Technology for Mortals

Microsoft Office Web Apps is looking pretty impressive. The real time collaboration is something you can’t even do on the native Windows applications. Having the conditional formating in Excel, all the other rich animations in PowerPoint, and native Office compatibility makes this look extremely usable. Microsoft already has had a usable Outlook Web application for a long time and this just seems to be the natural extension for the entire Office Suite.

Immediately rebooting after the latest Microsoft Windows Update pushed to me (even though it isn’t patch Tuesday) seemed to have nuked Outlook 2007 with the dreaded message:

“Cannot start Microsoft Outlook. Cannot open the Outlook window.”

My first reaction was to do a system restore to before the update was applied which was a mistake as it didn’t fix the problem.  A quick search on the support forums indicates that the correct solution is to run an “outlook.exe /resetnavpane” command from the Windows Run prompt.  Then after I applied the Windows Update again, Outlook broke again with the same error message.  Running the same resetnavpane command fixed the problem again so I would have saved myself a lot of trouble had I not performed a system restore.

If you’re going to be installing BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) 5.0 on a Windows Server 2008 machine, you better be ready to call technical support or read this blog post at a minimum.  I spend 5 hours on the phone with BlackBerry customer support over the course of two days to work out all the installation problems that should have been automated by the installer and documented in the pre-installation guide.  I will give Research In Motion support credit for helping me through these problems.

The main different between BES 5.0 and BES 4.1.x is that the administration interface is Java and ActiveX web based only, which irritates me to no end.  BES 4.1 gives you a real interface that works without a browser and isn’t dependent on some complicated JBoss+Apache web server setup.  This web based aspect of BES 5.0 was the source of some major installation and configuration headaches.  With BES 4.1.x, you don’t have to put up with any of this nonsense.  The reasoning behind 5.0 using a web administration interface is that now the users can manage their own BlackBerry Enterprise accounts though I really didn’t need this feature.

Just getting the basic preparation work done for a BES 5.0 install is daunting enough because you have to go through this pre-installation guide.  That involves setting up a BES service account, the local server permissions, the active directory permissions, the exchange server permissions, and other software that needs to be pre-installed.  It gets a bit confusing and I definitely recommend just using the SQL Server 2005 express they include in their BES 5.0 installer and then you don’t have to worry about additional JDBC drivers for remote SQL databases.  Don’t bother installing SQL express yourself as it will only make things more complicated.  You will need to install the Microsoft Exchange MAPI client before you install BES.

One pre-installation step that is missing is that you need to make sure that IPv6 on Windows Server 2008 is disabled.  Un-checking IPv6 in the network interface is not sufficient, and you’ll need to follow the instructions in this Microsoft KB article and edit the registry.  Once you’ve done this along with all the other pre-installation procedures above, you can proceed to install BES.  Note that during installation, be sure to select BlackBerry Server authentication for the web administration interface and not Active Directory (AD) integrated authentication.  BlackBerry technical support couldn’t figure out how to get this working and they told me to reinstall from scratch on a clean machine and don’t use AD authentication for web administration.

There’s more pain after you’ve completed the whole installation.  The web administration interface also needs access to the SQL database which doesn’t work out of the box and can frustrate you to no end.  Because the BES installer didn’t bother to nail down the SQL ports from dynamic to fixed TCP 1433, the web admin page refuses to come up.  You need to go into the SQL Server Configuration Manager and manually set the TCP ports to 1433 as shown below.

Internet Explorer 8.0 in Windows Server 2008 also requires you to enable “compatibility mode” for the administration page and you must also put the administration URL in the trusted site list.  The other problem you’ll find is that because the BES 5.0 installer generated its own SSL certificate rather than using the one that is either already on the server or easily obtained in a Windows network environment with a Certificate Authority in place, the browser throws up error messages that it doesn’t trust the SSL certificate.  You can fix this by right clicking on Internet Explorer and choose “Run as administrator”.  Then you can view the certificate and install it.  However, it’s installed in the wrong place in the personal user certificate store and you’ll have to export the certificate and import it into the computer certificate.  A better option is to import the certificate into Active Directory trusted certificates using this procedure I wrote up in 2006 and that solves your problem for every computer within the active directory that needs to use the BES web administration page.

Anyhow, it’s all working for me right now and I hope this document helps you avoid the headaches I went through.

I had a problem where SharePoint was set to send alerts to users (in this case, when tasks were assigned to them), but it was not sending the alerts to everyone. It turns out, that if a user is not explicitly a member of any SharePoint groups, they won’t get the email. I had put “DOMAINDomain Users” into the “Contribute” group (easy permissions that way), but adding the users to a group is what I needed to do for those alerts to get sent out. Hope this helps someone else out!

