New Macbook Pro Arrived

Ok, my new MacBook Pro arrived, 2.16ghz, 2gb ram, 120gb HD, and primed to run windows xp. The decision I finally went with was to use the Parallels tool instead of Bootcamp. I had to think about this because I want to make sure that I can run Microsoft CRM from my xp partition. I'd almost rather go with Bootcamp, because then I'm native on the mac when running windows, but with parallel's tool, I can switch back and forth pretty quickly...I ended up installing a 40 gb parallel partition, put windows xp sp2 on it. I had no problem joining it to the sbs network for my company either... Now on to the rest of the programs.

It's actually killing me that I have tons of customer work to do. I _really_ want to play with the new MacBook Pro and test the xp installations' speed.

Bellsouth.net, Smart Hosts, and Exchange 2003 on SBS 2003

Ok, so I've had my SBS 2003 running in my home. I am running a small business, but my DSL connection is a Bellsouth.net DSL residential connection and they block port 25 both inbound and outbound. I've scooted around this over the last 9 months by using ZoneEdit to Forward my company email to my IP address on port 2525. My outbound email hasn't really been an issue since it was routing via DNS.

Ok, it really has been a problem. I haven't been able to send to AOL. Not that I care (I really hate AOL, but my wife has a company email account and needs to send from our domain to AOL). As any wise married man knows: it's now imperative that I solve this problem. Well, I didn't. I waited (for around 9 months or so ---- Besides, I didn't say _I_ was a wise married man!).

Within the last week, most of my outbound emails have been kicking back with an NDR. I started using the Smart Host and configuring it to use my bellsouth.net settings, but could NEVER get this to work. I finally ended up using the DYNDNS.com's Outbound Mailhop service. It worked like a charm. Don't forget that after you run the Internet Email and Setup Wizard, you'll need to open up Exchange System manager and do a bit more work...

1. SmallBusiness SMTP Connecter Properties:
a. General: Forward all mail thru smarthost:
"outbound.mailhop.org"
c. Advanced: Outbound Security: Basic auth, used my DynDNS
username/password , then used TLS
2. Default SMTP Virtual Server Properties:
a. Delivery: Outbound Security: Basic auth, used my DynDNS
username/password , and use TLS
b. Delivery: Advanced: FQDN="smith.com", which is a valid domain
but hosted by a 3rd party
c. Delivery: Advanced: Smart host="outbound.mailhop.org"

Microsoft CRM 3.0, SBS 2003 and Faxing

Ok, we have a customer that wanted to do a fax blast through Microsoft CRM to approx 10000 Leads.

The campaign setup typically creates these faxes as individual activities that need to be manually executed. Not a great option, as none of them (I quickly excluded myself as an option!!!) wanted to click through each one to get the fax sent.

Soooo, after some research I figured out a short term fix (below) and a long term fix (I'll post the CRM Workflow examples when I'm done).

Here's the 411...

Ok, I have a long term fix, and a short term fix for you.

1) I did an advanced search in CRM 3.0 to determine the 8K Leads we wanted, customized the view to have only the first,last and fax number.
2) I exported those names
3) I opened Outlook, clicked on Contacts, and created a second group called "Fax Leads"
4) I imported the contacts into that list, and made that a public folder.
5) I quit Outlook
6) I opened the 1 page word document we wanted to fax, and choose Print, and in the Wizard, had the option of picking a Address Book. Under Outlook, the public Fax Leads showed up with all the contacts. You'll have to shift click to select them all and then Click the "Fax To" to get them in the big list. Now I know that sounds intuitive, but any variation of that doesn't seem to work quite right (only a few get added, or 1 gets added---you'll see what I mean).
7) Fax Away!
8) Then, after a weekend of the fax machine running...I realized the customer BOUGHT the leads lists (I did the import, so I should have seen this coming), and the fax numbers didn't have a 1 in front of them. The SBS Fax software is VERY picky, and NONE of the Area Code Settings in the control panel worked.
This may not be an issue for you, but I had to follow this and redo steps 4 on.

The downside is that this doesn't get stored in the history.

Long Term

I'm working on a workflow that walks through the activities and does it in the background. We were in a hurry, and it was more important to get the faxes out...

Sprint Treo 650 and Exchange ActiveSync

Ok, I've had a Certificate associated with my email address for quite some time. I typically send customers emails via this account (go figure), and until recently, only one or two would have an occasional problem receiving them. Of course, as I turn increase my customers' skills, they start using the devices I use. Now that some of my customers are using Treo 650s (I just moved to Treo 700w), they are having issues syncing when I send messages from my account. This only seems to happen when I include the secure certificate. If they delete that message from their inbox, syncing seems to work fine. The wierdest part is that it only seems to be sprint, and only the Treo 650...