debut.

Exchange 14 – Service First, Server 2nd

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 04:20:34 +0000

I’m thinking that Microsoft is finally starting to realize that the hosted model ‘works’. Seeing this article on cnet is starting to make me feel a lot better about the future of Exchange. As a hosted exchange provider, I can tell you that making Exchange a multi tenant environment is not the easiest thing to do. There are a lot of thing that Microsoft has had to hack in in order to get things to work properly. From the sounds of this article, they’re taking a different approach with 14. Thinking about the service providers first which then easily integrates with the Enterprise. This way, it doesn’t matter if you have 50 organizations on the platform or 1, it simply works.

First!

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 16:06:41 +0000

There are very few times that a company gets to claim that they are first to do something. But today, my project is launching and LightEdge Solutions gets to claim that we are the first service provider to provide this integration. Today we are announcing that we are rolling out our Hosted Office Communication Server 2007 service. The real kicker for this is that we have been able to successfully tie together the hosted OCS system with our hosted Broadsoft phone system. So now when you are on a call, it automatically updates your status so everyone in your company will know not to bother you at that time. This is taking the presence integration to that next level.

The need for speed

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 13:00:16 +0000

As I’ve written before, the main engine that we are using to provision users on our Exchange system is Microsoft‘s Hosted Messaging and Collaboration (HMC) framework.

I’ve had a few issues with it and various hoops that I have had to jump through. Many of which I have not had a chance to document on this blog. Those will hopefully come out in the coming months.

Today, I was dealing with a speed issue that we have been having in our customer portal that hits HMC. The page is pretty basic, it gives a listing of all the users, the name, login address, what package they are assigned and then some actions that can be taken on the user such as edit, delete, disable. This is all in house code that shows this information with calls being made to HMC to get the data.

Office Communicator Hotfixes

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 14:19:59 +0000

Not many people are aware of this. But “Microsoft Office Communicator hotfixes are not part of Windows Update, so it is important to find and deploy them through other means.” (source)

I’m completely baffled on how this happened. In the Mac Messenger version, the update is handled by the standard office update. Someone on the Windows side completely dropped the ball. And I’m willing to bet that there are a _lot_ of admins out there that don’t know that this is the case.

Zune Glitch

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 05:12:37 +0000

Having dealt with my fair share of timezone issues while programming, I find leap year issues really funny. Thank you Microsoft for starting off my year with a laugh.

Many Zune owners successfully revived their failed music players Thursday morning, while others were still unable to overcome a leap year-related glitch that caused thousands of the devices to simultaneously stop working on New Year’s Eve.

“Mine is back up and working as of a minute ago! Thanks Zune Team,” a user named “blcknwhte” posted at 9:19 a.m. ET on the Zune Web site’s forum.

The Missing Save Button

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 05:39:35 +0000

At work, our corporate network is mainly all Microsoft. Sure there are roles filled by some linux machines and for our ISP services, its almost all unix/linux. But for email, calendaring, document sharing, its Micro$oft all the way.

I’m the black sheep of the office running OSX on a mini. I’m “testing” software, honest =)

Due to the nature of the corporate network, I find it is just easier to run the Microsoft office suite which means working with Entourage on a daily basis. Its not the greatest thing in the world, but it gets me by.