SeanDaniel.com

Wiki your way to Small Business Server knowledge & Best practices

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Daniel) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 22:33:00 +0000

The Home and Small Business Server team has posted a forum post with links to the separate Wiki articles they are maintaining to help you get the most out of your server platform. The Forum post with all the links (looks like it’s being updated over time too!) is here.

What appears to be currently missing from this article is the Router Wiki links

Other items are copied below for your ease of browsing (note this might be outdated, check the actual link for an up-to-date version)

Server Deployment and Platform Configurations

Troubleshoot Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials, Windows Home Server 2011, and Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials Installation Issues (June 2011) - http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/3342.aspx
How to repair certificate issues in Windows Small Business Server 2011, Windows Home Server 2011 and Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials (July 2011)
- http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/3940.aspx
Default input language is set to English on the Spanish versions of Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials, Windows Home Server 2011, and Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2639424
How to Change the Password Policy in Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials - http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/6829.how-to-change-the-password-policy-in-windows-small-business-server-2011-essentials.aspx

Client Deployment

Troubleshooting Client Deployment Issues when using Windows Small Business Server 2011, Windows Home Server 2011 and Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials (July 2011)
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/3941.aspx

Remote Web Access

Manually install existing SSL certificate into Small Business Server 2011 Essentials
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/manually-install-existing-ssl-certificate-into-small-business-server-2011-essentials.aspx
Remote Web Access Deployment Guidance - http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/remote-web-access-deployment-guide.aspx

Media and Workgroup (Windows Server Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials and WHS 2011 only)

Media streaming known issue and workaround with Windows Home Server 2011 and Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials (August 2011)
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/media-streaming-known-issue-and-workaround-with-windows-home-server-2011-and-windows-storage-server-2008-r2-essentials.aspx
How to change workgroup name on Windows Home Server 2011 and Windows Storage Server 2011 R2 Essentials (August 2011)
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/how-to-change-workgroup-name-on-windows-home-server-2011-and-windows-storage-server-2011-r2-essentials.aspx

Data Protection (Server and Client Backup)

Server Backup FAQ (August 2011) -
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/faq-for-windows-home-and-small-business-server-backup.aspx
The "Recover your server wizard" crashes in Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essential, Windows Home Server 2011 or Windows Storage Server 2011 Essential
- http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2639956
How to fix the Server Backup Service exception "One or more services are not running” for SBS 2011 Essentials, WHS 2011 and WSS 2008 R2 Essentials -
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/6828.how-to-fix-the-server-backup-service-exception-one-or-more-services-are-not-running-for-sbs-2011-essentials-whs-2011-and-wss-2008-r2-essentials.aspx

Office 365 integration

Error message when an SBS 2011 Essentials user signs in to Office 365 after they change the password for their user account: "Microsoft Online Services ID or password is incorrect" - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2652040
The Office 365 Integration Module for SBS 2011 Essentials does not work as expected - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2652021

Extensibility

How to list your applications on Microsoft Pinpoint? How to make your applications discoverable - http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/6886.listing-your-applications-for-discovery-in-microsoft-pinpoint-for-small-business-server-windows-home-server-and-windows-storage-server-2008-r2-essentials.aspx (Posted here last week)

Developers! How to List your Small Business Server and Windows home Server Apps on Microsoft Pinpoint

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Daniel) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 23:32:00 +0000

Are you a developer or developer firm that’s built an application for SBS 2011 Essentials, SBS 2011 Premium Add-on, Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials, and Windows Home Server 2011? Then you should list your application in Microsoft Pinpoint. Listing here will give you greater awareness of your application to your target audience.

For example, these links are inside the product:

Over on the Small Business Server Wiki, there is a how-to guide on how to go about doing this. You can find that link here.

Before you can begin listing your applications:

You must join the Microsoft Partner Network. Before you can begin listing your applications on Pinpoint, you must create an account with the Microsoft Partner Network (MPN) and create a descriptive overview for your company. It can take up to five business days for your new account to activate in Pinpoint after establishing your membership in the Microsoft Partner Network.
Already a member? If so, then you can proceed to create your profile in Pinpoint. If you are already a partner but are not listed on Pinpoint and believe you should be, contact the Pinpoint team.

Sign-in using your MPN LiveID
Click on the Dashboard in the upper right hand corner
Click on Add or Edit Profiles in the nav bar
Click on the Apps + Services tab
Click the New button
Follow the rest of the wizard to create your listing
Wait for the application to be published in the marketplace

What are you waiting for? The complete guide is here, and you can jump to Pinpoint here.

I protest the protect IP act

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Daniel) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 19:17:00 +0000

Many websites are blacked out today to protest proposed U.S. legislation that threatens internet freedom: the Stop Internet Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). From personal blogs to Wikipedia, sites all over the web — including this one — are asking you to help stop this dangerous legislation from being passed. Please click the link below to learn how this legislation will affect internet freedom.

LEARN MORE

How to Enable Auto-Logon for your Server

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Daniel) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:42:00 +0000

WARNING: This Post reduces the physical security of your server, leaving the server open for anyone for a brief period of time after reboot.

So, you are still reading after the warning above. Excellent. Unless you are physically controlling access to your server, and aren’t worried in the least about theft or any other loss of server, or access to server, then please continue reading.

