www.teknobot.co.uk

MS CRM 3.0 Email Routing Rules

I’ve been setting up a simple CRM system to handle support requests from clients and assign them a tracking token.

I used this guide I wrote a while back to install and configure the basics of the CRM server. This gave me a working system with a support@company.com email address which routes messages to a Support queue.

This all works wonderfully until you want to reply to a support request and track the interaction with the client. i.e. Once a member of the support team (who are added as CRM users) reply to the client an email is sent out from the support team member’s email address. When the client replies their message goes back to the support team member who sent the email. Except it arrives in their inbox and avoids the CRM system entirely.

I imagine you could use the Rule Deployment Wizard to add a rule to the Exchange server mailbox but that would forward all messages to the CRM system. That’s not what we want in our company.

The solution is to create a rule manually in the user’s Outlook client which intercepts all messages with a tracking token in the message subject or body and forward it as an attachment to the CRM Router user which can then inject the message into the CRM server.

See the MS Dynamics Team Blog for more information on the specifics.

As an aside, I’m eagerly awaiting the April update to the Microsoft Action Pack for the v4.0 CRM software so I can try out the CRM Queue Manager.

70-282 Designing, Deploying and Managing a Network Solution for a Small and Medium-Sized Business

Today I passed my first MS cert.

I did a 2 day version of the MS 2395A course last month and crammed some study into a day and a half before the exam. Managed to score 894 in the test and am ever so relieved to have it done.

The course was mostly of benefit in that it made me aware of what the exam covers and some tips on areas to focus on, both in terms of question types that often come up and where my own knowledge was lacking.

Need to update my CV. ;)

Troubleshooting and Diagnosis of Hardware and Software Faults

One of my duties at work is repairing PC and Laptop computers with everything from spyware and virus infections to broken or defective hardware.

By following a methodology I’ve achieved a high degree of success and it has also enabled me to work on more than one system at a time which helps productivity. It also allows me to focus on other tasks while carrying out this, for the most part, mundane type of work.

Introduction

While I’ve developed the approach based on practical experience and have tried to make things as thorough as possible; it doesn’t always pan out in every case.

The correct course to follow isn’t always the next step on the list, in some cases steps can be skipped, in others you might actively harm the system you’re working on following a prescribed list of steps.

It takes time and experience to get a good grasp of effective troubleshooting skills. A high-level understanding of how all the components work and how they relate to one another in the context of the system is essential.

This guide is aimed at resolving issues with Windows XP SP2 computers. Although it may be effective with other Windows systems, as ever, mileage may vary. Read the rest of this entry »

Corrupt Icons When Opening CD/DVD in My Computer

If I have Large Icons enabled and open a CD or DVD to view the contents of the disc, I get Internet Explorer HTML page icons obscuring the actual icons for folders and files. Using TweakUI’s Rebuild Icons feature would solve the problem temporarily but the issue would always return. I decided I’d Google me a fix and it seems to have paid off.

The issue seems to be the icon size for large icons, I followed a fix listed on the Computing.net forums and restarted Explorer.

Open up regedit and navigate to the key listed below:

Change the value Shell Icon Size from 48 (the size it gets set to when you enable Large Icons) to 47 and logout or kill and restart Explorer.

Orange SPV E650 AKA HTC Vox S710

I’ve had an SPV C600 for the best part of a year now and the other day a nice lady from Orange phoned offering me a new phone. The SPV E650 has been getting longing looks from me since its release so I was weak and said yes to a much reduced monthly outlay and a shiny new smartphone.

The main thing that attracted me to the C600 was its small size and ability to support Direct Push from an Exchange server so I could get my email, tasks and calendaring on the go. Like any smartphone, it had its drawbacks. The lack of wifi was the biggest hump for me to overcome in choosing it, but I really didn’t want a pocketpc brick since I haven’t the need of PDA type features.

So forward on 9 months and Orange have a couple of new SPV handsets to choose from. The E650 caught my eye because it supports wireless, isn’t much larger than the C600 and sports Windows Mobile 6. To top it all off; it has a sliding QWERTY keyboard which is very handy for those situations where typing using predictive text or tapping away like a lunatic (eg: entering email addresses or URLs) just didn’t cut it. Read the rest of this entry »

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3 and SBS 2003 R2 Premium Installation Guide

The last week and a half has certainly been interesting. I’ve been trying to get to grips with two new [to me] technologies; SQL Server 2005 Workgroup Edition and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Small Business Edition.

I’ve previously looked at other CRM systems such as SugarCRM which, with my limited knowledge of the depths of CRM, looks a decent alternative. The draw of MS CRM is the integration with Active Directory, Exchange and other technologies such as Sharepoint which all exist in the Small Business Server platform. Along with Outlook integration, this is attractive from an admin perspective as well as to clients interested in utilising contact relationship management.

Scenario

This guide is intended to take you from having a Small Business Server machine currently running SBS 2003 with R2 technologies installed but without any Premium components currently installed and patched to the current Server 2003 SP2 service pack. Read the rest of this entry »

UBCD4Win Setup Guide

I often need to diagnose hardware faults or troubleshoot an install which may contain spyware, viruses or have other issues. As far as I’m concerned there is only one* tool that gets the job done with anywhere near a satisfactory success rate.

What you need

• XP SP2 media
• UBCD4Win (current version: 3.12)

Read the rest of this entry »

Postfix with Smart Host

Postfix is my favourite Linux mail server, I find gettng it up and running fairly straight forward. This is my quick guide to a working config that’ll accept mail destined for it from other mail servers and send mail via a smart host (eg: ISP mail server).

My preference is to use Debian/Ubuntu, so this guide is based on their semantics. Other distributions may differ in their requirements. I assume you have an otherwise running install of the OS and networking is properly configured. It also assumes your smart host doesn’t require authentication. Read the rest of this entry »

iriver H340 Battery Upgrade

I went to the new Maplin store in Derry today and got a replacement battery for my mp3 player to boost its running time.

I got an iriver H340 a couple of years ago as it was one of the larger capacity hard disk based players at that time. The icing on the cake for it came a year or so ago when I discovered Rockbox for the H3xx series. It’s an Open Source jukebox firmware that supports a raft of different players (to various degrees). It’s also rather good once you get it set to your liking with a decent theme and the like giving you far superior functionality over the stock iriver firmware which is very lacklustre indeed.

The new battery is larger capacity that the stock battery (2200mAh vs 1300mAh) so should see a decent increase in battery life. I just hope the larger battery doesn’t heat up overly or get damaged by the snug fit inside the iRiver case. I followed this guide to do the deed. Probably the fiddliest, most awkward and stressful piece of modding I’ve done.

Sorted now, after some false starts reassembling the device. I had to reconnect the old battery as I got no life from it when I first hooked up the new battery. Then when I realised it was still alive, I went back and tried the new battery again and got it to boot. I also had to go looking for how to load the stock firmware as there is a limitation to rockbox not lighting the LCD without first booting the stock iriver firmware.

Parsing Event Logs with Log Parser

I have a bunch of SBS servers who email me nice reports highlighting any errors in their Event Logs over the past day. I inherited a Server 2003 Std machine and with no reporting I had to rely on catching issues by labouriously trawling the logs or [worse] having someone at the site get in contact to report an issue. Not good.

I turned to Microsoft’s Log Parser to solve this lack of timely and, most importantly, automated reporting with the help of blat (a command line mailer).

What you need

1. Download and install Log Parser
2. Download Blat and extract the archive
3. Copy the contents of the ‘full’ directory to a sub directory called ‘blat’ in the Log Parser directory

Read the rest of this entry »