CRM 2011 Update Rollup UR6 released

January 12, 2012 Leave a Comment

CRM 2011 Update Rollup 6 has been was temporarily withdrawn

The downloads for UR6 were down for a while but are now back up, showing a published date of 20th Jan 2012 and a build number of 5.0.9690.1992 as opposed to 5.0.9689.1985 as was the case when they were first released. All the links and URLs remain the same, only the actual files to download have changed.

Microsoft still have not published any official information that I can find as to why UR6 was removed from the download center, what faulty behaviour it had and how critical the issue was.

“Nuke it from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure”

My recommendation if you already installed the redacted UR6 for the Outlook client is to uninstall the CRM client completely and re-install. It seems happy to keep configuration settings and evens saved credentials (eg for CRM online) so this is relatively painless and much more certain to work.

I previously tried just running setup over the top and was asked if I wanted to uninstall or repair the app, so I chose ‘repair’ but on checking in the Outlook client under File > CRM > About Microsoft Dynamics CRM it still showed the old build number, so I was not convinced this worked very well.*

*your mileage may vary. If you have applied the new build over the top on the server or any other components I’d be grateful if you could share any useful information or experiences in the comments for others to benefit from.

Original and edited blog post…

What is in UR6 and where to download it

A very quick post to get people straight to the information and downloads:

The Support KB article 2600640 about CRM 2011 update rollup 6 and all the fixes included is here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2600640 Note: you can’t uninstall UR6

Downloads of the update rollups for server, router, clients, BIDS, MUI etc. are all here <edit> and are now all updated to build 5.0.9690.1992 :

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=28712

If you have downloaded some of the updates and are not sure which ones you have, either go and download them again “just in case”, or if you have slow download speeds or limits on your total data volumes you could check the MD5 hashes first:

Outlook client UR6 32 bit (update only) has an MD5 hash of F537E8C3FF3FF1BA76028C07713B50F6, while the 64 bit client is 78CBBD33E035C9DDF5794F13B000243E.

Server is 64 bit only, and the MD5 is 1753B49EB935D051A4B319EFCC7265F3

Install and update ready-rolled

You can also get updated versions of the installation files with UR6 “slipstreamed” in so you can install in new deployments in one step rather than two.

Outlook clients with UR6 built-in can be downloaded here:
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=27821 (don’t forget you need the 32bit i386 or 64 bit AMD64 version to match your Office install, not your OS version). MD5 hash for 32 bit version which most people are probably looking to install is 426EBAB49CEA5EDEE0018DEB137AB09C

Download Dynamics CRM 2011 server with UR6 built in:
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=27822

Build number should be 5.0.9690.1992 after you have installed things.

If you are using Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and download the Outlook client today <edit: this is what I wrote on 12th January when the update was first released>, this is already at UR6 (just in time for go live on my current project as it happens!). For on premises or existing installations, install the UR6 update files or wait for them to come out via Windows Update on January 24th.

<edit: this date has not been changed in the KB article since the re-release of the new build, so it seems like this is still on track>

Happy Rollups!

Just for the record…

Earlier I updated this post because UR6 was pulled for a while, so just for posterity and to make sure any readers have the full picture and are not confuzled, here’s what that edited bit said:

A possible problem seems to have arisen with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 UR6 and the downloads have been withdrawn from the download centre pending further investigation by Microsoft so the URLs in this blog post do not currently work.

If you have already downloaded UR6 the advice is to not install this and await a later re-release before installing. Since UR6 cannot be uninstalled (other than completely uninstalling CRM 2011 this is a bit of a blow if you have already gone ahead with it, but hopefully the fixed version will be able to install over the top.

According to the article on the “CRM in the Field” blog this affects the Outlook client, so it may turn out not to be an issue for the server or other components:

“A Microsoft CRM 2011 Client for Microsoft Outlook issue has surfaced, and the Update Rollup 6 packages for Client and Server are being temporarily removed from the Microsoft Download Center pending our investigation. Please hold off on downloading Update Rollup 6 until new packages are available.

If you have downloaded UR6 packages for any components, please discard them and wait for an update on our investigation and the release of new packages.  If you have installed them, please note that the issue appears to be related to Outlook Client sync and prepare to install a newer build when it is available.”

