Access denied in http:\\companyweb

One thing to watch out for. Perhaps you are changing user permissions in SBS. Maybe a user now has a laptop and wants to use VPN. You use the change permissions link in Server Administrator to change the user from "User" rights to "Mobile User" rights. However, after doing that the user gets an access denied error on http://companyweb.

Try this:
Open the Companyweb main page, go to Site settings -> Under Administration, click Manage Users -> see if the user is listed. Perhaps he's been entirely erased and you'll need to add him fresh. That should fix your error.

SBS Backup Fails on VSS 0x800423f4 error Part 3

Well the latest suggestion appears to be related to having Volume Shadow Service not having a .dll properly registered. Somehow I think this might be related to SP2 of Exchange or a recent installed security patch as we've seen it on multiple servers and those are the only things that have recently been installed. At any rate here's the way to reregister the VSS files: (copy the files into a .cmd file or just run them individually from a command prompt)

C:
CD \Windows\System32
Net stop vss
Net stop swprv
regsvr32 ole32.dll
regsvr32 vss_ps.dll
Vssvc /Register
regsvr32 /i swprv.dll
regsvr32 /i eventcls.dll
regsvr32 es.dll r
egsvr32 stdprov.dll
regsvr32 vssui.dll
regsvr32 msxml.dll
regsvr32 msxml3.dll
regsvr32 msxml4.dll

Reboot your server. After reboot, open a command prompt and run: vssadmin list writers
Look for any errors.

We didn't do a reboot the first time and got the following errors in the backup.

Volume shadow copy creation: Attempt 1. Timeout before function completed Error returned while creating the volume shadow copy:0xffffffff. Error returned while creating the volume shadow copy:ffffffff Aborting Backup.

After the reboot we did a backup now and everythign started working. We will continue to monitor this for the next week or so. Here's to a good backup!

CRM data access with RSS feeds

Now this is getting pretty cool. If you're like me you read blogs and RSS feeds to get more information without having to hit every web site manually. It all comes to you, new and fresh.

Here's a great little download provided by Microsoft to leverage RSS feeds in CRM. Download details: Microsoft CRM 3.0 data access using RSS This is actually a pretty cool way to get the sales guy or CEO constant information in an even easier format than using the web or Outlook interfaces of Microsoft CRM. Subscribe to new account changes or perhaps new leads and get them right into your RSS reader. Very cool.

Adding Holidays to Outlook

Sometimes it's the easiest things that get ya. I noticed that I didn't have the national holidays in my Outlook calendar and wanted them so as not to schedule any customer visits on those days. I started looking via Google to import everything and wouldn't you know that it's already included...I've just totally missed em.

To add holidays to your calendar in Outlook 2002 or 2003, follow these steps:
While in Calendar view, from the Tools menu, select Options... . Then click Calendar Options... .
Under "Calendar options", click Add Holidays... .
Select the checkbox next to each country or region whose holidays you want to add to your Calendar, and then click OK. Your own country/region is automatically selected.

CRM Mobile 3.0 Gotcha

Just starting on the CRM Mobile component install and one thing to remember:

Receive a “Setup could not open a session to the instance of SQL Server” warning when installing
This occurs if you are installing a device on a non-production Microsoft CRM server. Microsoft CRM Mobile does not support MSDN license keys. The Microsoft CRM server must be in production before you install Microsoft CRM Mobile.

Guess those with MSDN testing keys are out of luck. Pretty bad in my opinion. How ya going to test a deployment? Well I guess you better go with the 90 day CRM keys instead. Just one gotcha to remember.

OK so I never read the readme but this time I did. CRM is one of those apps that you better read everything 3X over before you even think about starting to install.

Dr J and Security Summit coming to Michigan

Looks like we are privileged here in Michigan to be only one of 5 Microsoft Security Summit locations. Be sure and register for the Detroit Security Summit 2006 if you are in the area. It'll be at the brand new Rock Financial Showplace only about 20 minutes from our office.

Dr J will be there in person. I hope that some focus is given to the large amount of SMB businesses out there. Of interest will be the final keynote by Dr J on the subject of Vista security. Hope to see you there.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 Mobile Client Now Available

Just wanted to alert everybody out there that the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 Mobile Client is now available. I'll be downloading it and trying it out in this next week.

I'm going to be presenting to our Michigan Small Business Server User Group (www.misbs.com) on CRM 3 next week the 12th at 6:30 and hope to have this up and functioning to test with.