Blog of a Long Distance Worker Tech

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Tag Archives: Microsoft

Google Apps for Domains Problems for the Enterprise and Business

Google Apps for DomainsIn my business we are a heavy Google Apps for Domains user with several domains setup, some business and some free. I moved across from hosted Exchange a few years ago and everything has been pretty great until the last few weeks which caused me to question whether Google Apps for Domains was suited to Business in general.

The start of my problem was the in my use of Google Sync for Outlook, a tool that gives almost native desktop integration for the Google mail features. This has worked great and I noticed no problems until about three weeks ago I noticed that my laptop was sucking battery and ran hot all the time that Outlook was open. A little investigation found that the Sync of Notes was always running and syncing despite the fact that I don’t use the Notes feature of Outlook or Google at all (I prefer Evernote). Further checks found that I had a significant amount of Notes that I discovered was actually all of my .txt files that I had stored in Google Docs/Drive (I use Google Drive desktop sync and Insync to sync my main files, something I had added a load of files to about three weeks previously). The penny dropped, that because Google Apps Sync for Outlook syncs all ‘notes’ found in Google Docs to Outlook, all of the many text files (many GB by the way) that I sync were between machines and the cloud using Insync were also being synchronised into my Google Mail and because there were many GBs, it was taking a very long time and killing my laptops in the meantime.

I had to stop the synchronisation of Notes and contacted Google Apps Enterprise support for help (because I could not find anything online about how to do it). Their response was sort of expected and not expected… Google Notes sync is beta and the disabling of the sync was not supported. The last point is the killer for me, and what led me to think that Google has a big problem. They activated without my control a Beta feature (Notes Sync) but don’t provide a single way for me (a Live user) to disable a Beta feature, at least they don’t support it! Not Enterprise friendly and that has to change Google.

Anyway, they did provide some ‘unsupported’ registry settings to disable it in the end, so fine I used the settings but unfortunately it did not work – in fact the modifications were supposed to allow me to disable the sync of one or all features of Google Sync for Outlook but NONE of the changes did anything. I contacted Google again but their response was that they could not provide support on the unsupported registry modifications and I was ON MY OWN! Not friendly at all, they effectively hung me out to dry to a problem caused by their enforcement of the use of a Beta feature AND providing a fix that simply did nothing. Google, you have a problem right there in the use of your services with the Enterprise and you need to fix it right now. Don’t deploy Beta features without the ability to enable/disable them, and don’t leave businesses high and dry without a resolution caused by your own ineptitude otherwise you will LOSE to everyone else. I had to consider stepping back from Google Apps for Domains, back to a traditional hosted Exchange solution before I found the fix (we also considered stepping back from Google Docs/Drive as a smaller step).

Anyway, for those who need the fix I hunted over several nights through multiple Google Groups looking for a solution and finally found it, but that was no thanks to Google. For those who are looking to be able to enable or disable individual syncs in Google Sync for Outlook you need to modify the follow the instructions:

1. Go to http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?answer=1041455 , go to Enable/Disable Import Options.

2. Follow Step 1 to Create the “SyncFlagsEnabled” value with DWORD value set to 1.

3. Skip Step 2 because it is redundant to what you want to do

4. Follow Step 3 for each of the services you wish to control (NotesSync in my instance) but add the following to the registry key for the service:
registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\Google Apps Sync\NotesSync

Modify HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\Google Apps Sync\TasksSync by adding the following DWORD Values: 
DWORD Value: UploadEnabled 
Modify the DWORD Value as follows: 
Set the Value data = 0 

DWORD Value: DownloadEnabled 
Modify the DWORD Value as follows: 
Set the Value data = 0

All I then had to do was remove the almost 3GB of notes from my Notes folder and then compact my PST to get everything back to where it needs to be, and then go an provide a registry import for these settings to provide to all of my users so that they don’t have the same problem of the laptop whizzing about synchronising a whole load of nothing, using processor and bandwidth a plenty. All I need to do now is watch Google for the next Enterprise mess up with Google Sync for Outlook.

