The Idea

All your email, calendars, contacts, and notes will reside on our mail servers. Your devices (computers, laptops, iPhones, and iPads) will link to our servers. This way, every device will see the same information at all times. If you view a message on one device, then you can see that message “as viewed” on all your other devices.

Limitations

We have elected to use the latest technology for this service. At this time the only software that connect to Exchange Web Services are:

Mac Mail – Snow Leopard, Lion and later

Outlook 2011 -  Mac and later

Outlook 2012 – Windows and later

How to setup Exchange Web Services Email

Follow these steps to set up Apple Mail to sync with Exchange Web Services

1. On your Mac, open System Preferences.
2. Click Mail, Contacts & Calendars.
3. Click Microsoft Exchange.
4. Complete the display name, full email address and password fields.
5. Click Next.
6. Type the root URL to your webmail. http://mail.interactivewebs.com
7. Click Next.
8. An account summary screen will display. Click Continue.
9. Click Add Account.

Apple Mail is now configured to sync with InteractiveWebs SmarterMail. Depending on how much data there is to synchronize, the first sync may take a few minutes.

iPhone and iPad Touch

The iPhone and iPad still use the IMAP connections to the mail server.

1. On the iPhone, tap Settings.
2. Tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
3. Tap Add Account.
4. Tap Other.
5. Tap Add Mail Account.
6. Complete the Name, Address (email address), Password and Description fields.
7. Click Next.
8. Ensure IMAP is selected.
9. Enter your incoming mail server information:
   • Hostname mail.interactivewebs.com.
   • Username is your full email address
• Password as provided.
10. Enter your outgoing mail server information:
    • Hostname is generally mail.interactivewebs.com.
    • Username is your full email address
• Password as provided
11. Tap Next.
12. The iPhone will attempt to establish an SSL connection to your IMAP and SMTP servers. If this succeeds, you will be done and can proceed to step 13. If this fails, you will see the prompt, "Do you want to try setting up the account without SSL?"
    • Tap No.
    • Tap Save.
    • When prompted, "This account may not be able to send or receive emails. Are you sure you want to save," tap Save.
13. Tap the account you just added (identified by your email address)
14. Scroll down and tap the SMTP button.
15. Select the server you just added, identified by the hostname from step 9.
16. Select OFF for Use SSL.
17. Select Password for Authentication
18. Select 25 for Server Port.
19. Tap the SMTP button to go back.
20. Tap your email address to go back.
21. Tap Advanced.
22. Scroll down to Incoming Settings.
23. Select OFF for Use SSL.
24. Select Password for Authentication.
25. Select 143 for Server Port.
26. Tap your email address to go back.
27. Tap Mail to go back.
28. Tap the Home button.
29. Tap the Mail App to check your configuration.

Options

Push Notifications

With the phone and iPad, it is possible to use a service that pushes email messages to your phone, rather than your phone being set to constantly run off and check for new messages. This saves on battery life, saves on data used on your monthly plan and ensures your email messages always arrive on time.

If it is important to you to have email messages when they arrive, then this service is what you need. Known as Active Sync, it can be enabled by us with a a small additional cost for each account. $5 per month.

Larger Mail Accounts

Because your email remains on our servers, it means that your accounts will grow and grow in size. This takes up resources on our mail servers (which is fine) but if you like to keep past history of mail sent, and all your arriving email messages, then you will need to extend the storage space of your mail account on our servers.

This can be done easily with a small monthly fee per account. $15 per month.

Please contact us to learn more: http://www.interactivewebs.com/ContactUs.aspx

Beginning with SmarterMail 6, SmarterTools began incorporating some very powerful tools into the SmarterMail e-mail server software which made the control of undesired SPAM much easier.

Prior to version 6 of the SmarterMail software, it was necessary to maintain blacklists, build complicated tables of undesired words, phrases, IP address, e-mail addresses, and domains – all of which changed almost every hour.

The spammers knew the ISPs and e-mail server operators were up against a wall and, in spite of new state and federal regulations being put into place almost daily, continued to churn out ever more junk mail because they were unconcerned with being stopped or caught. With the introduction of SmarterMail version 6, the tide began to turn in favor of the e-mail server operators.

Between the more frequent adaptation of SPF, the general requirement of large ISPs that mail server operators have both IN-ARPA [reverse DNS] AND PTR records pointing back at the HOST and MX records of their respective mail servers, and the new tools being coded into the SmarterMail e-mail server system, e-mail server operators finally began to accumulate an arsenal in the war of the spammers vs the mail server operators.

In July 2009, ChicagoNetTech converted from IMail to SmarterMail version 5. Within a week of our purchase and conversation, SmarterTools introduced the BETA of SmarterMail version 6, and with SmarterMail Version 6 BETA, a powerful new set of anti-spam tools which would change our relationship with our customers significantly.

As ChicagoNetTech began to work with SmarterMail version 6 BETA, and experimented with various anti-spam configurations, and soon found the tools introduced with SmarterMail version 6 beta allowed some very powerful capabilities in the fight against spammers.

After testing with one of our minor domains, we decided to “flip the switch” and ran the new anti-spam settings we were using on just one domain on all of the domains. Suddenly, instead of complaints about the large quantities of spam users previously received in their in-boxes, we were receiving compliments about how pleasant it was to open their e-mail in the morning and find that everything in those boxes was 100% related to business.

The spam was gone, the customers were extremely happy, and we have not looked back since then.

In July of 2009, after assisting many SmarterMail admins on the SmarterMail forum with anti-spam issues, I decided to publish my settings for the benefit of everyone’s SmarterMail installations.

Since then many have adopted and, to their surprise, have had similar results to those we experienced from the beginning.

Unfortunately the software used for the SmarterMail forums allows for a limited number of characters in each post. Thus it was necessary split the original post into two sections. The forum software also limits the number of images in any given post and that has resulted in many questions as to the implementation of specifics relating to the anti-spam settings effectively implemented on our and other SmarterMail server operators.

This document will restate those settings, in somewhat greater detail, along with IETF specifications relating to why they work and why you should make certain you are in full compliance with both IETF requirements and recommendations.

The antispam settings listed below are the settings currently used by ChicagoNetTech Inc, an ISP in Chicago Illinois, with client base consisting primarily of not-for-profit agencies, healthcare facilities, and small businesses. ChicagoNetTech runs SmarterTool’s SmarterMail Enterprise version 9 – latest available software release.

These settings are based on SmarterMail Enterprise Edition, Version 9. Non-Enterprise, as well as versions earlier than version 9 may have slightly different settings or screens. More information about the differences in SmarterMail versions is available on the SmarterMail Version Comparison Page.

Many thanks for the proofreading and editing assistance provided by Jim Murphy of Digital Webby who is also a user of, and a regular in, the SmarterMail forums.

1. Setup your primary GREYLISTING settings:

To do this, login as the primary ADMIN for the SmarterMail server and goto:

SECURITY è GREYLISTING è OPTIONS

- SELECT ENABLE GREYLISTING

- UNSELECT ENABLE USERS TO OVERRIDE GREYLISTING

- SET your BLOCK PERIOD – we use 4 minutes

- SET your PASS PERIOD – we use 360 minutes

- SET your RECORD EXPIRATION – we use 36 days

The Greylisting settings shown above reject an e-mail sent to your mail server by anyone who has not sent e-mail to your server for the past 36 days with a notification to the sending e-mail server that the message was GREYLISTED, in accordance with RFC 821. The Greylisting rejection message will include a notification that the sending server should RETRY the message again after a specific number of seconds.

In our case the GREYLISTING BLOCK PERIOD is 4 minutes or 240 SECONDS

When someone who has not sent an e-mail to someone hosted on our SmarterMail server SmarterMail checks to see if they have e-mailed the intended recipient previously. If they have, and the previous delivery timeframe falls within the record expiration period, the message is allowed to be delivered, provided it does not meet other anti-spam measures.

If not, the initial Greylisting rejection response issued by SmarterMail is:

“rsp: 451 Greylisted, please try again in 240 seconds”

If the sending mail server attempts to resend the original message prior to the 240 second wait period expiring, they will receive another ““rsp: 451 Greylisted, please try again in XXX seconds”, where XXX is the difference between the initial send time and XXX is the time remaining until the 240 second wait time has expired.

If they send the same message after 240 seconds, but do not wait longer than 360 minutes, then the mail server white lists the sending mail server’s ability to send to the e-mail address the message was originally sent to for a period of 36 days.

Greylisting works for two reasons:

A. Because most spammers attempt to send an e-mail message only one time. They have so many spam messages in their outbound queue that they want to send them out as quickly as possible, and;

B. Because the International Engineering Task Force [IETF] states that all e-mail server must retry to send an e-mail message for up to a minimum of four [4] days if the message is not deliverable the first time.

The specific IETF rules concerning redelivery attempts are located at: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt, http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3261.txt, and http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3265.txt.

For more information about Greylisting, please see www.Greylisting.org

NOTE: GREYLISTING WORKS ON A PER USER E-MAIL ACCOUNT BASIS. Just because jimbeam@sendingdomain.com has been Greylisted for jackdaniels@receivingdomain.com does not mean that jimbeam@sendingdomain.com is now Greylisted for oldfitz@receivingdomain.com. Each time a sending e-mail address sends to a receiving e-mail address on your server which has not received e-mail from the sending e-mail address within the timeframe of the Greylisting table established for your server, they will have to be Greylisted for the receiving e-mail address to which they are sending a message.

Some users will balk at the initial delay imposed on the receipt of messages from “new” senders. Remind them that e-mail is not instant messaging and Greylisting is only a momentary delay – amounting to a mere 4 minutes, under the settings used in our example. You can also remind them that Greylisting plays an important roll in ensuring their e-mail box is not overflowing with junk mail every morning. They will get over it.

To make certain your SmarterMail server installation is properly trying to resend messages which may be Greylisted by receiving mail servers, or otherwise non-deliverable on a temporary basis, you can check your RETRY INTERVAL settings.

SmarterMail’s RETRY INTERVAL SETTINGS are located under:

SETTINGS è GENERAL SETTINGS è SPOOL

IMPORTANT NOTE: YOUR SPOOL PATH MAY BE DIFFERENT THAN THE ONE SHOWN IN THE EXAMPLE BELOW. NEVER ATTEMPT TO CHANGE A SPOOL PATH ON A FUNCTIONING MAIL SERVER!

IETF retry requirements call for “shall retry for up to 4 days”, but they do not specify the frequency of the retry attempts. The sooner a message is delivered, the better. In reality however, technology does break down and is not always repaired immediately. Attempting to retry delivery too quickly might not allow a message to be delivered at all, so most ISPs have opted to try several times within the first couple of hours and then retry at longer intervals to allow the receiving ISP time to resolve non-receipt issues.

ChicagoNetTech has opted to run the following retry interval schedule: 15, 30, 60, 90, 120, 240, 480, 960, 1440, 2880 minutes after the initial attempt.

This schedule sets the first retry time for 15 minutes after the initial delivery attempt. If still not deliverable, message delivery is reattempted at 30, 60, 90, and then 120 minutes. After the initial schedule, the amount of time doubles for each successive retry attempt.

In all, the server attempts to retry the delivery for a little more than four days. This satisfies the IETF retry requirement of four days.

If you loose an incoming e-mail message because a server does not retry their deliveries after the first delivery attempt they are either a SPAMMER or non compliant.

If a sending mail server is non-compliant, you do not have an obligation to whitelist them because of their ignorance.

If the receipt of a blocked e-mail is important to you, and/or your client, you may want to try to figure out what caused the problem and notify the sending mail server administrator.

DON’T GET CAUGHT UP IN THE AUTOMATIC WHITELISTNG TRAP!

If a valid ISP has a problem sending e-mail to your server, take the time to find out what the problem is. Your logs will reveal many of the issues for you. You can also use outside DNS testing tools to make certain the sender’s DNS is properly configured.

ISPs and e-mail server operators have an obligation to know how to properly configure both their e-mail server software, firewalls, server operating system software and their DNS records.

NOTES:

Ø DNS records include “A” or “HOST” records, “MX” records, “IN-ARPA” records, and “PTR” records.

Ø PTR is always setup on the LOCAL DNS server.

Ø IN-ARPA record mapping to the e-mail host must always be done by the INTERNET SERVICE or “bandwidth” PROVIDER – the company who provides the connectivity and IP ADDRESS range assignment to the ISP.

Ø You should also setup IN-ARPA mappings for any e-mail domains on your local DNS server(s) by creating reverse DNS mappings for your IP ADDRESS range on your DNS servers.

Ø RFC974, RFC1034 3.6.2, RFC1912 2.4, and RFC2181 10.3 prohibit the use of C-NAME records in MX or mail server host names. All MX records must be mapped to “A” or “HOST” records directly.

Ø ALL IP ADDRESSES ASSIGNED TO PUBLIC E-MAIL SERVERS MUST BE PUBLIC AND AVAIALBLE ON THE INTERNET!

EXAMPLE: The only issue we have ever encountered because of GREYLISTING was with a vendor who does shredding for medical companies who was trying to send an e-mail to one of our customers. The vendor’s e-mail server was configured to attempt to send messages only once. It was not configured to retry if a message was non-deliverable.

When the sending e-mail server encountered the “rsp: 451 Greylisted, please try again in 240 seconds” message, they aborted the process and never resent the message.

When the client complained they had not received the message, we checked the logs and found the problem. The customer asked me to whitelist the domain and IP address and I said no, the vendor needed to fix the configuration of their mail server. I also told our customer I would work with their vendor to resolve the mail server’s configuration so it would not happen in the future.

After contacting our customer’s vendor and explaining the how Greylisting works, along with the requirements that their server must be compliant, the vendor resolved the issues with their mail server’s retry times and we have had no problems with delivery of their e-mail since. The customer’s vendor was unaware of the issue and glad to learn of the problem so it could be corrected.

Because our customer’s vendor’s mail server never attempted to resend the message never got past the greylisting.

2. Once you have configured the GREYLISTING SETTINGS, it is time to configure your ANTI SPAM according to the following settings.

These settings work because they IMMEDIATELY DELETE any incoming message which is found to be from a server that DOES NOT HAVE an IN-ARPA or REVERSE DNS ENTRY.

Messages received from any of the RBL or URIBL are IMMEDIATELY DELETED if they are on one of those lists. If you UNCHECK the column labeled ENABLE FOR SMTP BLOCKING, the CENTER column in the main antispam section, and run according to weights, these settings WILL NOT WORK and you will be back to fighting with spammers.

Protecting your e-mail server from spam depends on total server spam lockdown.

