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  • Cool backup e-mail when it has succeeded & tape changing scripts

    Hi guys, I just saw this and decided it is so awesome (as someone told me this one featured paid for an alternative backup product). Put simply, Marina Roos has documented a 2 minute process to add e-mail alerts when backups succeed. The details can be found at http://www.smallbizserver.net/Default.aspx?tabid=266&articleType=ArticleView&articleId=143 At the same time, I was asked in the forums about compression of tapes and I found Sean Daniels blog, which had a auto tape changing scripts in it. The article can be found at http://seanda.blogspot.com/2004/10/sbs-2003-backup-hack_05.html enjoy the new week ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Mon, Apr 24 2006
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  • Ever wanted a "Microsoft" show that your customers could look at on how to use a server

    This is just a very quick one. I found this interesting little tool on the web which is almost customer safe, but explains the value of a server. Download, customise the powerpoints and use when ever you are at an exhibition etc. This is the " Information Worker’s Guide to the Windows SBS Computer Network " and according to the site performs the following: Through a series of interlinked PowerPoint shows or "modules," the "Information Worker's Guide to the Windows SBS Computer Network" provides users with a high-level overview of the Windows SBS network. As they progress through the modules, users learn how Windows SBS can help them keep company data secure, improve personal and team productivity, and communicate more effectively with customers and co-workers. Along the way, they are introduced to Windows SBS features and functionality and to the basic scenarios of working remotely and staying connected. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=d566b19a-63c9-48d4-8add-ed7f99c9024c&displaylang...
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Fri, Apr 21 2006

  • London Small Business IT Pro Group meeting 8th May - CRM with Julian Sharp of Vigence

    The next meeting of the London Small Business IT Pro Group will take place this coming Monday 8th May. We have another special guest this month. Julian Sharp of Vigence will be talking about implementing and helping clients to use CRM 3.0. Vigence are one of the leading Microsoft CRM consultancies in the UK and I know that Julian has lots of tips and tricks up his sleeve that he's going to share with us. The meeting will be start at 5:30pm Monday 8th May at Microsoft House, 10 Great Pulteney Street, London, W1F 9NB. Drinks and pizza will be served and the meeting will finish around 8:30pm in time for those who travel any distance to get away and for the locals to retire to the pub If you could let me know you are coming that would be appreciated. Look forward to seeing all of you who can make it!

  • MS-CRM and Mappoint for your customer map needs, of course it works with SBS

    I promised it a while ago, but it is finally here. Jedi Master Simon Hutson has finally documented the quick process of getting Mappoint services and MS-CRM working together. All the details including a downlaod are located in his blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/ukcrm/archive/2006/05/04/590006.aspx ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Fri, May 5 2006
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  • Microsoft CRM V3 on SBS 2003 Livemeeting presentation from "An Hour with Dave" for SBSC members

    Hi, SBSC members get a special ability to request livemeetings on any topic they want. This months was on MS-CRM. I provided an overview and then details as to how to join the partner programme, get training and further information. Given the fact that as a MS partner you can get discount off the price of the software when you have passed your exams, this can be an important source of income or differentiation for you. The presentation can be found at http://uksbsguy.com/files/445/download.aspx and I will post the URL for the recording in a day or two. ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Wed, May 17 2006
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  • New Microsoft web site design tool – Expression Web Designer

    Microsoft is launching a number of products over the next two years, which means a number of products coming into beta. Many of these cans be used by skilled small business IT consultants to build better solutions for customers. One such tool is the Expression Web Designer. It is designed to be highly accurate to online standards, ensuring greater compliance with a variety of browsers. It also makes extensive use of CSS to ensure a greater standard across sites. Finally, providing access to data and enabling data manipulation tasks through the browser is a key capability. To see more and downloads the product, go to http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/default.mspx and watch the videos and start playing today. Ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Thu, May 18 2006
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  • getting 8 people to service 30,000 parnters is nothing compared to getting <1000 partners to service 4.1M busineses - that is the reality for UK SBSC members