Most Useless 25GB Online Storage Gets Useful

Cloud is the key word on the Internet these days. Everyone gets excited about Google, Amazon and Apple for what they give you for quite small amounts of money. However there is something smaller – free. Who gives Cloud for free? Well Microsoft does, as they offer 25GB of storage with SkyDrive. So why are we not raving about it? Well because it is stuck behind the most appalling UI you have ever seen and only has limited integration with Live Mesh to allow only up to 5GB to be used by that service, leavin 20GB completely unused.

However news come about an update…

Microsoft tells me that the June 2011 update for SkyDrive will go live on Monday, June 20, so it should be available by the time you read this or soon will be. Reviewers were not given early access to the service, so I was only able to watch a live remote demo at the time of this writing. But as one of the few people who actually uses SkyDrive pretty extensively, Im excited by what Ive seen and by whats been implied for future improvements. SkyDrive has always been more promise than reality, but this update is going to go a long ways towards fixing that. I cant wait to see whats next.

via SkyDrive June 2011 Update.

This update seems to be giving us a way better UI, that looks like it will make it useful to actually sign up for the service. So remember one thing… you can use any email address as a Passport (such an old word) for accessing SkyDrive. Whatever you do, I do not recommend that Cross scripting hack hell that is Hotmail particularly as a logon for SkyDrive.

Can’t wait to try the new SkyDrive Out.

Software Compatibility History

There has been quite a bit of talk about this video and how amazing it is to see Windows upgrade from 1.0 through to the present Windows 7. However the narrator and originator of the video pushes the view that it is so commendable that Microsoft has maintained ‘compatibility’ for over 23 years.

If you use Mac, then you have absolutely no hope of doing this and that is not just because of the changes of processor from 68000 to PowerPC and then to Intel, but also because fundamentally MacOS is not OSX. Apple has taken great pains to move its users through several major step changes in platform architecture to improve the user experience and LEAVE the old behind. Through this, in my view, they have always ensured that they give their customers a great experience that builds on the latest features and not the oldest. They do not expend effort now making sure that software produced 10 or more years ago still works for corporate users.

You can see where I am going now with this… think about how much better Windows 7 would be if Microsoft put all its effort on the new features and ensuring programme compatibility with just the last decade and not 23 years+.

There is actually little business case support for Microsoft in keeping ancient software that does not attract revenue still working and actually holds them back in my view. I think Microsoft have begun to understand this, which is why they are finally (albeit slowly) making it clear that they really only support now and yesterday, and not the day before yesterday… so now Windows XP is finally dying and is almost dead (2014 if not already) and the newest software from Microsoft like Windows Live and IE9 will run on Vista or later only. This should improve things all round.

How old are your oldest software apps?

On the road failure

generic_road_crash Well it had to happen, I am on the road and my netbook suffered a hardware failure. This was a non-fatal failure but a failure all the same – the WiFi went on the fritz and would not connect to any WiFi network. Now in the office this was not a major problem as I have wired Ethernet there but the company I work with has a second office which only have WiFi which pretty much meant that I could not work there nor could I do anything when I was back in the hotel.

So the decision was taken to replace the machine with something that could work particularly since I was four nights/five days from base. So given machine obtained (an Asus EeePC 1008HA), the recovery mechanism started.

What can I say about the experience? It took way longer than I hoped… in fact to basic usage of the machine it took the whole evening (expected) and to fully complete four days. Why did it take so long? Well the big time killer was synchronisation of files using Live Mesh – it just took a long time because I have a lot of data to put on the machine. Even then, this was sped up by the use of the non-dead machine I was replacing being local to the laptop for much of the recovery time, so this is not an issue of upstream performance on the small business ADSL. The one main thing though about the recovery mechanism was that it did work and got me working on the road. How about your on the road recovery mechanism? You really do need one for when you are on the road.