Last year, I wrote a post about using my Home Server for more than just storage, backup and remote access. This is not condoned by Microsoft or supported for Windows Home Server, as Windows Home Server licensing doesn’t enable you to run Line of Business Applications on your server, just security type applications. This also depends on your EULA you’ve entered with your hardware OEM as well as Microsoft, so be careful you’re not voiding a warranty or locking yourself out of support here. That might be more important to you than this little hack. You should also see if your application can be run as a service, either by contacting the app provider, or by testing with the SRVANY.EXE command you can find from here. This wouldn’t reduce the security of your server, but still get you the end result.

Now that we’re through all the warnings, let’s get started.

I have some end-user applications that I want to run (as the different, non-admin user), that aren’t services. This means that if the box reboots for patches, or a power-outage, the apps don’t start until I connect into the server and kick them off. Naturally I put all the apps that need to start in the start-up group, this includes my iOS printing app, among others. So ultimately I just need to log-in, and then I’m good to go.

But… I can automate the logon with the System Internals (sysinternals).

STEP 1: I simply download the AutoLogon tool. When I launch it, I elevate it to the administrator account (ie UAC), and then accept the EULA. I’m then presented with the simple UI:

I simply enter the username, domain and password I want to auto-login as, and hit enable. To disable this in the future, run the tool again and hit disable.

STEP 2: This is the most important step, to secure things again. It’s super simple, you simply enable the screensaver (I chose the “Blank” screen saver), and On resume, display logon screen is checked, and the screen saver will come on after 1 minute.

This of course will get irritating if you’re working on the server. So in those cases I change the wait time up to 15 minutes, and then back down to 1 minute when I’m finished working. I never turn off the screensaver, because if I forget to turn it back on, then the server will be indefinitely unlocked, which is bad of course.

That’s all there is to it. Use this wisely and only if needed. You’d also be wise to see if your application can be turned into a service. Microsoft has a tool for that too, it’s called SRVANY.EXE.

Sean’s Top 10 Recommended iOS apps for Productivity

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Daniel) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:48:00 +0000

Before the slew of Windows 8 tablets come out, most folks have an iPad or iPad 2. If you go online looking for popular apps, you’ll either get a list of games or a list of apps without a description of what they do.. I’ve spend a lot of time trying to figure out the best way to use my iPad, and not just for games.. Below is my list of non-game apps and why I like them.

iTap RDP – iTAP RDP allows me to get to Windows clients via RDP. Sure there are free ones like iRDesktop, but this was the only one that did TSGateway so I can get to clients behind a proxy from outside the network. I also think that with the different mouse modes and special keys that come up on this app, this is the most functional.

You could compare this to CloudOn, which allows you to get to your MS Office apps, which uses DropBox to get to your documents. Pretty good solution, if you trust DropBox.
There is also OnLive, which let’s you RDP to a hosted version of Windows 7, but using a web browser to upload and download files seems hoaky to me. Plus with it being free, how are they making money? what are they selling?

mWOL – Mocha WOL is a free app in the iTunes store. It isn’t anything other than a Wake-On-LAN client, I picked it over the other ones because it’s free. The end. My laptops have an aggressive sleep schedule to keep power consumption down. My Home Server is the always on PC. Unfortunately this won’t wake up my clients if I’m out of my home.
Buzz Player – Buzz Player is a Media player and media copier. I like it because all of that media that I have sitting on my Home Server, this app can stream it to me when I’m in my home. That’s 2TB of videos and music that I can just use anywhere on my LAN.
Lync Mobile – Lync Mobile is Microsoft’s Lync IM client, on the iPad. Given that these days I don’t take my laptop to the couch for after hours surfing, this client allows me to stay in touch with co-workers that are world-wide. I can answer a quick question from Shanghai.
OneNote – Microsoft OneNote is another essential Microsoft app. If you use OneNote on your PC, and I do extensively, then this gives you access to any notes stored on your SkyDrive. This has revolutionized how I manage my soccer teams. I simply create the notes on my PC, and then update them on the phone or iPad
Grocery IQ – Grocery IQ is really only useful if you also have the app on your phone. My wife and I sit down with the iPad and make our grocery list and what we’re going to eat for the week. Then, because we have the same Grocery IQ account, when we hit the grocery store, the list is just in our pocket on our phone.
Feedler – Feedler is a less popular RSS reader that syncs with Google Reader. As far as I can tell, Reeder is the most popular app for this, and certainly is more beautiful looking; but it’s missing a key feature: mark older than X days read. I get to my RSS feeds as often as possible, and for the most part, I read them in entirty, although trying to catch up on Mashable, or Engadget, after being away for a week is next to impossible, but I do want to read a few days worth. Hence Feedler is my preference over Reeder for RSS reading
Kindle – The Kindle app is handy because it means on business trips, I only need the one device, and long plane waits etc, I can just continue on my book.
Skype – Skype I am only looking forward to. Sure I can use it on my iPad 1 for text chatting, but without a camera it kind of sucks. I sure do love it on my phone though, and can’t wait for this communication powerhouse to become fully operational once I get an updated iPad 3!
BlogPress – BlogPress is my mobile blogging app. Blogging from the PC is my preferred method, and I actually use the combination of the first two apps in this list to do 90% of my blogging, but if I’m travelling, it’s a secondary way for me to get the data out to the web, without having to wait.

Those are my top 10 favorite, non-game, iPad applications to boost your productivity and enjoyment of the iPad aside from a $700+ gaming tablet.

Restoring Files from SBS 2003 to SBS 2008/2011

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Daniel) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 18:34:00 +0000

I thought I had blogged about this prior, but it has been brought to my attention that I haven’t to date. So I wanted to make sure it was covered.

