Bloggers

CRM 2011 Outlook Client - Stuck in reboot loop installing SQL Express

Blog — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 22:43:25 GMT

Ran into this issue today when trying to install the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 for Microsoft Office Outlook where the installer would constantly ask for a reboot when trying to install “Microsoft SQL Server Express Edition 2008 (CRM)”. No matter how many times you rebooted it would always ask to reboot again. Note: This only happens if you use the “Offline” functionality. The solution to this is to manually install Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Express and call the instance...(read more)

Use a custom TFS Work Item Query to keep track of what you’ve worked on today

Blog — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 23:39:20 GMT

At SSW we need to record timesheets for all the work that we do. Normally keeping track of what you’ve worked on is difficult and you end up writing “Worked on web stuff” If you use TFS you can easily keep track of the Work Items that you’ve completed today You can then just copy and paste the results into your timesheets Read More......(read more)

Trimming down the size of your Outlook OST

Blog — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 06:35:00 GMT

Recently my Outlook 2010 OST grew to over 4GB of space which made Outlook slow. One of the biggest reasons why it’s this large is SSW’s policy against auto-archiving and never permanently deleting anything. As a result my Deleted Items folder was actually 2.1 GB! Now, I don’t actually need all of those items as they do span back about 4 years. So the goal is to only bring down the current year’s deleted items. Read More......(read more)

Adding configurable parameters to a Custom TFS Build Workflow Template & Remote Compiling Source Code on Unix

Blog — Tue, 31 May 2011 02:06:23 GMT

I’m currently working at a client that requires some source code to compile in Unix - as their major systems are Unix based with new development being done in .NET. The great thing about the project is that they have are trying to consolidate everything into TFS as the single source of truth (it’s mostly there). To get the unix stuff going I’ve customized the DefaultTemplate.xaml and added an extra InvokeProcess that calls a PowerShell script to copy files to Unix using Pscp (for...(read more)

Adding configurable parameters to a Custom TFS 2010 Build Template & Remote Compiling Source Code on Unix

Blog — Tue, 31 May 2011 02:06:23 GMT

Customizing Work Items in TFS 2010

Blog — Wed, 25 May 2011 01:32:07 GMT

The Team Foundation Server Power Tools allow you to edit templates online or offline. In the online mode, changes you make are instantly visible when you save the changes so be careful. I would advise creating a dummy Team Project to do the customizations on first before rolling the changes out to actual Team Projects. The offline mode works by saving the work item definitions locally as XML and making changes to the XML file. You will need to import the XML to the Team Project to deploy the changes...(read more)

Customizing Process Templates and Work Items in Visual Studio 2010

Blog — Tue, 24 May 2011 15:30:00 GMT

One of the best features of Team Foundation Server 2010 is the ability to customize and create your own Process Templates, Work Items and Fields. The first thing you’ll need is to install the Team Foundation Server Power Tools . This will give you a menu under Tools | Process Editor to customize the templates From here you can start modifying the Work Item Types (WIT) in existing Team Projects or create new WITs. The most frequent requests I get from TFS users is to: Add additional fields to a work...(read more)

RE: Microsoft ASP.NET - Too many options

Blog — Fri, 06 May 2011 02:00:29 GMT

Repsonding to Peter Gfader’s blog post about Microsoft ASP.NET - Too many options I see WebMatrix as an entry level tool to get people who don’t necessary have a development background a quick way to build and customize websites (using the templates and editors) on the Microsoft platform. It lowers the barriers to entry because you have one lightweight tool (7MB + about 20 MB of dependencies) that can edit web pages and manage your SQL. If the user wants to do more than they will need...(read more)

VSTO Addins break after Visual Studio 2010 SP1 install, can't find config file

Blog — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 07:36:00 GMT

I ran into a breaking change with Visual Studio 2010 SP1 and VSTO at a client today. It seems there was a change that caused Office addins to look for their config files in the application’s folder instead of from the addin’s folder (e.g. Word.exe.config or Excel.exe.config). The result is all sorts of chaos with AppSettings, WCF service bindings and anything else that needs to be read from the app.config The details are posted here on connect - Visual Studio SP1 (or specifically VSTO...(read more)

