Blogs

One of the most commonly asked questions is "How do I get Microsoft to send me leads?" While we run campaigns that point people to the bCentral site and the find a small business IT advisor process some want more direct action. Well, using the Mr Busy campaign you can now get us to carry our a campaign on your behalf. Yes, that is right, we will carry out a campaign on your behalf to people you want to - either by e-mail (EM) or post (DM). The process is really simple - go here and read the instructions. For the Post Card campaign we know that using post cards effectively communicate with your customers and provide short and focused information. You can customise the postcard with your company details, your logo and a relevant web URL and phone number. We advise that the URL you supply has information about the IT healthcheck to increase the number of customers then contacting you. Your postcards will be sent directly to your customers in a neutral envelope within five business days of you submitting...

The Video I have delivered a number of Vista and Office demos over my time, so I decided to record a number of them for others to borrow, use, learn from or anything else they choose. This video covers the following subjects in enough detail for people to hopefully understand what they need to know on how to use these features in Excel 2007 and apply them to all of the Office 2007 applications: Find a template and use it - I use an accounting template as it is based on Office 2003 and US based Change the currency cells from dollars to pounds using find and replace for formatting Change the date formatting from US to UK Dragging a list across a range of cells to give column a different month To see the Excel 2007 Video played using Silverlight (just try it) click here *. If you want to download it as a WMV file then head over to the new bCentral - the UK Small Business Center on MS.com - It is on this page as an Excel Accounting sample: * it will take a few moments to open if you have Silverlight installed and...

[updated on 28th July] Hi, I've pinged this around a bit internally and the answer I got back is that this is not supported and will not work. I have not tried it myself, but don't expect it to work. If you need this sort of functionality you need to look at MS-CRM I am afraid. History: You need a Volume License of Office 2007 to run in Terminal Services. You can get BCM with Volume Licensing of Office 2007 as noted at http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/suites/FX101635841033.aspx Outlook running in Terminal Services does not run in cached mode - http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/ba930d00-dc38-4564-ad00-8304d74f1d8c1033.mspx?mfr=true 3) BCM requires Outlook to run in cached mode (Office 2003 note in a KB about this - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/831747/en-us and I have had PSS confirm this is still the case with BCM and Office 2007) Wish this was not the case, but better to say up front rather than pretend. Now, updated, if you look at How to enable cached mode for Outlook when used inside...

You can tell from the title the favourite things I have found testing the latest version of Hotmail - well it is now public - we start rolling these features and more out over the Hotmail clusters. For more information look at the Ellie Powers-Boyle blog post Your mail is here, come and get it!: August: Hotmail will soon bring you more of your requests, better.performance . Obviously if you are a Office Live customer then you will also see these changes coming to you. For the international of us, I have called "Vacation Replies" Out of Office - you know what I mean then :-) 13 August August: Hotmail will soon bring you more of your requests, better performance We went out of beta in May, and we’re already releasing something new. Today, these new features will begin to roll our gradually to all our customers over the next few weeks, so if you don’t immediately see them, be patient, they’re coming! It’s a fun time to be working on Hotmail. We already did a ton of work to get the basics ready to get out...

Nothing like a blog entry on licensing to stir the people into action. Vijay posted a "small" post - Who understands Microsoft Licensing? . I'm now going to respond to both the main blog post and also some of the comments. I highly recommend you read the entry, the comments (some are included below, also for comment) and the linked blogs, especially the entry by Adam at Sorting out the complexity of Microsoft Volume Licensing as well as the others My conclusion to this question is that hardly anyone understands Microsoft Licensing. I’ve been to quite a few Microsoft Partner events and when the above question above is asked there is usually a very low number of businesses who say they understand it. This feedback is given time and time again but nothing really changes. The solution isn’t explaining it over and over again or writing Licensing Reseller Handbooks. If you can't explain something to a customer in a very succint way, then it’s just a waste of time and if as an organisation you have...

As many people know, I love Windows Vista. I think it is often sold short and people look at other OSs with rose tinted glasses. Part of this is due to past faults of Microsoft who once upon a time did have too many BSODs and where security was not taken seriously, but now days security is often placed above usability (although there is very careful attention to both) and BSODs are now more likely to be caused by dodgy unsigned drivers rather than MS code or some rogue application. Even these occurrences seems to be few and very far between. I believe that while many people criticise Vista, this is often a sheep like repetition rather than 1st hand experience. Susan has a little post comparing when people say "Vista Sucks", but when pressed with "Have you tried it?" retort with "I've heard" ( http://msmvps.com/blogs/bradley/archive/2007/09/19/quot-i-ve-heard-quot.aspx ). I still feel that much of Vistas bad press comes from the "I've heard" camp. Just to stress this...

Chris Parkes sent a mail round internally telling us about MORE resources & demos etc available to partners. Chris has written about it on his blog (discovered this after I wrote this - here , there may be some comments on his worth reading, so double check!!) The Demo Showcase has been extended to include Deep Dive/Product virtual environments *which are available to all partners * Only Demo Showcase remains as the Gold/Cert benefit moving forwards... The following are now available for immediate download: 2007 Microsoft Office System 47 Hands-on Labs 25 demonstrations Microsoft Forefront and System Center Demonstration Toolkit Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager Microsoft System Center Operations Manager Intelligent Application Gateway Microsoft Forefront Security for Exchange Server Forefront Client Security Microsoft Business Intelligence Demo (Data warehousing, reporting and analysis, performance management) Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007...

