Happy Holiday's & a Wonderful New Year from the SBS Product Team!

This is a note to all of our OEMs, Partners, customers, Value Adding folk, business owners, information workers, and pretty much anyone who touches SBS or walks, talks and balks in the SBS communities.

Here at Microsoft, the Small Business Server product team want to wish you the warmest of holiday's and a very happy new year!

All the Best!

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Live Meeting for Support?

Trump knows where it's at. Two weeks ago, "The Donald" aired the episode of The Apprentice which showed Live Meeting as a great place to save time on travel, and have virtual meetings in which to collaborate and work together on digital documents.

What they didn't tell you is what you can use it for! Every techy should have an account with Live Meeting. Just the other day, my father was having issues with his XP client. Apparently some pop-up was happening saying that he should pay for the use of some videos. My father didn't know what they were talking about, and couldn't find the "I didn't watch any videos" button. Lucky for him, he didn't have his credit card handy. :)

For some reason, I could not get TS or Remote Assistance to work on his PC to help him clear up his spyware. Instead, I started a live meeting session, invited him into it, made him the presenter and then took asked for control of his desktop. With just the two of us in the meeting, I was able to control his PC through Live Meeting. I of course, removed the spyware, and installed the handy-dandy Microsoft AntiSpyware application to prevent this sort of thing happening in the future.

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File Synchronization Technologies...

So a friend of mine would define this technology as "hot". Microsoft just aquired the FolderShare company. I just installed the trial version of Foldershare. You should read up on the features. It's pretty impressive.

The highlights are you can synch file changes between computers while they are running, over the Internet. Then you can go to this webpage and search all your computers from a single webpage! A nice side effect is that you can go to the website, login and browse the file structures on your computers. As long as they are running.

Might want to choose a strong password for this one, but it's a great service!!

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Where are you?

Having trouble finding out where to go? Check out Local.live.com. It's pretty cool, once you find where you're headed to, switch it into "Birds Eye View". Once you switch to that view, you get the 3/4 satellite view. It's great for seeing where you're headed before you get there!

Check out the Seahawks Sadium!

Never be lost again...

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Finding what's open

Yesterday I was deleting WSUS, not uninstalling it, but rather deleting it. I know this is bad practice, but on the particular machine, the drive that the WSUS version of MSDE was on was lost and was not replaceable. I'll probably post that here sometime soon too.

Anyways, as part of the instruction, I needed to delete a directory, but for one single file, it was apparently in use. GRRR I hate that! You never know which process is using a particular file.

Well, yes you can, you just need the tools!

Windows has a command line tool called "TaskList". Simply running the command TaskList /M {exe/dll} you can see what processes are using certain files.

In addition, if you're more of a GUI guy or gal, you can check out the handy tool called Process Explorer from SysInternals.

Just becareful what you kill. :)

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How to increase the Exchange SP2 storage limit to 75 GB

I had a question last night on how to increase the Exchange Storage limit for Exchange 2003 SP2. The You Had Me at EHLO blog has the details. The short form is:

1. Figure out how big you can make your store on your server based on hard drive size


2. Browse to HKLM\ SYSTEM\ CurrentControlSet\ Services\ MSExchangeIS\ {SERVER NAME}\ Private-013e2e46-2cd7-4a8e-bfec-0e4652b94b00
   
3. Create a REG_DWORD called "Database Size Limit in GB" and enter the DECIMAL value (ie switch the input to DECIMAL) in GB you want to use from 1-75

Restart the Exchange Store service

You should read the actual blog posting by the Exchange team, it's much more complete and provides more configurable options.

Then what I did, was divide the amount you alloted for the whole store, by 75 max users to find your new quota/user. If you're never going to go that high, then do the math differently, just don't forget the quotas when you're adding new users.

From experience, a corupted Exchange store is not fun, especially when it happens on Thanks Giving Day at 5pm.

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Have You Sorted Out Your Power?