Filed under CRM 2011, Patching + hotfixes Tagged with , , , ,

MS Dynamics CRM 2011 Certification Tracks and Exams

June 7, 2011 5 Comments

MS Dynamics logo

I see lots of people asking about the CRM 2011 certification track, exams and courses and although most of this information is available, it is not very well linked together. So, to try and get things straight and written down in one place, here’s my take on “how to get certified in CRM 2011”.

Individual CRM 2011 exams

There are three core exams already available for CRM 2011, very similar in concept to their 4.0 equivalents, and the details of what is required for each one are on these pages (and their various tabs for skills measured, preparation materials etc):

MB2-866 – Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Customization and Configuration

MB2-867 – Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Installation and Deployment

MB2-868 – Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Applications

The fourth exam “Extending Dynamics CRM 2011” is not yet available, but it is planned for release in August, and I’ll update this page once details are up on the Microsoft Learning website. Update: the details for Course 80295A Extending MS Dynamics CRM 2011 are now available.

Read more about the available certifications for CRM 2011 and what you need to pass to achieve each one»

Filed under CRM 2011, Dynamics CRM, Training + certification Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Problem with unresponsive lookup field on CRM 2011 form

January 26, 2012 Leave a Comment

Recently had a minor problem with a form in CRM 2011 which I have resolved while trying to fix something else (isn’t that so often the way?).

Problem description / reproduction steps

I created a custom entity in CRM 2011 to use as a joining entity in a manual N:N relationship. In this scenario it was an “Attendance” record to link a Contact to an Event, and enable the business to track the status of the attendance (tentative, confirmed, attended, cancelled) along with relevant dates etc.

To reduce effort on the user’s part I made the primary “description” field on the record auto-filled based on the event and contact name, using jscript web resources. To observe sensible UI practice, I made sure the lookup fields came at the top of the form, then the description which was a result of those, so it should be obvious to the user what to fill in first, then by the time they get to the name field it is already filled in.

A blank new record form is shown below.

Attendance record blank screenshot

So, what went wrong?

When the user creates a new record, they expect to be able to get on with the job of typing in the fields. Although the Event or Contact was automatically filled in if they created the record from the context of the parent record to make life even easier, this still means that sometimes they needed to fill in one or the other field, and that’s where it got strange.

Read more of this post

Filed under CRM 2011, Internet Explorer, Patching + hotfixes Tagged with , , , , ,

CRM 2011 Opportunity Revenue field is read only

November 14, 2011 Leave a Comment

I’ve just had a slightly strange situation with some customisation for a CRM online project I am working on that I thought I would share in case anyone else has a similar experience with this particular scenario or other odd results of customisations which may have a related cause.

Customising the Opportunity form

I have been customising various entities and forms to build the system to suit the particular customer’s requirements. One of the things I was changing was the Opportunity form. I added some of the custom fields, moved some things around and tidied is up generally. Published and everything seemed fine.

Estimated Revenue always read only

Then I noticed that I could not put a value in the Estimated Revenue field. It was dimmed as unavailable, read-only, “move along, nothing to do here…”. Nothing I did would change this, Est. Revenue was always read only.

I had quite deliberately already changed the “IsRevenueSystemCalculated” field default to “User Provided”, and this is the value it correctly showed up on the form.

In general this organisation will be quoting their clients as part of longhand written proposals or formal RFPs for very flexible services work which does not lend itself well to using the Product Catalogue, although they may do that later for standard, fixed price, “commodity” services they offer. So their Opportunities will be used to manage the sales pipeline but not to figure out the values for them, and user provided figures are the most sensible way to handle this.

If I changed isrevenuesystemcalculated to “System Calculated” it correctly added in a value (£0.00 at the moment since I have added no line items) and it remained dimmed, as it should. Change it back to “User Provided” and nothing happens, still read only and unavailable. Currency was set, no Price List was added (and none needed as there would be no line items). All very strange.

What else could be causing this?

I had included Est. Revenue in the form header, and thought this might be causing the problem in some way because it would be a read-only field, but I removed it and it made no difference. I checked and rechecked that there were no scripts or anything else that could be affecting this behaviour. Nothing.