    My boss, Steve Clayton recently noted how hard the job that the team I am part of has. We are responsible for working with, understanding and helping all UK partners, irrespective of size. To this end, he as written an excellent article " 30k divided by 8 just doesn't work ". This got me thinking, the ratio we have here is 1:3750 (PTS to Partners), but in the small business space where we have less than 1000 in the UK, to the 4.1M UK small businesses, we start to see a ratio of twice that at the moment, so while we feel pain, it really highlights just how difficult it is in the partner market. At the same time, it shows that for each partner, working together in community is very sensible as the number of times you are likely to compete with a fellow partner is a rounding error on a percentage. To this end, Susanne Dansey wrote an excellent posting http://www.uksmbgirl.co.uk/blog/archives/7 discussing the community and this was followed up by http://www.uksmbgirl.co.uk/blog/archives/8 and then http://www.uksmbgirl...
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Tue, May 23 2006

  • Vista beta 2 is now available – what can it do for Small Businesses

    If you get TechNet or MSDN , you have access to Beta 2 of Windows Vista now. If you don’t, then I am afraid you will have to wait a little bit longer. To find out when you can download if you do not have access, go to http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/get_it.mspx to pre-register for the Community Tech Preview. The official Microsoft page at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/features/forbiz/smallbiz.mspx for information as to why it is applicable for small businesses is a little thin today. However, I have been talking to small businesses and small business partners for a while and the 3 hot topics on Vista appear to be: Make me safer Make it easier to do what I want to do Make my PC more reliable Depending on your point of view, these are either really simple, or really complex, but in terms of Vista, this is how I think it breaks down. There are obviously thousands of Vista features, but these too me start to make it a no-brainer Make me safer Better security features (admin users and virtualization...
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Thu, May 25 2006

  • Office 2007 beta 2 is now downloadable – you can play with it online or download it

    Hi there, this is just a very quick post to say that Office 2007 beta 2 is available. For more info on how to play with Office, go to http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview - to understand how to get ready for the online test drive, go to http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/beta/testdrive.mspx?showIntro=n and if you want to download or order CD’s/DVDs now, go to http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/beta/getthebeta.mspx?showIntro=n . Small Business Information can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/smallbusiness/highlights.mspx and this is actually a very good quality set of information. Thinking specifically about the desktop and areas where small business owners can immediately see value, I see this coming in the following areas: Manage information better How many people are going to have less information next year Reduce the duplication Be more productive Loose the fear factor Stop using Office the 1996 way Look professional Make your documents look several notches above everyone elses...
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Thu, May 25 2006
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  • How to feedback on Office Beta 2007 easily with the smiley and sad faces

    This is such a simple concept and such a great way to offer feedback. Simply press the faces if you are happy or sad with Office and a screenshot and your comments. How easy is that? You can download the tool or read more at http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/05/26/607768.aspx . If you want a deeper discussion, you can find out more at http://www.microsoft.com/office/community/en-us/default.mspx Ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Fri, Jun 2 2006

  • Tell us how the Technology Assessment Toolkit helps you and earn cash

    You can get the Technology Toolkit from http://www.microsoft.com/uk/partner/sales_and_marketing/partner_initiatives/rightserver/default.aspx?page=sell which provides information on this tool and how it can help you spot, sell and close deals. If the toolkit is very useful then SBSC Members can also report their success to Microsoft and earn money to spend in the MS Merchandise store. To get details on the offer (which is available all over the world) can be found at https://www.mssboffers.com/Default.aspx ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Fri, Jun 2 2006

  • Windows Server 2003 and Virtual Server 2005 R2 - learn more with PTS-TV and Dave Sayers talking Virtualisation

    If you laughed at my exploits on PTS-TV - and even if you did not, go to PTS-TV and see DAve Sayers talk about Virtualisation. http://www.microsoft.com/uk/partner/blog/pts-tv ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Tue, Jun 13 2006