Just the other day, my router died because of a slight power outtage. I'm not too bent out of shape over it, because it was on the fritz anyways, but it got me thinking, I should have better power management setup in my house. I dropped by Circuit City and got me a relatively cheap UPS from APC. Boy was I impressed when I plugged the USB connection into my server.


It just showed up as a battery for my system! Just like my laptop!

So while that was cool, I noticed I could run apps as things died. Wouldn't it be great to get notified of a power outage? and have the server shut itself down?. Well, you have this handy tool called Microsoft Exchange Server on the server, which just so happens to excel at sending mail!

So, I decided I wanted to have the server send me mail when it dropped onto battery power, and again, just before it shut down, so I toyed with the alert bars, and built some VBScripts to get just that working!


As you can see, I wrote two different scripts (they were both small, and it beats trying to figure out what alert level we're at!) for each alert level. I was struggling to write the scripts, so my man Adam came through with some help. Here is what my script looks like {email address changed to de-spam the innocent}. I just have a file called PowerOut.vbs, with the following content:

Dim MyMail
Set MyMail = CreateObject("CDO.Message")
MyMail.From = "administrator@fqdn.com"
MyMail.To = "externaluser@fqdn2.com;phone#@smsaddy.com"
MyMail.Subject = "Power Outtage for YOUR DOMAIN"
MyMail.TextBody = "Power Outtage for YOUR DOMAIN"
MyMail.Fields("urn:schemas:mailheader:X-MSMail-Priority") = 0
MyMail.Send
Set MyMail = Nothing

Then, I just configure the program to run as the .vbs script. Note that it's expecting a .exe or .com file, so you'll have to change it to all files to be able to see the .vbs file when your choosing which program to run.

You'll also notice that I put in my SMS address, which works well in North America because SMS addresses are emailable directly from the Internet, some countries/providers do not offer this service. :(

Also, keep in mind that I'm not a Microsoft dev, and I've tested this on my own home server, that's it, so use at your own risk!

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Death in the Networking Family.

Thanks for all the kind words of those of you who want to drive by my house to pirate my wireless network. I appreciate the fact that I have some fans out there.

However, there are two things preventing you from doing this. (1), I haven't told you where I live, or which SSID is mine, and most importantly (2), my router got fried tonight, and as a result, I no longer have wireless at my place. My backup router is in place, and my wired connections is all I have.

Yes, this means no music downstairs and no XBOX LIVE tonight.
Disaster...

So, to those of you who are parked outside. Try another night. Sorry to disappoint. ;o)

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Securing your Wireless Network with WPA

I can't say that I have a complicated home network, it's actually really simple, but it's very wireless

When I was the backup Program Manager, I went out and dropped $300 on an external USB harddrive, when I was the client deployment PM, my network became completely managed by Group Policy (until of course, I had to take my Media Center Edition out of the domain for my externers to work). Now I'm the networking PM. I suppose you think that I should swich my machine into a dual-nic box, run premium, get to know ISA. Well, I might end up there, but I'm not there yet, I believe in simplicity, and besides, things are working now anyways, and I don't need to track my movement on the web. ;o) I know where I've been!

One thing I do want to change is my wireless security. Right now I'm using WEP encryption on my network, 64-bit. I was wondering one day what WEP actually stood for, and when the first hit that came up was Tom's Hardware Guide on how to crack WEP securitiy. Hrm, when something is as easy to crack as WEP is, it comes up on a search prior to the definition. Time to change your security algorithm.

Now if I was a business, I'd probably be installing and configuring Radius, but for me that doesn't work. I have people over all the time, and creating a domain user account for folks to just get Internet access kind of sucks.

So, I'm moving to WPA-Public Shared Key, but first I needed to make sure all my devices supported it:

• Linksys Router - firmware upgrade was needed


• Linksys Bridge - new enough that it was included


• Tablet PC - New drivers for the Wireless card were needed


• PDA - Pocket PC 2003, ok

Ok, so here goes, first step is to come up with a shared key, I picked "SBS is Cool". (haha! just kidding, I'm not going to post my shared key to the web!). So I picked a Super Secret shared key and configured my router.


