The South Asia Microsoft MVP Award Program

In this Guest Blog, our ASP.net/IIS MVP, Brij Bhushan Mishra is elaborating FriendlyURLs which is one of the features of ASP.net.

Being an ASP.NET developer, you must have worked on ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC. One of the things in MVC, most of us like that is pretty and elegant URL. But this is not in the case of using ASP.NET web forms.

These URLs include crappy extensions like aspx. Many developers have written their custom URL writer or used some third party libraries to achieve it. And here we either end up paying some extra bucks for the third party library or writing custom URL writer which is itself painful task.

FriendlyURLs was introduced with ASP.NET 4.5 release 2 as a NUGET package and can be used with ASP.Net 4.0+.

Working with FriendlyURLs  

To start working with the friendly URLs, we need to install it via NuGet in our project and require to add some code in various files and make the change. First let’s set up the environment.

Setting up FriendlyURLs in your application

To install using user interface, go to Tools -> Library Package Manager -> Manage NuGet Package for Solutions and search ‘FriendlyURLs’ and click on install as:

Once you have the NUGET package installed then we need to call a method RegisterRoutes from Application_Start method in Global.asax as

protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

           RouteConfig.RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);

}

Now our application is set up with friendly URL when we’ll run our application, the URL will not contain file extension. Let’s run and check it.

The above URL does not contain the extension aspx.

There are many other scenarios where we need to play with URL’s, let’s discuss how the FriendlyURLs works in those scenarios.

1. Redirect to other pages – This works in the similar way as earlier. We can either use Response.Redirect or Server.Transfer or any other way to go to other page i.e.: Reposne.Redirect (“~\second.”)
2. Query string – Query string also works in the similar way as earlier. Like we can have an URL i.e.: http://localhost:57353/Home/Product?Id=1001  and the query string can be read as Request.QueryString["Id"] as string; it can contain many query string variable as earlier.
3. If we access a URL and there is no page available then what would take place? Say if we have URL like http://localhost:57353/Home/Products/NewProduct and there is no page available with the name NewProduct then it looks the next segment Products. If products.aspx available then it opens this page. Similarly if this is also not available and it would like to search Home.aspx and display. It does the same until it finds any page or throw an error if no match is found. There are some other useful method provided by this feature. Let’s discuss some of the key items briefly.

Other useful Methods

To use these features, make sure you have added namespace Microsoft.AspNet.FriendlyUrls in your aspx.cs page.

• Request.GetFriendlyUrlFileVirtualPath() - This method is available with the request returns the virtual path of the requested page. Here in my application, Home.aspx is under folder personal. Let’s have a look, here the requested URL is http://localhost:53252/Personal/Home then

• Request.GetFriendlyUrlFileExtension() - It returns the file extension of the friendly URL of the page. Keep in mind that this return the file extension of the URL, not the extension of asp.net files like .master.ascx etc. As here also the accessed URL is same as in above section and

• Request.GetFriendlyUrlSegments() - This is another method that got added with the request and returns the URL segment in a list of strings. First let’s understand what is the URL segment?

URL segments here are the additional values in the URL that are not part of the path or the page. If I have an URL as http://localhost:53252/Personal/Home/Users/User/3; the path of the page is /Personal/Home.aspx. Rest are additional values that are passed with the URL and available as URL segments. Let’s see what does it return when we access it.

Here as we see that there are three values in URL segments. In the same way, we can pass multiple additional values through URL without using query string. And obviously, it makes URL pretty, cleaner and SEO friendly.

The above methods works only in case of the requested URL is of type of FriendlyUrl.

Leveraging some useful Classes

There are some classes that are very useful while working with this feature. Let’s us take FriendlyURL first.

Using FriendlyURL Class

This is a static class which is very useful in several scenarios such as:

• FriendlyUrl.Href – This is another method that generates the friendly URL based on the parameters. This is a very useful methods and can be used at several scenarios in code behind and in aspx mark-up as well. The parameters are:
  • First parameter is virtual path of the page
  • And then as many parameters that will be used as URL segments as

So here we first pass the virtual path of the page and rest three parameters are passed as Url segments, we can pass as many as segments as we need.

• FriendlyUrl.Resolve – This is a static method and used to resolve any URL into friendly URL. This does not check whether that URL exists or not and it does not has to do anything about the requested URL.

Here we can see that the URL returned by the method is a Friendly URL.