  • More on how to debug a crash (BSOD) from the dump file, or want some amazing Windows diagnostic and support tools

    I was not at Tech-Ed this year, but people like Susan Bradley and Vlad Mazek were. While they blogged on lots of interesting subjects, one that I thought I would bring up would be the how to examine a crash dump file. This was presented by Mark Russinovich who runs the amazing www.sysinternals.com site. To see the Tech-Ed presentation, go to http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032298075&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Wed, Jun 21 2006

  • Site look and feel updated

    I found some amazing site themes at http://japan.communityserver.info/ and have updated the default site with this. If you wish to change it back, click http://uksbsguy.com/user/EditProfile.aspx and select the site theme of "default for CS2.0". You might also notice the Posts on this site Zoom Cloud showing you a cloud of the keywords mentioned on the site. See the site in it's full glory at http://uksbsguy.com ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Fri, Jun 23 2006

  • Logging bugs in Vista and why we need them logged

    Tim, one of the community leads has a blog that I recommend people to subscribe too. He has said he has had to give up on Vista as it just fails to work . Susan Bradley then asks of Tim if he has logged a bug , but I also remember a long post by Tim on how hard it was to log bugs and being a beta tester. I then did a search of the internet and a few people have asked how to log a Vista bug and the answer appears to be to download a tool and then fill in the details. One thing to say is that things like 3rd party power management tools often break things, so try NOT loading them. Also, if your machine BSODs, let it upload the file to MS so we get the dump. If it BSODs on every boot, try doing a safeboot for it to upload the bugs. There is a great tool in Vista to upload BSODs and other info and it will auto fire when an admin logs in. that is it for tonight ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Thu, Jun 29 2006

  • Did you know that you can get all the security releases each month on a downloadable ISO?

    I didn't, but a quick search on http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/results.aspx?pocId=&freetext=security%20iso&DisplayLang=en shows that since January you can download each months security patches as an ISO, carry it around with you and patch to your hearts content. ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Mon, Jul 3 2006

  • how to make accessing SBS web areas easier, so making the remote web workplace (RWW) access easier, or sharepoint etc

    I was having a look at the site on OMPL shaing (mine is up there) and I noticed that my blog had been shared by a few people, so I looked around and came across this from Javier an MVP. This post from Javier is entitled "Create easier-to-remember URLs for OWA, RWW and even Sharepoint" and it made me realise how great an this idea is. Just to add to this, I have a 3rd tool to add, which is ISAPI Rewrite, which I use for this site. From Javier's site: If you are running SBS you must know by now that you need to type http://something.yourdomain.com/exchange or /remote to access OWA or RWW from the internet. One issue that I often encounter is that users forget those URLs are (specially if the are technologically-impaired J ). So, what about giving your users simpler URLs? Like http://webmail.yourdomain.com for OWA and/or http://remote.yourdomain.com for RWW It is all so simple, go read his blog entry for more. As I said, he gives two ways to do this, my 3rd is to use ISAPI_rewrite to have lots more control. For this...
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Wed, Jul 5 2006

  • Livemeeting today @4:30pm for SBSC members on Vista and Office - by Jo Carpenter and David Overton - ask us the hard questions

    Howdy folks, I thought I would remind all those SBSC members about the Office and Vista webcast happening today - as it is a livemeeting it will be mainly demos, plus some nuggets on positioning the technology. This is one of my monthly technology webcasts that you are welcom to join. To register (you need to do this a little in advance to get the final link via e-mail), go to http://msevents-eu.microsoft.com/cui/eventdetail.aspx?EventID=118771191&Culture=en-GB and sign up. This is one of the perks of being an SBSC member. ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Wed, Jul 5 2006