Next I configured the bridge with the same shared-key, and then my laptop, then my PDA.

After upgrading the drivers on my laptop, I decided to get started. My first problem was I lost the CD to setup my wireless bridge. Lucky for me, Linksys support works on a Sunday and a typing feind named Jesse told me to set my wired LAN address to 192.168.1.2, I was able to get to the bridge (192.168.1.21) and notice that the version of the firmware that I had didn't support the "#" character. I changed my Pre-Shared Key to something else without that character and everything started working.

And for my PDA, it would seem I need to get Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition to support WPA.

At least now I can feel more confident that my neighbours aren't on my LAN ..

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Changing the Email Format in Outlook

This may seem trivial to most people, but it seems to bother me more than it should when you toss an attachment into the email and it doesn't appear at the top in the attachment window, but instead, inline, amidst all your text that you've so carefully put together.

One of our brilliant developers, Leszek, managed to point out that it was inline because I was sending in "Rich Text" instead of "HTML". Of course, Outlook (and by default Word) is defaulted to send new messages in HTML, which is great, but what happens if you reply to a message that's already in Rich Text?

You can change it with the bar at the top of the window:


I hope that gets rid of some frustration. I know it has for me. I only like to send in HTML format.

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Customizing the Office "Save As..." Dialog ... Or Otherwise known as "My Places"

As you can probably tell from the lack of posts, Billy-G has been putting us to the grind these days. I'm in the middle of writting specs, updating specs, reviewing specs, reading specs, etc. Basically my life consists of specs, specs, specs. And what comes with specs? The over use of a unknown little program called Microsoft Office. :o)

I was saving a particular spec today, about a BAZILLION times, and it occured to me, I haddn't posted this little tip on how to have fun with the Office "Save As..." dialog.


So here is my customized "Save As..." dialog, notice anything different?

I'll give you a hint, take a look at what is selected. CompanyWeb! How cool is that, you can put links to any folder in here. SharePoint folders, or UNC/SMB paths. I bet your just itching to know how.












It's easy:

1. Open Word, or Excel, and choose File, Save As...


2. Browse to the folder you want on the quick bar, for me I typed in http://companyweb and hit enter


3. In the top right hand courner of the dialog, drop down the Tools menu and choose Add to "My Places"


4. Now the folder is added to the bottom of the list, but it's inconvenient because it's off the bottom of the dialog


5. Simply right-click the item and choose Move Up, and shift all of the items around to your liking

Now if that's not a time saver, I don't know what is. You know what else? You could even add this to your employee's computer to promote the use of SharePoint, you know make it easy!.

I use this non-stop when I'm writing specs, I'm sure once you do it, you'll find it handy too.

Keep in mind that this only works for Office Applications, if you're ambitious and want to change it for programs like MSPAINT or NOTEPAD (two of my favourite applications btw), you'll have to get the Tweak UI Power Toy and change it there. Keep in mind in Tweak UI, it's called "The Places Bar". (dang naming conventions, or lack there of will get you every time!)

Now that's some low level customization, but if you're in the same spot all the time opening or saving, these tips might save you, or your customers some time!

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Let's all fight spam together

Yes, I'm still on my banter against fighting spam... There is a lot of it. Things like Exchange Service Pack 2 and the IMF filter improvements drastically help, but we need to reduce spam together.

SPF is something I'm just learning about. Here is an overview of SPF to get you up to speed. Wouldn't it be nice if no one would get spam from your domain name, because you are the only one who can control the source of that email?

Gotta love that!

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ClearType Tuner Power Toy

So everyone in the office seems to be getting the same Dell Widescreen LCD monitor. Dang it's a nice monitor, and manages to satisify all of our apple-envy on their big montiors. Well, my manager stops by the other day and says to me "WOW! Those fonts look awesome, how come my fonts don't look that good?"

Easy-peasy. XP has a set of Power Toys, and one of those power toys is the ClearType tuner PowerToy (download link). It's a cool little control pannel application that when you run it, you choose which text looks better on your screen and click next a few times.

