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Ken Hughes... - Archiving
Productivity, Technology and Automating Everything...
    
 

The company I work for (C2C) are hiring.

We are looking for Technical Support Engineers to work in our Reading, UK office.

We'll consider any experience level as long as the individuals show commitment, determination to learn / succeed and have a passion for technology.

You might be right out of school / college, looking for your first step into an IT career, you might be an Exchange expert with many years of experience.
We can promise variety, leading edge technology, in depth technical problems to investigate and input into the product direction.

Want to apply ?, email us at hr@c2c.com

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Posted: Monday, February 12, 2007 12:55:15 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #   Comments [0]
TAGS: Archiving | Exchange | Software | Support | Technical

This week (so far) has been good - in terms of completing things, productivity and new products.

First off, Microsoft finally released PowerShell for Vista. No more having to 'play' on my old lab machine to get to grips with this stuff. There seem to be a number of people reporting failed installs(due to EFS encryption being disabled), just read the comments of the PowerShell blog announcement.

Next, we're just coming to the final couple of days of a 'Supporting Exchange 2007, Office 2007 and Vista SPRINT' at work (we use a form of SCRUM as our development process) - all is looking good and we have beta sites lined up.

Then, I noticed Eileen's (the most communicative Microsoft employee on the planet) post about Office 2003 to Office 2007 command references. An interactive demo from Microsoft when you can click the toolbars and menus of an Office 2003 application and it tells you how to find the equivalent command/function in Office 2007. I spent some time finding the 10 or so commands I'd been having difficulty with and increased my productivity.
Here's her post : http://blogs.technet.com/eileen_brown/archive/2007/01/31/old-to-new-reference-guides.aspx

Then late last night (again at work) we just completed our internal testing before sending our Archive One product for Microsoft Platform testing. We are testing against 5 of the 6 platform tests (we don't fit into the 'Managed Code' test category as we make extensive use of MAPI which basically requires C++ / Unmanaged code)

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Posted: Thursday, February 01, 2007 10:42:07 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #   Comments [0]
TAGS: Archiving | Development | Exchange | Outlook | Scripting | Software | Technical | Tools

We had a customer issue yesterday that manifested itself as the user getting a HTTP 401 error when trying to connect to a Website (that is part of our Product).

The user was logged into the domain, the virtual directory was set for 'Windows Integrated Authentication' so they should have been able to connect no problem.

After so investigation we opened the IIS logs and found that the substatus code was 2 (HTTP Error 401.2 - Access denied by server configuration). A bit of searching around the Microsoft KB unearthed this article:

Troubleshooting HTTP 401 errors in IIS

Common reasons

• No authentication protocol (including anonymous) is selected in IIS. At least one authentication type must be selected. For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

253667 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/253667/) Error message: HTTP 401.2 - Unauthorized: Logon failed due to server configuration with no authentication

• Only Integrated authentication is enabled, and an older, non-Internet Explorer client browser tries to access the site. This happens because the client browser cannot perform Integrated authentication. To resolve this problem, use one of the following methods:

• Configure IIS to accept Basic authentication. This should only occur over SSL for security purposes.

• Use a client browser that can perform Integrated authentication. Internet Explorer and new versions of Netscape Navigator and Mozilla Firefox can perform Integrated authentication.

• Integrated authentication is through a proxy. This happens because the proxy doesn't maintain the NTLM-authenticated connection and thus sends an anonymous request from the client to the server. Options to resolve this problem are as follows:

 

• Configure IIS to accept Basic authentication. This should only occur over SSL for security purposes.

• Don't use a proxy.

 

Turns out our customer was using a Proxy Server - adding the FQDN of our Website component to the proxy exclusions list solved the problem.

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Posted: Wednesday, January 03, 2007 10:32:46 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #   Comments [1]
TAGS: .NET | Archiving | Software | Support

At work I have been the champion of an Integration Framework for our Archive One product. This is a set of API's, events and open file formats embedded into the Archive One products that allow customization 'around the edge'.

The kind of thing that can be done with the Integration Framework is running searches, interworking with the AD schema, running archive policies, integration into Network Management Systems or Document Management Systems and the like - it really opens the product to other business systems as either the slave (other systems controlling Archive One) or the master (other systems being controlled by Archive One).

