Managing email from two different domains on SBS 2003

This tip has been around for quite some time, and we use it at several of our customers. I'm posting it here so that some of our newer techs will have a good reference location for it.

For E-mail, the first thing you need to do is make sure your Internet domain's MX records are pointing to your SBS server's IP address, feel free to use backup a MX record, or even dynamic dns (I do!), depending on your own situation. For the first email domain, follow the normal SBS wizards (Primarily CEICW) to configure your first and primary domain that you will want to use.

Adding additional domains to Exchange To do this, we're going to edit the default recipient policy:

• From Server Management, expand Advanced Management, First Organization, Recipients and select Recipient Policies
• Right-click on the Default Policy and choose Properties
• On the E-Mail Address (Policy) tab, click the New button
• Select SMTP Address from the list and click OK
• Type in the name of the domain in the format @domain.com and choose OK. Leave the check box checked
• Check the box next to your new domain in the Default Domain Properties window, and click OK

Now that you've added this into the policy, Exchange will become aware of this domain and start responding to mail from it. This change will take effect the next time Exchange updates its policies, but you can force the change.

• Select the Recipient Update Service from the console
• Right-click on both policies on the right and choose Update Now

This forces Exchange to update the policies now, so you don't have to wait.

You will now be able to notice all of your users have an 3 email addresses:

• user@domain.local - added by SBS for your internal domain. It's suggested you keep this email address for this user as it is used by some SBS tools
• user@domain1.com - this is the first domain you added using CEICW
• user@domain2.com - this is the second domain you just added

That's as far as I went, since I wanted all my users to receive email from both domains, but what if you don't want this? Micro-manage! To micromanage which users have which email addresses simply:

• Change to the Users' snap-in and right-click on a user
• On the E-mail Addresses snap-in, uncheck the box at the bottom that says Automatically update e-mail addresses based on receipient policy
• Remove any email address you don't want the user to receive email at and add any additional email addresses in your configured domains. Don't forget to keep the domain.local e-mail address!
• Set the primary one to be the email address the user will send email as

There you have it, if your domain MX records are configured correctly, the SBS box will receive e-mail for both domains!

You can add any number of domains using this process. Moreover, you can add any number of email addresses to a specific user within a given domain using micromanage tactics.

Microsoft Launches CRM Online

With the price increase for my target market, the launch of CRM Online (formally called CRM Live) is a great solution. This will allow them to take advantage of the benefits of Microsoft CRM without having to purchase an additional server or enterprise license. Read more about it here...

My new MacBook Pro!

About 2 years ago, I decided that I was going to need to get back into the Macintosh World. I've blogged about it here a few times, and for the most part have had an incredibly easy time living with one foot in the Mac side, and the other on the Windows side. All in all, my previous MacBook Pro (1st Gen, 2.1ghz, 2 GB Ram) held up very well. In fact, it's probably the longest I've ever held on to a machine.

When Apple revved the line in February, I new my time for a replacement was coming. The major irritation for me was the lack of RAM, a relatively small HD (when you consider I run two OS's, 32 GIGs of music, etc).

I was considering just going back to the Windows world, and could have certainly gotten a good deal on some decent Windows laptops, but the fact that I held on to the 1st MacBook Pro for so long led me back to just replacing the MacBook Pro with another MacBook Pro.

This time, I got a 2.6 GHZ Core 2 Duo Processor, 2 GB Ram (already ordered the 4Gb upgrade for $94 vs Apples' $400 price), a 7200 RPM 200gb drive, Nvidia GeForce 8600m 512 video, etc. The biggest change for me is that I replaced the Glossy Screen I had with the Anti Glare screen. So far, the LED screen is way brighter, and the Anti Glare rocks!!!

So, what about my old baby? Well, my wife just got a great replacement for her 12" MacBook that she's been using for about 2 years.