As you recall, Small Business Server 2003 used Windows NT Backup (or NTBackup for short). With the introduction of Server 2008 (and hence SBS 2008), NTBackup was removed from the product (with good reason! Trust me!). With this came the introduction of the Server Backup, built by the same team as the Data Protection team.

This server backup and restore utility doesn’t know what to do with NTBackup (.bkp) files. So instead, you can download the Windows NT Backup and Restore Utility for Windows 7 (KB 974674). Be sure to choose the version you need based on what operating system you’re running on.

Another IMPORTANT note to realize, is if you use it on your server, and then attempt a bare metal restore of the server using the Windows Server Backup, the box gets stuck at a black window and doesn’t boot properly.

So the correct steps are

Install the NT Backup and restore utility
Restore desired set of file(s)
Un-install the NT Backup and restore utility

Happy Restoring from Old backups!

How to use your Home Server as an AirPrint server for only $10

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Daniel) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 19:47:00 +0000

As I move more and more of my computing and data to the Cloud with services like SkyDrive. I am reducing the amount of computing power I have in my house. I have an iPad (v1), a Laptop, and of course my Windows Home Server.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m looking for more ways to take advantage of my low-powered Home Server to do more for me as an *always* on device.

Over the holiday’s we had a few visitors, which of course means printing boarding passes prior to leaving for the airport. It was frustrating to have to take out the laptop when the iPad is just right there. But without a compatible AirPrint printer, you can’t print from the iPad….

Or can’t you?

I found an application for Windows (and Mac OS) that installs on your computer that shares almost any printer connected to the computer, to the AirPrint service.

There was an old version that doesn’t work with iOS5 that is free. But obviously, I have iOS5 on all my devices, so that wasn’t an option. I’m also not a big fan of Jail-Breaking (I guess I know too much about security to allow a hacker full access to my device).

This application, called FingerPrint by Collobos Software, will share out any connected printer, as well as DropBox locations to the AirPrint service. I started with the trial to make sure it worked first.

To get it set up, I downloaded the FingerPrint installer, copied it to the desktop of my Home Server and installed it. Then of course ran FingerPrint on the server. I also had to add my network printer to a printer on my Home Server, just by going to Control Panel and adding a printer as I normally would on any Windows machine.

However, it didn’t initially work. I had to make two changes to the configuration for it to work, probably specific to my network. I’ll share them here incase you have the same problems.

Enabling Multicast on my router

First, I discovered that my DLink DIR-655 router wasn’t allowing Apple’s discovery service, Bonjour. This is not always the case with routers. But I discovered that I can enable MultiCast, on the router, which seemed to allow it. I did this on the DIR-655 by going to Advanced, then Advanced Network, and at the bottom, selecting to Enable Multicast Streams:

This required a router reboot, which took down my network for 30 seconds, and then it took another approximately 5 minutes for my iPad to discover the services running.

This enabled me to see the list of printers connect to my Home Server

Opening an Additional Port on the server

Per Collobos support page, I had to manually open the port 6631 on my Home Server to allow AirPrint to send the document to FingerPrint. To do this I simply:

Logged into the Home Server
Clicked Start, then Run, and ran the wf.msc firewall configuration utility
I clicked on New Rule
In the wizard that opened, I selected Port, and clicked Next.
The port is a TCP port which was the default, and I typed in the specific port of 6631
I also chose to Allow the connection even if it’s unsecure (this might not be available in SBS 2011, in which case you’d also need to make a group policy change)
On where does this rule apply, I ensured that it only apply to Private networks, meaning that I unchecked Domain (which doesn’t apply to WHS anyways) and Public. (Note for SBS 2011, you’d have to select Domain)
Finally, I gave it a friendly name. I used FingerPrint Port 6631 so I could easily find it in the list again if I ever wanted to remove FingerPrint, and clicked Finish.

At this point, the printing just started! woo hoo! Of course I can play around with this for 7 days on trial, then I’ll have to get a license key for FingerPrint.

Additional Bonus!

As an additional bonus, you can manage all the documents printing from the Home Server’s print queue. So I think it’s worth the $10 to be able to print directly from the iPad. Plus Collobos has support if you ever get stuck.

As a final note, I have noticed that you don’t want your iPad to go to sleep before the print has happened, and it’s not exactly the fastest thing/

[Note: This is untested on Small Business Server 2011, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work, changes are noted above, leave a comment if you try and have modifications]

Blast from the Past: The BackOffice Server 4.5 Daily Cycle

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Daniel) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 22:11:00 +0000

Lots of old friends in this video. Unfortunately I only worked on BackOffice 2000, the last edition of BackOffice Server (excluding Essential Business Server of course). Back Office Server 4.5 released in January 12, 1999, and I joined Microsoft in January, 2000 (as an Intern).

Enjoy the blast from the past!

This video talks about what it was like to build BackOffice 4.5, the BVTs, daily meetings, all that seemed to stay the same.

Introducing a new line of Network Storage Servers for SMB

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Daniel) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 00:52:00 +0000

Only yesterday, a third product that I worked on over the past little while called Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials was announced, on hardware provided by Western Digital.

Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials is a mid-way point between Windows Home Server, and Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials. And by in between, I mean you have a business class Home Server. So you have media streaming, but no domain controller, and a limit of 25 users instead of 10 that Home Server has.