We have been writing up the API documentation recently and had initially started this as a (Word) document we would publish to customers and developers. I looked into NDoc which now seems dead (at least for VS2005 and .NET2.0) and then came across Sandcastle. Sandcastle is Microsoft's answer to NDoc, it allows the collation and generation of documentation from the XML comments embedded in your code

Right now it is at CTP stage and is command line driven - a few projects have sprung up which provide a UI for it (backing on to the CLI). One is a VS2005 add in (which I installed but it wasn't immediately obvious how to use it, so I didn't really pursue) and other is SandcastleGUI - this provides a single form where you choose the options, point it to the folders containing the Sandcastle app, the code DLLs and where you want the docs to end up and then simply kick it off.

When you hit 'Start Documenting' it closes the form and fires off a command prompt window (batch files) which in turn fires off other command prompt windows until it's collated everything and built the documentation.

It allows you to generate html documents - a whole website, multiple pages, images etc or a compiled help file (.chm) or even both if you wish.

Another of the options is 'Online MSDN Links' this provides a MSDN link for every object type it can find in the base class library. Be warned enabling this option means it has to reflect through about 14500 classes / objects in the framework so that they can be indexed and used if found in your app / library. Enabling this option increases the time to generate from about 1 minute (on my Dual Core laptop) to about 15 minutes - I'd recommend disabling this option whilst developing the app / library and only enable it when you are doing the final or release build.

The resulting documentation is really good quality - pretty much the same format as MSDN documentation.

For the effort of a few extra XML comment lines in your code this provides great value and a very comprehensive resulting document.

The easiest way I have found to integrate this into VS2005 is to set it up as an External Tool.

I create a folder under the solution folder named 'Documentation', I run SandcastleGUI manually the first time around, do all the required configuration and then save the settings to a file in the solution directory (don't save it in the 'Documentation' folder as that is cleared out with each Sandcastle run.

I have an 'External Tool' configured which points to SandcastleGUI with parameters of :

/document $(ProjectDir)\settings.SandcastleGUI

(I called the settings file 'settings.SandcastleGUI') and called the tool :

Sandcastle This Project

This allows me to simply click this tool and it will go away and create all the documentation (with my chosen parameters) for the project.

As I mentioned this is CTP at the moment - I look forward to the release version, hopefully fully integrated into Visual Studio and stylesheets that exactly mimic MSDN.

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Posted: Wednesday, November 22, 2006 9:27:47 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #   Comments [1]
TAGS: .NET | Archiving | Development | Software | Tools

At work we are heavily into MAPI (we provide email archiving solutions).

MAPI is Microsoft's mainstream supported and recommended protocol for accessing Exchange. There are currently two main versions of MAPI - 'Exchange MAPI' and 'Outlook MAPI'.

Exchange MAPI is the version that is installed when you install Exchange System Manager (ESM) and is the recommended version to use for enterprise applications that work with Exchange.
Outlook MAPI is the version that is installed when you install Outlook - it is NOT recommended for enterprise applications.

Now, there are also two types of PST files - the original Outlook 97-2002 version and the newer Outlook 2003 Unicode version (Outlook 2003 supports both versions, but no other version of Outlook supports the Unicode version).

The problem is that the ESM version of MAPI does not support the 2003 / Unicode version of PST files either. This is real pain, meaning that we have to use the ESM version (if we want to go with Microsoft's best practices) for our application, but if we want to support the Unicode PSTs we need to somehow use the Outlook version (NOTE: Microsoft absolutely do NOT support both versions of MAPI installed on the same machine).

Apparently the new MAPI 2007 version (that will be downloadable for use with Exchange 2007) was initially slated to support both, but, I've since heard this will not be the case. So currently (and possibly in Exchange / Outlook 2007), the only way to work with Unicode PSTs is via Outlook MAPI.

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Posted: Thursday, November 16, 2006 1:12:23 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #   Comments [0]
TAGS: Archiving | Development | Exchange

The company I work for (C2C Systems) are a Microsoft Gold Partner this is great in that it gives us a whole bunch of licenses for internal use, it also gives us (almost ??) unlimited access to software for test, development and demonstration. The problem is :-

Demonstration licences are provided for customer demonstration purposes only – that is, licences to be used only by employees of the company with customer contacts. 
[extracted from the Microsoft Partner Programme document (v7.1)]

When you think about it, this is incredibly limiting - it means that someone from the company has to be present at the demonstration (in person or remotely)...

Now, our solution (Archive One, email archiving) works with Exchange Server, our normal demos are on a system with Exchange 2003 (aside: although we do work with Exchange 2007 already) meaning we need Windows 2003 and all the Active Directory baggage.