1. SETUP AN ACCOUNT WITH BARRACUDA CENTRAL and ADD THE BARRACUDA REPUTATION BLOCK LIST to your ANTISPAM settings.

Before you can begin to use the Barracuda Reputation Block List, you will need to setup an account at Barracuda Central. That account must be linked to the IP ADDRESS used by your e-mail server to RECEIVE e-mail. If you have multiple IP addresses for your SmarterMail server, as in a situation where you have hosted domains with dedicated IP addresses, you will want to list the IP address which is MAPPED TO THE HOST NAME OF THE SERVER ON WHICH SMARTERMAIL IS INSTALLED in your Barracuda account as that is the IP address which will actually contact the BRBL to do the lookup.

To setup your account go to http://www.barracudacentral.org/. Then go to the TOP OF THE PAGE and click on REQUEST ACCESS. This links to http://www.barracudacentral.org/account/register

Once your setup your Barracuda account you will need to configure your SmarterMail server to use it. To add your BRBL listing configuration goto:

SECURITY è ANTISPAM ADMINISTRATION è ADD RBL.

Configure your new RBL as follows:

Once you have entered all of your data into the configuration box, then click SAVE and you have added your new BRBL too to your list of Antispam measures.

B. NOW TURN ON the ANTI-SPAM SETTINGS per the SCREEN CAPTURES SHOWN BELOW:

Your SPAM CHECKS TAB is located at: SECURITY è ANTISPAM ADMINISTRATION è SPAM CHECKS

A note about the settings for each of the line items below:

v Depending on the version of SmarterMail you have, you may not have some of the items shown below;

v Depending on the version of SmarterMail you have, you may have more items than are shown below;

v There is no need to modify the REQUIRED LOOKUP VALUE in any of the items listed below. They all map to localhost addresses in the 127.0.0.X range, where X is always greater than 1, because 1 is always reserved as the LOCALHOAST address in the HOSTS files in Microsoft operating systems.

NOTES:

v By checking the ENABLE FOR SMTP BLOCKING [center] column, all weights are overridden and meaningless. Weights are only used when the ENABLE FOR SMTP BLOCKING column is NOT checked.

v URBL: MailPolice no longer exists and was eliminated in June 2010. SmarterMail was supposed to have removed the URBL for MailPolice in Version 7, but when we installed SmarterMail version 9 it magically re-appeared in the antispam list. Whether you are running pre-SmarterMail version 7, or a later version of SmarterMail, with MailPolice still in the antispam settings, it is easily removed by highlighting, right clicking, and hitting DELETE. Even if left in, it no longer does anything because they are out of business.

v There is no need to check OUTBOUND messages for spam unless you have known spammers on your server, in which case you have a much bigger problem. Most outbound spam is caused by someone hacking your server and sending via one of your hosted accounts. Secure passwords can go a long way toward prevent having your server hacked and hijacked by spammers and are discussed elsewhere in this document.

v Note that we ENABLE REVERSE DNS FILTERING. This checks to see if the sending e-mail server has a public IN-ARPA or REVERSE DNS entry which maps to the sending e-mail server’s HOST NAME and IP ADDRESS.

v While not REQUIRED by the IETF, RFC1912 2.1 says you SHOULD HAVE a reverse DNS for all your mail servers. It is strongly urged that you have them, as many mailservers will not accept mail from mailservers with no reverse DNS entry.

v With ENABLE REVERSE DNS checked in the ENABLE FOR INCOMNG SMTP BLOCKING column, anyone who does not have BOTH an IN-ARPA or REVERSE DNS AND a PTR entry associated with the IP ADDRESS of their primary mail server will be unceremoniously disconnected and their message will not be accepted by your mail server. This is an extremely important antispam setting as most spammers will not make the effort to, or will be blocked from, setting up an IN-ARPA address.

v Anything checked in the “ENABLE FOR INCOMING SMTP BLOCKING” column will UNCEREMONIOUSLY DELETE an incoming message which meets the criteria. Mail Servers are notified you are using SMTP Blocking with the following message:

“554 Sending address not accepted due to spam filter”

v These settings do not use content filtering. I strongly suggest you do not use content filtering in addition to these settings because the maintenance of any content filtering is a maintenance intensive, self-loathing task which is never done. Should you choose to enable content filtering in addition to the settings suggested in this document, you may run the risk of having your e-mail server tagged as a spammer by BACKSCATTER.ORG, BARRACUDA, and SORBS. You do not want to put yourself in that position.

To DISABLE BACKSCATTER, goto

SECURITY è ANTISPAM ADMINISTRATION è OPTIONS and make certain you have set CONTENT FILTER BOUNDING to DISABLED. It should be configured as follows:

Note: Your Auto-Responder, Spool Proc, and Catch-All settings may be different.

ü Your DomainKeys may be set to different values, ours are set as follows:

ü Your DKIM settings may be set to different values, ours are set as follows:

ü We have initiated some different settings for SPF records. Our SPF is set as follows:

C. FILTERING:

The FILTERING settings are available under:

SECURITIY è ANTISPAM ADMINISTRATION è FILTERING

We initially set our LOW PROBABILITY to PREFIX SUBJECT WITH TEXT [**** Junk E-Mail ****] to make certain we were not deleting legitimate e-mail.

Once you are comfortable with the new antispam settings, and are convinced you are not turning away legit e-mail, you can change LOW to DELETE if you like. If you are more comfortable with initially setting the MEDIUM or HIGH to PREFIX or MOVE, please feel free to do so.

In order to alleviate any confusion about what we show in the SMTP BLOCKING screen, I have include a capture from our SmarterMail setup below. Your settings may be different.

D. OPTIONS:

The following options are available under:

SETTINGSè DEFAULTS è DOMAIN DEFAULTS è TECHNICAL

You will also want to make certain that your PRIMARY IP ADDRESS is properly mapped to your SmarterMail host’s server name.

Because we run TLS on the mail server [available in the Enterprise edition only], and run SSL, we have ALL of our clients setup to use the IP ADDRESS which is bound to our SSL/TLS.

In the event of a failure of that IP ADDRESS, SmarterMail will automatically pick up with the primary IP ADDRESS of the NIC card, which is also bound to all domains, but not as a primary.

Our two MX records point to:

v SECUREMAIL.CHICAGONETTECH.COM, with a PRIORITY of 5, which makes that our PRIMARY e-mail server, running on an IP ADDRESS of 173.165.112.155, and;

v FIFI.CHICAGONETTECH.COM, with a PRIORITY of 10, makes that our SECONDARY e-mail server, running on an IP ADDRESS of 173.165.112.146

Make certain these are both setup in DNS, with the appropriate HOST NAME records, MX records, and PRT records pointing to the HOST NAME records.

The MX record number which is the LOWEST will always be the first to be attempted when e-mail is delivered to your server from outside your domain.

You will also want to have your internet service bandwidth provider, the company who allocates your static IP ADDRESSES, map IN-ARPA or REVERSE DNS entries back to those HOST NAMES for your MX records.

These settings are available under the SmarterMail primary ADMIN account via:

SETTINGS è PROTOCOL SETTINGS è SMTP OUT:

NOTES:

v The OUTBOUND IP is the DEFAULT OUTBOUND IP for all domains hosted on your SmarterMail server. If you host multiple domains with separate IP ADDRESSES assigned to those domains, or you have SSL setup to use a specific IP ADDRESS as would probably be the case if you have enabled TLS, then you may need to change this default IP ADDRESS for specific domains or services.

v If you run more than one domain on SmarterMail, remember to check the OUTBOUND IP address for each domain you host. This can be found by selecting the domain, EDITING the domain settings and then navigating to the TECHNICAL TAB and selecting the OUTBOUND IP address from the drop down box. If you should ever have to change IP address ranges, or add additional IP ADDRESSES to the server hosting your SmarterMail installation, it will be necessary to change the outbound IP ADDRESS in EVERY domain you host via these settings.

v DO NOT CHECK the DISABLE GREYLISTING box. If it is checked, UNCHECK it. Allowing users or domains to disable greylisting will override one of the most important aspects of your new anti-spam settings and result in your users, once again, being deluged in spam.

v The EXCLUDE IP FROM RECEIVED LINE was added in SmarterMail version 9. While this may be something which is perceived as being needed by some admins, I highly recommend NOT checking this box.

v In our case, we have TLS enabled. TLS is an encryption protocol which became available in SmarterMail 8.

v Beginning with the most recent versions of SmarterMail 9, TLS is available on a PER DOMAIN basis and is enabled or disabled only after enabling TLS on the SmarterMail server, via the TECHNICAL TAB under EDIT DOMAIN. TLS must be enable in BOTH AREAS for TLS to be available for a domain.

So, now that I have told you we have TLS enabled, you may wonder, what does TLS do and why is TLS important?

TLS enables the full encryption of e-mail, along every step of the message chain, from the desktop to the recipient, where the inter-transport e-mail servers also support TLS and an SSL encryption is used between the desktop and the SmarterMail server.

ü TLS uses PUBLIC KEY CERTIFICATES to verify the identity of the endpoints;

ü In the case of e-mail servers, these endpoints are the SMTP servers which interconnect to transport the e-mail messages;

ü TLS is the upgrade to the SSL protocol which is now partially depreciated.

ü Both work under SSL certificates;

ü Implementation of SSL in SmarterMail requires you run SmarterMail under IIS and disable the SmarterMail web server;

ü The full benefit of TLS is realized only if e-mail originates either via an SSL web interface or a TLS or SSL encrypted client, whether desktop or SmartPhone;

ü TLS is included only in SmarterMail Enterprise edition;

For more information about SSL/TLS, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Layer_Security.

For information on how to implement SSL/TLS in SmarterMail, see my post at: http://forums.smartertools.com/showthread.php/29845-SM-9-x-and-SSL-(Free-Version)

If you decide to implement TLS on your SmarterMail server you should then test your server to make certain your implementation is working properly.

To test either your SmarterMail TLS installation, or any other e-mail server which claims to be TLS enabled and capable, you can use the free testing tool at: http://www.checktls.com/perl/TestReceiver.pl

Once you have opened the testing website, use the drop-down and select CertDetail after entering a full e-mail address for the server you wish to test. Use the e-mail address of Test@CheckTLS.com to see demonstration output for a properly configured TLS e-mail server.

Here is the summary output for the test e-mail address:

TestReceiver

CheckTLS Confidence Factor for "Test@CheckTLS.com": 100

MX Server	Pref	Con- nect	All- owed	Can Use	TLS Adv	Cert OK	TLS Neg	Sndr OK	Rcvr OK
mail2.CheckTLS.com [204.225.38.195]	20	OK (1ms)	OK (4ms)	OK (1ms)	OK (1ms)	OK (207ms)	OK (6ms)	OK (78ms)	OK (4ms)
www1.CheckTLS.com [24.123.1.3]	30	OK (117ms)	OK (1,031ms)	OK (88ms)	OK (86ms)	OK (595ms)	OK (251ms)	OK (352ms)	OK (92ms)
Average		100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%

In the example above the e-mail address, test@checktls.com shows that the e-mail servers used by checktls.com are both capable of fully supporting the TLS encryption protocol and the SSL certificate is both valid, not expired, and properly installed on the server.

The CertDetail level test performed will also generate approximately 5 pages of test data showing all negotiations, results, and certificates used during the testing process.

If this test positively validates a TLS server, then the server is both capable of, and properly configured to use, TLS negotiations and encryption during the process of sending, and receiving, of e-mail messages.

Failure to encrypt e-mail in today’s hacker rich environment can cause unwanted and undesirable results in today’s hacker and corporate raider environment. Every e-mail server operator should consider upgrading their mail server to support TLS and SSL. Read on, McDuff!

RESULTS FROM A NON-TLS COMPLIENT E-MAIL SERVER, or How the FBI and Scotland Yard Shot Themselves In the Foot:

For an interesting sidebar on how the lack of TLS got the FBI and Scotland Yard into trouble with the nefarious group Anonymous, see the following blog:

http://networkbastion.blogspot.com/2012/02/anonymous-vs-fbi.html

Here is the FAILED TLS test from the FBI’s e-mail server:

It was not just the FBI’s e-mail server which failed the TLS testing, but the e-mail servers of intelligence groups the United States deals with on a day-by-day basis as we attempt to prevent infiltration of government, military, corporate and personal e-mail communications.

Had TLS been properly installed and tested on the e-mail servers of the various intelligence communities involved, the incident outlined in the blog would probably never have happened.

Out of the six intelligence agencies involved, only three passed the basic TLS encryption security capabilities on their e-mail servers.

NOTES:

v E-Mail servers which run Greylisting may require a second test after a few minutes to display completely accurate results.

v Failure to validate an e-mail address as part of the test does not mean the TLS enabled e-mail server has failed the TLS testing.

E: SETTINGS è PROTOCOL SETTINGS

Make certain you are not an open, or partial open, relay: [Your SMTP BANNER may be different. I keep ours up to date with the current VERSION information whenever we update.]

F: PASSWORDS – the Bain of Every Administrator:

To check your password requirement settings, goto

SECURITY è ADVANCED SETTINGS è PASSWORD REQUIREMENTS

and modify your password settings as necessary.

We currently require passwords to be a minimum of EIGHT [8] characters in length with at least ONE UPPERCASE LETTER, 1 NUMBER and 1 SPECIAL CHARACTER in the password.

We do not allow any exceptions to the password rule. This prevents a lot of headaches because it eliminates short and simple passwords and prevents having our mail server hacked.

Note that setting a minimum of 8 characters does not preclude longer passwords as SmarterMail does not check for a maximum password length. This is actually a good thing because it allows your users to use PASS PHRASES.

So, with the settings show above, both: “rG#34_1@4b” and “meYe d0Ggi3 hA$ f133Z” are acceptable passwords – with the second actually being a pass phrase, which is longer, and easier to remember than the first. They both meet the secure password requirements shown in the password configuration screen below, and they are both secure.

Generally speaking, the longer the password or pass phrase, the more secure it is, and the less likely it is to be hacked by spammers, and the safer your SmarterMail installation will be:

NOTE: leaving the DISABLE PASSWORD STRENGTH FOR EXISTING PASSWORDS box checked will allow users to keep passwords which DO NOT meet the defined password requirements.

Leaving this blank will force everyone to change their passwords to meet the new requirements.