It's that easy. When you're finished, you're clear-type text will look great and people will marvel at your display, even if it is a cheaper one...

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Getting "UserName" back on the OWA logon page

So, against Susan's wishes, I installed Exchange Service Pack 2 at home this morning before I headed into the office. Infact, it was installing while I was in the shower! Sorry Susan.

Anyways, I have folks who log into to check their email (AKA my grandfather), who would probably phone me if that didn't say "username". So I changed it. It was simple:

1. Browse to the Exchsrv program files directory, mine is at c:\program files\exchsrv.


2. Continue expanding exchweb, bin, auth.


3. In this directory, choose the language(s) you're going to be serving up to the web and open each of these folders. For me, I opened the usa folder to change English only


4. In the file, look for the line that contains CONST L_UserName_Text = "Domain\user name:". Now simply change the peice that says "Domain\user name:" to "Username:".


5. Repeat for each additional language

There you have it, now when you're users go to the OWA logon page, they will just see the "Username:".

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Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2

So Exchange Service Pack 2 released yesterday! You should start planning accordingly to get this service pack on your Small Business Server 2003 box! As Susan says, you might not want to Install it over a lunch hour, but definately plan for it.

Download details: Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2

Just so you're aware, we've been running Exchange Service Pack 2 on the SBS Catfood server for about a week and a half now, and there have been no issues. Of course the OWA logon page now reads DOMAIN\USER, but you can still log on with just username.

One of the big things to note is the new mobility features with Windows Mobile 5.0!

• Syncing of Contact pictures


• Security control over devices in the field


• Remote wipe of device


• Always up to date without SMS


• and more ...

Exchange Service Pack 2 is pretty exciting for mobile users....

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More on the MSN Search Toolbar

A little bit more on the search thing. Chad inspired me to check out the shortcuts. This thing is really powerful! You can launch applications, web queries, desktop queries, open documents and everything!

All you need to do is read the
Toolbar Help: Use Deskbar shortcuts

In addition, you can transport your shortcuts from computer to computer simply by copying the .ini file mentioned at the bottom of the link.

Pretty cool if you ask me.

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New Search...

When you host your blog on Google, you get search by default. However, I'm in the process of de-Googling my life to see what it's like. I'm primarily moving over to the MSN Search engine.

What am I crazy???

No, I'm not crazy, I'm primarily moving because I like the MSN Desktop search, and MSN IE toolbar (available here) are *way* better than Google's in my oppinion. The MSN toobar gives IE Tabs, which is ok if you like tabs (I'm not a huge fan). But the plug ins are awesome. My favourites are:

• The Weather Add-in


• The Phishing Filter

I also changed my home page to MSN Search on all of my PCs. The final thing I have left to do is remove the Google Toolbar, however, the "Blog This!" link is too handy...

Oh yeah, and the point of this post. I've added MSN Search to this blog, which IMO does a better job at finding things, I searched with Google for "IMAP" this morning and didn't find anything until I added the MSN Search. Try it!

Oh, and it's good to use, our MVPs are using it!

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Checking 2 Exchange servers on the SmartPhone

I appologize that it's been a while since my last post, I've been busy. There is this thing called SBS that apparently Microsoft wants to ship another version of. Since this decision was made, I've been typing like a mad man into Microsoft Word, building specifications for the new version. Let me tell you, once you've been typing non-stop for about 5 to 6 hours, the absolutely last thing you want to do, is open up IE, point it to your bloggosphere and start typing again. Plus it wouldn't be prudent to type half my spec in the blog would it?

We call that type of mistake a CLM.... Career Limiting Move. I kind of like my Career thank-you... so, no secrets for you ... just yet anyways.

Now onto the task at hand. I'm a geek, although some non-geeks probably consider me an "ultra-geek", I only think I am at the geek level. I don't have the API set for ISA in my head for one thing, I have no idea how many lines of code are in CEICW, and I don't build new dyndns clients in my spare time. :) (Geez, I hope none of those people read this post. )

But... I do run SBS 2003 SP1 at my house! This leaves me in an interesting delema. Which server do I synch my phone against?