One other unique feature it has is the ability to join a domain, that Windows Home Server does not have. You can join any size domain, but limit (via AD security group) the number of users down to 25 who can use the NAS box. You can only use it for up to 25 users.

This is a great solution if you want to add client backup to 25 clients on any SBS 2008 or SBS 2011 Standard networks, or just a standard server network. Furthermore, it does have RWA with it, which means you can add an RWA solution to your standard server network if you want.

The WD Sentinel DX4000 looks pretty awesome from a hardware perspective as well. You can jump on over to the Western Digital WD Sentinel DX4000 website to learn more.

Home Server and SBS Add-in to Automate Client Backup of your MAC

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Daniel) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 17:41:00 +0000

One of the most popular posts on my blog is how to enable Apple’s Time Machine backup to backup to your Windows Home Server 2011 or Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials. As it turns out, a company named Orbital Technologies has decided to build an add-in that enables this functionality without the need for you to walk through the steps of creating those confusing sparse files.

That add-in has been reviewed over on the famous UsingWindowsHomeServer blog, specifically in a blog post here, covering the preview of the Orbital Backup Configuration for Mac. They additionally covered the add-in again when it was available.

Simply install the add-in, open up the dashboard on the MAC client and go to add-ins, Orbital utilities and follow along. All you need to know is your username and password to the server. easy right? also free!

Keep in mind that you can still do the manual steps provided in my post if you prefer not to install anything as all this add-in does is the configuration pieces for you.

You can download the add-in directly from the Using Windows Home Server Forums, or We Got Served forums. The add-in should work fine on Windows Home Server 2011, Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials, and also Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials. If you’re using any other Windows product, the manual steps are for you.

Using your Home Server for more than Storage, Backup and Remote Access

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Daniel) — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 18:26:00 +0000

Back in 2006, I was without power for 4 days in November. It was cold, but I had friends, and an offline Small Business Server 2003 R2. Of course I ran everything out of my house, why wouldn’t I? Being offline my server started sending NDRs and I didn’t have access to anything, as it was all offline. While I had been toying with adopting the cloud for the amount of spam I was getting, this pushed me over the edge. It was at that time I decided to adopt the cloud. My email and most things that I own are all hosted in various cloud services so if the power goes out at my house, my stuff keeps running.

Trust me, I did a cost benefit analysis and in order to keep things running for me at home, I’d have to pay for hosting services anyways, and given I was running a “business class” server, I was forced into “business class” prices. I am not a business, I am a consumer.

However, there are certain things that I don’t trust the cloud for, and hence I want my own cloud storage that I run and have total control over. Enter Windows Home Server stage left. Home Server has been my personal cloud storage location since 2007, I now run WHS 2011.

Enter Cloud computing.

My Windows Home Server is perfect device to do computing for me, and it can just chug away on it all the time. The one draw back is that there is only one account “Administrator” that has total access to the server. this obviously isn’t good computing practice, so let me show you how to create a working account that you can have do things for you.

First step, let’s create a new user account on the server. We’ll do this using the normal Add User Wizard in the dashboard. I’ll call the user Working User. I gave the user access to the shared folders it needed access to (where I can interact with Working User’s storage), and nothing more. I didn’t even give this user remote access.

Now, by default all users created don’t have access to log into the server, we need to grant this permission. This will make the user a standard user on the server, so it will have access to do things the same as a standard user would have access on a client PC (running applications, a /user folder with full control, and access to those folders you gave it. it won’t be able to mess with the OS or install things. PERFECT!

On the server console, click Start, then Run, and type in gpedit.msc to edit the local policy on the server
Expand down Local Computer Policy, Computer Configuration, Windows Settings, Local Policies, and click on User Rights Assignment
Scroll down the list on the right until you find Allow log on locally and double click to open the property page
Click the Add User or Group… button and type in the username that you created in the first step inside the Add User Wizard.
Click OK and then OK again and close the local group policy editor.

Now this Working user has access to log in to the server locally. Of course it can’t do any administration of the server as it’s not a member of the administrators group.

Next I want to use something as this user, say the command prompt. I simply use a command line like the following: C:\Windows\System32\runas.exe /USER:SERVER\Working /savecred "C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe"

The /savecred will save the credentials you typed in as Working User (alias “working” in the above) and will remember it for future runs. I actually just created a shortcut with this command in. Now that you have a command prompt open, anything you run from this command prompt will run as the Working User. So you can load up any application and have it work in the context of this non-administrative user. So if you do hit something that wants to modify your system, you’ll get a UAC pop-up or an access denied (I haven’t hit anything like that yet in my set up).

Just be careful what you do, because there is no free Anti-virus for your server, and I highly recommend getting an anti-virus for your server if you plan on connecting this user up to the Internet to do anything directly on the server. I have Antivirus on my system.

Seattle Interactive Conference: Learn the Cloud

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Daniel) — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 20:01:00 +0000

Technical Content, Technical Experts

The Cloud Experience track at SIC is for experienced developers who want to learn how to leverage the cloud for mobile, social and web app scenarios. No matter what platform or technology you choose to develop for, these sessions will provide you with a deeper understanding of cloud architecture, back end services and business models so you can scale for user demand and grow your business.

Register today using the promo code “azure 200” and attend SIC for only $150 (a $200 savings).