But one other thing that I had changed from the default OOBE is the way the field was displayed – rather than a pair of radio buttons I had chosen to save some space on the form by showing isrevenuesystemcalculated as a picklist since the user would only very rarely want to change this.

Switching back to radio buttons fixed the problem.

Why would this be buggy?

So it seems that the built-in functionality which is triggered by changing this field and updating the Est Revenue field accordingly is not particularly flexible. As far as my testing shows, it looks like it explicitly uses the status of the radio buttons as part of the DOM, rather than the underlying value of the bit field to figure out the state of the user selection in the isrevenuesystemcalculated field.

I would argue that this is a bug, since it should be possible to display this field in any way I choose. Albeit if I chose a single check box the label would need to be more explicit than simply “Revenue”, and I have a feeling this would not work in any case as I am not sure if selecting and clearing a checkbox triggers an “onChange” event in the way other operations do.

Have you had any similar experiences where the built-in functionality is very picky about how things are displayed, or where changing the default forms has affected things in strange ways? Please feel free to share via the comments.

Filed under CRM 2011 Tagged with , , , , ,

CRM 2011 now works with SharePoint online

November 7, 2011 Leave a Comment

I don’t usually blog unless I have something original to say, and try to avoid becoming just another echo in the blogosphere, but felt this announcement is important enough to merit it.

You can now properly integrate CRM 2011 with SharePoint online – in other words the SharePoint list component can be installed and configured properly and the previous problem whereby you could not get the SharePoint online server to serve up .htc files which are a vital component of the “seamless” document management experience enjoyed by on-premises customers has been resolved.

This also means by extension that you now use CRM online with SharePoint 2010 online (eg via Office 365) for a totally cloud-based setup. Note this is supported for SharePoint 2007 and 2010, but only 2010 gives the completely integrated look and feel inside CRM.

Thanks to Donna Edwards for tweeting this article by Eric Boocock: CRM Integration with SharePoint online is here

Previous problem is described and documented very well by Jukka Niiranen here: Office 365 launches without Dynamics CRM integration

More information on how to setup SharePoint to work with CRM 2011 is on MSDN:

Filed under CRM 2011, Office System Tagged with , , , ,

CRM 2011 Training Options

October 24, 2011 Leave a Comment

There are loads of resources for official and unofficial CRM training available, so to try and make things easier, here’s a few starting points.

Official E-learning, classroom training and books

The easiest way to find all the official Microsoft options in one place is to start with the Microsoft Training Catalog for CRM.

This includes Online training courses and instructor-led classroom training which map to the exams, as well as some courses which are more general (such as 80442 Introduction to CRM  2011). The classroom training also provides links to search for training providers near you, although this simply lists partners that may or may not offer the specific courses you are looking for, so you will need to check their own websites to see if they have public scheduled courses to suit you.

You will also find links to the exams with full details of the objectives covered and their weightings. There are also links to “Learning Plans” which guide you to resources specifically aimed at gaining the skills to pass a particular exam, but it seems that all the plans available describe the CRM 4 tracks, not CRM 2011
Read more about training options and free resources for learning about CRM 2011»

Filed under CRM 2011, CRM 4.0, Training + certification Tagged with , , , ,

Exam tips for MB2-866 Customising CRM 2011

October 11, 2011 2 Comments

I recently passed the Microsoft exam MB2-866 – Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Customization and Configuration, and I wanted to share a few thoughts about my experience, and hopefully help others who also want to gain this certification.

Of course, like every other exam this was done under NDA, so I can only give some general thoughts and not discuss specific questions or answers.

All change

I find many exams for a new product version like this seem to deliberately ask lots of questions about the new or changed stuff rather than the old elements that have remained largely the same (this was certainly true of the MCAS exams for Office 2007). I can only assume this is to avoid people coasting through on old knowledge from CRM 4, although it does seem to risk not testing some of the core knowledge.

Obviously some features are unchanged and some questions still cover them, but the feeling is that to pass the exam you really need to have studied the new material and properly practiced using these new skills. Of course, in the real world of actually getting on and using CRM 2011, knowledge passed along from previous versions is all very useful as well.

Are we nearly there yet?