G: FURTHER PROTECTING YOUR SMARTERMAIL E-MAIL SERVER REPUTATION

To help protect your SmarterMail installation, you can do a couple of additional things:

Ø Setup an SPF record which points ONLY to the IP ADDRESS or IP ADDRESSES authorized to send messages from your e-mail server(s). Do NOT use a range. Setup specifically for the e-mail server, or servers, allowed to send. For more information see: http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/safety/content/technologies/senderid/wizard/

Ø Setup both DOMAIN KEY and DKIM signing:

NOTE: DOMAIN KEYS ARE SPECIFIC TO THE DOMAIN. EACH DOMAIN MUST HAVE A UNIQUE DOMAIN KEY CERTIFICATE.

v These keys are setup on a PER DOMAIN BASIS via the MANAGE tool for the domain.

v To setup DOMAIN KEYS:

Ø SELECT THE DOMAIN FOR WHICH YOU WISH TO CREATE THE KEY

Ø SELECT MANAGE

Ø SELECT SETTINGS è DOMAIN SETTINGS è ADVANCED SETTINGS è MAIL SIGNING è OPTIONS.

v Enable BOTH ENABLE DOMAIN KEY SIGNING and ENABLE DKIM SIGNING

v Then click on the tabs CERTIFICATES, DOMAIN KEYS SIGNING, and DKIM SIGNING, and complete the forms according to the HELP FOR THIS PAGE from SmarterMail. They have done a pretty good job with this section of the help files.

Here is a picture of the process of generating the certificate required for DOMAIN KEYS. Note that the KEY SIZE can be selected as 512, 768, and 1024. Shorter keys require less work on the part of both the sending and receiving e-mail servers but are less secure.

The longer the Domain Key certificate, the better.

Most modern e-mail servers can handle 1024 bit keys without any problems.

v Note the TXT record name? Domain Keys are added to your DNS as TXT records.

v First enter a SELECTOR to differentiate your domainKey and give it a name.

v Now Generate Key. This will both create the TXT Record Name and the TXT Record Value.

v When you add them to the DNS record, the only portion of the TXT RECORD NAME you enter into RECORD NAME portion of the DNS is, according to the example above, is “CNT.domainKey”. [without the quotes]

v The Microsoft GUI DNS tool will automatically append your domain name to the TXT record and create your domainKey certificate record.

v If you are using DNS other than Microsoft’s DNS, consult your DNS to see how to add a TXT record.

v The TXT Record VALUE is your actual certificate and goes into the TXT box of the TXT record. Save both the new TXT record value in SmarterMail and the newly created TXT record in your DNS for the domain, and you should be able to click on the TEST DNS and receive a PASSED notation at the top.

A test of a successful generation, and DNS install, of your domainKey certificate will look like this:

An explanation of DOMAINKEY SIGNING and DKIM SIGNING can be found in the SmarterMail KB at http://help.smartertools.com/SmarterMail/v9/Default.aspx?p=_SA&v=9.0.4408&lang=en-US&page=domainadmin%2ffrmdomainkeys

For more information on DOMAIN KEYS see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DomainKeys_Identified_Mail and http://www.dkim.org/

H: TEACH YOUR USERS NOT TO RESPOND TO PHISHING E-MAIL MESSAGES!

Sorry if I appear to be shouting, but the long, ALL CAPS, bolded title was deliberate.

General rule of thumb: If you don’t recognize the sender, or were not expecting an attachment, DO NOT OPEN THE MESSAGE – DELETE IT!

Phishing e-mail responses cause more problems with compromised e-mail accounts, identity theft, and compromised business networks and workstations than all other problems combined.

No matter how much you secure your e-mail server, no matter how well you protect your network, no matter how good the tables in your firewalls are constructed, all it takes is one hair-brained user sharing personal information with a total stranger to undo all of your hard work.

The FTC has published an excellent article on Phishing scams, which is available as a FREE PDF from their website, in both English and Spanish, that is both well written and easy to understand.

The FTC’s Phishing Scam article is available on the FTC website at:

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/alerts/alt127.shtm

A downloadable, and re-distributable, PDF version is available at: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/alerts/alt127.pdf

If you are an ISP, make this available for download, via a link from your website or e-mail FAQ page, so that every person who you provide services for has an opportunity to read it.

For your business customers, you have an excellent opportunity to help them run a tighter workplace by making this available to them for distribution to their employees.

If you are a business, you might consider making the FTC’s PDF part of your employment or IT security manual which you distribute to all employees when they are hired.

I: SUMMARY

Once you have your new antispam settings configured you will be able to monitor your server and see the actual results of your efforts.

First, you will have to make certain your logs are set for DETAILED recording of all log data. To do this go to SETTINGS è LOG SETTINGS and make certain you have your logs set to DETAILED for both DELIVERY and SMTP.

Once you have your logs set for detailed logging you can search. Logging can only be performed by SmarterMail admins. To view your SmarterMail logs, go to

MANAGE è VIEW LOGS.

Ø Search both the DELIVERY LOGS and the SMTP logs [be certain to check the ENABLE RELATED TRAFFIC BOX] for

v "rsp: 554 Sending address not accepted due to spam filter".

v The results will show you which messages were denied messages because of spam and why they are being denied.

Ø You will also be able to see both the spam tests, and results, for the delivery of all other messages processed by the server.

Ø [NOTE: We designed our servers with enough capacity to keep all logs for a minimum of FIVE [5] years because of our medical and healthcare clients. This is in compliance with the new HIPAA / HITECH Agency requirements which were made law in October 2011.]

Ø By using these settings we have close to ELIMINATED our spam problem. It CAN be done and it does not take a lot of effort or extra cost.

Ø Get rid of content filtering. It is a pain to maintain and will drive you crazy trying to stay ahead of the spammers and hackers as they come up with new ways to get around your content filters.

Ø Do not use the wizard. Use the capabilities of the built in antispam tools in SmarterMail to your advantage.

Ø LIMIT WHITELISTING. A well created and properly setup e-mail servers should not have to be whitelisted. Poorly designed and improperly setup e-mail servers are not our problem. They are indicative of someone who does not know what they are doing who should not be running an e-mail server in the first place. It doesn’t cost a lot of money to setup an e-mail server properly.

Ø If you encounter a problem you would normally whitelist, search out the real problem and inform of the administrators of the domain with the problem about the issues.

Ø Ask the administrators with improperly setup e-mail servers and/or DNS servers to correct the problem on their end. There are several free and paid DNS testing tools available via searching the Internet which can assist you in troubleshooting those issues.

Ø Run REPORTS:

v Go into REPORTS è SPAM AND VIRUS REPORTS è GREYLISTING and set a date range to see how many e-mail servers never re-send because they are spammers.

v Reports can also be created on both a SERVER and DOMAIN LEVEL. You can also create custom reports and have them e-mailed on a regular schedule.

v Other reports are available as well. Experiment with what is already built into SmarterMail and see how well your server is doing and what resources your customers are using.

Once you have configured these settings, monitor your server for a while. You should see a huge improvement in the amount of spam you process immediately.

Will these settings completely eliminate spam? No. Even with these new antispam settings in place on your SmarterMail installation you may, occasionally, see some spam creep through and end up in user’s mail boxes.

You can help prevent this from happening by making certain you do not allow your users to override greylisting or spam settings. Doing so will both allow spam to start to come through again and will also cause you hours of support headaches and ill will with our customers and users.

Spammers make large amounts of money off the relatively small percentage of people who respond. In the case of identity theft, the result is often years of working to resolve unauthorized charges on credit cards, money stolen from bank accounts, and ruined credit. As SmarterMail operators we have an obligation to protect our users from all kinds of spam.

Even with these new antispam settings in place on your SmarterMail installation you may, occasionally, see some spam creep through and end up in user’s mail boxes. Using these settings provides no guarantee that you will not have any spam.

Much of what you are likely to encounter is joe-jobbing, for which very little can be done except to ride out the storm.

You may also encounter spam from spammers who have setup e-mail servers which meet all of the requirements set forth by the IETF and are not trapped by these filters.

You can help prevent this from happening by making certain you do not allow your users to override greylisting or spam settings. Doing so will both allow spam to start to come through again and will also cause you hours of support headaches and ill will with our customers and users.

Finally, and I cannot impress this frequently enough, make certain you enforce SECURE passwords. Secure passwords are at least eight [8] characters in length, and require a combination of UPPER and lower case letters, numbers, and special characters. This will eliminate insecure passwords; eliminate the possibility of your users from using the names of family members, pets, and friends; and will also eliminate words which are in the dictionary.

J: NEED HELP?

IT has changed significantly in the 40-plus years since IBM was kind enough to underwrite the classes I initially attended while in high school. It is no longer about plugging cables into boards on accounting machines or writing code with a 16K limitation on available memory. We no longer enter data via 80 column punched cards and read the results off of printed paper, and we don’t have to wait hours or days to see a result.

The best thing about working in IT is the fact that our field is constantly changing – and constantly challenging.

The SmartPhones we now carry around with us have more than 100,000 times the computing power of the computers sent up in the original Mercury and Gemini space programs and 10,000 times the computing power of early mainframes.

Even for an experienced IT tech: someone who has come up through the ranks, answered the calls on the help desk, can troubleshoot PCs, Macs and printers, in his or her sleep, giving tech support via a hands-free cell phone call while driving down a busy expressway; setting up an e-mail server, even an e-mail server with the reliability and integrity of SmarterMail, can be a daunting endeavor.

The devil is always in the detail! The detail required to properly setup modern IT has so many different aspects to it that locating something that is “not quite right” can completely disable the proper operation of many different aspects of a network but improper configurations are especially significant where e-mail is concerned.

A forgotten HOST entry, selecting the wrong IP address, forgetting to map an MX record to a HOST NAME, not mapping DNS to the DNS servers setup when a domain name was purchased, wrangling with DNS for e-mail and IIS when having to maintain the integrity of DNS for Active Directory, failing to setup IN-ARPA – all of these have a potential to disable any e-mail server’s ability to send and receive e-mail properly.

SmarterMail users are exceptionally fortunate to have an incredible community of users who participate in the forums provided at http://forums.smartertools.com/forumdisplay.php/14-SmarterMail.

If the forums cannot provide everything you need, then the SmarterTools Knowledge Base is available for further research at: http://portal.smartertools.com/KB/browse.aspx

Remember, SmarterMail gives two free support tickets with the purchase of each product. Those tickets can be used to open support cases with SmarterMail, and, if your trouble turns out to be a bug, the cost of the ticket is refunded back into your account. This is a HUGE benefit of using SmarterMail over some of the other products on the market.

Finally, if you are just setting up a new SmarterMail installation, you can always request support from one of the members of the forum. Simply click on the member’s screen name and select the option to send a private message.

This includes a comprehensive listing of the Time Line for the History of the Internet.

Check it out.

We first researched the hits for “The History of the Internet” as a search term in Google.

What we found is that there are 450,000 searches each month for this term. We hope to capture some of that traffic.

1. Registered the Domain Name: the-history-of-the-internet.com

We did this at: http://domains.interactivewebs.com/

So we registered the domain name, and set Domain Name Servers to:

fserver2.fserver2.com

fserver3.fserver3.com

2. Next we setup DNS servers for the domain name.

and pointed the www.the-history-of-the-internet.com to the weebly website IP address that we have been assigned.

3. Then we updated the site settings in Weebly to accept the new domain name.

4. Then we setup a Google Analytics tracking code.

and pasted that to the Weebly settings so that every page would be tracked.

5. Then we added meta tag and page description data to every page of the website.

6. Next we blogged the site and linked to the URL, in an attempt to bring the page ranking and linking index up for the domain: http://www.the-history-of-the-internet.com/

7. Once the site has some hits from the 450,000 lookups each month, we plan to introduce some paid advertising to help cover the cost of the domain name registration.

CRM Anywhere Q2 CY 2012 Service Update Now Live

Preview some upcoming features in Q2 "R8" such as mobility, BI and Analytics enhancements from Reuben Krippner a MSFT Technical Product Management Lead in this video.

One of the most talked about improvements in CRM Anywhere is the introduction of a new mobility component dubbed Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile.

Cross-Browser Support

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile isn’t the only reason Microsoft is calling the coming update CRM Anywhere. Users of CRM Online 2011 will now be able to access the application using the following browser versions (see below).

To understand why this is so important for CRM Online 2011, let’s turn to a few third-party statistics on browser usage around the world. The following table compiles several different studies for easy comparison.

You should notice that while Internet Explorer is definitely in the lead, other browsers remain popular. Since users of Firefox, Chrome, and Safari cannot use CRM Online 2011 now, CRM Anywhere will literally double the potential user base of CRM Online 2011.

CRM Anywhere

Are you beginning to understand why Microsoft named its latest update CRM Anywhere? CRM Online 2011, already a versatile application, is being fully extended to mobile devices and all major browsers! When you include the social-media enhancements, you start to see why we think CRM Anywhere is so important.

When CRM Anywhere is released, you will be able to download it either through Windows Update, or at the Microsoft Download Center. Stay tuned here and we’ll provide you with all of the information you need to update when the time comes.

Multiple browser support

• IE on Windows 7
• Safari 5.11 + on Mac OSX and iPad 2
• Firefox 6+
• Chrome 13.x

Enhanced Activity Feeds

• Builds on current foundation
• Adds Likes/Dislikes
• Improved filtering of activity feeds

It sounds like this release will still only expose Dynamics CRM records on the activity feeds “wall”, but that the Q4 2012 Service Update will extend this to external communities.

new features and improvements in SQL 2012

If you’re attending Convergence you’ll probably want to attend some of the sessions on this important topic.

• Performance improvements
• Next-gen BI with Power View (Crescent)
• Pre-defined Power Pivot models for CRM
• Pre-defined Power View reports
• Available on marketplace as a Microsoft Labs solution

Using RDP from windows to access a remote server of Windows 2003. The problem sometimes appears that you cannot connect with an error reported as:

ERROR The terminal server has exceeded the maximum number of allowed connections

The Problem

The cause of this is that you have remote sessions that have not exited correctly. Either the connection to the server was lost, or the user simply clicked the close X at the top of the session.

AND

You have your settings in Terminal Server set to hold dropped or inactive sessions either for a period of time or forever.

To Solution

At the Start Button on the computer where you would normally run Remote Desktop Connection from.

Click Start

Run

Type in “mstsc.exe –admin”

Then enter the connection details that you would normally use, and away you go.

We are assuming that the server is setup to run IIS websites, and that you have some general idea about running websites in general on IIS. If this is not the case and you are learning from scratch. Better to learn on Linux server.

Assuming you want to get OpenCart running on IIS.

Step 1 – Web Platform Installer

Install the Microsoft Web Platform Installer on the server from this link.

http://www.microsoft.com/web/downloads/platform.aspx

In Windows 2003 you need to:

Go to the directory on your server: C:\php

Find the file: php.ini

Edit the file in a text browser, finding the following lines:

extension=php_curl.dll

extension=php_gd2.dll

extension=php_mysql.dll

And remove the ; before each line:

Then save the file.

Start a Command Prompt “cmd” and type “iisreset”

This enabled MySQL, GD, and cURL,

Step 2 – Setup PHP on the server.