The machine transfer wizard worked amazingly for BOTH machines. No hiccups (well, except for the fact that my Bootcamp partition didn't come across---not that I'd trust it if it had!)

Outlook 2007 with Vista running RPC Over HTTP

Recently updated workstations now running Outlook 2007 with Vista Business are giving me a Certificate Error when the user name and password is entered. "There is a problem with the proxy server's security certificate. The security certificate is not form a trusted certifying authority. Outlook is unable to connect to the proxy server (Error Code 8)"

You can install the certificates through Internet Explorer running with Administrator privileges but it’s easier to do it using the Certification Manager application. To start the Certification Manager go to the “Start” menu, type certmgr.msc and press enter.
Once inside the Certification Manager, right click on the “Trusted Root Certification Authorities” node, hover over “All Tasks” and then click on “Import…”

This will start the Certificate Import Wizard. Read through the first screen if you want and then click the next button. On the next screen click Browse, locate the certificate that you saved previously and click the next button again.

The next step will allow you choose the certificate store where you want the certificate saved, and this is the important part. I have tried several work flows to figure out where the certificate ends up if you let Windows automatically choose the store but it is never in the Trusted Root Certification Authorities. So, instead of letting Windows automatically choose this we are going to tell it where to put the certificate. Click the “Place all certificates in the following store” radio button and then click the browse button.

Check “Show physical stores” on the popup form and select “Local Computer” under “Trusted Root Certification Authorities”. Click OK.

Finally click next and then click finish to start the import. If everything worked fine then you will get a “The import was successful.” message. Congratulations, you have successfully imported the root certificate!

Don’t be surprised if you don’t see the new certificate in Certification Manager right away, you have click refresh button the toolbar before the certificate will show up in the list.
Have fun!

Private User Settings when using Connect Computer Wizard

Over the last few years, we have come across several machines that give us a 'users data is private' error message when trying to join them to a SBS domain with the Connect Computer Wizard. In most cases, the Private Settings (navigate to the Users' My Documents folder, Right Click on the folder and choose the Sharing and Security). I find that if I check the box to make it Private, let it make the folder private, and then uncheck the box to clear the privacy setting, the wizard will then run perfectly.

Workflow in CRM 4.0

I've been rebuilding (I wanted to start from Scratch) on some of the workflow processes that we use to run parts of our business. From a professional services standpoint, this process is a simplified workflow that outlines the four stages of our Managed Services sales process with only a couple of tasks at each stage (I can't give away all my secrets you know, hahahah).

The new workflow manager:

I'm very impressed with the built in functionality. The major feature I like is the ability to create and manage workflows from my Desktop instead of having to remote into the server like I did in version 3...

I'm working on a workflow design tutorial that will take some of the best processes I've seen and outline how to work with them in CRM 4.0. I know these won't be applicable to everyone, but with some tweaking they should be a great start. It just seems like workflow examples are almost non existant, so I'll post mine. If anyone has any ideas on examples that they'd like to see, I'd love to have them!

CRM 4.0 Installed on our SBS Server 2003 r2

Well, we official have CRM 4.0 running on our SBS 2003 r2 server. I had to investigate an issue with SQL Server 2005 during the installation process. There is a hotfix KB936305 that needed to be installed to get SQL Server fully patched. Once we did that the installation worked great...

The outstanding issue that I have relates to the version of Microsoft CRM 4.0 that is allowed to be installed ON the SBS Server. Apparently, after talking with Microsoft Support reps on the private forums, ONLY the Workgroup edition (which is limited to 5 users) is supported on SBS 2003 r2. In my case, the only 'choice' I had when I installed was based on the product key I typed in. I used the Professional 'trial' key, with no problems, but am curious as to how I 'tell' the installation to install the Workgroup (we will have more than 5 users, so we'll need professional----Just like most of my customers).

We already have 1 member server on the domain running our support server, but I'd hate to have to throw a 2nd member server in the mix for maybe 10-15 users of CRM. I'll keep investigating this.