STEFANO DEMILIANI

Update your calendar…

Stefano Demiliani — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 11:30:48 GMT

Rob Caron has shared the news: Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 will launch on Monday, 12 April 2010.

Wonderful

Happy New Year!!

Stefano Demiliani — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 13:43:43 GMT

Only few words to all my reader... I wish you a wonderful and successful new year 2010!! Happy new year!!

How to rename a Sharepoint Content Database

Stefano Demiliani — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 14:08:34 GMT

During the Sharepoint setup process (all versions), a Content Database is created on SQL Server and the possibility to rename it during the creation process is often hide.

By default Sharepoint creates a Content Database by adding a GUID to the end of the database name. The result is that you have a SQL Server DB like this:

This is not easy to read and you don’t have immediate undertanding of what is the site related to this Content Database. If I create a site called “MySite”, I’d like to have a Content Database called for example “WSS_Content_MySite”.

How to rename a Content Database? This is not an immediate task and when I’ve to perform this task, I always refer to the wonderful Sean’s post:

To rename it, we are going to:

Take the database Offline (so nobody adds anything to it while we are renaming)
Detach the database from SharePoint
Back up the database using SQL Management Studio
Restore the database using our desired name using SQL Management Studio
Re-attach the database to SharePoint

Start by going to Central Administration –> Application Management and click on Content Databases

Select the Web Application associated with the database you want to rename, and click on the Database name itself.

Change the Database Status to Offline (which just makes it so that no new sites can be added to the database), click OK. Click on the database again, select “Remove content database” and click OK. This does not delete the database, just removes it from SharePoint.

Switch over to SQL Management Studio, and back up the database, then take it offline.

Next… restore the database

And choose a friendly name to restore the database to. In this case, it will be the ContentDB for my My Sites.

Switch back over to Central Admin (you probably still have open) and click on “Add a content database”

Change the database to your new friendly name, and hit OK. Voila! You now have a database name that makes sense. Once you have verified that everything still works, you can go back into the SQL Management Studio and delete the database that you previously took offline.

I hope this could be helpful for everyone and thanks to Sean for the tips.

Technorati Tag: Sharepoint

Microsoft xRM: a winning idea?

Stefano Demiliani — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 16:49:40 GMT

One of the new terms that is emerging always more on the Microsoft Dynamics universe is xRM.

Do you know CRM (Customer Relationship Management)? Now take the letter “C” out of the CRM term and place a variable called “X” inside the word “Relationship Management”. The translation of this into a more technical language is simply that now you’ve to start seeing Microsoft Dynamics CRM not only like a standard CRM platform, but always more like a platform where to start building line of business applications.

The xRM concept in my opinion opens a wide range of opportunities for customers and for partners. You can work with a consolidated web platform, always updated with the latest technologies, for building your applications in an easy manner.

Working with the xRM Framework permits you to have “out of the box” features like:

Possibility to model your entities and your form directly via a web interface
Enhanced security (record-level security, record ownership and sharing, roles, scopes, business units etc.).
Multi-tenant applications (more companies with data separation)
Workflow engine based on Windows Workflow, with the possibility for the end user to self made custom workflow directly from the web platform.
Enhanced Reporting features
Web Services layer for interaction with the platform in a SOA environment (with all the related security features like filtered views)
Office integration (Excel, Outlook, Word).

Building new web applications starting from this Framework is a big advantage…

But how to make xRM a winner?

I think that Microsoft should start thinking to a new licensing for having Microsoft CRM not like a standard CRM application but only like a platform where to build LOB applications. If you pay X for the standard CRM platform, you could pay X/n for having the CRM Framework itself.

If this will happen soon, prepare yourself to see always more xRM applications growing…

Technorati Tag: Dynamics CRM,xRM

Sharepoint 2010 and Workflows: what about .NET 4.0?

Stefano Demiliani — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:29:42 GMT

As you already know, Microsoft has finally released a public beta of Sharepoint 2010 and Office 2010 (available from here).

Starting from this Beta 1, we’re working hard on Sharepoint 2010 and I want to write this post not for celebrate the big amount of interesting new features of the platform but to signal an important lack (or at least I think so).

