KDR Creative Software and The Online Workshop and Microsoft Exchange, the Story so Far.

KDR Creative Software have always had on the back burner the perceived need to introduce Microsoft Exchange into the office. There has been an intention to utilise shared calendars to keep a track of who is where and who is doing what.
Naturally this always remained as a nice to have project given that resources were always allocated to FMMS Support, FMMS development and of more recent times SmartAsset development.

Well with the introduction of SmartAsset and the Office Deployment Capability (ODC) the need to have Microsoft Exchange running in our office suddenly became a necessity and a reality.

Hence, began the project to introduce Microsoft Exchange to The Online Workshop.


Microsoft Exchange 2007 can only be run on 64-bit architecture and operating system, it does run in a 32-bit environment but it is not supported by Microsoft in a production environment.
We purchased a new Dell Server and installed Windows Server 2008.
We setup Active Directory and then installed Microsoft Exchange 2007.
We created a number of equipment mailboxes.

We used these equipment mailboxes to test shared calendar functionality in Microsoft Outlook.


Whilst we have utilised Microsoft Exchange to test SmartAsset ODC we are yet to adopt it into our office environment. There are still a number of outstanding issues to address.
Namely:
- Where does our mail sit before being downloaded by the client. ie. should we utilise an external web mail provider or should we have it delivered straight to our Microsoft Exchange Server.
- How do we setup outgoing mail via Exchange.
- Which equipment and resources should we setup as shared calendars.
- etc


With the work that we have performed via SmartAsset ODC we can see that the introduction of Microsoft Exchange into our fold can dramatically improve our office environment efficiency.
- When a sales person needs the data projector for a sales presentation they will simply check the shared calendar for its availability and then book it out as required.
- When a customer rings our office wishing to speak to a particular staff member who is not in the office we can simply check the shared calendar and let them know when they are expected back in the office.
- And many more possibilities.

SIRF Planning4Reliability

The SIRF Planning4Reliability forum has been a favourite for us to exhibit at over the years and we are pleased to announce that we will once again be participation in this great event. This year it will take place at the Langham Hotel in Melbourne on the 20th and 21st April 2010.
Details at their web site: http://sirfrt.com.au/
or contact Anna Civiti
National Forum Manager
SIRF Rt
276 City Road
Southbank VIC 3006
TEL: (03) 9697 1103

Antarctica New Zealand Case Study

We are delighted to announce that the Antarctica New Zealand business article has gone live on Microsoft website. For a link to the Case Study go here:

http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?CaseStudyID=4000005389

“…..it felt like a ‘get together’ to solve a family problem.”

Joey at the Ferntree Gully - Quarry Road fire Strike Team
on Black Saturday (Feb 2009)


Australian Capital Territory Emergency Services Authority (ACT ESA) has been very busy in its final leg in implementing the FMMS/CIPS application for phase 1. In the midst of the preparation and implementation, there has been enhancements to the current application to meet the ACT ESA requirements.

Joey has been tasked to discuss, analyze and to come up with the proposals for the ACT ESA enhancements. By coincidence, Joey task is made somewhat easier as he is an active volunteer fireman with the Country Fire Authority (CFA) Victoria in the suburb of Rowville. “Yes, being a member of CFA, I understood most of the ‘slang and lango’ used during the discussion. Whenever we got together to discuss an issue, it felt like a ‘get together’ to solve a family problem. Their issues and practical requirements are much easier to understand and can be translated more effectively to the software design and development requirement “, said Joey Tan.

In Phase 1 implementation, apart from using the application to manage the maintenance activities of the ACT ESA assets and equipments, it is also to use the application to control all requisitions, purchases, invoices, vehicle inventory, warehouse inventory, special project, and issuing of emergency personnel safety clothing and equipment. The emergency personnel safety clothing and equipments is a big ‘budget ticket item’ within all emergency services around Australia and hence, a control on them is very important.

PDAs and scanners will be utilized to provide easy management of works, including warehouse stock taking, vehicle inventory control, and stock picking for issuing within a warehouse.

Microsoft Tech Ed 2009

As mentioned in the last Newsletter, several developers attended Microsoft TechEd, held on the Gold Coast Queensland. One of our most exuberant and enthusiastic team members - Anna won the competition for the Best Trip Report. Here is an excerpt from Anna’s Report and a listing of the papers and presentations she attended. I am sure this will only whet you appetite for more, so contact us for a copy of the whole report or contact Anna to discuss any of the topics in detail.

"This was the first time in my life that I have had the opportunity to go to a conference. I was so excited, that I did not pay much attention to my flight details and almost went to Sydney (my flight number was JF444, but the number of flight to Sydney was QF444). The flight was full with Tech Ed delegates and the two hour flight time passed quickly as I chatted to a couple of guys from a company called PnP. We had arranged for Kevin to pic me up at the airport. and after a short wait Kevin rang. He was there to pick me up. However communication problems occurred and I couldn't hear him clearly on the phone. I was inside the airport and he was outside. I finally heard a great word “Outside”, ran out and with relief saw Kevin waving to get my attention. At the Hotel my room looked huge and far too luxurious for me. But, no time to enjoy the large bed or watch the big TV right now, I had a quick wash and imediately went to the Gold Coast Convention & Exhibition Centre for Tech Ed registration."

Lesson 1: Use Visual Studio 2008 Team System to manage Application Lifecycle Management
Lesson 2: Improve the code Quality with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2010 Team Test
Lesson 3: Building solutions with SharePoint and Visual Tools for Office
Lesson 4: SharePoint Strategies for Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Lesson 5: ASP.net MVC
Lesson 6: Pitfalls of Software Development
Lesson 7: Migrating to Exchange 2010: Deployment Best Practices
Lesson 9: Building Fast, Standards Compliant ASP.NET sites
Lesson 10: What’s new in security in .Net4.0
Lesson 11: Server Query Plans and Query Performance
Lesson 12: .Net 4.0 Parallel Extension
Lesson 13: Tools for the DBA- better, faster, easier to use – SQL Server 2008.
Lesson 14: Big Algorithms made easy with Microsoft’s F#

"In Conclusion, after studying in Tech ed, I have gained some ideas about project management. I now have some new concepts about how to develop a website and a search engine techniques. I am far more familiar with New Visual Studio, SQL Server and windows 7 platforms. Plus as an attendee I was given a new(sweat) laptop, I think this is the best event I have attended in my life. I have to give my special thanks to my boss who gave me the chance to attend such a great event. Appreciate you, Kevin!!!"

A Tip when Using SmartAsset ODC

Here is a tip when using the SmartAsset Office Deployment Capability.

Users are already familiar with SmartAsset's ability to populate a Microsoft Outlook Calendar with SmartAsset Maintenance Jobs. This is achieved by merely 'dragging' them from the Schedules Table and 'dropping. them into the Outlook Calendar. Here Outlook provides a great visual interface to identify the work you have on today, tomorrow, next week, etc.





Additionally, the Calendar is a great communications tool. You can email the Calendar with built Jobs to those in your organisation who are interested in executing the work or just need to know when and where that work will occur.

Now, here is the bonus. The email doesn't just send the Calendar as an attachment, it also populates the body of the email with an interactive report on the Maintenance Jobs.

The picture below is a snap shot of the body of the email and shows Calendar days that have Jobs scheduled highlighted in blue. The highlighted dates are also hypertext links to; firstly a summary of all the Jobs for that day and; secondly, the Jobs are also hyperlinked to the Job details.



All this is in the body of the email, making it an extremely useful Report and Job Sheet to work off.