Start the Web Platform Installer and search PHP in the top right of the search window.

Select and install the latest version of PHP from the list.

Step 3 – Install MySQL on the server.

Also from the Web Platform Installer, search “MySQL” and install that.

During the install, you will be asked for a password for the –root- user. This is the Administrator account and the password should be very well guarded and complex.

Step 4 – Create a Database in MySQL.

Open the My SQL Command Line Tool and enter the –root- password selected above.

Modify the following script to replace the database name, user name and password.

create database mydb;
 
CREATE USER ‘myuser’@’localhost’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘mypassword‘;
CREATE USER ‘myuser‘@’%’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘mypassword’;
 
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON mydb.* TO ‘myuser‘@’localhost’;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON mydb.* TO ‘myuser‘@’%';
 
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Enter your own values where highlighted above.

Copy and paste that line by line into the MySQL Command Line Window. You only need to run one from the first two, then one from the second two.

If you need to change a password.

SET PASSWORD FOR 'myuser'@'localhost' = PASSWORD('newpass');

SET PASSWORD FOR 'myuser'@'%' = PASSWORD('newpass');

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Step 5 – Download and unzip to Web Located Folder the contents of OpenCart

Download here: http://www.opencart.com/index.php?route=download/download

The contents of the download package is in a folder called “upload”

Extracted in our case to a folder we called: opencart.interactivewebs.com

Step 6 – Create an IIS instance to hit that directory.

Using the IIS skills that we suggested you should have. Create a new site that hits the directory you dropped the Upload contents to above.

For Windows make sure the following folders and files permissions allow Read and Write.
image/
image/cache/
cache/
download/
config.php
admin/config.php

Step 7 – Set the permissions for IIS.

From the Exploring, Right click the folder with the web files in it, and select Security Tab. Modify the permissions for:

IUSR – Modify (you will probably need to add this)

IIS_IUSRS(<servername>\IIS_IUSRS) – modify

Step 8 – Visit the home page.

Visit the store homepage
e.g. http://www.example.com or http://www.example.com/store/

Accept the license

Check the permissions you need.

Fill in the following details with the relevant information.

Using the MYSQL database settings you created above.

As per the instruction above, you need to delete the Instillation directory.

Step 9 – Deleted this directory.

Restart IIS from the command prompt again. “iisreset”

Common problem if permissions are not set correctly.

http://www.opencart.com/index.php?route=documentation/documentation&path=7_57

We were receiving this error constantly when trying to run either the Microsoft Update service or Windows update service.

Read more about steps you can take to resolve this problem (error number 0x80072EE7) yourself.

Solution (fix)

As you would expect, there is no help from Microsoft here.

We found that the DNS server for the internet connection on this machine was pointing to a local server of ours. We changed this to the Google free DNS service:

IP 8.8.8.8

IP 8.8.5.5

And ran the update process again. We found that it worked right away.

The likely cause relates to the DNS server we host being unable to look up something Microsoft correctly. We will fix that by updating the way that the server references Microsoft resources. But for now, it is handy to know that the error above was related to a DNS problem.

The issue is that not all fonts will work on all browsers on all computers. Here is the reason why.

Web-Safe Fonts

There are an awful lot of fonts in the world! For years, no doubt, you’ve been using a ton of them in word processing documents, party invitations, banners, etc. But have you ever noticed how few of them are used on the web?

There’s a really good reason for this. When a web page loads, the browser is told to write text onto the screen using a specified font—one that is stored on the computer that the browser is running on. Therefore, if the web page’s code is calling for a font that a user does not have installed on their computer, it won’t show up! What that person will instead see is a default font, which might look a little ugly.

Now you might be wondering why this will happen so often if there are so many fonts installed on your computer. Well, here’s the problem: the two most widely-used operating systems—Windows and Mac OS X—each come installed with a different set of fonts. Awesome!

To illustrate this point, here’s where the fonts are stored in Windows 7:

And here’s where they’re stored on Mac OS 10.6:

Right away, we can see that only one of the displayed fonts overlaps: Arial. None of the Calibri orCambria fonts are available on the Mac, and the Mac has at least a dozen just on this page that aren’t available in Windows!

In fact, between these two systems, there are only ten fonts that overlap:

Those fonts that fall into that middle area, covered by both operating systems, are what we callweb-safe fonts. If you use Calibri on your webpage, Mac users won’t see it; if you use Andale, Windows users won’t see it; but if you use Georgia, you can rest assured that users of both systems will see the it.

Now there’s a bit of grey area here. Users of older operating systems don’t have some of these fonts we’ve declared web-safe. For example, Windows XP users don’t have Palatino or Trebuchet MS. Even worse, users of Android mobile phones don’t have any of these fonts.

So to be clear, there are only five fonts that are considered universal:

• Arial
• Courier New
• Georgia
• Times New Roman
• Verdana

Feel free to use these fonts all you want! Even if you dug up that old Packard Bell you had back in 1997 and it didn’t explode when connected to the modern web, you’d be able to see these fonts rendered as intended. Those Android users will just have to fight for themselves.

So, what happens when the font fails?

Your text will still be visible, but the browser will use whatever default font it supplies for situations like this. This means that you may have intended to use a cute, scripty font, but what you get is

Your text typed in a regular serif font.

This is good because your content still goes through, but your design might be compromised. Therefore, you should always specify fallback fonts and a category that the font falls into. Let’s say that you want to use Helvetica, but you’ll settle for Arial. Since both of these fonts are considered to be sans-serif fonts, you can write a CSS declaration like this:

{ font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; }

The browser will first try to use Helvetica, and if it’s not installed, it’ll attempt to use Arial. If even that font is not available, it’ll use whatever default sans-serif font the browser likes, but at least it’ll be the correct type of font!

For more information about coding fallbacks, alternative methods to using non-web-safe fonts, and everything typography related, you can pick up a copy of our Web Typography Handbook. It’ll tell you everything you need to know.

Verandahs | Pergolas | Patios | Alfresco | Designs Kits Melbourne Builders

As a supplier of:

Centenary Pergolas & Carports

Eclipse – Louver Roofs

Solarspan Roofing

Totally Outdoors are one of Australia’s premier supplier and builder of outdoor roofing needs.

We are please to be providing services to them, and welcome them on board the InteractiveWebs team.

http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Resources/Forums/forumid/112/threadid/451288/scope/posts.aspx

“is there anyone who is not trying to sell me their product, that has done something interesting with CRM and Silverlight?”

Well yes there is…

InteractiveWebs have done several interesting projects with Silverlight as an interface to Microsoft CRM.

One of the most interesting of these is a Silverlight membership login system for a grain trading company based in Australia. The business is an organisation that trades produce in a similar way to how shares are traded in the stock market. The difference being that the commodity being traded has been grown by “growers” (farmers) and represents the produce that their farm has for sale in the open grain trade market.

Interestingly, Microsoft CRM is being used entirely for the backend management of this trading. This is quite complex in it’s design as you can imagine would be the case if you were running a stock exchange using CRM.

Entities are being used to track the bidding for sales and purchasing of hundreds of different qualities of different grains, at different locations over an entire country.

Of note to the Silverlight interface, is the fact that there are an ever increasing number of records within this system in the order of 65,000,000 records of some CRM Entities.

About the Silverlight Interface

In it’s simplest function, the Silverlight interface is a membership system.

Allowing users to login and manage the buying and selling of commodities. Very similar to how users of a Stockbroking system would login and buy and sell their shares. But of course the user data is all being driven from a CRM backend running CRM 2011 with IFD.

The membership login is using custom attributes within CRM Contacts to authenticate and allow login.

Once logged in the user can modify personal details that are saved back to the CRM Contact entity.

Data is retrieved live using XRM to interface with CRM on the fly. Silverlight gives a clean and robust interface for users.

Other Types of Data Retrieval

Just like with the sale of share, there is some paperwork generated with the buying and selling of commodities. Broker Notes, Freight Invoices, and Monthly trade Statements are example of just a few. Originally the thought was to interface with a Microsoft SharePoint server to store the related .PDF documents generated for these items. Instead we took the simpler approach of attaching the .PDF documents to the relevant records in the custom entities that are used to track each trade.

This data is simply stored as CRM Notes with Attached Files (.pdf) to the custom Entities.

Then in the Silverlight interface we allow users to open (on the fly) these notes and attached .pdf files to view the “paperwork” associated with each sale.

Summary data is presented that is referencing custom attribute data, and able to be exported live from Silverlight to Excel.

Or clicking on the PDF icon, will open the associated attached note from CRM and open the .pdf record live.

Example of PDF data.

Creating CRM Records from Silverlight with XRM

Growers of commodities can create new stock records, listing the gran they have, quality, quantity, location etc in a simple user interface.

Listing too the price they wish to achieve in order to sell the produce.

Doing this creates a new record in a custom Entity in CRM directly, and this data is used in the bidding and selling process.

The data is available to Silverlight users in their record of stock.

Similar in concept to a statement of shares for a stock market trader.

Where is Gets Cool

So far, these are reasonably simple interfaces using XRM to CRM. Reading, writing, opening attached files etc. Where it gets interesting is in some real time graphing that we do to show bids on stocks / commodities.

For this we are needing to access tens of thousands of records that represent different bids for different commodities and work out on the fly the best or highest bid, and show that to the client in a fast loading graph.

This is where Silverlight and some cleaver XRM calls to some cleaver processes in CRM delivers a great result.

With the great graphing tools in Silverlight, the graph draws in real time and animates the loading of data. It has a full screen mode:

And is really a great use of Silverlight for this particular task.

Best of All it Runs Out of Browser

One of the features we built on this interface is the ability to “Run Out of Browser”. So the client can right click the interface and select to “Install to this computer”.

This adds the project to an Out of Browser Silverlight experience that can be launched as any other application or program from your computer.

This feature of Silverlight can run on a Mac or PC, and delivers an experience for end users that is very similar to having a membership program installed on your computer.

The project will auto update if we modify the web based source version with a new release automatically.  The client is promoted with a messaging saying the program will close to update, then opens with the new version automatically. Truly using the best experience that Silverlight has to offer.

Uninstalling the out of browser app is as simple as a right click in the app, and selecting from a dropdown “Remove this application”.

Kind of like a windows 8 experience with any pc.

Thoughts on this and Silverlight for Microsoft CRM.

Silverlight… ahhh what to say about Silverlight….. where to start.

1. We drank the Kool Aid. Microsoft told us how great Silverlight would be, how it would segregate the design team from the development team and deliver the benefits of keeping people within their specializations.

2. We spend years of time investing in Silverlight development. We get it, we can work with it and we can do amazing things with it. This and other cool projects including a MS Pivot interface to DotNetNuke and Microsoft CRM data.

MS Pivot and CRM – http://demo.interactivewebs.com.au/dnnpivot/dnnpivot_demo.htm

3. We kicked it’s butt. We were able to deliver anything we wanted using Silverlight and made it interface with a multitude of data sources at multiple times using XRM and other web services to pull data from both CRM and other data sources.

And after all that… I can say with some authority. Silverlight is dead!

We get it, we can do it, we hate it and we regret the time we wasted after Microsoft mislead us into their Silverlight sphere.

Microsoft Silverlight Evangelist – We drank the Kool Aid

Silverlight never came close to delivering on any of the promises that Microsoft made about it.

It is tricky to develop in, it is poorly supported by even Microsoft, design tools are definitely lacking greatly, the development experience was a mine field of poorly documents bugs and broken features that required time and commitment to untangle the crap that Microsoft produced.

It was amazing to us how many things we were doing and solving that literally no one else was talking about. We felt like the first team walking on the Silverlight moon at every step of the way.

The end result is something that we are proud of. There are some cool features that we think make the project example above shine. But for all the time, and trouble invested to deliver it, it is just not worth it!

If looking at this and other similar projects again, we would use other technology to more quickly develop a very similar experience. There quite simply is nothing in Silverlight in interfacing with CRM that we can do easier other ways.

Final Thoughts

So there you have it. A good example of Silverlight with CRM, and the reason why we would suggest you use other technology yourself.

And check out that Silverlight Pivot link above. It is actually very cool too in what it does and how it does it. We have rigged this to work against any internet facing CRM environment including the Microsoft Hosted CRM.

Contact Us for CRM Development

We wrote this to help someone asking for a non commercial plug for a Silverlight in CRM example. We hope the above meets the requirement of that… but we are a development and CRM business, so we need to mention that if you need some cleaver interfacing with CRM. Then please contact us here http://www.interactivewebs.com/ContactUs.aspx.

We have other examples to show too.

Of particular interest on the site is a new module or ours soon to be released to the DotNetNuke Community called Mushroom Video Module.

The module will feed Youtube Play Lists from youtube.com directly into your site in an easy to manage and easy to use video feed.

The end result of the feeds looks like this:

http://www.networkyou.org/Network/GlobalVillage.aspx

With the video feeds being selected directly from a play list selector button that referenced a YouTube account name.

The module also uses the template system developed by InteractiveWebs for the display system that allows simple to load templates to be customized to the users requirements.

An example of the module with multiple feeds onto a single page is this one: http://www.networkyou.org/Network/Professionals/VideoTopics.aspx

We will be releasing the module to the public in the next few weeks. We would love to hear any comments!

1. Select Configure Module
2. Select Add Edit Form Items
   
3. Enter a Name for the Field (Like Upload File, or Attachment etc.)
4. 
5. Select Add – To add the filed to the Existing Form Items
6. Use the up or down arrows to position the filed where you would like it.
7. 
8. Back and back

The result is a form with file upload ability. The attachment is sent as an email attachment.

Please contact us for additional DotNetNuke Support requirements.

The Bulk Email module for DotNetNuke has a feature known as Bounce Email Monitoring, and it is probably a good idea to understand what it does and how it does it so we can explain how best to configure it.

Sending a Bulk Email Message

When an email message is generated using the DotNetNuke Bulk Email Module, a list of all the email addresses that you have selected from multiple sources is generated into a database.

The lists that you select can include.

• Website Users
• Custom Lists that you import
• Microsoft CRM Marketing Lists
• Imported contacts from email programs
• Custom typed email address

Once the list is complied, email addresses are removed.

• Duplications
• Email addresses on the unsubscribed list
• Email addresses on the bounce email list (that meet the requirements set)

Then the email messages are sent out and ticked off as being sent.

You can see that bounced email addresses will only be removed if they are on the bounced email list, and have bounced to a count matched the settings configured.

How the Bounce Email List is Generated and Counted

Periodically, the module will use the setting for the POP 3 account to look for email messages that it can add as a bounce. To do this, it will download all messages in the mailbox and look using some complex searching tools for email messages that appear to have bounced back from a failed send attempt.