In order to avoid worrying about running out of time, what I tend to do is make some very quick and rough calculations when the information comes up at the beginning about how many questions there will be and how much time is allowed. If it’s easy enough to work out in my head, I figure exactly how much time per question. If not, I just figure out for a bunch of them – however many makes the maths easier, say 5 or 6, and likewise round the time down a bit if it makes it easier to figure out, which also gives you some slack time at the end.

If you have 75 questions , you have 1/15 of the time for every 5 questions, and 15 is easy to divide into hours. So for a two hour exam that’s 8 minutes for every 5 questions (15 goes into 60 four times, so into two hours 8 times). Read more exam-taking tips and some of the important changes to remember in CRM 2011»

Filed under CRM 2011, Training + certification Tagged with , , , , , ,

Don’t let CRM overload users’ email inboxes

October 10, 2011 Leave a Comment

EmailSpam

Matt Keenan wrote an interesting post about some of the CRM deadly sins over at his Dynamics Café blog. One of his categories that I particularly see happening all too often is “too much notification”.

Why do people do this?

I see this in initial customer specifications and requirements documents quite a lot, usually in the form of “When foo happens, send an email to person/group X”.

This is often born out of naïvety on the part of the person who has been tasked with figuring out how their processes should be managed using a system they have never seen yet. They respond by falling back on what they know and try to use their existing mechanisms (such as email) to tell people when something important happens.

I also find this in existing systems, sometimes where the original consultant has simply felt that if that is what the customer asked for, that is what they should be given. In other cases it is because not enough time has been spent on looking at alternatives or on training end users how to find information for themselves without having it pushed out to them over old channels.

I tend to be a bit more argumentative and ask “why do you want it do that?” “have you considered other options such as…”. Of course, if someone insists loudly enough I deliver what the customer has asked for, but I do at least try to explore with them whether they are taking the best approach.
Find out how to replace notifications, and when they are the right option»

Filed under Dynamics CRM Tagged with , ,

Create your own offline book of TechNet content

August 1, 2011 Leave a Comment

If you use the Microsoft TechNet Library at all, you will know it is a vast resource of information for systems administrators and IT professionals. But sometimes it can be a bit overwhelming, particularly when a particular topic may have various different scenarios, only one of which really applies to your organisation.

So I was really pleased to read about a great new feature today which will let you collect together load of pages or whole sections that you want to read through later, or perhaps share with your colleagues to save them trying to find the same information.

Browser bookmarks could very quickly get tedious, so this way means you can create your own contents page inside TechNet, which will be remembered for you between sessions. You can also output your collection as a web page to host locally or as a PDF file which means you can read the content on a wide rage of platforms, including e-book readers like the Amazon Kindle.

Read a step by step guide to building your own book of TechNet articles on the Office IT Pro Blog.

Filed under Microsoft, Utilities + Tools Tagged with ,

CRM 2011 Update rollup 3 released

August 1, 2011 Leave a Comment

Update rollup 3 is here, and contains lots of little fixes for things you may not even have known were wrong! Some of these are more important than others, but overall at this stage of the product lifecycle it is not surprising that many are things which simply had not been spotted during beta testing until people start to stress the system with real world use, and deploy in a much wider variety of complex environments.

Where to get it

The main information page is KB article 2547347 Update Rollup 3 for Dynamics CRM 2011, and the downloads can be found at download centre page 26912 CRM 2011 UR3 for servers and clients. The update will also be available via Windows Update and therefore also ready to deploy via WSUS on August 9th (or possibly 23rd, since both dates are shown on the KB page). Read more about what’s in Update Rollup 3 »

Filed under CRM 2011, Patching + hotfixes Tagged with , ,

Course 80295A Extending MS Dynamics CRM 2011

July 24, 2011 Leave a Comment

An an update to my earlier post about the official MOC courses available for instructor-led training for CRM 2011, I have just found that the details of the course “Extending Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011” have now been released, although the course itself won’t be available for another week or so. The course page is here:

MS MOC course 80295A Extending CRM 2011

This will be a three-day course as expected, and includes lots of topics such as:

  • querying CRM by various methods, including LINQ queries, FetchXML and OData,
  • developing custom workflow activities and plug-ins,
  • application events and the xrm.page model
  • customising the Ribbon
  • publishing web resources including Silverlight applications

No news on a release date for the related exam yet, but of course lots of people want to go get the training in order to be able to bring their skills up to date for actually getting on with the job of developing for CRM 2011, and not necessarily in order to pass an exam.