Well, naturally, since the calendar gets updated WAY more often at work, I chose that one. Since I have the Unlimited Data Plan, I tend to use the data way more than I actually need, just to look up or get useless things on my phone.

I'm already setup via ActiveSync against the work server and it works great. But I've been using OMA Browse to my home server simply by going to https://homeserver.com/oma . It's ok, but not ideal.

I decided to switch it to IMAP4. I first enabled IMAP4 on my Home Exchange server. The on the phone, I went into my ActiveSync inbox and did the following:

1. Clicked on Menu, and then Options


2. Clicked on New Account and followed the little wizard on the screen

Now every hour, the phone *also* checks my home email account and downloads the message. It seems to drop off the schedule if you run out of cell signal though, that's a little frustrating.

But the beauty is, the new messages show up on the home screen when they arrive, and you get the notification (which on my phone just happens to be "Woo hoo").

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Dilbert ... Always on the Money

If you're like me, you can't get enough Dilbert, and you get the RSS feed from Dilbert.com, or you have the calendar. (I have both).

I came across a rather interesting comic about blogging about work. I thought I'd post it here, since it's large, I'm Linking to the Dilbert Cartoon.

Enjoy,
Sean

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Office 12 UI shown at PDC...

Office 12 has been seeing some press lately. Specifically around the new UI they are building. I've tried it, and it is indeed very different. I do think the majority of the UI is very intuitive and easy to use, but as with any new UI, you have trouble finding those less used features ...



Check out the menu system at This Blog, and more UI at the Silicon Valley Sleuth site.

Keep in mind that Office is still in development, so naturally the UI might not look like this when you receive it.

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A tad late, but Bill Gates on Channel9!

I know this is "Three Weeks Ago" according to the fancy Outlook 2003 groupings, but I thought I'd share it for those of you who haddn't seen it already.

Bill Gates was interviewed on Channel9!

And because everyone already asks, have I met Bill? No.

The closest I've been to Bill Gates was at an internal product fair after a company meeting. I was standing at the Small Business Server 2003 booth, and I was talking to one of my fellow employees (who knew nothing about SBS other than it was for small businesses), and my co-worker and friend was pointing to behind me with big-wide eyes. I saw him out of the courner of my eye and kept waving my hand as if to say "Hello! I'm talking to a customer here, stop being a goof-ball!", but sure enough, I had my back to Bill Gates as he was visiting the booth directly behind me (MS Baseline Security Analyzer)...

I missed my opportunity, but I did get another employee running SBS at home, so that has to be a good accomplishment in itself! :)

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The few ruin it for the many....

Like everything, the few ruin it for everyone else. Last night I mistakenly left my volume up on my computer (hey, it's my media center, and I was watching a great show!). The computer is two rooms away from my bedroom, but I could still hear every new email that came in.

Surprisingly, this coencided exactly to when this blog got spammed all through the night. I now have 27 blog posts to go and clean up, wonderful.

I get why Susan is so security happy on her comments now.

Anyways, I was going to turn comments off, but then I noticed I could have the funky word thing (or rather computer spoofer. So sorry, you have to deal with that now.

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SmartPhone Themes

As you know, I got the Audiovox SMT 5600 some while ago, and I felt special. That was until 18,000 of my closes Microsoft peers also go the same phone, then I felt more like a lemming.

But, after putting on my thinking cap, and applying my same knowledge of customization to my smartphone that I do with my desktop, I got to thinking: I could make this phone truely mine.

I started with ring tones & sounds. I have the Pirates of the Caribbean theme song as my ring tone. It works out quite nicely. I also have some pretty wacky sounds as reminders and new item notification.

I still felt like a lemming, my phone looks like everyone else's... So naturally, I started putting my own photos on the home screen, then I thought about the colours, and I found this wonderful page on SmartPhone Themes! (make sure you drop the "goto category" drop down, there are hundreds of themes here!).