Unfortunately email servers report bounce messages in different ways, so the code that reads the email messages and looks for bounce backs is long and complex. For this reason, the process of finding bounce messages should be kept to a minimum to reduce the load on the server.

Reduce Load

The best way to reduce load is to minimise the number of mail messages that the process needs to check.

The best way to do this is three fold.

1. Send email from a unique email address that suggests no normal communication should run through that account. noreply@domain.com is my suggestion. That way the only email messages in that mailbox should only ever be bounced messages.
2. Delete processes messages. The module can do this for you, but if the mailbox is a normal account, then ensure it is basically kept empty.
3. Manually delete messages that are not bounce messages. If you intent to use a general account, then you should keep it as free as possible from general communications.

What happens if you don’t do this?

The process of downloading thousands of email messages, checking them all and processing them all can take hours. It will put a huge load on both the web server and your email server. It will increase your data transfer costs both on your web and email server.

So follow the suggestions and the result should be clean and fast.

Want to know more about email messaging in DotNetNuke.

Today we updated some code in our Contact Details module for DotNetNuke.

The module makes it easy to add your contact details to a page in DNN.

There is a map control function that uses Bing Maps that can be seen in the demo here: http://www.interactivewebs.com/contactdetails/Demo.aspx

We have updated the module today to support the use of SSL or https connections to the page that contains the module.

How we did this

So here are the two ways to add the Bing Ajax control to your page in HTTP or HTTPS:

HTTP:

<script src=”http://ecn.dev.virtualearth.net/mapcontrol/mapcontrol.ashx?v=6.3” type="text/javascript"></script>

HTTPS:

<script src=”https://ecn.dev.virtualearth.net/mapcontrol/mapcontrol.ashx?v=6.3&s=1” type="text/javascript"></script>

Now on the HTTPS version notice I changed the URL to start with HTTPS, this is what pulls from the secure site over at the good Bing folks. Also notice I added the “s” parameter and set it to 1, default is 0, this tells the Bing API to get the image tiles for the map from HTTPS.

Why? you ask.

Well it seems that the API determines what protocol to use for JavaScript and other parts from the document.location.protocol, however when it comes to the map tiles it looks to a global setting that is set based on the parameter being passed.

Specifically we wanted to take a version of DotNetNuke from 4.9.1 to 6.1.3 today and actually found that it worked perfectly.

We did take some steps that helped a lot. This may be of value to some of you.

Before we Began

1. Backed up the entire file system for the website.

2. Backed up the database on SQL server for the site in question.

3. Ensured we had a HOST login account that worked.

4. Ensured the server we were running on (Windows 2008 R2) was patched and running .Net Framework version 3.5 SP1.

5. If your site is busy, work out a way to stop the traffic. One way is to add a portal alias, like test.domain.com in your DNN website. Setup a DNS entry to that test.domain.com points to the IP address of your DNN web server. In IIS, setup a Binding, so that test.domain.com will answer for your site.

Then access the site on test.domain.com and check you can login, etc.

Then remove the binding in IIS for www.domain.com (temporarily while you play upgrade).

This way, the site will not answer normal user access, but will answer you when you go to test.domain.com.

Update Path

We suggest the following table for upgrading your DNN Website.

Note: If you are upgrading a version prior to DNN 4.6.2, then you will need to manually update the web.config file. After this version the updates are automatic.

Steps On Upgrade

On Codeplex, Click on View All Downloads

Find the version for the next upgrade step from the table above. Then find the Version Upgrade download link.

Download the .zip file to your server. Then extract the contents directly over the existing website directory structure.

You will be asked to overwrite files, Tick yes to all.

You will be asked to overwrite folders, Tick Apply to all – And continue.

Once you have extracted, hit your website in a browser, and watch the upgrade happen before your eyes.

Repeat the steps of backing up after each successful update, and download the next update package and repeat the process.

Tricky Bits

If you are using the XML module, on a DNN version before 5.3.0, then you should obtain the latest update of the module before moving past 5.3.0.

If you have the Ifinity URL Master module. We suggest turning it off to upgrade.

After Upgrade

In IIS you will wan to move the website to a new application pool that is running .net 3.5 or 4.0 Integrated. You cannot share application pools with earlier DNN versions that run on .net 2.0.

Jump into the HOST settings, and configure things like, friendly URL’s, DNN Host Menu Options, and performance settings.

If you disabled bindings (from the initial steps 5 above) re-enable them and test access.

DotNetNuke Upgrade Service and Support

We offer a DotNetNuke Support Service that can include the upgrading of DNN websites for you. This is especially useful if you are not confident with either .net websites or IIS server administration.

We are happy to help you evaluate the upgrade path and potential problems. The cost of the service is in effect calculated at at an hourly estimate. It should be noted that if everything goes well, and trouble free, there there is at least 1 hours work in this upgrade, usually more as there are often little bugs to sort out.

Please contact us for support here: http://www.interactivewebs.com/Services/DotNetNukeSupport.aspx

Additional References

http://www.datasprings.com/resources/articles-information/dotnetnuke-articles/upgrading-dotnetnuke-4.9-to-dotnetnuke-6.0

Today we have added support to the DotNetNuke Bulk Emailer module for WebFarms.

We have identified a feature of Bulk Emailer for DotNetNuke that has caused some issues with the running of the module on a WebFarm.

There is an automatic enable feature that checks when you start a bulk email message that the scheduler for the module in the Host / Scheduler is enabled. If it is not enabled, the module will enable it.

The Problem

With WebFarms there are two processes that run at the same time.

This will cause duplication of sending email messages.

The solution is easy… just disable one of the schedule processes. However this will be automatically re-enabled by the module.

The Fix

To solve this we have added an option to the Bulk Emailer Settings. This option enables you to tick that you are using a WebFarm, stopping the automatic enabling of iWebs BulkEmailer EmailSchedule process.

Additional Steps Required

After you enable WebFarm mode, you will need to go into the Host Scheduler processes and disable all but one of the multiple processes for the iWebs BulkEmailer EmailSchedule.

The result will be that only one of the schedulers run and only one email message will be sent.

Add New Email Address

1. Log into the webmail interface. webmail.domain.com as a mail administrator.

2. After Login, select the Settings Icon from the left hand menu.

3. Expand Domain Settings and Select Users.

4. From the Main Window, select New.

5. Fill in new user details with the following format.

User Name:  firstname.lastname

Pass: secure password

Display Name: FirstName LastName

Reply-To Email Address: firstname.lastname@domain.com

Backup Email Address: Optional (Use Existing personal address of user if filled in)

User Status: Enabled

Mailbox Size Limit: 50 MB

Enable Outgoing Mail Signing: Enabled

6. Click Save when complete.

I find it absolutely incomprehensible how hard it is to purchase a Microsoft Product and actually gain access to it.

Over the years, things have always been hard, but appear to have got a lot worse.

My Experience with MSDN Subscription.

In December I receive notice that our existing MSDN subscription is due to expire, so I set about renewing it. Now with any other company, you would just enter a credit card number into a website some place and you would be done. But Not Microsoft.

Microsoft force you to purchase through a reseller (and I get that) so we set about that path.

Our previous reseller was Ingram Micro, who totally destroyed their own business by interdicting SAP some time ago, and have got nothing right since then! So we followed the Legendry Microsoft License Expert “Shane Piercy” to Dicker Data and purchased our license there. (Thanks Shane, that was the easy part).

After some weeks, Microsoft approve our license and send an email with some details.

We then login to Live.com and revalidate an email address that we have used, validated and sign in daily with for the past 10 years. This take 3 days.

We then go to the Volume License website and find the new license needs to be added. We do this, and are advised that we again need to validate our email address. This takes 48 hours (actual time was 4 days). – Remember it is computers doing all this tricky validating of email addresses by sending us an email with a link to click.

We then check back for days in the Volume License website and are advised in the FAQ that validating the license and email can take several days. Go figure!

Finally after 5 days the license appears, and we find that we need to then assign it to a user. We start doing this and fail several times before ringing their Asian America support line and chat to a helpful person who suggest a lot of things before mentioning the catch phrase “What version of IE are you using?”  – I almost blurt out… “Why would I use such a F#&!ed browser!” before explaining that I was using Chrome. Heaven forbid I was on a Mac and did not have access to IE at all.

We finally worked out that IE is required for “This Website” even though there is no detection on the website warning you of this.

So I fired up IE, and set about assigning a user to this license before I get this error.

Lucky I am on the phone to the Philippines at the time and ask.. “What Next?”

MS support take all my details again, and advise they will assign the license. This will take only 1 hour to complete. (Believe that when I see it).

I ask for an email address for my support dude. No, he does not have an email address, only a team address that I can use his name in and someone may forward it to him. Remember here I am communicating via a POT (Plain Old Telephone) to the number 2 (I like saying that) IT company in the world. Why can’t I email the dude, or skype, or MSN, or live chat, or SMS, or whatever.. No the only way to get him is call a POT and wait in queue like I did in the last century.

So now I wait. 30 days down, and still no access to something I have paid for. Can you frigging believe it!

The story is not over yet, but I just know I will not have access in 1 hour from now. That would be way to easy.

Microsoft – if you want to know why you are failing. It is because everything you do is 10 x harder than it needs to be. Compare this experience to Apple App store on the Mac!

You have a lot of catching up to do MS!

The steps assume that you have installed the DNN website module by InteractiveWebs called the Outlook Social Connector.

1. Close Outlook

2. Start the MSI installer “Setup_DNNSocialConnector”

3. Select Next

4. Use the default path, or select one, then select – Next

5. Select Next when ready to proceed

6. Wait a bit

7. Select Close

8. Open Outlook and in the Mail view, find an email message and expand the view for the Social Connector.

9. Select the + symbol under the contact image, and select “on another social network” from the available list.

10. Select “iWebs – DNN Social Connector” from the available social connector plugins.

11. Fill in the connection settings for your DotNetNuke Website that has the iWebs – DNN Social Connector module installed. And admin or host account is needed. Click Connect

When you browse an email message from a user who is registered on your website, you will see the activity that they have taken on your site. This includes activity on security roles, DNN Forums Module, and if you have updated to our modified Documents Module, activity on that module too.

Today we have added this feature to the DotNetNuke Advanced Login Module.

User Name Omission

Normally DotNetNuke requires a user name to be entered at registration. The Advanced Login Module will automatically create a DNN user name at registration time, even if the token for User Name is not included in the registration form. This way you can allow users to register with an email address and no user name, while in the background the Advanced Login Module handles the user name for you.

How It Works

If omitted from the registration form, the user name will be taken from the email address.

david@domain.com for example will generate a user name using all data from before the @ symbol.

david@domain.com = david as the user name.

If david is already taken as a user name, then david-01 or david-02 etc. will be used automatically.

This keeps the username familiar to users should it ever be provided to them, yet keeps the registration process as simple as possible.

The module is available as a Free DNN Module trial on our site.

I have been trying to work out for some time, a really easy way for AutoDiscovery services in outlook to be directed to the correct address allowing for easy user configuration of services.

Without going into all the details, I have tried all the methods described in (yet another) Microsoft Whitepaper.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb332063(EXCHG.80).aspx

Had some level of success but while working through this stuff I discovered by mistake a little discussed method.

A new feature is available that enables Outlook 2007 and later to use DNS Service Location (SRV) records to locate the Exchange Autodiscover service.

Discussed here: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=940881

To Hell with the the WhitePaper, this works fantastically well. It is everything that I need it to be.

Captivate SCORM Problems

We have been playing in depth lately with some some of the Captivate SCORM outputs in an effort to better understand the SCORM Compliance and where Captivate falls down in this area. What we have found is very interesting and needs to be explained in detail to understand.

The Problem

Until recently, anyone who wanted to author SCORM-compliant content had few choices. Not many authoring programs existed and the technical knowledge to create compliant content was and, in fact, still is beyond the reach of most training developers. Now there are many affordable, easy to use content authoring programs to create SCORM-compliant content that can be deployed to learning management systems (LMS). Adobe, a leader in the multimedia authoring and programming industry, has recently thrown their hat into the ring and released Adobe Captivate – a SCORM-compliant authoring tool that includes screen capture, simulation, automated testing and more.

Adobe Captivate and LMS Software Working Correctly

When exporting content from Adobe Captivate, you have the option of making your package SCORM 1.2 Compliant. Specifics of the SCORM specification could fill an entire book (in fact, it does!), so let’s just say that SCORM defines what must be included in a content package (certain files which contain certain information in a certain format) and the methods that the content package must use to communicate information (student name, score, etc.) to and from the LMS. The idea is that content authoring programs and learning management systems would all be programmed to comply with the spec and therefore be compatible with each other. Unfortunately, reality has not lived up to the vision.

The SCORM 1.2 specification is long, open to some interpretation and not always logical. Developers have had to make some assumptions and, at the same time, had to predict and hope that other developers made the same assumptions! Our experience with the workings of Adobe Captivate and the development or our own SCORM-compliant LMS has given us some insight to help you get the most out of Adobe Captivate and your LMS – even if it’s not our LMS! Note that we are only focusing on SCORM 1.2. The SCORM 1.3 specification was recently released, however most learning management systems and authoring tools, even those recently released, still support SCORM 1.2 and rightfully so.

Problem 1 – Setting Captivate to be SCORM 1.2 Compliant

If you export a Captivate package that does not have any graded questions in it, it will not be SCORM-compliant. I don’t mean that it just won’t track because it has no grade to send; I mean it is not compliant. In tracing method calls from Captivate lessons, we’ve found that a lesson with no questions will not make the required call to the LMS to initialize itself upon start-up. It will make the finalize call upon exit, however any compliant LMS will throw back an error when this happens. The spec dictates that a content package must initialize itself before it can finalize itself. Makes sense, right?

A tangential problem to this is that a lesson with no questions (even if the correct initialize and finalize calls are made) has no way to tell when it’s been completed, so it does not send that information to the LMS either. This secondary problem is not an issue of compliance as the SCORM specification does not require this information to be sent, but more an issue of usability. What’s the point of making a SCORM-compliant lesson and loading it into an LMS if you never find out when your users have completed it?

Solution 1 – Captivate SCORM Solved

The resolution to both these problems is easy – just make sure that you have a graded interaction in your lesson. It can be an interaction that is actually presented as such or even a button or hot spot that you are sure your users will click while viewing the lesson. The possibilities here are endless, so be sure to test your solution, but the bottom line is that there needs to at least one graded interaction in your lesson.

Problem 2 – Passing the Proper Lesson Status Value

Adobe Captivate lets you choose whether to report ‘pass/fail’ or ‘complete/incomplete’ values for lesson status, but this is not an arbitrary choice. The spec dictates that this shall be determined by the lesson after querying the LMS and deciding based upon the response it receives.