J.Ja

Update 4/30/2009 – Microsoft support helped me fix the problem using an internal script/utility called au_check_v78f.exe to clear out my update database which may have been corrupted.  Hopefully, they will make this tool public.

For anyone who has more than one computer running Office 2007 or if you may need to run the update on a future reinstall, I would suggest that you download the Office 2007 SP2 update here rather than use Windows Update.  That’s because the file is just shy of 300 MB and it’s a big hassle to have to download the file more than once.

Be aware that the update does require a reboot.  Also note that it may take some time for Outlook 2007 to reprocess your email data file the first time you run it after the SP2 update.  Then once I’m all done, redo “check for updates” under Windows Update and hopefully it removes Office SP2 from the list of items that need to be downloaded and installed and you will still see a bunch of other smaller Office updates.  On my desktop system for some reason, Windows Update insists that I need to download Office 2007 SP2 and install it even though it’s already installed.  I didn’t see this problem on my laptop.  I’ve reported the issue to Microsoft and hopefully they’ll have a remedy for this because this would be very annoying for IT people.

Of course if you’re an IT shop, you should be using WSUS to distribute the updates centrally.  That works infinitely better than pulling updates “from the cloud” because you’re getting the updates from the local area network.

Am I the only one who finds it surpremely arrogant that OCS 2007 R1 did not work on Windows 2008 or 64 bit Windows Server, but OCS 2007 R2 requires 64 bit Windows Server?

And to ”upgrade”, you either need to build out completely new servers, add them in, and remove the old ones (only an option for users of Enterprise Edition), or to backup the config, uninstall, upgrade the servers, reinstall, and reload the config. What kind of upgrade path is that? Does Microsoft want people to do this upgrade? They make me wish I had waited 4 months on the OCS deployment, and just gone straight to R2, especially since R2 has a feature that we’ve been dying for (the Web-based client to be able to participate in conferences/desktop sharing).

Overall, I use the Microsoft “enterprise stack” for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that, as certified partners, we get most of it for free. I’d also rather deal with a single, integrated stack than to cobble together things from various “best of breed” solutions, which often end up to rarely be “best” or “solutions” anyways. But stuff like this is just rediculous. It isn’t like they jumped a version number, like SQL Server 2005 to SQL Server 2008 (or Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007). Maybe I’m just being mad because they are calling it “OCS 2007 R2″ instead of “OCS 2009″. But honestly, there is no good reason why R1 could not have shipped in a 64 bit version from where I sit, and R2 really does not have enough new functionality to be called “2009″.

J.Ja

I was surprised to see that Microsoft Photosynth Silverlight edition was working in Google’s Chrome browser today.  It looks like Silverlight is shaping up to be an awesome universal application platform especially when it comes to video playback.  The video playback seems to be hardware accelerated and Microsoft’s VC-1 (Windows Media 9 Advanced Profile) is already very CPU friendly compared to H.264 video compression.  We’ve already had the 2008 Olympics and the Obama innauguration using Silverlight technology.

Microsoft OneNote is just about my favorite application, other than Outlook. I’m not a huge fan of Outlook per se, but I spend a lot of time it in, and it doesn’t break on me, so I am happy with it. But OneNote is a miracle. Two years ago, I started fiddling with it, because my life was an unorganized mess. About a year or so agao, I got serious about using OneNote. Now, I am nearly 100% paperless, but OneNote still needs some tweaking to be a great application.

OneNote, for those who are not aware, is a deceptively simple application. It does not appear to do too much on the surface. It lets you create “notes” in “tabs” which are put into “notebooks”. At the very least, “notes” let you drop in free form text box areas all over them. The emphasis is very clearly on getting information in, not formatting. A deeper examination shows that OneNote also lets all sorts of other data – not just text – into the notes. You can use the system tray icon do perform a “clipping” of the screen (like cutting up a paper with a scissors and taping it into a notebook). You can record audio and video items. You can add simple tables (hardly an Excel replacement). You can send Web pages from Internet Explorer to OneNote as a note, and you can print to any application to the OneNote virtual printer, which turns what would have been printed into a note. It also can handle handwriting input via Tablet PCs’ input or a graphics stylus (I have also seen “pen” devices which tie into OneNote as well). One of the very cool standards in OneNote, is that anything new (a new note, a new screen clipping, something send to it from Internet Explorer, etc.) all get annotated with the source (if applicable) and a timestamp. This makes research a breeze.