Attend a full day of technical sessions and learn more about leveraging the cloud for mobile, web and social scenarios. View the list of confirmed Cloud Experience speakers. Sessions include:
- Great Mobile Apps Make Money – Intro to Cloud Experience Track
- Mobile + Cloud, Building Mobile Applications with Windows Azure
- Zero to Hero: Windows Phone, Android, iOS Development in the Cloud
- Building Web Applications with Windows Azure
- Building Social Games on Windows Azure
Cloud Experience speakers and technical experts will be available to provide technical assistance and resources for developing, deploying and managing mobile, social and web apps in the cloud.

Seattle Interactive Conference (SIC): November 2-3, 2011, The Conference Center at WSCC

How to remove G+ and add proper sharing buttons to your Blogger Blog like Facebook, and Twitter!

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Daniel) — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 22:32:00 +0000

If you’re not one of the few that uses Google+, then Google’s Sharing defaults inside of Google Blogger aren’t necessarily for you. The scream Google sharing only. The e-mail button is an icon of GMail, Google+ is the biggest sharing button. Sure you can get to the others, but they are little buttons. Don’t you want to be mainstream?

Here’s how I changed it with a little help from A Consuming Experience.

Getting your sharing code snippets

First, before I even touched my blog, I went to the appropriate sites to obtain my sharing buttons. For me, that was the Facebook Like Button, Twitter’s Tweet Button, and LinkedIn’s Share Button (although I don’t use this one on my photo blog). From these pages, you should use the UI to decide how you want the button to look for your site. Make sure you specify a URL to Like, Tweet, or Share, this is a temporary URL, I used http://foo.bar.com. This is a placeholder for later.

I saved each of these code snippets into Notepad for copy/paste later.

Adding the sharing code to the Blogger blog

Inside your Blogger Dashboard, select the blog you wish to add your sharing buttons to, then click the “template” modification and choose to Edit the HTML:

Choose to Proceed when you edit the HTML, and then make sure you select Expand Widget Templates that’s at the top:

Scroll down until you find the <b:include id=’shareButtons’ var=’post’> tag. I deleted everything between that tag, and </b:includable> and replaced it with my own sharing code.

This is where things get fun.

You need to replace that http://foo.bar.com with the URL of the blog post. Google puts that information into a variable and replaces it at the time the page is rendered. So we simply need to do this as well. Let’s take a look at the twitter code, because it’s the simplest.

Here is what Twitter gave me:

<a class='twitter-share-button' data-count='horizontal' data-via='seandaniel' data-url=”http://foo.bar.com” href='https://twitter.com/share'>Tweet</a><script src='//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js' type='text/javascript'/>

note that I have bolded the temporary URL we need to replace with the URL of the blog post. With the help of the above website, this is what I changed it to:

<a class='twitter-share-button' data-count='horizontal' data-via='seandaniel' expr:data-url='data:post.url' href='https://twitter.com/share'>Tweet</a><script src='//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js' type='text/javascript'/>

Note I have added the expr: phrase which tells Google there is something to replace after the “=” sign. I then put in the URL variable data:post.url, and also changed the quotes from double quotes to single quotes. Google interprets that code and inserts the actual URL of the individual blog post. Thus if they tweet on the main page with all the posts, they still only tweet the one that they are intending to, instead of the entire feed of posts.

So yeah, a little harder than their previous format where you had just put in <$BlogPostPermanentURL$>, but not too difficult all the same.

Now on my blog you can see the following at the bottom of each post, without having to put that Google + link there.

Cleans things up and standardizes them all in one. Enjoy.

HP/Microsoft do an Extreme Make-Over of a Not For Profit Organization

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Daniel) — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 20:20:00 +0000

Earlier this year, I had the pleasure to be able to participate in a very heart warming story. Families For Effective Autism Treatment of Washington (or FEAT WA), was the first winner of the HP & Microsoft Extreme technical make-over. FEAT really does a lot of work for children with autism, and were struggling with their hobbled together IT infrastructure.

Microsoft and HP came together to set up the IT Infrastructure backbone running Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials on a maxed out HP ProLiant MicroServer. And for the children and office workers, Microsoft Windows MultiPoint Server 2011 Premium on an HP ML 110 G7; to be connected to with the HP t5749e thing clients and HP EliteBook 8460p Notebooks. HP also improved their networking infrastructure with the HP ProCurve 1810G-24 switch.

It was so awesome to meet and help out Brenne and Amanda at FEAT of WA to do their job and help children with autism. Check out the video:

Outlook 2010 Speed Tip: Using the Quick Step Box

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Daniel) — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 00:19:00 +0000

Outlook 2010 has been out for a while, but one of the more recent features I started to depend on to make email faster for me is the Quick Steps box on the dialog:

The Quick Steps bar allows you to make quick and customized operations on pieces of email that you have in your inbox. There are a bunch of default ones that I use all the time, and I’ve also created a few new ones myself.

Let’s first talk about how to use it, it’s pretty simple. If you have a message you want to take action on, simply make sure it’s collected and select the one you want. If you want to reply and delete it, simply click that button. A reply message is opened to the individual, and the original message is deleted. It’s that simple.

Let’s say we often move mail to a specific folder in our inbox, and it involves selecting the message, dragging it to a folder that may or may not be collapsed in the tree view, and then dropping it there. Instead, we can create a new Quick Step for this. To do that simply:

Select the Create New Quick Step
Give the Quick Step a name like “Move to Follow Up”
Select Move to a folder, under the Actions drop down.
Then select the folder in the drop box that appears that you want to move the message to.

And that’s it. You can additionally assign a short cut key, give it tool tip text if you have complicated rules, or even add additional actions.