• FriendlyUrl.Segments – This is static property of the FriendlyUrl class and returns the URL segments of the URL similar as Request.GetFriendlyUrlSegments().

Here we have just accessed this property and it returned the URL segments for that page. Even we did not require to pass any information about the page.

Using FriendlyUrlResolver

FriendlyUrlResolver is a class that provides another set of good features that can be used at various scenarios. To use it, first we need to create the instance of FriendlyUrlResolver. Here the constructor requires one parameter that is the extension of URL that need to take care while working on friendly URL: FriendlyUrlResolver friendlyUrl = new FriendlyUrlResolver(".aspx")

It provides many methods such as:

• ConvertToFriendlyUrl – It takes the normal URL as parameter and return the friendly URL based on the extension provided while creating the FriendlyUrlResolver instance as

Here we have created the instance FriendlyUrlResolver with the parameter .aspx then we used ConvertToFriendlyUrl that returns the friendly URL. Here if we have provided some other extension while creating the instance then this method returns null so be careful while using it.

• GetExtensions - This is another method which returns the list of extensions that is configured for that instance. This method takes a parameter which is type HTTPContextBase. But we need to keep in mind that HttpContext.Current is not of type HTTPContextBase. To get the instance this type we can do:

HttpContextWrapper wrapper = new HttpContextWrapper(HttpContext.Current);

HttpContextWrapper inherits from HTTPContextBase so we can get the extensions as

• PreprocessRequest – This is a virtual method and should be override at derived classes. This method takes two parameters an instance of HTTPContextBase and a handler instance. It executes once friendly URL is resolved and before executing the handler.

Conclusion

In this article, we discussed about FriendlyUrls and its various other components. It can be used with ASP.NET 4.0+ and easily configurable with the solutions. It provides a rich API to handle various scenarios. FriendlyUrlResolver class provides us capability to extend this feature based on our requirement.

About Guest Blogging

South Asia MVP Award Program introduces Guest Posts by the MVPs from the region. These posts would help readers to be in touch with the recent trends in technology and be up-to-date with knowledge on Microsoft products.

Author

In this Guest Blog, our Windows Phone Development MVP, Mayur Tendulkar covers the important FAQs around Windows Phone development.

In our technical communities, many folks ask me questions on Windows Phone development. Most of these questions are same & repetitive. So, I thought of compiling ‘Top 10’ of them as ‘FAQs’ and here they are. Let’s call it FAQ v1.0.

1. I’ve bought a laptop year ago, can I use it to build WP apps?

Any laptop with a processor, motherboard and BIOS supporting virtualization and Second Level Address Translation (SLAT) can be used to build and test WP apps, provided it is running Windows 8. Intel calls SLAT as Extended Page Tables (EPT). If you know the processor model, you can check details about your processor on processor manufacturer’s site. Else, you can use coreinfo.exe (read here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-in/sysinternals/cc835722.aspx ) utility which can give you details about your machine. However, this feature is required for emulator. If you want to build and test on real device directly, any PC with descent configuration can work.

2. I want to keep my development environment separate, can I use VM for WP development?

This idea is not supported. Even though there are some sites which use third-party virtualization tools to create VMs for WP app development, I personally will not recommend it.

3. What version should I build for v7.0, 7.1, 7.5, 7.8, and 8.0?

7.0 was first release of Windows Phone. After that, major release was 7.8 with many features. However 8.0 is a game changer. Apps built for 7.x can run on 8.0 however, reverse is not supported. If you want to target all WP devices, 7.x is the way to go. However, 8.0 provides many new features and rich API set. You’ll miss-out these features if you build for 7.x. You can have more information about WP versions here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/library/windowsphone/develop/hh202996(v=vs.105).aspx

4. Do I need to pay annual fee for developing Windows Phone apps?

To build and test app on your own device, you don’t need to pay any fees. You can developer unlock one device and test 2 apps (maximum at any time) on it. However to change this number or sell the apps you’ll need to get a developer account by paying annual fees. You can read more about it at: http://blogs.windows.com/windows_phone/b/wpdev/archive/2013/08/06/making-it-easier-to-get-started-with-windows-phone-app-studio-beta-simplified-phone-registration-support-options-amp-more-payout-markets.aspx.

5. While building my app, how can I test my app with location data?

Windows Phone SDK comes with fantastic tools and Windows Phone emulator is one of them. It has functionality to emulate sensors (Accelerometer, Camera) as well as location. You can test your location specific functionality using this emulator.