(and for fellow MCTs, yes, this course is available in the download centre so you can start preparing)

Filed under CRM 2011, Training + certification Tagged with , , , ,

CRM 4 MCITP Certification tracks updated

July 24, 2011 Leave a Comment

The exam requirements to become a Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP) in Applications for Dynamics CRM 4.0 have been updated slightly. Now you will be able to take (or use an existing pass in) exam 70-680 Configuring Windows 7 instead of the out-dated 70-620 Configuring Windows Vista Client. Hurray!

Dude, where’s my transcript?

The only strange thing here is that whether you have already passed this exam or take it now, it won’t count towards making you an MCITP on CRM 4 until September. Why would that be? Answer: because internally at Microsoft Learning, the matrix of which exams count towards which qualifications is handled by the Transcript Database, and there is a planned update to that taking place in September.

This means that any exams you take now which are not already featured in the database / matrix simply don’t count towards anything, and will not show up on your official MCP / MCT transcript that you can access through the Microsoft Professionals portal or share with anyone else. Essentially, you can’t prove you have passed any of the new CRM 2011 exams, for example, because they don’t have a pigeonhole for that yet, so “computer says no”.

Update October 2011: They have fixed one part of the transcript database so it does at least show up the exams you have passed, but for MCTs it is still frustrating as the whole Dynamics range of products is shown in strange ways. I can apparently teach subjects in which I have no knowledge at all, while on the other hand I can’t cover courses for which I have passed the relevant exam. Hopefully this will be largely resolved when they finally release the requirements for the CRM 2011 tracks.

What about the tracks for installers and developers?

While this is only a small change to the Applications track, I wonder if this is a sign that the other tracks will follow, such as allowing exams in Exchange 2010 rather than 2007 for the Installation track.

This also bodes well for the MS Dynamics CRM 2011 Certification Tracks and Exams which look more likely to use current versions rather than older ones, which will make them more relevant and achievable for a longer time into the future.

Update October 2011: Yes it was a sign of further changes! The Installation and Deployment track now includes 70-432 (SQL Server 2008 Implementation and Maintenance) and 70-431 (SQL Server 2005) as an elective alongside the Exchange 2007 and Windows Server 2008 exams. This looks promising for people wanting to qualify as an IT Pro in CRM 4 using 70-432 and being able to count this towards CRM 2011 too (but not the SQL 2005 version which is not supported for CRM 2011).

Does this change make anyone out there an MCITP in Applications or Installation who was not already? What other exams do you think should be included as electives for the CRM 4 or 2011 tracks? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Filed under CRM 2011, CRM 4.0, Training + certification Tagged with , , , , ,

Advanced Office Documents 2010 Edition by Stephanie Krieger

July 3, 2011 Leave a Comment

It took me a while to realise that when Stephanie Krieger said her new book was on the way, it was not necessarily going to be published under a similar title to her previous one “Advanced Office Documents 2007 edition”, in the MS Press “Inside Out” series.

So I’ve only just got round to finally ordering Documents, Presentations, and Workbooks: Using Microsoft Office to Create Content that gets Noticed which is the updated version.
Not the snappiest of titles, and if it is anything like her last it should have really been called something like “How to make Office 2010 really rock”.

I’m hoping it will be as brilliant and have the same deep content as the previous one, which certainly taught me loads about the packaging and XML structure of the new document formats, as well as some great stuff about using content controls in Word. If I get time I’ll do a proper review when I’ve worked my way through it.

Filed under Office 2010, Office System, Reviews Tagged with , ,

PowerPoint presenter view smarter with sp1

June 29, 2011 Leave a Comment

PowerPointOnce you install Office 2010 service pack 1 then PowerPoint presenter view gets a bit smarter about how it choose which screen is used for the presenter’s “dashboard”, and which shows the slides for the audience.

With sp1 installed, when you select “use presenter view” on the Slide Show tab of the Ribbon, whichever monitor is set to be your main display (the one with your Start menu and Taskbar on) will be assumed to be the one the presenter is looking at, while the slides will go on your second monitor.