It’s made my life easier, with the amount of messages I get each day, I highly suggest checking out the Quick Steps. Allows you to cut through email pretty fast.

New SBS Marketer!

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Daniel) — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 00:03:00 +0000

Well… not so new, as he’s been around as an external content vendor forever. Welcome David Fabritius to the Windows Server & Cloud marketing team here at Microsoft, with a focus on small and medium businesses. David is very familiar with the Windows Server family since he’s spent most of his time at Microsoft creating technical readiness material for the last few releases of SBS and other SMB-focused server products. David has a lot of experience as an ITPro deploying and managing server infrastructures.

David is from the Pacific Northwest and has been doing computer stuff since before college. He’s been a fan of SBS since he first bought a copy to run his own local small business. Since 2008, he’s been spending the majority of his time making sure you, the Microsoft Partner, are ready to sell SBS and have the training and resources you need to be successful.

Obviously with his new role, he’ll be helping to decide the direction of the product from within the marketing org!

Thank you BizTech Magazine – SeanDaniel.com is listed in their top 50 Must Read IT Blogs

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Daniel) — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 20:46:00 +0000

I was rather surprised last night to be browsing my @Mentions on Twitter only to find out that @BizTechMagazine listed me as one of the “50 Must-Read IT Blogs”. I first saw it when I was mentioned in their tweet. Today I was able to visit BizTech Magazine’s blog post to see that I’m not even at the very bottom!

It’s a great honour to even get a mention in a top 50!

Obtaining a Domain Name in SBS 2011 Standard and Essentials

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Daniel) — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 19:09:00 +0000

So my second video that I did with the HP/Microsoft Coffee Coaching is now live. This one is near and dear to my heart as it’s a program that I built almost from the ground up (admittedly I had a little help from my friends at the start). I dive into the nuances of obtaining a domain name for your Remote Web Access website in these two products. The “Essentials” side of the fence also pertains to Windows Home Server (except in the view I talk about .remotewebaccess.com, where in WHS its .homeserver.com, but it works the same way)

Additionally, if you are interested in some corny video footage and want to learn a bit more about me, you can view my rather embarrassing bio video. I swear it didn’t feel this corny when I was filming.

Learn about how Multi-Point 2011 Premium works with SBS 2011 Essentials on HP/Microsoft Coffee Coaching

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Daniel) — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 03:22:00 +0000

I managed to finally get my schedule coincided with the HP/Microsoft Coffee Coaching filming crew. When I was with them I managed to create my first video which talks about how awesome MultiPoint 2011 Premium server is when you have Small Business Server 2011 Essentials already running in your network (details here). Check it out, it’s only 6 minutes of your time.

Using the new Office365 with SBS 2011 Essentials

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Daniel) — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 18:31:00 +0000

Over on the Official SBS blog, they have a new post about how you can use Office365 with SBS 2011 for a better together story.

SBS 2011 was designed from the ground up to work with hosted versions of Exchange and SharePoint, such as Office365, or BPOS. But you don’t need to wait for any integration pieces to be in play, you can get started today. Check out these videos for more details:

What you can do Today

What you can do with the Office 365 integration module

The Basics of Local DNS for Small Business Server 2011 Essentials

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Daniel) — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 16:53:00 +0000

[Post idea courtesy of Robert Pearman, MVP]

If you’ve used Windows Small Business Server in the past, you’ve probably figured out exactly how DNS works. With the SBS 2008 and SBS 2011 the Connect to the Internet Wizard would analyze your network and determine a static IP address to use, and then ensure you like it before making it the server’s IP address. Then as we all know, the DNS server runs on SBS and resolves local network addresses, like “domain.local” or “server” or the internal fully qualified domain (FQDN) “server.domain.local”

Since SBS 2008 and SBS 2011 are DHCP servers by default, that means they hand out IP addresses, and the server’s IP as the DNS server. DNS works flawlessly in such an environment. Internet based addresses (such as Microsoft.com) are first sent to the SBS box for resolution, and then forwarded on to the ISPs DNS servers for name resolution.

Ultimately SBS is a middle man in the peer to peer DNS infrastructure and gives the full power of DNS to the local network

So how is SBS 2011 Essentials Different?

SBS 2011 Essentials doesn’t assign itself a static IP address, and it doesn’t have a Connect to the Internet Wizard. Essentials will automatically connect to the Internet just like any client computer, using the DHCP assigned address. It does however use its local DNS server to resolve both local and Internet based names by overriding the DHCP assigned IP address to 127.0.0.1 (localhost). If you dig into the DNS settings, you’ll notice that the DNS Server picks up the routers IP as a forwarder. Routers by default will hand out their own IP as the DNS Server and proxy DNS out to the WAN configured (usually DHCP but sometimes services like OpenDNS) DNS servers. This means that if the server were to ask for an Internet based address, like technet.com, it would forward that request to the router, which would intern forward it to the ISP, which could hopefully resolve it for you.

Clients on the network also still need to use the SBS DNS Server in order for Active Directory to work, or to resolve the server and other services on the network (for example, client backup doesn’t work unless DNS is operating correctly). Clients *also* get their IP and DNS Server from the DHCP server, which in Essentials, by default, is the router. This means that the DNS server is the router, essentially skipping the SBS name resolution step. Once the client goes to http://server/connect, a service is installed called LAN Configuration Service. This service monitors client IP address changes, when the client gets a new IP (ie, it turns on, or it changes locations) it immediately sends out a UPnP query looking for the server (note, this only works on single subnet environments). If a server is found, the DHCP assigned DNS address is overwritten by the server’s IP address (obtained in the return call from UPnP). If no server is found, the DHCP DNS assigned address is kept.