When publishing with Captivate, if you select complete/incomplete, and the user fails or fails to finish the lesson, the value of ‘incomplete’ will be reported to the LMS. In the event that the user completes or passes the lesson, the value of ‘complete’ will be reported to the LMS. Likewise, if you select pass/fail, then the value of ‘pass’ will be used instead of ‘complete’ and the value of ‘fail’ will be used instead of ‘incomplete’.

Additionally, Captivate lessons never query the LMS for the value of ‘credit’, which is the element that the lesson should be using to determine whether to use ‘complete/incomplete’ or ‘pass/fail’.

Problem 2 – Solution to Captivate Lesson Status Value

Solving this problem may or may not even be necessary – it’s a rather minor issue. The best thing to do is make sure that you coordinate the credit setting you use in the LMS with the lesson status value you select here. Lessons that are for credit should use ‘pass/fail’ and lessons that are not for credit should use ‘complete/incomplete’. However, one thing to note, and this takes us indirectly to Problem #3 and beyond, is that the spec dictates that the LMS revaluate the score and change this value if you have set a mastery score. We’ll come back to this when we get to Problem #4.

Problem 3 – Passing Score in the SCORM Format

The ‘Publish’ interface in Adobe Captivate lets you choose whether to report score as a raw value or as a percentage while the spec dictates that this value must be ‘normalized between 0 and 100′ (meaning it must be a percentage score). When you choose to report this value as a raw score, your lesson is not compliant.

Adobe tells us that they put this option for a very specific reason. The spec defines 3 values relating to score and all shall be normalized between 0 and 100 – minimum score, maximum score and what they call raw score (oddly enough, the spec calls it ‘raw score’ and at the same time dictates that it be normalized – no wonder everyone is confused!). Logically, since they are required to be normalized between 0 and 100, minimum score would always be 0 and maximum score would always be 100 so why even use them? Because of this confusion, Adobe decided to allow the content author to decide whether to report score as raw or normalized.

The problem occurs when you choose to report score as raw and then load your content into an LMS that has been implemented according to the SCORM spec because it will expect to receive score normalized. Confusion ensues!

You create a Captivate lesson and choose to report score as a raw value. Your lesson has 5 questions and your user gets them all correct. Your lesson is going to report ’5′ as the score and a compliant LMS is going to interpret this as 5%. Of course, your lesson should also report a lesson status of ‘complete’ or ‘passed’ (see problem #2) which will truly confuse your user when they look at their stats and see that they passed/completed a lesson with a score of only 5%!

Problem 3 – Solution to Passing SCORM Score Correctly

This is an easy one. Unless you are certain that your LMS implements score as a raw value, always select ‘percentage’ to ensure that your lesson is compliant.

Problem 4 – Making it all Work

Take a deep breath, because problem #4 might get a little confusing. The SCORM specification instructs the LMS to change the lesson status (the same value discussed in problem #2) when certain conditions apply. When this happens, the LMS shall use the score to decide how to change the lesson status value. If you remember though, from problem #3, you may be reporting score as a non-compliant raw value, so the LMS may change the lesson status based on bad information.

To get a better understanding of this, let’s introduce mastery score. You set the mastery score by clicking the ‘Manifest’ button on the Publish Interface. mastery score is value stored in the manifest file that is included in the content package you load into the LMS. The LMS reads this value and stores it with the lesson. If you notice, Captivate instructs that this value should be between 0 and 100, or normalized.

Now the SCORM specification instructs the LMS that if mastery score is set, the lesson is being taken for credit and the lesson status is not ‘incomplete’, the LMS shall change the lesson status to the appropriate value (complete, incomplete, pass or fail) by comparing the score reported from the lesson and the mastery score that is defined in the manifest. This occurs even if the lesson has already passed a value for lesson status.

The first thing to notice is that you probably should set the mastery score to the same value that you set passing score. That way, if the LMS re-evaluates the lesson status, it will use the same value as the passing score that the lesson itself does.

Now let’s refer back to Problem #3. You had the option of reporting score as a raw value. If you chose that option, when the LMS performs this re-evaluation of lesson status, it is going to compare a raw score to the normalized mastery score. Since one value is normalized and the other is not, it should be clear that you will have some unexpected results from this.

Example

You create a Captivate lesson with 20 questions. You choose to report score as a raw value (non-complaint per Problem #3, but Captivate lets you do it), choose to use ‘pass/fail’ for lesson status, enter a mastery score of 80% and enter a passing score of 80%. Your user gets 17 questions correct.

When the lesson finalizes, the lesson reports ‘pass’ to the LMS for lesson status and ’17′ for score. Everything looks good until the LMS sees that there is a mastery score and therefore it must re-evaluate the lesson status. The LMS looks at score (’17′) and sees that it is less than mastery score (’80′), so it changes lesson status to ‘fail’. In fact, a lesson created with these settings will always have its lesson status re-evaluated to ‘fail’ by the LMS because even a perfect raw score (’20′) will always be less than the mastery score (’80′).

The root of the problem is that Captivate prompts you to enter mastery score normalized, but gives you the option to report score as a raw value. They need to be on the same scale for the re-evaluation by the LMS to work properly.

Solutions

Solution 1 – Don’t enter a mastery score. By doing this, the LMS will not re-evaluate the lesson status and you avoid the problem altogether. But don’t forget about Problem #3 and its solution.

Solutions 2 – Make sure that mastery score and score are both normalized by choosing to report score as a ‘percentage.’ You’ll notice that this is also the solution to Problem #3. If you have confirmed that your LMS expects to receive score as raw, then use Solution #3.

Solution 3 – If you must report score as a raw value, then be sure to enter a raw value for mastery score. In our scenario, instead of entering ’80′ for mastery score, you would enter ’17′. That way, when the LMS re-evaluates lesson status, both score and mastery score are on the same scale and the calculation is done correctly. While technically incorrect since the spec dictates that mastery score be normalized, we won’t worry about it because you’d only use this solution in the case that your LMS is also non-compliant because it’s expecting raw values for score. It’s a workaround.

Conclusion

We’ve seen that Adobe Captivate provides a robust solution for quickly developing online training solutions. But let’s not forget that we need to be mindful of the implementation of the SCORM specification by the LMS and how it’s going to react to our Captivate lessons.

Review the problems and their solutions and you can be sure that your Captivate lessons are going to comply with SCORM 1.2 and function properly when loaded into a SCORM 1.2-compliant learning management system.

An otherwise happy install suddenly failing to start, or if is started it would be very slow.

Once started, it would not close from the task manager, even if I killed the process with the end process.

Initially

I suspected that it was possibly a virus etc. However I found that there are a lot of people on the net with this exact problem.

I then set about a solution, and figured on out myself, that involves replacing some of the files use by the MSTSC.EXE application.

Basically there are 4 files that I replaced with the same version from another computer that was functional and healthy. They are:

c:\windows\system32\

MSTSCAX.dll

MSTSC.exe

c:\windows\system32\EN-US\

MSTSCAX.dll.mui

MSTSC.exe.mui

I would create a .zip copy for download except I fear giving out some stored connection settings in the files I already have. So sorry, you will have to find your own backup files.

The Bitch of it

The annoying problem is that you cannot just copy the 4 files into the two folder locations as Windows 7 in all it’s wisdom will not let you copy files there, as you are not the “Trusted Installer”.

You might be like me, Administrator and God of your computer that at any time can take to it with a hammer and replace it with a Mac, but Windows 7 knows best… so let’s show you what you have to do to hack that crap!

Give Permissions

First, go to the folder or set of files that you need to change permissions for, right-click on them and choose Properties.

Next click on the Security tab and then click on the Advanced button at the bottom:

Next click on the Owner tab and you’ll now see that the current owner is TrustedInstaller.

Now click on the Edit button and choose who you would like to change the owner to, either your account or the Administrators. If your account is an Administrator account, I would suggest just picking Administrators.

You can also check off Replace owner on sub containers and objects if you need to delete more than one file in a folder. Go ahead and click OK. Now you will see that the Current owner is the account you picked.

Click OK until you have closed all properties windows and are back to the Windows Explorer screen. Then right-click on the folder or file again and choose Properties again.

Now click on the Security tab again, but instead of clicking on Advanced, you need to click the Edit button.

Now click on the user name in the list that you want to change the permissions for, which should be the same as who you changed the current owner too. If the user name is not in the list, click Add, type in the name and click OK.

Since I had changed the current owner to Administrators, I clicked on Administrators here and then clicked on the check box next to Full Control. When you do that, all the other boxes get checked too.

Click OK once and then click OK one more time to get back to Windows Explorer. Now you can replace those files without any UAC messages telling you that you can’t! Enjoy!

Today we received notification during a PCI compliance check that our Microsoft CRM 2011 server was not PCI Compliant.

The cause of the lack of compliance was due to the server accepting connections via an SSL v 2.0 protocol.

Synopsis : The remote service encrypts traffic using a protocol with known
weaknesses . Description : The remote service accepts connections encrypted
using S S L 2.0, which reportedly suffers from several cryptographic flaws and has
been deprecated for several years . An attacker may be able to exploit these
issues to conduct man-in-the-middle attacks or decrypt communications between
the affected service and clients . See also : http://www.schneier.com/p

aper-ssl.pdf
Solution: Consult the application’s documentation to dis able S S L 2.0 and us e
S S L 3.0 or TLS 1.0 instead. Risk Factor: Medium / CVS S Bas e S core : 2
(AV:R/AC:L/Au:NR/C:P/A:N/I:N/B:N)

Perhaps not the worlds biggest deal, as the SSL certificates in place are using the SSL 3.0 however we needed to remove the V2.0 for compliance with PCI.

The solution turned out to be no so easy… Mostly due to the fact that we are using a 64bit Windows 2008 server and Microsoft have only appeared to provide details on fixing 32 bit servers to remove SSL v2.

We did manage to get there and this is what we had to do

Remove SSL v2

You need to run the following commands at a command prompt on the server:

REG ADD “HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SChannel\Protocols\SSL 2.0\Server” /v Enabled /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
REG ADD “HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SChannel\Protocols\SSL 2.0\Client” /v Enabled /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
REG ADD “HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SChannel\Protocols\SSL 3.0\Server” /v Enabled /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
REG ADD “HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SChannel\Protocols\SSL 3.0\Client” /v Enabled /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
REG ADD “HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SChannel\Protocols\TLS 1.0\Server” /v Enabled /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
REG ADD “HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SChannel\Protocols\TLS 1.0\Client” /v Enabled /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

We created a batch file to make this easier.

You can download the file here, and extract the batch file. Then double click the file called: “DisableSSLv264bit.bat”.

Then Reboot the server.

All it will do is run the above commands and in the registry it will add:

and similar sets to enable SSL v3 and disable SSL v2.

Then you can use a free test service here:

to check that you are disabled.

A failure like this: http://foundeo.com/products/iis-weak-ssl-ciphers/test.cfm

indicates something did not take correctly.

If you are using a 32 bit version of windows. (Not possible with CRM 2011) but possible otherwise, then you can use the Microsoft tool here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/187498/en-us

We have found an issue that would prevent the Google Analytics report module from rendering in certain websites under certain conditions.

The symptoms of the issue are that the module reports “invalid data” when you have configured the module settings.

If you experience this error messages, then the solution is easy…

Ensure you have a version of the module that is later than 45.06.02 – Available from our website as a download here: http://www.interactivewebs.com/DotNetNukeModules/ModuleDownloads.aspx

Then after updating, you need to check the option that says: “Render Chart from Control”

This should allow the chart to report past the Invalid data error.

The error relates to the DotNetNuke Alias redirection settings in the DNN Site Admin settings, and appears to be when a redirection has been defined in the settings.

If the redirection is turned to none, this should also fix the error.

Alternatively it appears to have been fixed in DotNeTNuke release 06.01.01. But who is to day that the issue will not creep into later releases of the module.

If you are receiving this error in Chrome, and finding that installing the plugin does absolutely nothing.

And clicking the":

Takes you to a Windows media and Java error page.

http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?answer=95697&topic=14687&hl=en-US

Which if you bother to follow the instructions will not help you at all.

The cause

Almost certainly the cause of this problem is going to be a recent update by Skype. One could posture that it did not take long after the Microsoft purchase for Skype to become annoying, but I am saddened to say that I thin they have buggered it up without needing to call anyone from the Vista development team.

The most recent update of Skype 5.6.0.8.442 adds a little feature to your browsers (without asking you) that reads numbers that look like phone numbers and allows you to click and call them in Skype.

It also adds a little blue Skype thing to the top of you page:

The Solution

So the fix to stop Chrome asking you about installing a plug-in all the time is to disable the Skype plugin in Chrome.

1. Click the spanner

2. Tools \ Extensions

3. Un-tick the Skype Extension

That should be all you need to do to stop Skype mucking up your browser.

Thoughts

It is bad practice for Skype or anyone to add invasive features such as this that “take over” your experience without making it clear in the install process that this is being done. Skype did it in the past then dropped the idea. Not sure why they have returned to it, but it sucks!

I remember the annoying days of Real Player and their invasive installs that totally bombarded you with their crappy experience. I hope that Skype is not taking that path.

Interestingly the only other plugin that I found installed in Chrome that I was not asked specifically if I wanted installed was a RealPlayer extension.

Funny that!~

All pages with HTML blank when logged out, but show this error logged in.

Error: Services is currently unavailable.DotNetNuke.Services.Exceptions.ModuleLoadException: The type initializer for ‘DotNetNuke.Modules.Html.DataProvider’ threw an exception. —> System.TypeInitializationException: The type initializer for ‘DotNetNuke.Modules.Html.DataProvider’ threw an exception. —> System.InvalidCastException: Unable to cast object of type ‘DotNetNuke.Modules.HTML.SqlDataProvider’ to type ‘DotNetNuke.Modules.Html.DataProvider’. at DotNetNuke.Modules.Html.DataProvider.CreateProvider() — End of inner exception stack trace — at DotNetNuke.Modules.Html.WorkflowStateController.GetWorkflows(Int32 PortalID) at DotNetNuke.Modules.Html.HtmlTextController.GetWorkflow(Int32 ModuleId, Int32 TabId, Int32 PortalId) at DotNetNuke.Modules.Html.HtmlModule.OnInit(EventArgs e) — End of inner exception stack trace —

Solution

In our case, the upgrade left 2 things behind that DNN 6 did not like.

1. in the app_code directory, we deleted the ‘HTML’ folder (since it does not seem that it was in use anymore and was potentially conflicting with new html module code)
2. in web.config, I removed the following line in the <Codesubdirectories> section
   <add directoryName="HTML" />

Save and you are done.

