Global Relationship Study

We often work with Anthony, Pierre and Mitch, the evangelists from the IT Pro team at Microsoft Canada. They asked us to share this important message with you.

The team at Microsoft Canada is focused on ensuring that they help set you up for success by providing the information and tools you need in order to be get the most out of Microsoft based solutions, at home and at work.

Twice a year, Microsoft sends out the Global Relationship Study (GRS for short); it’s a survey that Microsoft uses to collect your feedback and help inform their planning. If you receive emails from Microsoft, subscribe to their newsletters‚ or you’ve attended our any of their events you may receive the survey.

The important details:

• Timing – March 4^th to April 12^th 2013
• Sent From – “Microsoft Feedback”
• Email Alias – “feedback@e–mail.microsoft.com”
• Subject Line – “Help Microsoft Focus on Customers and Partners”

Many of you already read the Microsoft Canada IT Pro team’s blogs‚ connect with them on LinkedIn and have attended their events in the last year or so. So you may already know that you’re their top priority. So they want to hear from you.

Pierre, Anthony and Mitch use the GRS results to shape what they do, how they do it and if it’s resonating with you. Tell them what you need to be the “go-to” guy (or gal). Tell them what you need to grow your career. They want you to be completely satisfied with Microsoft Canada.

This year, Pierre, Anthony and Mitch have delivered 30 IT Camps and counting across the country. Giving you the opportunity to get hands on and learn how to get the most value for your organization. They have a few more events planned this year, so keep an eye on their plancast feed for events near you. Based on your feedback, topics they’re planning to cover will include:

· Windows 8

· Windows Server 2012

· System Center 2012

· Private Cloud

· BYOD – Management and Security

That’s not all. They’ve heard you loud and clear so in addition to hands on events, they’re also delivering more technical content online via the IT Pro Connection Blog. Windows 8 continues to be a big area of focus for them. They covered a lot of great content at launch and they’ve complimented that with new content like:

· Security Concepts

· Enterprise Focused Content

· Windows 8 and System Center 2012 Integration

In addition to this, there are some valuable online resources you can use like Microsoft Virtual Academy, Microsoft’s no-cost online training portal. Or software evaluations (free trials) on TechNet that allow you to build your own labs to try out what you’ve learned.

Regardless of how you engage with the team at Microsoft Canada‚ you’d probably agree that they hear you. They’d also encourage you to continue to provide that great feedback. They thrive on it‚ they relish it‚ they wallow in it and most importantly of all‚ they action it. So please keep connecting with them and keep it coming! Pierre, Anthony and Mitch are listening.

Resources, Tools and Training

· Tim Horton’s Gift Card Contest – We’re giving away 350 Tim Horton’s gift cards, all you have to do to qualify is download a free qualifying software evaluation (trial). Download all three for more chances to win, but hurry, the contest closes soon.*

· Windows 8 Resource Guide - Download a printable, one-page guide to the top resources that will help you explore, plan for, deploy, manage, and support Windows 8 as part of your IT infrastructure.

· Windows Server 2012 Evaluation – Get hands on with Windows Server 2012 and explore the scale and performance possibilities for your server virtualization.

· Microsoft Support - Get help with products‚ specific errors‚ virus detection and removal and more.

· Microsoft Licensing -Visit the Volume Licensing Portal today to ask questions about volume licensing‚ get a quote‚ activate a product or find the right program for your organization.

*No purchase necessary. Contest open to residents of Canada, excluding Quebec. Contest closes April 11, 2013 at 11:59:59 p.m. ET. Three-Hundred-and-Fifty (350) prizes are available to be won: (i) $10 CDN Tim Horton’s gift card.  Skill-testing question required. Odds of winning depend on the number of eligible entries. For full rules, including entry, eligibility requirements and complete prize description, review the full terms and Conditions.

Speeding up BizTalk and SharePoint InfoPath load times

I found this for a client not too long ago.

The symptoms were extremely odd. As InfoPath opened it would take anywhere from 2 to 25 seconds.

As any good developer would, we removed all the different events that may even be remotely associated.

That did not work!

We then tried to remove the local machine variable. We tried on various devices of different power types.

That did not work either!

Finally, we decided to check the network. We tried on my phone’s LTE network, wireless and wired. The results were sporadic.

We scratched our heads and then hit the internet for more research.

Thanks to this link >> http://blog.logicworm.com/2011/04/25/open-with-windows-explorer-in-sharepoint-fix-slow-webdav-performance-on-windows-7/

We found that IE makes use of the WPAD protocol to discover  a web proxy or it will try query the DHCP server. If this fails then it will go direct!

This was the cause of delay!

The solution ?

A simple:

1. Open Internet Explorer
2. Go to the Menu “Tools” > “Internet Options” then go to the “Connections” tab
3. Click on button “LAN Settings”
4. Uncheck the box “Automatically detect settings” (culprit)
5. Close and restart all running Internet Explorer processes
6. Restart the “Web Client” Service, if needed.

 

Success!!! Fast and consistent InfoPath start times!

Presenting at EDIST- Customer Interaction Management: Enabling Meaningful Transactions & Communication

I am presenting at the EDIST 2013 Conference this Thursday 8:30 – 9:30 am.