This means that client computers get the SBS DNS address within the SBS network, but the DHCP assigned address at a place like StarBucks. Clients can always resolve the Internet, and inside of the SBS network, they can also resolve the SBS server and Active Directory domain.

Now, for those paying attention, you’ll have recalled that the SBS server’s address is also DHCP assigned, which means it can change if the router deems it necessary. There is a similar service on the SBS server that will broadcast when it’s IP address changes, the clients on the network pick this up and update DNS, the clients off the network will just re-do the process above to get the right IP address.

A side-effect/pro of this design over the SBS 2008 or 2011 Standard design is that if the server is down for patching (we all know how long those reboots take), or another reason, the client will revert back to the DHCP assigned address after a short period of time and can continue to resolve the Internet until the server comes back online.

Can I set things up the old way?

Of course you can. SBS 2011 Essentials is still a full blow copy of server, and all the power that you’re familiar with is there. You can just jump into the NIC settings on the server and give it a static IP address of your choice. No problems there.

Additionally, if you absolutely wanted to run DHCP on the SBS Essentials server, no problems there either, simply open up the Server Manager, install the roll and configure DHCP. Don’t forget to turn off DHCP on your router, and away you go. If you’re not familiar with DHCP settings though, I suggest you leave it the way it was.

How to Manually Configure SBS 2011 Essentials Internet Domain Name

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Daniel) — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 20:22:00 +0000

Back in SBS 2003 timeframe, having an Internet domain name for remote access to your server started to become more and more essential. With the SBS 2008 product, we added the ability to work with domain partners directly inside of the product to obtain that domain name, and also configure it. This same methodology was moved to SBS 2011 Standard product, and with the birth of Essentials, only later this year, we added the ability to also get your SSL Certificate as part of this process. Moving away from the self-issued certificate, which while can be configured correctly to work, causes a lot of work pushing the root certificate around to all the remote PCs and devices that possible connect to the server.

I believe the best path to success for you is to have your domain with one of our domain partners, because the alerts are integrated, and the solution is simple to set up, and you don’t need any additional components like 3^rd party Dynamic DNS clients or static IP addresses from your Internet Service Provider (ISP). It’s a built in Dynamic DNS client, that’s been completely tested by both our 3^rd party vendors as well as the Microsoft test team.

However, if you must manually configure your domain name, In SBS 2011 Essentials, the path of manually configuring your domain name is more hidden, and I wanted to share with you how to do this. First off, your domain name cannot be with GoDaddy or eNom if you want to manually configure your domain name. We optimize for the automated cases as mentioned above. So let’s get started in manually configuring our domain name.

Open the Server Dashboard and click on the Server Settings link
On the Remote Web Access tab, select Turn On

Choose to configure the router, or skip the router configuration. If your router does not support the UPnP based configuration protocol, or you have and want UPnP disabled; it’s recommended that you skip the router configuration. If this is the case, you should

Create a DHCP reservation for your server in your router’s DHCP server (or other DHCP server on the network) such that your server gets the same IP address every time.
Open at a minimum port 443 from the Internet to the router using the TCP protocol (UDP is not needed). If you do not wish to educate users to type in https://, then you should also open port 80 to the same internal IP address. The server will automatically redirect http:// requests to the secured by SSL https:// URLs

When you have finished the router configuration portion of remote access, you should choose to Set up your domain name.
Click Next on the Getting started page of the wizard
When manually configuring a domain name, the server assumes you already own it. Thus in the Do you own a domain name page of the wizard, select I want to use a domain I already own and type in the name of the domain, eg. Contoso.com.

Note: if your domain name is with eNom Central or GoDaddy, you’ll be asked to use that service instead of manually configuring your domain name.

On the following page, select Set up my domain name manually, and click Next.
On the following page, you will be shown a help topic on how to set up your domain name manually by clicking the I want to set up my domain name manually link.
Outside of the wizard, to setup your domain name, you’ll have to log into your domain name provider and make the following changes:

Create an A record called “remote” (if you choose to use remote.contoso.com) that points to the static IP address of your server
Ensure that your IP address from your ISV is static (doesn’t change). If this is not an option, you can look into a 3^rd party dynamic DNS solution and ensure that that’s updated. If you go with the Dynamic DNS option, then (a) above should probably be a CNAME to the URL provided by the Dynamic DNS company.

Once you have completed the above step, confirm that your domain is set up, check the box and click Next.
Next you will need to have a certificate for your domain name. This certificate will secure web traffic to your domain. It’s VERY important that the certificate name (remote.contoso.com) matches the A record you created above. Without a match, your users will get a certificate warning (you can change the “remote” using the Advanced button:

This generates a certificate request. You’ll have to find a certificate provider (Both GoDaddy and eNom Central offer low cost certificates for use) and follow their instructions on how to get a certificate. They will need the certificate request string shown in the wizard below. To copy this into a webpage, simply press the Copy button and paste it into the certificate providers webpage when asked.