We had a requirement today to run a DotNetNuke Website in .Net 4.0 as some code we are using as part of the Microsoft CRM 2011 SDK require .Net 4.0.

Problem is that with many of the DotNetNuke websites, they have some references that will cause this error when you flip your website worker process to 4.0. in IIS.

This will give you an error that looks like this:

Generates an error:

Server Error in ‘/’ Application.

---

Compilation Error

Description: An error occurred during the compilation of a resource required to service this request. Please review the following specific error details and modify your source code appropriately.
Compiler Error Message: CS1703: An assembly with the same identity ‘System.Web.Extensions, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35′ has already been imported. Try removing one of the duplicate references.
Source Error:

[No relevant source lines]

Source File: Line: 0

Show Detailed Compiler Output:

Interestingly too the reference to Version=4.0.0.0 initially said Version-3.5.0.0 until the second page refresh on the error.

The Problem

The problem in our case, and it may differ with others, related to an older file for Microsoft Ajax.

There is a file called: System.Web.Extensions.dll

in the \bin    folder.

We renamed this to: System.Web.Extensions.dll.bak

And our problem was fixed.

This is due to an older way that Microsoft handled Ajax vs the new way in .Net 4.0.

DotNetNuke Support Services

We do offer DotNetNuke support services and would be happy to assist others with this or other DNN problems that need professional support services with.

http://www.interactivewebs.com/Services/DotNetNukeSupport.aspx

Moving from one IIS 7.0 server to IIS 7.5 is relatively easy and there are a number of tools that can assist you. Probably the best is the Web Deploy tool mentioned here:

• http://www.iis.net/download/WebDeploy

This tool can allow you to package up and migrate the entire web sites, including configuration and database files etc.

Because our IIS 7 server is almost dead, it prevented us from configuring the tool. The install files see .Net 2.0 as required, and although it was installed we were unable to get the server to see it as installed. Anyway we tried all sorts of things, and finally gave up. (Good opportunity to rag on Microsoft, but we will leave that alone).

So now we find a need to migrate without the good tools.

Migration

We shared the IIS root folder on the source server. Then pulled all the folders containing websites across from that server to the same location on the new server.

In IIS manager, you need to export the config from the already-configured server. In IIS manager, click the Server node, and go to Shared Configuration under Management.

We then clicked to Export – on the right.

Enter the path you’d like to export the config to, and set an encryption key password:

Note: One thing here that is a real BITCH is that they make you select a pass that is so complex you absolutely have to write it down. We never suggest writing down passwords but they are out of control in what they make you do with this.

Copy administration.config, applicationHost.config, and configEncKey.key to your new server to a temp location.

On the new server, go back to the “Shared Configuration” section and check “Enable shared configuration.” Enter the location in physical path and click “Apply.” It should prompt for the encryption password that you had set. Enter it, and reset IIS.

After resetting IIS (command prompt “iisreset”), go back to Shared Configuration and uncheck “Enable shared configuration.” Click apply. You should see this:

Click YES and it will import all of the settings from your Shared Config into the local config on your new IIS server.

At this point, all you should need to do is change your server-specific site bindings, and it should be good to go.

Bindings

How to add binding information to a site

1. Open Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager:
   • If you are using Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2:
     • On the taskbar, click Start, point to Administrative Tools, and then clickInternet Information Services (IIS) Manager.
   • If you are using Windows Vista or Windows 7:
     • On the taskbar, click Start, and then click Control Panel.
     • Double-click Administrative Tools, and then double-click Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.
2. In the Connections pane, expand the server name, expand Sites, and then click the Web site on which you want to configure the bindings.
3. In the Actions pane, click Bindings…
4. In the Site Bindings dialog box, click Add..

5. In the Add Site Binding dialog box, add the binding information, and then click OK.

Something strange that we have encountered with CRM 2011 is a 404 – File or directory not found error.

What is particularly strange about this one is that the error happens from IE 9 on one computer, but the same URL and site loads correctly with another browser on another computer AND loads correctly to the authentication screens on the same computer but with a different browser.

Go figure right!

Microsoft show it as:

So what is the Solution?

We tried a number of things that did not work, and we will not bother to list them all, but interesting the clearing the browser history and cache etc does not fix it but is needed to fix it.

1. Clear history and cache in the browser:

2. Close the Browser entirely

3. Navigate to C:\Windows\Temp and delete everything in that directory.

4. From this screen, got to browser history settings:

Then View Files:

5. Takes you to this location: C:\Users\XXUSERXX\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files

6. Close Outlook and IE.

7. Delete Everything in that folder that it will allow you to delete. Some files are in use and not able to be deleted.

8. Start IE, and away you go.. you should be able to access the site again.

Rant!

IE really does suck as a browser, it is a real same and the worst thing about CRM 2011 is that they make you use this junk browser.

To correct this, we have created two new templates that are designed specifically to work with the DarkKnight skin in DotNetNuke.

Called:

• DarkKnight-Small
• DarkKnight-Large

They produce the following results…

With the Large template being the content on the left, and the bottom right showing the content of the small template.

This makes the module perfect for use with DotNetNuke 6x our of the box.

How to Set the Templates

The templates are selected through the normal RSS Template Tab in the module.

1. Select Load Template Button

2. Select the appropriate template and press the select button.

That will load the new templates and be ready to use on your site.

InteractiveWebs Support Services

At InteractiveWebs we have years of experience with DotNetNuke, with more published modules on SnowCovered than any other module developer in the store. (And we don’t publish all our modules.)

• We have our own full time employed team of DNN developers.
• We have our own full time employed Server Administrators.
• We have our own Data Centres with our own equipment.
• We have Years of Professional DotNetNuke Development Experience.

Quite literally there is no one who is more experienced with everything dotnetnuke.

We Offer Paid Support Services for DotNetNuke

We offer paid support services for DotNetNuke in an easy and covenant process.

1. You advise us of the issue you are facing.
2. We estimate an up front cost and advise you.
3. If you decide to accept the quote, we will request that you buy the equivalent number of support tickets from our store.
4. We will then complete the support job.

Purchasing Support Tickets

You only need to purchase support tickets if we have advise you how many tickets you will need to purchase upfront for the particular job.

You can purchase support tickets from our Support Store Here.

Supporting our Modules Free VS Charged

All of our DotNetNuke Modules are supported free of charge. We will work to resolve issues that our modules cause, or problems directly related to our modules not working as they should.

Sometimes we have clients who need our modules to be configured in a complex environment, or would like them to work with another conflicting product, or they may just want the people who made the module to set them up for them.

In these instances, we are happy to identify work that goes above an beyond “product support” and provide a quote for the additional work. You will find that we are very reasonable both about the price and what we cover for free.

Purchase Support Tickets Here

Apple has released the iOS 5 and new Apple App Cards.

The Cards App is an exciting and easy way to send a card to someone anywhere in the world.

One thing that did surprise me was the App asked me to: Please Enter Your CVV

This is asking you to enter the Credit Card CVV number:

Either 3 or 4 digit number depending if you have an AMEX card or not.

Why I was surprised  was that apple usually make things incredibly easy to follow, but in this case I suspect that not everyone would know that the number on the back of your card are called CVV Numbers (Card Verification Value). Hence this post.

What to do?

Easy… if asked for the CVV number while using the Cards App. Just enter the number as you previously provided with the credit card on file with your iTunes account. That is all there is to do.

Why Do They Ask?

This is just anther way to verify that you are indeed you. It is a low level security check that the person who put the card on file is using the App.

In just the last few days, I have started experiencing some issues with Outlook when opening messages sent from PayPal.

This is happening with the recent versions of Outlook, including Outlook 2010 and Outlook 2007.

Some of the indications of the problem include.

• Outlook taking longer than normal to open.
• Outlook with “Reading Pane” on
• Outlook Stops Responding when clicking on an email from PayPal.
• If you wait a long time, it will come good, and even show the email message.
• If you are impatient and cancel out of outlook, your reading pane is gone when you next open it.

When loading Outlook you receive a message about and address: Contacting: \\102.112.207.net\b\ss\paypalglobal\1\G.4-NS

Background information

It appears that the cause of this is some malformed tracking cookies being sent from PayPal.

While it could be argued that Outlook should handle this invalid link much better than it does… We all know that Microsoft is responsible for Outlook, so really we should not expect too much in the way of “graceful error handling”. (After 20+ years of Windows system events, they still don’t have an online library of error codes and meanings.)

At the bottom of the message, there is a hidden tracking image. Instead of this image pointing to a web server, it is pointing to a non-existing network share. As it is pointing to a network share and not to a web server, Outlook’s “Internet picture blocking” functionality doesn’t kick in and tries to retrieve the content.

So what to do what to do?

First, I know for a fact that PayPal is aware of this issue, and while it is literally a 10 min fix for the right person, we know that finding the right person probably means contacting the dev team out of India that they hired last month, and asking them to fix their crap!

Oh I have been doing this too long!

Really… what to do!

1. Nothing… If you are patient when opening email messages from PayPal while this issue happens, then they will open.
2. Delete all recent messages from PayPal permanently form both your inbox and deleted items.
3. Turn off the reading pane in Outlook.
4. Turn your Outlook into plain text preview
   
5. Redirect the invalid call using a modification to hosts
   

   ---

   1. Start Notepad as an administrator.
      You can do this by right clicking on the Notepad shortcut in the Start Menu and choosing “Run as administrator”. If you don’t see this option, hold SHIFT while right clicking on it.
   2. Choose File-> Open… and open the following file;
      C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts
   3. Add the following line at the bottom.
      127.0.0.1        102.112.2o7.net
   4. Save the file and close Notepad.

   
   4. Save the file.

6. This will basically route 2o7.net request back to your computer, which will reject it, allowing you to read your emails quickly and in peace once again.
   This fix will work on 32/64 bit versions of both Vista and Win 7

   ---

If you still have a problem

In Microsoft Windows, use the command ipconfig /flushdns to flush the DNS resolver cache. Open the command prompt and type the following:

C:>ipconfig /flushdns
Windows IP Configuration
Successfully flushed the DNS Resolver Cache.



Corporate solution for all computer clients at once

If you are in a corporate network, your system administrators can fix this for everyone at once by adding a Forward Lookup Zone (Primary Zone) for the 102.112.2o7.net domain. Then add an A host record without a name and have it resolve to 127.0.0.1.

After PayPal fix the issue.

The invalid link when fixed will not fix messages already sent with the issue. So unless you permanently delete message with the problem, you will see the trouble each time outlook references them for reading. This is because the reference is totally invalid, not just temporarily down.

Today we are please to announce that the Activity Emailer Module for DotNetNuke, will support and run on DNN 6x.

This single package will now run on all DNN versions from 04.05.05 and later, including DNN 5x (all versions) and DNN 6x.

To Understand the Module

To understand the best use for this module, it is necessary to understand the type of situation it was designed for…

Any business that has a membership database, for example a gym, club or association, church etc. Who currently have an in office database of membership details, and want to run a website that allows members to update their details online, will need a way to have the databases linked from the website back to the membership database in the office.

In many cases we develop custom modules that feed and sync data to a “backend database” to meet specific needs. However sometimes clients simply cannot afford the expense of a customized application that links membership databases.

This module is the cost effective solution. This module sends a simple email to a configured email address with a list of the changes that members who have logged into their website have made. This email can then manually be entered into the “backend database” by staff in the office.

Example

• A local gym with 500 members has a database to manage membership and billing information in the office.

• The office database is proprietary software and although a connection module is possible, the cost of development is prohibitive.

• Membership details are exported from the office to the web.

• Members of the gym are encouraged via promotions etc. to keep their details up to date on the login area of the gyms DNN website.

If you are using the Advanced Email Module for DotNeTNuke, called bulk emailer, and you find that the links you place in your emails are not working when they arrive as an email. Then the fix is simple.

In the Bulk Emailer Settings Menu

Click on the option to Update Link

This will force the module to operate on the URL that you are currently working with on the site. It is necessary when you install the module in a dev URL and then try to operate through another URL such as a final domain name url.

The help for the item reads:

If you change the domain name that this module is operating on, then you should click ‘Update Links’ to reset the base URL for Email Tracking, Unsubscription and View Online.

With our DotNetNuke Image Module, the module comes with several templates. It is possible to modify any of the templates and create images and looks to suite your needs.

The original lightheads template that we use the following html for the thumbnail:

     <div class="iwebs-pic " style="background: url(‘$item.image’) no-repeat scroll 50% 50% transparent;">

     That means the raw image will be used as background image for the thumbnail rectangle. Since the background image will not be cropped or resized, you can only see part of the whole pic.

I You can change the template <div class="iwebs-pic " style="background: url(‘$item.imageresize‘) no-repeat scroll 50% 50% transparent;">

However, in order to keep the proportion, there will be some blank area for each thumbnail.

If you do not care about distortion of the thumbnail and want to fill the blank area any way he can use <div class="iwebs-pic " style="background: url(‘$item.thumbnail’) no-repeat scroll 50% 50% transparent;">

http://www.interactivewebs.com/mushroom-image/Demo/LightBoxEffect.aspx

Other DNN Modules

Posting to your WordPress Blog

We recommend that you use Windows Live Writer to post to your WordPress blog site.

Windows Live Writer (WLW) byMicrosoft is an application for composing and managing blog posts. You can write your posts offline and publish them later. There are many helpful tools in WLW that make creating popular posts easier:

• WYSIWIG using the theme of your blog
• Image manipulation
• Spell check
• Easy HTML tables
• Include maps from Virtual Earth
• Automatically syncs changes before re-editing posts

Download the Windows Live Writer 2011 setup program. If you are using Windows XP you will need this Windows XP Version of Windows Live Writer.

Select “Choose the programs you want to install.”

Uncheck everything except for Writer. Click Install. You’ll be prompted to restart your computer once the install completes.

Note: Please be patient while waiting for the install process. It can take several minutes to install Writer.

Once you have restarted, you can find the new program in your Start Menu. Go to All Programs > Windows Live > Windows Live Writer.

When you start Windows Live Writer for the first time, you’ll be prompted to configure the program to connect to your blog.

• For “What blog service do you use?”, select WordPress and click Next.

• For “Add a blog account”, enter your WordPress blog address, user name, and password, then click Next.

Finish and Your Are Done

If Windows Live Writer cannot detect your blog settings, a screen titled “Select blog type” will appear.

• Type of blog that you are using – make sure WordPress.com is selected from the dropdown box.
• Remote posting web address for your blog – only change blogname to your actual blog name. The URL needs to end in xmlrpc.php.

Once you select your blog type, you’ll be prompted to Download [your] Blog Theme. If your blog is notprivate, click Yes. (This feature will allow you to view your blog post like it’ll look on your blog before publishing.)