I have a Windows Home Server at home and I decided I wanted it to be responsible for handing out DHCP and DNS addresses in the house. All very good, but when I set up the services none of it worked because of the built in Windows Firewall. While I could have just turned off the Firewall I decided to learn how to put the holes into the firewall to make it work with the firewall, thus maintaining better security. A quick search of the web showed me many settings, but it did not seem to cover the whole picture – then I came across the MS site Windows Firewall Settings which has things broken down into these four handy sections that shall for ever more be my guides to ports and firewalls in the Microsoft world. What is more, as you will see later, the tips in here as to how to get things working, getting over common hurdles is quite stunning too: Windows Firewall Settings: Optional Components Windows Firewall Settings: Remote Administration Tools Windows Firewall Settings: Server Roles Windows Firewall Settings: Services...

I saw this at the Special Offers site from the Small Business team and thought I would share. Office Small Business 2007 – get up to 25% off Buy Office 2007 Small Business Edition before 17 January and you can get a discount of up to 25%. Enhance productivity in your workplace and manage tasks and your customers more efficiently with Microsoft Office Small Business 2007. Excel, Word, Publisher, Outlook and PowerPoint provide all the tools you need to give your business a professional edge. (Offer applies to FPP (Fully-Packaged Product) only, ie not via volume licensing or OEM etc.) Availability: UK Small Businesses Valid from: December 21 2008 Offer expires: January 17 2009 How to buy: Equanet: Microsoft Office 2007 Small Business CD Equanet: 2007 Version Upgrade Grey Matter: Microsoft Office 2007 Small Business CD MacWarehouse: Microsoft Office 2007 Small Business CD MacWarehouse: 2007 Version Upgrade Microwarehouse: Microsoft Office 2007 Small Business CD Microwarehouse: 2007 Version Upgrade PC World Business...

It seems like an age ago that I spoke with a film crew about my daughter's at Microsoft's nursery and about the depression that first came visiting over 3 years ago now.  As a result they spent some time with us as we put up the Christmas lights on the house .  This is always a cheerful time of the year for me, but as the video shows I am still very aware of my unhappy side and the understanding my family, especially Melanie show towards me. This simple 3 minute video aired mid-August on Channel 4, but until now was not legally available on line.  Martin, the producer has made mine and the other 7 videos available at http://vimeo.com/channels/microsoftbabies .  All the videos show how the families of Microsoft employees live, work and look after their loved ones.  Mine, shockingly titled Crisis is embedded below: CRISIS from Martin Hampton on Vimeo .   I hope you get to see the very human side of the people that make up Microsoft UK.   thanks   David

HI, I've been asked this many times, so I thought I would blog on it.  Microsoft offers great discounts for people in education (beyond those who work in education).  The best options are: For university students: http://www.microsoft.com/student/discounts/theultimatesteal-uk/default.aspx - – Office £38.95, Windows 7 Pro - £30 For any age group in education - Office 2007 for around £39- £52 depending on which edition (Standard to Enterprise) and Windows 7 upgrades for £40-56 depending on the edition http://www.software4students.co.uk/ http://www.rm.com/shops/thebasement/Range.aspx?nguid=480909c5-102c-4700-8739-f3feedbb6a6d http://www.rm.com/shops/thebasement/Range.aspx?nguid=59137e0c-6185-4d95-a360-a680d60636ea     There are obviously some conditions you have to meet to qualify to use these products and each site has information about them.  If you are in full time education or a parent of someone who is then you likely qualify.  To learn more about Microsoft and education in...

Thank-you for your interest in Sync for SkyDrive. Following all the feedback from version 1 and 2, I’ve finished release 6 (version number 2.0.0.26 in the store) and submitted to the Windows Store and can be found at the Windows Store: [27th March 2013] A new version of the application is now in the Windows Store. You can find details of it here . The tool is not free, but it is at the lowest price point I can make for the Windows Store (from the UK). The purpose of the tool is very simple, to enable you to synchronise chosen folders from Microsoft SkyDrive to a Windows RT (or Windows 8) device. While I would like this to be something that happened automatically, the processing time required does not fit into the Microsoft allowed timings for a Windows RT/8 device for battery consumption, so this is still a “user initiated process”. While Windows 8 has a synchronisation tool for the desktop, Windows RT does not, so here is my offering in this space. How does it work The tool scans chosen folders...

One of the recent heated discussions has been around the services that Microsoft has started to offer to consumers and small businesses. Last night at the Thames Valley Partner Group I was asked in Microsoft was going to start servicing customers directly. This was then followed by Matt's presentation ( http://www.axxis.com ) on SLAs and much discussion was had about how people do/don't want to deal with those "how do I format my Excel spreadsheet" type questions. So I thought I would highlight the services Microsoft offers, for both consumers and small businesses, but we are hardly alone in this and I think it ties up to Vlad's post at http://www.vladville.com/2006/04/your-potentialour-passion-they-took-r.html . The world is constantly changing, online services are being offered by many people and Microsoft is working to see how new partner can benefit and existing parnters can take advantage of them. So let's look at the services: SB+ / One Care - information about this can be found at https://www.microsoft...