The case of the Missing Team Project in VS 2010

Blog — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 21:00:00 GMT

Ran into a strange issue today when trying to upgrade a project from VS2008 to VS2010. We are running TFS 2010 and the Team Project appears fine in Team Explorer under VS2008 but is mysteriously missing from Team Explorer in VS2010. My windows account is also part of the Project Collection Administrators group. Read More......(read more)

TIP - Enable MVC 3 “Add | View…” to Orchard Code Generated Module projects

Blog — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 06:38:36 GMT

When you use the command line interface in Orchard to generate a module, it seems you cannot use the context menus to create views and you end up manually creating the *.cshtml files. That is when you right click on the project and select “Add” there’s no “View…” option. This is because the project type isn’t being set correctly by the Orchard code generator. Read More......(read more)

You are not Authorized to Access \ when adding a CodedUI Test

Blog — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 01:09:10 GMT

When trying to add a Coded UI Test using an existing action recording, you may receive the following error: TF30063: You are not authorized to access <TFSServer>\<Collection> Read More......(read more)

VSTO Tip - Show Errors from your Add-In

Blog — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 03:15:21 GMT

By default, Microsoft have chosen to hide user interface errors for Office add-ins. That means whenever an unhandled exception occurs, you are none the wiser if you’re not debugging. There are two solutions to this: Implement an exception handler (like LadyLog ) Show the errors by changing the end user options Read More......(read more)

VSTO Tip - Stop the built in Ribbon reflection from slowing your add-in's load time

Blog — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 01:10:35 GMT

Behind the scenes, when a VSTO addin or customization loads, the runtime uses reflection to search for all Ribbon controls and customizations and automatically adds them to the appropriate extension regions. This process makes it easy for developers as they don’t have to worry about hooking up the Ribbon Tab that they’ve developed to the Ribbon, or add a new menu item to the Office Menu. However, it can make the add-in’s startup time slower if your Office solution has many references...(read more)

VSTO - Error when adding items to ComboBox

Blog — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 00:41:47 GMT

Ran into this issue when designing a Ribbon (Visual Designer) control that contained a ComboBox. After you add items to the ComboBox using the properties window, everything appears fine until you attempt to Save or Build. You will get the following error: Code generation for property ‘Items’ failed. Error was: ‘Object reference not set to an instance of an object’ Read More......(read more)

Tip – Test sending emails from your application without an SMTP Server

Blog — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 02:20:00 GMT

Frequently the applications that we develop will need to send out an email (e.g. for account registration, order confirmation or newsletter). How does a developer tests that the emails are formatted and mail merged correctly? The options you have are: Local or other SMTP server (not applicable for Windows 7 as there is no local SMTP server option anymore) Local Directory Delivery Smtp4Dev (recommended) Read More......(read more)

Configuring IIS 6.0 for Silverlight

Blog — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 01:00:18 GMT

p>By default when you deploy a Silverlight application to an IIS 6.0 server and try to load the page, you will get a JavaScript error: Error: Unhandled Error in Silverlight Application Code: 2104 Category: InitializeError Message: Could not download the Silverlight application. Check web server settings Read More......(read more)

Setting up ASP.NET 4.0 with IIS 6.0

Blog — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 02:47:36 GMT

You may run into an error with Windows 2003 Server and IIS 6.0 when trying to deploy an ASP.NET 4.0 web application. <compilation debug=”true” targetFramework=”4.0” > <assemblies> : : </assemblies> </compilation> Exception information: Exception type: ConfigurationErrorsException Exception...(read more)

Fix slow loading mkv files in VLC in Mac OSX

Blog — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 10:11:09 GMT

Was having a frustrating few months with MKV files containing subtitles taking up to 30 seconds to load in VLC. The solution to the problem is to grant write permissions to the fontconfig file. So the simple fix is this: Open up Terminal.app Type in “sudo chmod 777 /usr/X11/var/cache/fontconfig” Now MKV files containing subtitles will load instantly! Read More......(read more)

Adding custom http header to WCF requests

Blog — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 13:14:36 GMT

I needed to add a customer http header to the outgoing request of a web service call (for authentication purposes). With old web services it was easy to do this, but with WCF it’s a bit tricker. The good thing is that WCF is *very* extensible. To do this, we need to create a custom WCF behavior and message inspector. The solution file is available in the resources section of the post. Read More......(read more)