Then I figured, why stop there (by this time, you know how much of a time synch this has been, my poor puppy, he wants to play, and I'm knee deep in xml writing a new SBS 2003 unofficial smartphone theme!

That's right, you heard me, In my spare time, I'm writing a new theme, I'm optomizing it around visibility, simplicity and clarity. Which of course just sums up in "damn cool!" Once I get it complete, I'll post it here. I'd say I'm about a 1/4 of the way through.

Don't be lame, customize!

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How to configure a firewall for domains and trusts

Came across this interesting article the other day. Apparently, (for non ISA users of SBS SP1) you can run the Windows Firewall on your LAN nic to protect the server from the network side. The Article on
How to configure a firewall for domains and trusts (KB 179442) tells you how.

I wouldn't recommend it if you're not extremely familiar with the how to master the Windows Firewall configuration....

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Official Guide to Running Microsoft Windows Server Update Services on Windows Small Business Server 2003

Well, Hurray,

After a few months of hard work, the Step-by-Step Guide to Getting Started with Microsoft Windows Server Update Services on Windows Small Business Server 2003 is finally here!

If you're an avid WSUS'r, you should read this documentation!

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MSN City Guides - More Useful Everyday

So as it turns out, MSN keeps on going!

Check out Local.MSN.com for all of your local outtings in your area.

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MSN Search Toolbar with Windows Desktop Search Add-ins

If you're using the MSN Search Toolbar, this one's fory ou. As it happens, there is a Phishing Filter Add-In.

The Phishing Filter Add-in offers access to the beta version of a new dynamic online service, updated several times an hour to warn you and help protect your personal information from these fraudulent websites by:

• Scanning websites you visit and warning you if they are potentially suspicious.


• Dynamically checking the web sites you visit with up to the hour online information via an online service run by Microsoft and blocking you from sharing personal information if a site is a known phishing website.


Just make sure you have Service Pack 2 and IE 6!

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Windows Media Player to Update ID3 Tag Info

For a while now, I've been looking for a good ID3 tag updater, mainly because the Genre's are all messed up and I have about 80 different Genre's. Rock, Rock & Pop, Pop, the list goes on of just usless Genre's. Plus some music is put into the wrong Genre from what I consider it.

I then realized, I probably had a pretty powerful ID3 tag updater with just Windows Media Player. I was right! I just didn't know how to use it.

Basically, select the song(s) you want to update, within the WMP Library, right click and choose "Advanced Tag Editor". Now you can update the Tag info using this editor. The data gets written to the disk, as well as the WMP library catalog, so you're changes take place and are saved for all eterity.

Excellent.

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Watch your Routers

So, I'm in Chicago right now. Very cool city and just a wee bit bigger than Seattle. The architecture is really cool! The good news is we're out collecting data for the next version of SBS. If you're in Chicago, good luck trying to find me, the room that I'm in, has no windows!

Anyways, we managed to visit a small business site today, I always like going to visit a site, they had a very small (but seeminly highly effective) office, a number of printers, a number of new Dell computers. While they weren't running SBS, they did have an SBS like setup, a domain, in a single-nic environment.

One thing I noticed, was they had a hardware firewall router as their gateway to the Internet, then in addition, they had a Wireless Router/gateway device that provided wireless access to their network. One of my major concerns is people who put their routers in their network, and then don't use them in bridge mode.

Of course, both Bridge mode and router mode are ok, just keep in mind that if it's not in Bridge mode, you're desktops won't be able to "see" the wireless computers, as they will be behind a NAT/Firewall.

This information might help when you setup your Wireless Access Point, make sure you choose what's best for your network.

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Tablet PC Add-ons

Tablet PC is one of Microsoft's great inventions. I have one, and I really do like it. Granted that I use it as a laptop for the most part, but when standing in the back of a conference like SMB Nation, tablet mode comes in very handy! It's also nice to carry around the PC in tablet mode, so you never have to open it up to see when the next meeting is.