The final screen should say “Your blog has been set up.” If you’d like, you may edit the Blog nickname before clicking Finish.

Now, you should see an [untitled] post screen. On the Home tab, your Blog nickname from the previous screen will appear next to the Publish button.

Getting Started With Windows Live Writer

Basic Authoring with Windows Live Writer

How To Blog for SEO Results

If you have your own blog on your company or personal website, or post on others’ blogs, blogging can be a great tool for improving your search engine rank. Google  picks up on new content being added to your website sites, and the more often you add new content, the more often Google will visit you. Especially with WordPress blog sites. Simply throwing up useless blog posts, however, will not do you much good at all. Here are some SEO tips you can use to give results.

Only Relevant Blog Posts

If you are going to be using a blog post to link to one of your website pages, whether internally or externally, you need to try and write relevant content. If you have a website offering Sydney SEO services, blogging about your neighbours new cute dog won’t do you any good at all. Although there are many benefits that come from Blogging, blogs are for people to actually read. Users don’t want to visit your blog post expecting one thing, and end up with your life story. Keep your blog post within the framework of your industry. Save your musings on other subjects for your journal or personal blog.

Target Your Blog Posts

Following the previous point, try to not make your blog posts a wild fantasy journey that takes you from one magical world to the next. Try to have a central theme or idea to your blog post. Some blogs may take on a kind of free-for-all style, where anything goes and one blog post may just be someone recalling how their day went. This is not the best way to use a blog to increase your SEO rankings. Keep your blog, and blog posts targeted to your industry.

Post Only Unique Content

For heaven’s sake, this should not need to be said. Google clearly does not like duplicate content. Do not copy from Wikipedia, or any other site! Write your own stuff, or you will be penalized. Enough said.

Use the Opportunity for Links in Each Post

Obviously, adding new content to your site is great and Google loves it, but each blog post can be a great opportunity to link to some of your pages internally, or to get a link to your site if you are blogging on someone else’s blog. Do not mistake me, I am not suggesting blogging solely for the purpose of a link. But if you are going to blog, don’t waste a good opportunity to get a good link. This will boost your search engine rankings better than anything.

Clearly, the art of blogging is something that can be abused. But if these few steps are followed, I believe many useless and irrelevant blog posts will be prevented from being written.

Not just a Search Engine Optimization Service, but a true Search Engine Marketing Solution.

Search Engine Marketing

The directed marketing of your websites towards producing a natural Google search results, using a range of SEM tricks and tools to deliver results for specific key words.

Website Optimization

The configuration and management of your website to ensure that it is correctly and effectively indexed by Google and other search engines.

AdWords Management

The management of your Google AdWords campaign to ensure that your advertising money delivers that maximum targeted "bang for your buck".

Are you attracting visitors who want your product and are wanting to buy?

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a highly specialized field of Online Marketing that analyses your company’s website, and provides proven tools and expertise to improve your website and its visibility in Google, Bing, and other Internet search engines. Improving your search engine performance and rankings attracts higher and more targeted visitors to your website.

Why is Search Engine Marketing so important?

The Internet is Australia’s fastest growing sales channel with some industry commentators indicating that Internet Advertising is growing at 10 times the rate of traditional media advertising. More and more of your customers are looking online for your products are services, and less are looking at the traditional “Yellow Pages”. Most people will look at the first (and sometimes the second) page of Google results to find what they’re looking for. A high ranking becomes a high visibility on the results of Web Search Engines.

There is no silver bullet!

Search Engine Marketing is not something that you can “set and forget” on your website, and then wait for the traffic to come to you. Search Engine Marketing is an ongoing and iterative process of research, competitive analysis, measurement and modifications. InteractiveWebs will work with you, for an initial period of three (3) months, to provide you with dramatically improved results. You’re not locked into an ongoing contract, so you can start seeing the effectiveness of the InteractiveWebs Search Engine Marketing solution, and then make the wise choice of continuing to engage our specialist SEM services.

Why you should use InteractiveWebs SEM solutions.

Search Engine Marketing is a very specialized field, and the goal posts move on almost a daily basis. In order to stay competitive, your SEM team needs to be aware of these changes, and react to them quickly. InteractiveWebs are constantly monitoring these changes, and will supply whatever changes are needed for your website. At InteractiveWebs, we use cutting-edge tools and proven techniques to improve your search engine visibility, and then work with you to maintain and continue to improve those rankings.

See more about the services here: http://www.interactivewebs.com.au/sem/WhatWedoforYou.aspx

Advanced Login module for DotNetNuke works with DotNetNuke 4x, 5x and now 6x.

However because DotNetNuke 6x has some popup effect by default with the login button it interferes with the Advanced Login Module popup mode.

Solution

To fix this issue, the solution is relatively easy.

After selecting “Popup" from the Advanced Login Basic Settings Edit the skin object login and register as follows.

Default Settings

Update to:

Login

#dnn_Login,#dnn_LOGIN1_loginLink

Register

#dnn_USER1_registerLink

Save Tab Changes

Update to Templates

Then we need to make a small mod to the templates. After Selecting the Templates tab, click on Custom Script.

And modify the script to:

jQuery(document).ready(function(){
    /*
     add any custom initialization logic here,
    */
       jQuery("#dnn_LOGIN1_loginLink").attr("onclick","");
       jQuery("#dnn_USER1_registerLink").attr("onclick","");

})
function custom_validate_login(){
    /*
    add any custom login form validation logic here,
    return true if pass validation
    */
    return true;
}
function custom_validate_registration(){
    /*
    add any custom registration form validation logic here,
    return true if pass validation
    */
    return true;
}

Note: We added two new lines highlighted in yellow.

Save Tab Changes and you should be done. With the default skin in DNN 6.0.1, now the advanced login popup mode should work fine. Look at the Advanced Login Module for more assistance with configuring the module with different skins.

Aviation Airline News App launch.

We are pleased this week to announce the release of our latest iPhone / iPad / Touch App. The Aviation Airline News App.

The app is a super covenant way to keep track of news and updates about a range of Airlines and Airline industry news, including:

• Airbus
• Boeing
• IATA
• ICAO
• Qantas Airways
• British Airways
• Virgin Australia
• United Airlines
• Cathay Pacific
• Singapore Airlines
• Delta Airlines
• United Airlines
• Southwest Airlines
• American Airlines
• Lufthansa
• Ryanair
• US Airways
• Emirates
• Continental Airlines

If you are involved in the industry or just interested in what is going on, then this app is a great way to stay updated.

See it on the App Store: http://itunes.apple.com/app/aviation-airline-news/id462360506?mt=8

One of the most common problems experienced by users of hosted email services is that they find they can only send email messages to their own domain.

For Example, if you have two hosted email addresses:

1. ted@mybusiness.com
2. john@mybusiness.com

You find that you can successfully send an email message from one user to another, but when you try to send to any other domain:

1. anything@hotmail.com

You find that the email messages do not send.

Solution

You need to enable “Authentication” in your configured email account settings. There are many client email programs, probably the most common is Outlook.

When you configure an new POP3 email account you normally end up with something that looks like this:

If you click on More Settings / Outgoing Server

and just tick the option to use the same settings as the incoming mail server.

This is all that is needed to enable outbound SMTP authentication.

Background

SMTP Servers (or email servers) are setup to need stop people using them for sending email messages. As strange as that sounds, if they were not setup this way, then anyone could SPAM the world using that email server.

To prevent users from abusing an Open Relay Mail Server, the administrators say that anyone wanting to send email messages from that server to any other server, will need a users name and pass. Almost always this is the same user and pass as the one needed to download your mail from that server.

This this need for user and pass is referred to as “Authentication” and is necessary on almost all servers, other than internet service providers who give you an internet connection. In that instance they authenticate you from your internet connection.

Why Can You Send to Your Own Domain?

Because Email Servers by nature will received email messages to addresses they host. This is part of the process necessary for email messages to be sent and received.

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Sick of seeing the message “Your session in Microsoft Dynamics CRM is about to expire. To continue working, you must sin in again.” and would like to extend the session time so as not to bother you as often?

This is quite easy with an IFD setup of CRM 2011. We have an IFD configuration and setup that we use to test settings and some of our CRM Portal – Linking to DotNetNuke on.

Taking the server as configured as described here: http://www.interactivewebs.com/blog/index.php/server-tips/microsoft-crm-2011-how-to-configure-ifd-hosted-setup/

We ended up with an ADFS Relying Party Trust that is named “CRM IFD Relaying Party”

This is the name we must use in the Windows PowerShell program to make the necessary changes.

To Extend the Auto Logout of IFD CRM 2011

1. Start Windows PowerShell

2. Copy and Paste the following command into PowerShell and hit enter (you can right click to paste):

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.Adfs.PowerShell 

3. Check you have the correct name of the Relying party trust by typing the following:

Get-ADFSRelyingPartyTrust -Name "relying_party"

Where you replace “replying_party” with the name of your relying party trust. In our case we would use:

Get-ADFSRelyingPartyTrust -Name "CRM IFD Relaying Party"

You should see a bunch of junk, indicating that you have the correct name:

4. Now type the following command:

Set-ADFSRelyingPartyTrust -Targetname "relying_party" -TokenLifetime 480

Where you replace the “relying_party” with the name of your relying party. Again in our case we would use:

Set-ADFSRelyingPartyTrust -Targetname "CRM IFD Relaying Party" -TokenLifetime 480

Note that the 480 is in minutes. You can change that value up or down as required.

We chose to use 24 hours for example.

That’s all there is to it. Close the PowerShell and you are done.

Microsoft CRM 2011 allows XRM services that use application/soap+xml content type.

When you install Microsoft CRM 2011 in an IFD / hosted environment, it is smart enough to automatically configure IIS gzip compression on the website.

What it does not do, is configure the

C:\Windows\System32\Inetsrv\Config\applicationHost.config

file to compress XRM calls out of the CRM database.

In a test we were performing for an update to our Microsoft CRM 2011 Portal technology, we found that retrieving a list of around 20,000 items returned a 19 MB data package without gzip dynamic compression. Not huge but pretty big! What amazed us was that after enabling dynamic compression on the XRM data, this reduced from 19 MB to 890 KB, a huge performance improvement!

We also noticed that the Microsoft Hosted CRM 2011 service already has this compression enabled, so we figured if it is good enough for them, then we should give it a shot.

How to Enable XRM gzip Compression in IIS

Navigate to: C:\Windows\System32\Inetsrv\Config\applicationHost.config

and open it in your favourite editor.

Search for the Section: “<httpCompression directory=”

And in that section you will probably find an entry that looks like this:

<add mimeType="application/x-javascript" enabled="true" />

Below that, add the following:

<add mimeType="application/soap+xml" enabled="true" />

So the file looks like this:

Note: We are making the assumption that you are on Windows 2008, and that CRM 2011 was successfully installed, and that this in turn enabled IIS compression on the Microsoft CRM website.

These steps should massively improve data access to CRM using XRM calls.

Typically this limit is set to 5000 but with some types of calls it will return 7000. In any case, the process to remove the limit and set it to 20,000 is very easy.

On the server running CRM

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit in the Open box, and then click OK.
2. Locate and then select the following registry subkey:

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\MSCRM

3. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
   
4. Type TurnOffFetchThrottling, and then press ENTER.
   
5. Right-click TurnOffFetchThrottling, and then click Modify.
   
6. Type a number other than 0 in the Value data box, and then click OK.
   

   
   Note Step 6 lets you retrieve the number of records specified in the Count attribute of your fetch statement.

7. On the File menu, click Exit.
   

InteractiveWebs DotNetNuke Modules require a license to be activates on each sub domain from which the module is accessed.

The license is per sub domain, and NOT for each instance of DotNetNuke.

A sub domain example is:

1. www.domain.com
2. dev1.domain.com
3. domain.com

In the case of domain.com and www.domain.com, these are considered as one single license. EVERY other sub domain needs it’s own license.

If you activate a module on dev.domain.com then browse to the same module using another sub domain (like dev2.domain.com) the module will not be activate with the new sub domain in the browser URL.

Trial

Each module will automatically enter into a 100% functional TRIAL mode the first time you access the module with any particular sub domain.

The trial period is automatically set from the date you first visit the module with any particular sub domain.

Example

If you access dev1.domain.com the module will start it’s trial period from today, and may expire if you don’t activate.

If you then use another sub domain like dev2.domain.com the module will start a new trial and you will continue to be able to access the module on that dev2.domain.com sub domain.

Note: All the settings and modifications you make to any module in trial WILL be preserved and waiting for you once you activate the module license. So if your trial expires on your development sub domain, you can simply activate the module in it’s final www.domain.com location when you are ready to go live.

Before You Activate

We recommend that if you need to configure and test (development site) before going live, that you do that on a development sub domain (like dev.domain.com), IN TRIAL MODE.

From that dev.domain.com, Setup the module, test and be sure things are working. Don’t be concerned if you get things just right, and the trial time expires. Because as soon as you access the module page on a new sub domain, it will go back into trial, and be available fro activation.

All your module settings and customizations will carry over to the new sub domain when you access it. So in this example, if you are ready to go live with www.domain.com you can access the module page with that sub domain, and extend the trial, or activate the module.

For this reason we always suggest that you only activate your module on www.domain.com as your final public URL of your website.

To Activate Your Module

Select the Licensing Dropdown Menu Item from the module Menu:

The module will tell you about the Module Name, Version Installed, sub domain you are on, and trial days remaining.

If you have not purchased a License yet, you can click the Buy Now icon and purchase a license from our site.

Note: Check that the sub domain shown in the module is the final correct sub domain you wish your license to be active on:

Click: Request License Activation

Fill in the details requested, including the store you purchase from and the email address that you used with your purchase.

Note: The email address must be the one you have on file. With SnowCovered, it is apparently possible to have more than one address on file. The address we need is the one that is in the purchase order confirmation data sent during purchase. This is the accounts primary e-mail address.

Wrong License E-mail Address

If we are unable to match the email address against a valid license activation, we return the error:

We suggest that you verify the email address used for purchase and try again with the correct address. You can also monitor your License Management on our site by logging in with the email address that you try to activate with.

Correct License E-mail Address

With the correct details, you will receive a message like this:

Managing Licenses

You can monitor your licenses and activations by visiting our License Management page here.

Ensuring that you login to our site using the e-mail address that the license was purchased with.

Module Support

We provide several Support services for our modules.

1. Where necessary our modules come with extensive manuals (like our bulkemailer module).
2. Each Module has it’s own pages on our website. Visit the module website by clicking on the correct module from this list: http://www.interactivewebs.com/DotNetNukeModules.aspx

Then use the support menu to find module specific support. This will include KB Articles, Support Forums, Blog Posts.