PowerPoint Slide Show Ribbon tab - Presenter View option

This is usually the right decision and is much more likely to result in you getting the setup you need “right first time” without having to fiddle about to choose the right monitor from the list (although you can still select this by hand if you need to override the automatic choice, of course).

Filed under Office 2010, PowerPoint, Presenting skills Tagged with , ,

Office 2010 Service Pack 1 – sp1 download available

June 29, 2011 1 Comment

Office 2010 logoLast month I wrote about the planned availability of Service Pack 1 for Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 for the end of June. And it’s here!

You can now download the whole service pack file as a self-extracting executable and simply run it to install, or you can use Windows Update, where it is listed as an Important/High Priority update (rather than critical or security) for you to manually install (after 90 days this will change to an automatic update if your system is configured for that). At the moment my 32 bit install claims this would take 409 MB via Windows Update compared with only 361 MB for the full exe package download.

Even if you only have 1 machine to do, you will save marginally on the file size if you manually download Office 2010 sp1, and then of course you will have the file to use again on any other machines that need it – if like me you are the de facto IT support for family and friends, this can be quite useful.

A few key changes relating to other products are that Outlook 2010 sp1 will fully support the now-released Office 365 online business applications suite, while SharePoint 2010 will support SQL 2011 and has improved support for users of Internet Explorer 9.

So, there’s lots of information about this important update, as well as the downloads themselves, so let’s dive straight in with a load of links to the things you probably want to get hold of straight away.
Find out more about Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 service pack 1 downloads, resources, and information »

Filed under Group Policy, Office 2010, Office System, Patching + hotfixes Tagged with , , , ,

New micro-site for all Microsoft Certified folks

June 14, 2011 Leave a Comment

MCT logo mediumMCP RGB logo white borderMOS Master medium white

Microsoft Learning have launched a new central certification website for all your needs as a Microsoft Certified Professional, Trainer or Office Specialist:

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/members/

This is essentially a starting point: at the top of the page you will see “tabs” for each the three different branches’ own micro-sites. This provide more consistency between the three sites, as well as making sure that you can easily take advantage of all offers, discounts or services which apply to your particular specialist area or areas.

From what I have seen of the MCT and MOS ones (which I am most interested and involved in) they are great little pages full of all the links you need to all the resources you want, and some that you may need and did not even know about.

Included are links to the logo builder pages, how to download or order a certificate, create an online virtual business card or update the profile information which Microsoft holds about you (including which newsletters and updates you receive by email).

This is not a replacement for lots of the resources which already existed, such as Born To Learn, or the MCPeStore, or to view or share your transcript; rather it is a single page to go to which brings links to all those resources together in one place.

Don’t overlook the links at the top of the page directly below the tabs (you can get to these by hovering over each tab, or once you have clicked on a tab the ones for that section stay visible.

If you have ever passed a Microsoft exam and want to continue certification as part of your career or personal development, go and check out the Microsoft Certified Members’ site today.

Filed under Microsoft, Training + certification Tagged with , , , ,

MS Dynamics CRM 2011 MOC training courses

June 7, 2011 5 Comments

MS Dynamics logo

As a follow-up to my previous post about the new Dynamics CRM 2011 exams and certification tracks, this article describes the official courses available to help prepare you for gaining CRM 2011 certification, or upgrading your skills from a previous version, or simply to find out more about the software to help you do your job without actually taking any exams.

All the courses described below are available now on the courseware download library (for MCTs) and on PartnerSource (for suitably certified MS Partners), except where stated.

Microsoft Official Courseware (MOC) courses for CRM 2011

Although there are four main exams (Applications, Customization, Installation, Extending) there are many more courses, some of which are already released, others around the corner. All of these are discussed in this article. Find out about MOC courses available for Dynamics CRM 2011»

Filed under CRM 2011, Dynamics CRM, Training + certification Tagged with , , , , , ,

SharePoint and Office 2010 Service Pack 1 announced

May 19, 2011 1 Comment

Office2010Logo_small

The Office Sustained Engineering blog has an announcement that Service Pack 1 for Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 is on track for release at the end of June.

As you might expect, this will include a roll up all previous patches and cumulative updates, as well some minor feature changes.

Update 28th June 2011: It’s here!