Anyways, the Tablet team at Microsoft has been working very hard and has produced more software for you to use on your Tablet. If you haven't already checked it out, you can try the:

• Experience Pack or the


• Education Pack, which is primarily for students

Also, if you haven't tried OneNote with a tablet, you should, it's amazing. My favourite feature is you can write down key words while recording a conversation and it links the audio to that point in the conversation, so you can instantly jump to that place. Comes in very handy note taking when you need to not miss a beat!

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To my Readers ... Thanks!

So, on Friday I attended the SMB Nation 2005 Conference here at Microsoft, I spent little time in the seminars, and most of my time at the SBS booth talking to our valued partners. I was surprised and shocked of how many of you had seen my blog and liked it. So I just wanted to write quickly to say thanks! It's always nice to hear that this is useful.

In addition, I feel somewhat bad for not posting as often as I used to. With the R2 version of SBS and the version that will ship on the tip of the Longhorn wave, there has been plenty to keep me busy beyond the normal business hours, and sometimes, blogging just doesn't reach the top of the priority plate. Or sometimes, I spend my entire day working on items I'm not able to blog about.

However, I am planning on blogging on these topics within the next few weeks

• How to host multiple websites when running ISA 2004


• How to build a secure wireless network using WPA encryption

So please continue to keep an eye here.

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Windows Media Player Doesn't have to be in the Right

So this is a rather lame post, meaning it's not really that technical. But I didn't know how to do this. Windows Media Player (WMP) has the ability to minimize to the task bar, so you can get a quick menu access to your songs and playlists, access to play, pause, stop, prev/next track and volume and mute. You simply right click the task bar, go to toolbars, and choose "Windows Media Player". Now when you minimize WMP it drops to the task bar ... on the right side.

Now with every other toolbar, I know you can move it around on the task bar, whether it's 2 lines, 6 lines or just 1. You can actually grab the handle in front of WMP and drag it anywhere you want on the start bar.

Seems weird that I didn't know this, but I figured I'd blog it in case. Worse comes to worse, it's up here so at least I remember it. :)

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Ratings of Anti-Spam programs

Spam is a huge problem, I can't believe how many spam messages I get. I know that when I was a JDP lead (which stands for Joint Development Parnter), I essentially did the VAR work for a company running beta SBS 2003 software in order to put the product into product before we shipped it. Their biggest complaint prior, and biggest win with SBS, was the amount of spam they reduced.

I found it cool today that Microsoft Outlook 2003 is the Best Spam filtering program available... at least according to this study.

Knowning that Outlook uses the same filtering as Exchange, you can totally use this to sell more copies of SBS! (is my agenda that obvious?)

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ALT+CLICK in Word 2003

This is pretty cool, I miss clicked and found a new feature in Word 2003. Hold down ALT and click on a word. The Research bar comes up with the definition, thesaurus, and a translation for the word you clicked on.

This is even cooler! If you click on translate, it takes you to WorldLingo.com and shows you a translated version of your document in the language of your choice.

I do have my gripes with Office, but this is pretty darn cool!

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Don't install ISA Server Service Pack 1 on SBS SP1, it's not needed!

So it occured to me this morning, while I was reviewing some documentation that SBS customers might be tempted to install ISA SP1 onto their SBS box.

Let's just say that this doesn't work.

Why you ask? Well, ISA SP1 is already included with SBS SP1 for premium customers. The SBS SP1 ISA sku is slipstreamed with ISA SP1, so you, as an SBS customers should feel special as this is the only place you can get ISA with slipstream SP1. However, if you try to install the ISA SP1, you'll receive the error that ISA isn't installed. This is expected, as the sku guids are the different(basically, some mumbo-jumbo to help us differentiate what's what).

So, bottome line: don't install ISA SP1 on your SBS SP1 premium boxes.