Sharepoint 2010 actually doesn’t support .NET 4.0, it runs in .NET 3.5 SP1. I think that the main reason for this choice was due to the fact that actually .NET 4.0 is still not RTM'd (so not ready to be the core of the new Sharepoint engine), but I really hope that Microsoft is thinking to release as soon as possible a product update (maybe a SP1?) in order to give the .NET 4.0 support.

This is extremely important mainly for the workflow engine. Sharepoint workflows are based on WF 3.5, so we don’t have all the advantages of the new WF 4.0 engine (Windows Workflow was totally rewritten on .NET 4.0).

My question to the Sharepoint Team is mainly this: Can we have a chance to see WF 4.0 in Sharepoint 2010 or we’ve to wait until Sharepoint 2010 SPx? Please don’t answer me to wait until SharePoint vNextNext…

Technorati Tag: Sharepoint

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 and WPF designer

Stefano Demiliani — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:12:37 GMT

After a week of testing Visual Studio 2010, I think that the integrated WPF Designer is not so stable…

I’ve successfully converted all my projects to the new version and all works good. However, when I work directly on the XAML editor on a WPF form, sometimes if a designer error occours, Visual Studio crashes. This problem occours expecially on two projects where I’ve used the WPF Toolkit.

Someone has experienced problems like this?

I think that the integrated WPF Designer lacks again… if you’re not a good designer like me and you love to work directly with XAML (I’ve always edit a WPF form via XAML), sometimes you’ve to rebuild the solution in order to see the form refreshed. Not so good…

Technorati Tag: Visual Studio

Sharepoint 2010 and BLOB storage

Stefano Demiliani — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:03:43 GMT

In these days I’m collecting lots of informations regarding Sharepoint 2010 (I think I’ve to work a lot with it during the next year) and today by checking my RSS Reader I’ve discovered an interesting new feature for the upcoming version:Remote BLOB Storage (RBS).

Seems that now you can store BLOB also outside the database in a supported and managed fashion.

Seems really interesting. Check this post for more informations.

Technorati Tag: Sharepoint

Moving to Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2

Stefano Demiliani — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:29:25 GMT

I’ve always used the Beta versions of Visual Studio on a virtual environment mainly in order to preserve my production box. However, after trying the Beta 1 version of Visual Studio 2010 many months ago, I promised to myself that the Beta 2 will become my official development environment. And so today I’m aboard…

I’ve converted lots of my projects and the conversion process works like a charm… now all is ready on the new environment:

Wonderful…

Sharepoint 2010 unveiled

Stefano Demiliani — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 07:20:52 GMT

Yesterday at the Sharepoint Conference keynote Microsoft has shared lots of interesting news about the future Sharepoint 2010 release (Beta version in November, official release for the first half of 2010). Lots of cool things are ready and I recommend to read this post that comes directly from the Team.

As a developer perspective, with Visual Studio 2010 you’ll have lots of new “facilities” for developing with Sharepoint 2010 (Project Templates etc) and Sharepoint Designer will be improved (and free again). A new Business Data Catalog engine (now renamed as Business Connectivity Service) will also be available (with CRUD operations and integration with Visual Studio 2010 now…).

Seems that we’ll have also LINQ for Sharepoint and possibility to design Sharepoint workflows also with Visio… wow :)

For the end user feature, I want to mention here also my “hottest” topic:

Office Web Apps integration
Sharepoint Mobile Access improved (I hope not only on Windows Mobile…)
Document Management improved
Business Intelligence improvements: you’ll have Performanpoint Services integration and also the integration of the “Gemini” project (now officially called SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel and SharePoint). This is a powerful new in memory database technology that lets Excel and Excel Services users navigate massive amounts of information without having to create or edit an OLAP cube. I think it will be really really a powerful feature…

Can’t wait to have the first bits on my hands… :)

Technorati Tag: Sharepoint

Windows 7 and Video Driver update

Stefano Demiliani — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 06:59:31 GMT

This morning Windows Update prompts me to update the video driver for my Dell notebook. After the update, this is the message I’ve received:

Maybe I’ve to buy a new monitor and place it on the wall of my office??

Google Sync and iPhone: not good!

Stefano Demiliani — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 07:39:33 GMT

In these days Google has launched its Google Sync service, the response to the most frequent request from the Gmail users: having push capabilities on mobile devices. Now Gmail is able to support push technology.