Note: My recovery steps

1. Base install of OS and configuration for basic networking including Anti-Virus (including machine hardening steps that I always follow)

2. Install key applications – Live tools, Live Mesh, Evernote, VPN client, Firefox, Firefox addins such as delicious and Xmarks to ensure I have my bookmarks and saved passwords, RocketDock, Skype, Skype handset drivers, Spambayes, WinSCP, Adobe Air, Tweetdeck (using group sync so I have all my groups) and Syncback.

3. Install MS Office 2007 and Project 2007 using online downloads of Trial software (hey I do not carry the disks, no need to when you can get the Trial versions that work up to 60 days).

4. Configure Outlook 2007 for my multiple Exchange hosted mail and IMAP4 accounts.

5. Install key driver software for 3G card etc.

6. Setup Live tools such as Live Messenger and Live Sync as necessary (I use Live Sync for My Pictures rather than Live Mesh just because it is setup in a better way for those file types).

7. Sync core file folders that are in Live Mesh

8. Sync secondary file folders in Live Mesh

9. Install iTunes and move my iPhone over and setting up Podcasts that I listen to on it (Music waited until it had completed synchronisation as I use Live Mesh that my MP3s are on all my machines).

10. Install Truecrypt for whole disk encryption, although activating this is outside of the four days :-)

11. When back at base, reinstall MS Office 2007 and Project 2007 using my actual media and proper activation keys (needed because the trial versions do not activate with my keys probably because my keys come from a volume licensing deal).

Microsoft Mesh – Having it all

Now I could do the big write up of Microsoft Mesh and how it can help you, but a whole lot better idea is to run VT after giving you a couple of notes.

  • It allows you to store your most important files on every PC you have login access to – they should always be available, and after running this through the bad times of August and September, I can safely say it now works beautifully.
  • It allows you to store 5GB (maybe more in the future) of those files on a web desktop.
  • You can access those files via web, PC, Mac (it has now become available) and Windows Mobile (in controlled Beta at the moment) – it means never having to say that you cannot give someone a document.
  • It scales much better than Foldershare, which is what I used before.

So, let us run VT (you need Silverlight).

Live Mesh: End to End User Demo

This is a very capable piece of software, which I have combined with others to create that great mobile worker workflow, as well as a great way of ensuring that when a machine goes bad – your files don’t. We will go into that backup solution later.

Openproj – Project Management software without the cost

OpenProj_big

We have all heard of Openoffice, as a replacement for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint but the replacements for other tools that people are really comfortable with has been a little more difficult – and in this I am mainly talking about MS Project. MS Project is a very costly product, particularly for the small business or independent contractor, costing upwards of £500 for the most basic version. If you do not have it, then it really impacts you when that client sends you a project plan to follow, or if you needed to create a project plan for a particular customer, so you used to have to just buy it. You could of course use the various software as a service free/low cost systems out there like Basecamp and a number of others and hope that no-one wanted to have all that information available in the MS Project file format.

Now though, there is an open-source piece of software available that offers the 80% features that people use out of MS Project including the ability to open the MS Project file format – this is Serena Software’s Openproj. It is pretty basic and, shall we say, a bit ugly in most eyes but it does the job and there is no outlay. Openproj has advanced significantly since the version 0.90 that I started using to what is now version 1.4. It has become more stable, and slightly prettier. It also has one other major advantage – it works on multiple platforms, so if you are not a Windows fiend then you can actually fire it up on Linux/Unix and on Apple systems. One weakness it has is in the filesaving capability as it saves in the MS Project 2003 XML format, which needs to be imported into Microsoft’s product rather than simply opened but that is relatively simple to do. It does also have its own file format for those who do not need to keep files always in a Microsoft compatible format.

I am sure this is going to continue to develop, and the recent purchase of the Projity company by Serena Software, shows that the product has some legs.