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An Extension to Delgate Access

Well, I'm back from vacation, and before I dive back into the world of building a Vista version of SBS for you guys, I thought I'd give the long over due credit for some hard work to Justin Kruger. I had posted a while back about How to host multiple domains on SBS, and a lot of discussion was generated. There was also a follow up about Delgate Access. However, neither of these posts satisfied Jusin's unique need. Justin had the specific requirement to give users different default email addresses based on a simple LDAP query.

I didn't have an answer for Justin, so he took the initiative and figured it out for those who share in his frustration! Well Done Justin! The steps that Justin followed are outlined below.

Keep in mind that I have not tested this and I provide it AS IS from Justin. Use at your own risk.

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To kick off the process, Justin creates two seperate user templates inside the server management, the first template has a description, and the second one doesn't (ie left blank)

Next, Justin opens the Exchange System Manager (ESM) and edits the default recipient policy to change it to an irrelavant SMTP address (which will be modified if you run CEICW at a later date). Justin uses %g@not-used.com, as the %g uses the given name variable when creating the account.


Also, as shown above, Justin created two more recipient policies for the two domain names the server will host. The first query is modified to search for the particulars in the description field as shown:

As you can see, if the description does not match, then this policy will apply. Then you set the SMTP address you wish to create, taking note of which way the %g.%s are

Now back to the second recipient policy, we make the description match exactly in the LDAP query.

And we add the SMTP policy for this as %s.%g (which is backwards to the above policy).

The reason for the swapping of the %g & %s is based on how you create the user using the SBS add user wizard. When creating the user with FLastName or LFirstName.
The image below will get the @whatever.com address

And this image will result in the @otheraddress.com since the first and last names are switched

Then Justin gave the two accounts that belong to each others mailbox send on behalf permissions and loaded the default mailbox to the outlook profile with the other as the additional mailbox. (See my previous post on how to grant delgate access)
Finally, Justin amended the Address space in teh SMTP connector properties to relay for both domains

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That's all Justin suggests to do! Happy emailing! Feel free to have a discussion with Justin right here on this blog post if you are having problems.

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An Extension to Delegate Access

Well, I'm back from vacation, and before I dive back into the world of building a Vista version of SBS for you guys, I thought I'd give the long over due credit for some hard work to Justin Kruger. I had posted a while back about How to host multiple domains on SBS, and a lot of discussion was generated. A follow up post on Delgate Access was posted, but this still didn't satisfy Justin's unique need. Justin had the specific requirement to give users different default email addresses based on a simple LDAP query.

I didn't have an answer for Justin, so he took the initiative and figured it out for those who share in his frustration! Well Done Justin!

Keep in mind that I have not tested this and I provide it AS IS from Justin. Use at your own risk.

---

To kick off the process, Justin creates two seperate user templates inside the server management, the first template has a description, and the second one doesn't (ie left blank)

Next, Justin opens the Exchange System Manager (ESM) and edits the default recipient policy to change it to an irrelavant SMTP address (which will be modified if you run CEICW at a later date). Justin uses %g@not-used.com, as the %g uses the given name variable when creating the account.


Also, as shown above, Justin created two more recipient policies for the two domain names the server will host. The first query is modified to search for the particulars in the description field as shown:

As you can see, if the description does not match, then this policy will apply. Then you set the SMTP address you wish to create, taking note of which way the %g.%s are

Now back to the second recipient policy, we make the description match exactly in the LDAP query.

And we add the SMTP policy for this as %s.%g (which is backwards to the above policy).

The reason for the swapping of the %g & %s is based on how you create the user using the SBS add user wizard. When creating the user with FLastName or LFirstName.
The image below will get the @whatever.com address

And this image will result in the @otheraddress.com since the first and last names are switched

Then Justin gave teh two accounts that belong to each others mailbox send on behalf permissions and loaded the default mailbox to the outlook profile with the other as the additional mailbox. (See my previous post on how to grant delgate access)
Finally, Justin amended the Address space in teh SMTP connector properties to relay for both domains

---

That's all Justin suggests to do! Happy emailing! Feel free to have a discussion with Justin right here on this blog post if you are having problems.

Read More