Unfortunately, there’s a problem with the iPhone: if you don’t have an Exchange account configured, all is OK and Gmail push works great. But what about if you have a previously configured Exchange account, for example with your corporate mail server?

The iPhone can’t sync to more than one Exchange/ActiveSync server at a time!

The iPhone can sync email messages to any number of IMAP or POP accounts without a problem, but it can only sync to a single ActiveSync server at once. So you can set up Gmail over IMAP, Yahoo over SMS/IMAP, your local provider over POP, a Gmail Apps account over IMAP, etc at the same time as your work Exchange server without a problem. But you cannot set up more than one Exchange server using ActiveSync.

If you don’t want to loose your corporate mail server synch, no Gmail push for now…

The iPhone natively supports the configuration of a Gmail account, so why not working directly on the software in order to support pushing? Apple and Google, please work on this…

Vista upgrade to Windows 7

Stefano Demiliani — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 15:42:27 GMT

I’ve to bookmark this nice chart… I think could be useful in the next days :)

Microsoft Dynamics CRM and iPhone

Stefano Demiliani — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 13:12:33 GMT

I know that the iPhone users are growing everyday more and I can undestand that if you try an iPhone you’ll love it forever (this happens to me too), but it’s a first time for me that the iPhone is a pre-requisite in order to buy a software.

We’ve received this type of request during our last demo of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Customer say us: “We’re a group of Sales Agents and we’ve choose the iPhone as our mobility solution. All our agents have an iPhone now. We want a CRM solutions that works well with the iPhone. What about iPhone and Microsoft Dynamics CRM?”.

I’ve to admit that I was a little surprised and not ready for a great answer… my first answer was to signal the good Mobile Express for Microsoft Dynamics CRM (recently released). It works on every HTML 4.0 browser and it works perfectly with Safari on the iPhone. It’s totally free and easy to install and manage.

If you’re an iPhone user, it’s really a good solution I think (I use it on my iPhone for example).

But what about more “powerful” solutions?

I’ve to signal two solutions where I received interesting feedbacks (but not personally tested): iDcrm and Bridge2CRM.

Bridge2CRM is a web-based application that gives you full access to your CRM data, while iDcrm is a native iPhone application (you install it directly on the device).

I’ve found extremely interesting iDcrm: The application give full access to all your Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities, Activities and any entity that you have in Microsoft CRM. You get the application in your own language including all customizations you have done in your Microsoft CRM implementation. There is no configuration required. All data and all metadata is synchronized to your iPhone. All you need to do is to install the application and provide your server address and your login credentials (the user must have Read access to MD CRM Entities, Attributes and Relationships).

This post not covers all the Microsoft CRM world on the iPhone, but I hope that it could be useful if you have this type of requirements.

Obviously, feel free to signal other interesting solutions…

Technorati Tag: Dynamics CRM

Microsoft Office 2010 and Office Web Applications

Stefano Demiliani — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 07:21:05 GMT

One of the coolest feature of the future Office 2010 are certainly the new Office Web Applications, now not simply services offered via web but browser-based Office clients.

You can host an Office document for example on a Sharepoint site and edit documents directly by using the Office Web Applications (same browser page), with any browser… so cool isn’t it?

I’m curious to see what could happen on a mobile browser… can you imagine to work with your Office documents directly from your iPhone or Windows Mobile phone? This is productivity… :)

Excel Web Application

Mobile Express for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 released

Stefano Demiliani — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 07:07:20 GMT

Mobility in the CRM world is an hot topic and I think that a great CRM product must have also a great mobile experience.

Unfortunately Microsoft has not worked too much on the mobile field for its Dynamics CRM, but from version 3.0 we have the availability of a free mobile tool to use… and it works quite good (with some limits such as the lack of offline functions).

Today Microsoft has released the new Mobile Express for Dynamics CRM 4.0, always as a free download for every CRM customers. It supports the full customization features of CRM and now it’s also multi-tenant enabled.

It works on every mobile device with an HTML 4.0 enabled browser. Here’s the product in action on an HTC Touch Pro and on an iPhone:

Technorati Tag: Dynamics CRM