The conference program is located here.

Technorati Tags: EDIST,Microsoft,Social Media

Keeping the Windows 8 (UI) Clean

YAY! My article has been published!

Technorati Tags: Windows 8

Windows Server 2012

I had a chance to review the Windows Server 2012 both the Hyper-V edition and the Datacenter Edition.

I have to admit that the Win 8 Motif was a bit strange at first but then actually made things work a bit faster. You can chalk me up as a fan at this stage.

One challenge I had with the Hyper-V server was that for some reason, it refused to acknowledge the Wireless card on my laptop.

I remembered that wireless is a “Feature” that must be enabled in the Datacenter edition but alas, I had already removed the HyperV edition to put on Server.

Please use the following link to download Windows Server 2012

Windows 2012 Download ! There will be a process that allows you to receive emails to help guide you as well.

There is a full evaluation VHD that you can download as well but it is in english only!

Technorati Tags: #Windows 2012 #Download #HyperV

Yorkdale Microsoft Store Presentation

I will be presenting at the Yorkdale Microsoft Store on November 16 between the hours of 2-3 pm.

The topic of my presentation will be:

Windows 8 – the Ideal Platform for Work and Play ?

Explore Windows 8 as Winson Woo, Microsoft Integration MVP runs through scenarios where work and play collide to see how Windows 8 can truly help in both the personal and work experience.

This will be awesome fun as I have a ton of scenarios which I will demo on my Samsung 700t slate!

Technorati Tags: Microsoft Store,Windows 8

BizTalk 2013 Beta–with Commentary !

 

Great news on the war of “BizTalk is dead”.

The radio silence banner is lifted and we can freely talk around this beta. The source of a lot of this information is on the BizTalk Server team blog.

The 2013 is a great replacement for the 2012 R2 naming convention and I never liked the R2 names to the products, it tended to confuse a lot of the customers. The beta is available to download here.

Some of the more interesting features include (note commentary in italics):

• Integration with Cloud Services – BizTalk Server 2013 Beta includes new out-of-the box adapters to send and receive messages from Windows Azure Service Bus. It also provides capabilities to transfer messages to relay endpoints hosted on Azure.  - This is a great move to cement the integration strategy of hybrid cloud. BizTalk provides the onsite integration, messaging and orchestration capabilities to the cloud.
• RESTful services – BizTalk Server 2013 Beta provides adapters to invoke REST endpoints as well as expose BizTalk Server artifacts as a RESTful service. –again a move towards a more efficient infrastructure in the cloud.
• Enhanced SharePoint adapter – Integrating with SharePoint using BizTalk Server 2013 Beta is now as simple as integrating with a file share. We have removed the need for dependency on SharePoint farms, while still providing backward compatibility.
• SFTP adapter – BizTalk Server 2013 Beta enables sending and receiving messages from an SFTP server. –This was just needed
• ESB Toolkit integration – With BizTalk Server 2013 Beta, ESB Toolkit is now fully integrated with BizTalk Server. Also, the ESB Toolkit configuration experience is vastly simplified to enable a quick setup.
• Dependency tracking - The dependencies between artifacts can now be viewed and navigated in Admin console
• Improvements in dynamic send ports – BizTalk Server 2013 Beta provides the ability to set host handler per adapter, instead of always using the default send handler of the adapters. –This will help yield better scalability, uptime and extensibility design. I am anxious to see if there will be inherent speed improvements here as well.
• XslCompiledTransform – BizTalk Server mapping engine makes use of XslTransform API for mapping needs. With BizTalk Server 2013 Beta release, the mapping engine makes use of the enhanced XslCompiledTransform API. This will provide improvements in mapping engine performance.
• Ordered Send Port improvements – With BizTalk Server 2013 release, we have made changes to the BizTalk runtime engine which increases the performance of ordered send port scenarios.
• BAM Alerts update – In previous releases of BizTalk Server, BAM Alerts feature had a dependency on SSNS (SQL Server Notification Services). With the current release of SQL Server (SQL Server 2012), SSNS is no longer available. However, we have made sure your existing BAM Alerts scenario work just the same even if your backend is targeting SQL Server 2012. If your backend is SQL Server 2008 R2, you will continue to require the dependency on SSNS. –This is great, not having to put in SSNS. This was always a bit awkward with customers having to install a separate component onto their SQL box that did not have SSNS.

And for the HIS fans, in  HIS 2013 Beta, we have made significant improvements in the following areas:

• Data Integration – New OLE DB Provider for Informix and new Service for DB2 DRDA.
• Application Integration – New Transaction Integrator runtime and web configuration-based administration and deployment.
• Network Integration – New 3270 emulator and improved Session Integrator, both with direct TN3270 connectivity.  -This will be interesting, TN3270 is what most of my engagements fall back on if there were integration challenges.
• Platform Support – Support for Window Server 2012, Visual Studio 2012, SQL Server 2012, BizTalk 2013 and new IBM Systems.

I am looking forward to playing with the new BizTalk box!

Technorati Tags: BizTalk 2013,BizTalk,Azure