Read all about it and find links to all sorts of information and resources: Office 2010 sp1 available for download

Change to Outlook reminders dialogue

One of the changes declared for Service Pack 1 will be to revert the behaviour of the reminders window in Outlook 2010 back to the way it worked in 2007 thanks to sustained pressure from various contributors on the Microsoft Answers forums.

In Outlook 2007 when you snooze a reminder it remembers how long you snoozed that item for, and next time it comes up that is the default time chosen so you can very easily hit snooze again for the same delay. Each item (calendar entry, task or follow up) remembers it’s own interval so you can snooze a meeting later today maybe 15 minutes at a time, but a reminder about a conference next month a whole day at a time.

Outlook 2010 changed this behaviour so that each time you snooze any item, the time interval chosen is remembered for the next item as well, which means some people found they had to keep changing this back and forth between different values, and might snooze something for too long without realising – possibly ending up being late for that important meeting for example. Service Pack 1 will switch this behaviour back to the 2007 method, and it sounds like this will just happen, rather than providing the user with any option to choose which approach works better for them.

Which way would you prefer this to work? Let us know via the comments.

No news on Outlook 2010 holiday errors

For over a year now people using Outlook 2010 have been able to add public holidays for their country, with the slight problem that many of these holidays have several errors in at least 23 countries around the world . I have actually seen some people report the problem and offer fixes for it which still contain some of the incorrect dates, or “corrections” which introduce different faults.

Hopefully Microsoft will stick to their plan of including fixes in the service pack to finally address this problem, but there is no detail available on this yet, but we’ll update this with any news when it arrives.

Filed under Office 2010, Patching + hotfixes Tagged with , , , ,

Producer for PowerPoint

May 19, 2011 Leave a Comment

PowerPoint 2010 logo

The Microsoft Office blog has an article about Producer for PowerPoint, as well as links to the download page, and importantly to the Office Animation Runtime which you will need if you have PowerPoint 2010 (previous versions installed this along with the application, whereas 2010 does not). What is strange here is that the download page describes this as version 2 with a release date of 29th April 2011, yet the actual download page and file is identical to the version released and announced at the beginning of May last year.

The previous release was really a bug fix version which sorted out compatibility for Office 2007 and 2010, and there were vague claims that there would be new features in some later release, although as always according to policy there were no specifics about software in development.

Producer is a great way to turn a presentation file into a polished multimedia show which anyone can view using their browser. This is great for e-learning, tutorials, or any situation where you want to take something which would normally be delivered in person and make it available to a wider audience.

Oddly enough the download page refers to this as version 2, but the program itself claims (through help > about) that it is build 3.0.3012.0, but the MD5 hash for this file is identical to the year-old one. I’ve had a couple of problems with it – for example if you delete a load of slides from the timeline it expands the last one to fill up the space, and when you try to shrink it back down it takes while for no obvious reason, in my case chewing up one of my four processor cores flat out for a couple of minutes (tip: only add slides when you know you need them rather than all at once to avoid this problem).

Filed under Office 2010, Office System, PowerPoint, Utilities + Tools Tagged with , ,

Microsoft increasing exam prices on July 1st 2011

April 27, 2011 Leave a Comment

Microsoft will be increasing the cost to take any of their technical or developer track exams worldwide on July 1st, the first increase for several years. This change will affect pretty much all their exam tracks except for the top-tier MCM and MCA, the Microsoft Technology Associate (MTA – aimed at school and college students mainly), and the Microsoft Office Specialist (MOS, currently managed by a different exam provider anyway).

In the UK this means an increase from £88 to £99, so if you want to save that extra £11 then get your exams done before the end of June. Both of these prices are ex-VAT, so for those of you paying your own way through a certification track that means you will need to find an extra £13.20 from your own pocket, or £15.40 more than a year ago thanks to the VAT increase as well. If you already have pre-paid vouchers which are still valid, you should be able to use these for some time, but read the small print on the page linked below.

More information on prices for other countries, details of voucher eligibility and plenty of FAQs on the Microsoft page about the exam price rise.

UK MCTs will have already seen that their exam discount will increase at the same time by 5% which takes out a lot of the sting here, but early adopters in the training community will no longer get the super-bonus discount for taking exams within the first 90 days of release, which is not such great news.

Filed under Microsoft, Training + certification Tagged with , , , , ,

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