Virtual Server technology (in fact any virtualization technology) allows me to generate a number of Virtual Machine images and run them on one machine and hey presto I have a full demo / evaluation environment - the limiting factor is licensing - If I want to just give people (resellers and / or customers) copies of those images so that they can easily test / evaluate our solution then I have to license it (Win2003, Exchange 2003, WinXP etc)

I think Microsoft really missed a trick here - some kind of (slightly) crippled or trial version of the OS and apps, that partners can redistribute, would have been great - BANG - you have a easy way for everyone to roll out full demo environments of there software / systems.

As a customer I can grab the DVD (or download the images) and evaluate without having to go through the pain of putting together a bunch of servers, setting up a test environment yadda yadda...

As a partner I can grab the DVD (or download the images) and immediately go out and start demo'ing it to my customers (the same way that vendor does)...

Anyway, I'm trying to beat up the Virtual Server / Licensing team over this...

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Posted: Wednesday, October 25, 2006 1:48:13 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)  #   Comments [0]
TAGS: Archiving | Exchange | Software

At the 2006 Microsoft Partner Program Awards, C2C (my employer) won the Customer Experience Award for outstanding customer service.

Read all about it here.

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Posted: Tuesday, October 03, 2006 4:29:08 AM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)  #   Comments [0]
TAGS: Archiving | Exchange

I've recently implemented the SCRUM methodology at work (C2C Systems).

It has been a really interesting process, has taught us some very valuable lessons and provided a number of benefits :

  1. There are many things that go into the development process that people do not view as (or understand are) part of the software development lifecycle (SDLC). During the first couple of Sprints we didn't have all of these surrounding tasks in the backlog so our time estimates for getting features complete were a good deal off. However this was made visibile by the daily SCRUM meeting very quickly and sorted out on the subsequent Sprints.
  2. Developers really appreciate the kind of visibility it gives them of what is going on. What is left to do and in what sort of timescale, also what the objective for the Sprint is and the (non changing) list of tasks for the Sprint are.
  3. It doesn't work well when you have interdependant tasks in the same Sprint. OK, maybe one or two would be OK but lots of dependancies are a bad thing. All design and investigation work should be in the first (or early) Sprint and the coding in the subsequent (or later) Sprints.
  4. It 's incredible the visibility you get of Impediments. ...and the difference it makes when you 'fix' them. Fixing them also demonstrate to the development team you are serious about helping them be successful.
  5. It 's incredible the difference it makes when you focus everyone on SCRUM work. For example we got a little behind during one Sprint, we focused all developers on the Sprint work, barred interruptions (I triaged all Support Escalations for the day) and the productivity for the day went through the roof.
  6. Our estimating (of timescales) improved beyond recognition. Instead of 'Oh that'll take about 2 weeks', you get accurate estimates (because the developers know that you have all components of the SDLC in the 'plan' they feel more comfortable providing accurate timescales instead of trying to cover their arses). I measure the delta between time worked on a task and the time estimated, then add all those together for all tasks and generate a percentage figure - last Sprint was 98% accuracy in our estimating

Here are some links that I found useful when planning / implementing SCRUM.

and here is a sample Excel spreadsheet I use for planning and tracking our SCRUM projects.

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Posted: Friday, August 25, 2006 12:18:09 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)  #   Comments [0]
TAGS: Archiving | Technical

The much awaited version 4.2 of Archive One Policy (from C2C Systems, my employer) is now available. You can find details here.

The aspect I'm excited about is the Integration Framework (see here for the announcement). This opens up a whole new arena for us - we can be both subservient to other systems; and take control of other systems. We're using open file formats and hooks for any of the common scripting languages.

I'm looking forward to developing a bunch of useful scriptlets to make (archiving) life easier.

 

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Posted: Tuesday, November 22, 2005 5:33:12 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #   Comments [0]
TAGS: Technical | Archiving

Blank entry, simply to list out the categories.

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Posted: Saturday, January 01, 2005 5:32:53 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #   Comments [0]
TAGS: Archiving | C Sharp | Code Generation | Exchange | Family | Mountaineering | PHP | RSS | Scripting | Support | Technical | .NET | Design Patterns | Hardware | Dasblog | Running | Tools | Development | Software | TaHoGen | GPS
     
 
 
Copyright © 2010 Ken Hughes. All rights reserved.

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