Most inexpensive certificates are issued immediately, but if you live in a country that doesn’t do this, or you purchased a higher end certificate, you might have to wait. I do want to take a second and tell you that yes, you do only need the cheapest of certificates. The SBS team has gone to a great deal of effort to ensure that you only need the cheapest security aspect, with no multi-name or wildcard certificates needed. If you choose to upgrade, it should be for another reason than those mentioned. So if your provider needs more time, just tell the wizard and follow the instructions

Once you have the certificate string, or file, you’ll have to import that into the server using the next page of the wizard:

Now you’re finished, and your domain name is set up.

You know you’re correct when on a computer outside of your network you type in NSLOOKUP remote.contoso.com (replacing your domain name here) and it returns the static IP address of the external IP of the router (the one your ISP gives you), and that when you browse to http://remote.contoso.com/remote, that you don’t get a certificate warning when the logon page comes up. This ensures you have both the router port 443 forwarded correctly, and that the certificate is installed correctly. Additionally, all the errors in your dashboard should disappear, if they were there in the first place (this can take up to 30 minutes for these alerts to clear)

That’s all there is to it!

SMB MVP Community Roadshow

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Daniel) — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 04:30:00 +0000

HP and Microsoft have joined together with our Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) to visit 66 cities in Canada, Australia, Europe and of course the United States. They are touting it as a real-world experience and advice talk by the MVPs who live and breath the product ever day. No marketing talk!

Kevin and Dana give it to you straight.

Kevin Beares and Dana Epp talk about SMB MVP Community Roadshow

These guys brought down the house in Vancouver, BC tonight. Tomorrow night they hit up Victoria, BC. Then are out to talk to you, in the rest of the world!

Windows Phone 7 Add-in for SBS 2011 Essentials and WHS 2011 (Release Candidate)

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Daniel) — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 17:38:00 +0000

Today the Release Candidate of the Windows Server Solutions Phone Connector for Small Business Server 2011 Essentials (aka Integrating Windows Phone 7 with your SBS 2011 Essentials Server) is available

The purpose of this Add-in is to enable Remote Server Management tasks for SBS 2011 Essentials including

Alerts

After you complete the authentication steps with the server that you are trying to connect to, an alerts listing is the first panorama item that the application launches into. This feature brings the Alert Viewer that you know from the server, to the phone.

If an alert is displayed white, it is active and included in the alert count. If an alert is dimmed, that means the alert is disabled, and it is not included in the alert count. Any alert item can be clicked to view the full alert text just as on a computer. Contextual menu options include enabling or disabling an alert, and performing a repair action if one was assigned to this alert.

Users

The user-panorama item performs basic user management tasks, including:

Viewing user account details
Enable or disable a user account
Change a user account password

If you disable a user account, that is a reversible action. The moment a user account gets disabled, it causes the same effect as it would if you disable it by using the dashboard. The user’s access to Remote Web Access, the phone application, and any server resources is turned off.

Devices

“Devices” is a panorama item that lets you:

View server-joined computer and Mac details.
View the backup status that every device last reported to the server.
Start or stop a backup for any computer or the server (from the contextual menu).

Live Tile Support

If you pin the application to the home screen of your Windows Phone 7, you will be able to see a variety of at-a-glance information without launching into the application. An opt-in using the settings menu is required.

The at-a-glance information includes:

Count and type of network health alerts.
Percentage of storage use of your main disk.
Server name sending this information.

The Windows Phone 7 application requires both a server sided add-in to be installed on the SBS 2011 Essentials Server, as well as Windows 7 Phone application downloadable via marketplace.

If you end up getting the Windows Home Server version, you’ll also get live media streaming

Media Support (Home Server Only)

The Media panorama lets you discover and view streams of media elements that you stored on your server in the appropriate shared folders (such as Music, Video and Picture shares).

Music

MP3 non-Digital Rights Management-protected songs will be streamed directly from the server to your phone. Album art is also transported. Your library is searchable and can be organized in different views to help find what you want fast.

Pictures

“Pictures” has a variety of functions:

Discover all .png and .jpg images that are stored in the Pictures shared folder on the server. Subfolders are recognized.
Open a picture full-screen to view it on the phone.
Save a copy of the picture to the phone, using its original dimensions and resolution (to be viewed later in the built-in Pictures hub of any Windows Phone 7).
Take a picture with the phone’s camera and upload it to the server.
Upload any picture that is stored in the Pictures hub of the phone to the server.

Videos

The “Videos” feature allows you to discover and view videos that are stored on your server in the Videos shared folder.

Even though discoverable by this feature, the variety of video formats is high and not all formats can be streamed. For details about which video formats can be streamed from the server and accepted by the phone, see Supported Media Codecs for Windows Phone.

For further information, and access to the downloads to start testing today please visit the SBS Connect Site, or WHS Connect site depending on your product.

Please note this is a release candidate and as such is for testing purposes only. Link Back to the Official SBS Blog Post.

First Preview of Windows 8

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Daniel) — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 19:04:00 +0000

If you’ve been living in a cave since yesterday afternoon, this video is for you. Director of PM, Jensen Harris, has revealed the first look at Windows 8.

Building Windows 8–Jensen Harris

Jensen talks about the “Tile” and “Multi-Tasking” designs of the Windows 8 new shell. Using Tiles, similar to Windows Phone 7, allows for more space for the app to bleed out goodness (personality as Jensen calls it), and give you active views.

The other slick feature I liked was the multi-tasking, the ability to flip seamlessly between apps, or show two apps at the same time, something that the iPad doesn’t do today.

Finally, the “thumb mode” on screen keyboard is *amazing*, I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to have to stretch your thumb to the middle of the screen… now designed for your thumbs….

Well, enough typing, check out the video!