  • Vista Complete PC Backup and Virtual Server / PC disks

    I spoke to Matt in our team recently about the backup and disk image technology in Vista and lo and behold, off he went and wrote a whole blog article on it with some fantastic links. The backup in Vista has been critised by quite a few as it does not allow the user to perform granual backups, however I do think that most users who want to backup their documents are more than capable fo simply draging their documents to a CD or DVD and having it burn. For those who want a more robust backup, the Complete PC backup of Vista does a full system image backup. While some find the lack of control fustrating, every end user I have spoken to simply wants a reliable regular backup - nothing more - and this is delivered excellently. ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Fri, Jul 7 2006

  • Virtual PC is now free - so you can use it to build better demos and carry them with you, or run legacy OSs on a PC for compatibility reasons

    Hi guys, here at Partner Conference and one of the snippets I picked up is that Virtual PC is now a free download, following the lead Virtual Server. There are restrictions I believe, in the number of hosts, but how great is this. The product can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/downloads/sp1.mspx ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Wed, Jul 12 2006

  • Queenie (Susanne Dansey) meets Allison Watson, as did Chris, but who is Allison Watson?

    If you know anything about the Microsoft Partner organization then you should know that Allison Watson heads it up. Susanne Dansey comments on her blog that she recently met Allison at the UK Party in the evening at the Worldwide Partner Conference. A bit of background has just hit the press on Allison Watson and it shows how determined she is to improve the life of a Microsoft Partner. Further proof that some of us are human – really. Ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Tue, Jul 18 2006

  • Understand what the community can do for you–See Susanne, Mark and Tom from the WW Partner Conf

    They were great – they came from the UK and they told the world how to get the benefits of the community – still don't understand it, try reading these: Vladfire Episode 2: SBS Show — True Hollywood Story Vladfire Episode 3: Jump into the community & SBSC with Susanne Dansey Ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Thu, Jul 20 2006

  • David Overton moving to a solution / revenue based role (it means I need to help partners sell)

    Many people ask me what I do and sometimes they are amazed with the answer "I help Microsoft Partners build solutions that deliver value to their small business partners – for free". This is a great job and part of it is to engage with as many partners as possible to improve the quality and knowledge around the solutions that can be built upon Microsoft technology. This year my role has a slightly different focus, but the way I achieve it will have many similarities. It has becoming important for me to ensure that partners are not just technically capable, but also selling solutions, sometimes even offering their customers alternative licensing options to suit their business needs. Some may see this as me selling out in some way, but while I love technology, if it is not applied correctly and you and I can't make money out of it, then there is a limit to the business value of the technology. I will still be blogging, posting on both business and technical ideas, but also be discussing how to...
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Fri, Jul 21 2006

  • How to open Office 2007 Word, Excel and PowerPoint files in Office 2003 and Office XP

    This is a straight lift from a recent TechNet newsletter, but if you don't get it... Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 Microsoft has added new file formats to the 2007 Microsoft Office system to reduce file sizes, improve the recovery of corrupted or damaged files, and improve integration with external sources. The Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 file formats (Beta 2) ensures that users of Microsoft Office XP and Office 2003 can exchange documents between Office releases. Get more information on the Open XML file format page. ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Sat, Jul 22 2006
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  • Updated Technology Assessment Toolkit – Understand your customers and deliver the right solution

    Hopefully you have all heard of the Technology Assessment Toolkit – if not, it is a great set of tools, whitepapers, presentations and other "stuff" to enable you to quickly take your customer through the thought process as to what technology can do for them and how you can deliver the value their business needs. One award submission to the Worldwide Partner Conference awards stated – "We make great use of the Small Business Technology Assessment Toolkit we received from Microsoft. This has proved to be an invaluable tool for us and our clients in outlining their business / IT requirements & defining the solutions. We provide an excellent service to our clients & they recognise this from the hard work we put in for every installation—from sales, design, installation & post-installation support—they know they are in good hands and we would never let them down." As to the actual contents of the toolkit: Ready-to-use "Business Assessment" guide Comprehensive...
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Mon, Jul 24 2006
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