OneNote also has some nice functionality, outside of getting information into it. You can also categorize notes with flags like “Contact” or “Question”. You can share the notes with others in a live online session, or through a “shared notebook” (I beleive this requires SharePoint). You can also tie notes to Outlook/Exchage Tasks.

What differentiates OneNote from Word (the nearest analogy)? Well, with Word, people tend to use the file system to organize their information (a Word file for each item), and in OneNote, you don’t think about files at all. In fact, OneNote is constantly saving, as far as I can tell, you can’t lose data in it (maybe if it crashes the moment you put something in it). There is no way to actually “save” in OneNote, it is that seemless. Also, in Word, the emphasis is really on formatting text; that’s why it is a “word processor”. OneNote’s formatting facilities are adequete, but actually fairly out of the way. As an indication of how different the focus is, OneNote has a single, one row toolbar that might occupy about 1,000 pixels, and a simple menu system. Word has the massive Ribbon to contain all of its functionality. OneNote has less commands than any version of Word I have ever used.

Using OneNote is a refreshing experience. With Word, it is hard to not get sucked into the trap of formatting everything “just so” or feeling neurotic if things don’t look “right”. In OneNote, if I can’t get two text boxes to line up… oh well! There aren’t even facilities to align items. Overall, OneNote has replaced paper in my life, with the exception of things I need to print (like my exercise routines to take to the gym), or paper I need to share with others while it is being edited (such as shopping lists which my wife and I collaborate on throughout the week).

But this is not to say that OneNote is perfect. There are a number of serious ommissions that drive me nuts with it, that I think need to be corrected for it to be the best application possible.

The first flaw has to do with tables. Having tables in my notes is very useful. At the same time though, the table functionality is crippled. While I do not expect (nor want, for simplicity’s sake) a full Excel workbook to be embedded in my notes, I do expect functionality above and beyond adding/deleting rows. Sorting, for example, needs to be added.

Along the same lines, I appreciate the lack of formatting options in many ways, but there do need to be a few more of them in there. Being able to align objects would be great, and so would being able to set the dimensions of something using a hard number, not the mouse (or maybe a “make the same width” function).

Another thing that drives me nuts, is the way the page headers are handled. By default, they have a timestamp on them, which is great. You can edit these timestamps. But what I would really like, is a way to insert (or covert the existing timestamps into them) a “last modified” timestamp. For some of the things that I use OneNote for, that would be much more helpful. There are a few other dynamic fields that I am used to in Word that I think OneNote could use as well, but that is the key one.

Finally, I would love to see a way to turn certain items into reusable components. For example, if I have a table of data, I would like to be able to turn in into an object which can then be inserted onto any other note. Even though it would reside in many places at once, the table would only be stored once. As a result, updates to the table in one place would update all other instances of that table. While this may be a bit of an advanced feature, it would be extremely helpful to me; I maintain a number of different notes that contain identical information, and when I update it in one place, I need to copy the change and paste it in to all other notes that make use of it.

As you can tell, I really like OneNote, but it could use some refinement. But for a version 1 product, it is quite well done!

J.Ja

To put it plainly, someone completely forgot to document Exchange 2007. The OAB (Offline Address Book) issues that were present in previous editions are still there. The sad part is, the problem is documentation, not technical. Over the last month or so, I have been wrestling with OAB issues for at least 20 hours per week. About 30 minutes ago, I conquered them for good. Here is everything that I have learned along the way, hopefully it will spare you some trouble.

The error that we usually get in Outlook is “an object cannot be found”. The Synchronization Log shows that it could not get the Offline Address Book (to see the log, go to the “Folders” view and select the “Sync Issues” folder). Additionally, you’ll possibly get an error code of 0x8004010F during a Send/Receive. Here are some of the causes I have found for this:

The OAB does not exist at all
Verify that the OAB has been created. Turn up the logging level on OAB in Exchange and force a re-creation of it. Verify that there are no errors. If there are errors, fix them.

The OAB is in the wrong place or inaccessible
After creating an OAB, you need to restart Outlook to get the new location. If you still get the error, check the IIS logs on the server hosting the Exchange Mailbox role. Look for entries trying to do a GET on /OAB/* which will be Outlook trying to get the OAB. If there are errors, fix them. A few common problems with this:

• The OAB directory requiring SSL; all of the other Exchange directories require SSL, but OAB should not.
• The OAB virtual directory is pointing to the wrong spot. I deleted the default OAB and created a new one, but the new one was in a physical path different from the physical path of the old one (not just the GUID of the OAB, but the entire path was different!). I had to re-target the OAB virtual directory in IIS to get it looking in the right spot.

The path is being blocked by a firewall/ISA
If your problem only crops up when the user is trying to get access via “Outlook Anywhere” (or RPC or HTTP), make sure that what you’ve published in the firewall or ISA server is allowing the path /OAB/* through to the correct server.

