SADev

Win 1 of 4 Tickets to Microsoft Tech·Ed Africa 2010 worth R6 150 each!!!

Venue:    ICC Durban

Date:       17th - 20th October 2010

All you need to do is take a photo of a Microsoft Tag in a really cool/funny/practical place and upload the picture to the Facebook competition page.

More details in the competition animated video here.

Full Competition Rules on our Facebook page.

Dates for Submissions & Announcements of Winners:

• 25 Aug 2010    -    Last Date For Submissions (week 1) (5pm)
• 27 Aug 2010    -    Week 1 Winner Announced
• 01 Sep 2010    -    Last Date For Submissions (week 2) (5pm)
• 03 Sep 2010    -    Week 2 Winner Announced
• 08 Sep 2010    -    Last Date For Submissions (week 3) (5pm)
• 10 Sep 2010    -    Week 3 Winner Announced
• 15 Sep 2010    -    Last Date For Submissions (week 4) (5pm)
• 17 Sep 2010    -    Week 4 Winner Announced

Submissions & Announcements of Winners:

• A new winner will be selected weekly.
• Last date for submissions for a particular week is 5pm Wednesday of that week.
• Winner for that week will be announced on the Friday.
• Submissions after 5pm will count towards the following week.
• Submissions which did not win in a previous week will still be considered in following weeks and need not be re-submitted.
• A person can only win once, thereafter all his other submissions will be ignored.
• You cannot submit on behalf of another person.
• Submissions are done by posting a photo to the Facebook page wall.

Terms and Conditions apply:

This competition is limited to Tech·Ed Africa 2010 entrance and does not include Travel, hotel or any other expenses. You will be required to help out at the Developers Community Lounge at Tech·Ed Africa 2010 for 3 hours a day if you do win. For Full list of rules please consult the Facebook page.

Over the last year I have done a number of presentations and recently some of uploaded them (unfortunately I cannot upload all, as some contain NDA information) to SlideShare so here is the collection of presentations from the last 15 months or so, in no particular order:

• ASP.NET Dynamic Data
• JSON and REST
• What’s Microsoft CRM all about?
• Source Control 101
• SQL Server Integration Services
• ASP.NET MVC
• What’s new in the .NET Framework 3.5 SP 1

If you thinking, jeez this sounds familiar well it was only 1 month and 19 days ago that rollup pack 1 shipped.

You can download it at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=aa671769-61e9-45c4-919f-c88199aa4241&displaylang=en

So what’s new?

113 known (rather publicly known issues) and 18 private (i.e. MS did not publically post articles on those) fixes!

My highlight reel of fixes

After 10 months and 20 days (since RTM) it is now out! You can download it from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=57c6267b-3b13-49dd-bfed-3cc83633aea7&displaylang=en&tm

Highlights of the release include (full list at 952858):

• 117 Fixes included!
• As usual with a rollup pack – importing and exporting customisations between different versions is not supported.
• Workflows which are stuck in In Progress or Waiting (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957701/) – fixed. I am hoping this refers to my previous posts on the issue.
• Also fixed is workflow not working when imported: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950680/ which may be related.
• When using the router it downloads the message over and over again (saw this one in the field): http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952018
• Outlook fixes for not responding or data loss!
• http://support.microsoft.com/kb/955234/
• http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954800/
• http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948121/
• http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948045/
• http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951179/
• The text length issue I posted on previously: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/955247/

Important Note - Two of the hotfixes require MANUAL configuration after the rollup has been installed. They are (click links for details):

• You cannot use Outlook as expected until all Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 add-ins are loaded
• E-mail messages from a CRM user to a queue are not delivered in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

Thanks to Jim Glass for the heads up.

I haven’t worked with MSCRM for a few months, but I still follow the news and today there was something worth acknowledging. Jim Daly released a tool which creates a Word 2007 Document detailing the configuration of all customisable Microsoft CRM 4.0 forms, including tabs, sections and details about each field.

An email asking for help on a problem floated by me and I thought it was an interesting enough one to blog about. First off all I had was the following error message from the MSCRM Exchange router:

I work with great people who are open minded (none of this my brand is better than your brand thinking), so much so they are IMHO the driving force behind interoperability in South Africa.

The official MSCRM blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/crm – which I knew out of my head.