Missing entry for autodiscover in DNS
This was my final “gotcha” to overcome. After spending hours doing packet captures, I noticed that on a clean DNS table and a fresh Outlook start (in other words, close Outlook 100%, do “ipconfig /flushdns” and start Outlook) I saw that Outlook was trying to lookup “autoconfigure.domain.com” as a host, and when that failed, it was hitting “_autoconfigure._tcp.domain.com” as an SRV record. Making an A or a CNAME record for autoconfigure.domain.com is silly, since I would need to spend money on another SSL certificate for it. Actually, that is debatable, since the only clients trying to hit that address should be clients that already trust my internal root CA, so I could self-issue one. But I digress. To make things slightly less chaotic (do I really need to publish Yet Another Host Name in ISA anyways?), I simply added an SRV record for “_autoconfigure._tcp.domain.com” with the data of “0 0 443 mail.domain.com” (mail.domain.com is the external address for the Exchange server, which already has a cert on it and it is the name of the Exchange proxy server, etc.). Once I did that, the last of the problems were solved.

I hope this helps someone. I’ve seen some of these items listed elsewhere (sadly, the bits on autoconfigure turned up on my final search, in tabs that I checked after I resolved the problem!), but never all of them in one spot.

J.Ja

So Sam Diaz over at ZD Net takes Microsoft to task, because they have said that their online offerrings of Office will be “lightweight”. And then he says (in a nutshell), “what’s Microsoft’s problem, Google has gotten this right already!” The reality is, Google Apps are “lightweight” too. As Steve Ballmer mentioned, they didn’t even have footnotes (they got footnotes a few days after he mentioned it).

I can understand that Microsoft is lagging on getting a version of Office on the Web. But, let’s examine reality. Google Apps’ usage rates show that there is not much demand for Web-base office suites at this time, Office still makes a ton of money, and offering a “lightweight” Web Office still puts them on par with Google. Most importantly, the people who are attracted to a Web based office suite neither want nor need a “kitchen sink” application; if they did, they would just buy a copy of Microsoft Office or download Open Office.

The people who are not buying Office are the casual users. People who need to type up a shopping list every now and then, or maybe use a spreadsheet to balance their checkbooks. Yes, this is a huge percentage or users, probably the bulk of home users. These are the same people who do not need the tight collaboration of Outlook, and for whom Web-mail is perfectly suitable. And so on and so on. I am sure that there is some money that can be made, selling ads on these online applications. Unlike most online apps, an office suite is insanely “sticky”, with users spending many hours in them.

What is lost in the whole thing, is a misunderstanding of why people pay for Office in the first place. Businesses buy Office because of Microsoft Exchange. Period. End of story. If you are not using Exchange, all of a sudden, Outlook is merely an “adequate” email client, an “adequate” calandering application, and an “inadequate” contact management system. Word is a great “kitchen sink” word processor, but in reality, the alternatives (Corel WordPerfect, OpenOffice) are perfectly acceptable from probably 90% (or more) of users. Ditto for Excel.

In fact, Office’s “killer app” as far as I am concerned on OneNote (if you have not used it, I highly recommend it!). Over the last year, I have been training myself to transition from paper to OneNote; for every activity that I do this with, I am happy, but it is taking me some time. As an example of just how good OneNote is, I used to buy a paper notebook (usually steno pads with perforated sheets) every few months. Now, I buy one every 6 – 9 months. Even more telling, when I print something from OneNote, once I am done with it, I save the paper. Either I flip it over to used as scratch paper (for those tasks that I am not using OneNote for yet), or I print more items from OneNote on the other side of it. Off hand, I would love to have a Windows Mobile device, provided that it had a copy of OneNote that would automaticall sync with what I have on my desktop PC. That would blow my mind in terms of usefulness and functionality.

So other than OneNote, I really do not think that Office is particularly great. Overall, it suffers from having too many features and too wide of a user base. It just cannot make everyone happy, so no one is particularly happy with it. For the casual user, it is far too complex, even with the Ribbon. For the “power user”, too many tasks require too many clicks or keystrokes (for the power user, WordPerfect 5.1 was the best application on the face of the planet, except for possibly Emacs). So yes, I really do think that if Microsoft’s online Office is “lightweight”, not only is this not terribly bad, but I think that it is really good. Remember Microsoft Works? Where it was a disaster, was that it used a file format that wasn’t Office’s file formats. But as a lightweight office suite aimed at casual users, it was good. If Office Online replicates that, there is nothing bad about it at all.

J.Ja