6. Can I associate my app with files, share data between two apps or launch another app?

Yes. You can associate file types with your app, so when file is downloaded or opened, your app can be an option for the user to open that file. Read more about it here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsphone/develop/jj206987(v=vs.105).aspx
If you want to share data between apps or launch another app, you need to know the URI schemes associated with it. To launch system apps: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsphone/develop/jj662937(v=vs.105).aspx, example of other apps: https://developer.skype.com/skype-uris/reference

7. My app is ready, can I submit to the store now?
Once your app is ready, rather submitting it on store directly, test is on real device. Run Store Test kit to test it for performance and other bugs. Also make sure you’ve taken proper screenshots of the app (again use emulator’s feature to take screenshot rather than print-screen/screen clipping). Make sure it is not leaking memory, not showing any debug information and most importantly, build it in ‘release’ mode. More information about test kit can be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsphone/develop/hh394032(v=vs.105).aspx

8. Is there any way to provide more information to test-team?
Sometimes, you might have implemented login/authentication functionality in your app OR used some special features which may cause certification failure OR you may want to convey some message to the testing team. In this case, to provide more information to the team and to make their life easier and help expedite your app certification process, always provide details about your app along with ‘technical notes to testers’ whilst submitting the app.

9. Can I share my app without going through store?
The only way to distribute your app to consumers is to go through store. However, if you’ve built enterprise application and want to distribute internally, you can do enterprise distribution. However, you’ll require a ‘Company Account’ not an ‘Individual Account’.
Another way to distribute your app to selected few people for testing purpose, you can go through store under ‘beta testing’ option. It will allow you to distribute the app to selected people and will make your app private, without showing on store.

10. My app failed the certification. What should I do?
If your app has failed the certification process, you’ll get a mail about it with detailed error report. Look for reason for failure. Usually, the report also contains steps to reproduce the error. Try to reproduce it and fix it. After fixing it test it again and resubmit.

I hope with these FAQs answered you can kick-start your Windows Phone Development and build some stunning apps. By the way, have I told you there are gifts for Windows Phone Developers who complete challenges! Visit http://www.dvlup.com

About Guest Blogging

South Asia MVP Award Program introduces Guest Posts by the MVPs from the region. These posts would help readers to be in touch with the recent trends in technology and be up-to-date with knowledge on Microsoft products.

Author

In this post, our Dynamics CRM MVP, Roohi Shaikh introduces Windows Tablet Client for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013.

Microsoft has just released windows tablet client for CRM 2013. This is a fully operational client in contrast to the earlier mobile express. In this blog let us have a look at what the tablet client has to offer.

Installation

You can download the tablet client from http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/en-us/app/microsoft-dynamics-crm/93772212-7b72-4aee-bc4e-b1adb7712ebe

After the installation, provide the CRM Online or IFD URL to connect to your CRM Organization and see the Dashboard.

Note: Once you sign in, there are no options to change the username or the organization. You need to uninstall and re-install to connect using different credentials.

This Sales Dashboard is the same dashboard that is displayed on the web client. It is only the rendering that has changed to suit the tablet client.

Note: IFRAME and Web resources are not rendered in the tablet client and if they have been added to the dashboard they will not be rendered here.

Full-featured forms for entities

Unlike the mobile express where we had a separate type of form, Tablet client uses the same form that are designed for web interface. So there is no need to maintain separate forms.

In case of multiple entity forms that the user has access, the form which comes first in the form ordering would be displayed to the user. Users don’t have any options to switch between forms in the tablet client.

The Tablet form presents the Business Process UI similar to the web form. You also have all the ribbon button features available to Switch Process, Qualify etc. A few tablet related new options like Pin to Start and Dashboard are also available.

The Open in Browser button will open the record in a web browser. This will allow you to access web forms and any other web resources or IFRAME that have not been rendered on the tablet.

The Save button is missing from the interface. All changes made are automatically saved when you navigate out of the record.

Quickly create New Records:

You have a quick create option for all entities enabled for edit access on the tablet.

Lookup controls are provided for the dynamic filtering so that it is easy to search for the desired record.

Global Search

The most awaited feature has been delivered in the tablet client even before being included in the web client. And in that aspect Tablet client has an advantage over the web client.

You can now search records across the entities listed in the drop-down. It is currently restricted to these entities only.

Support for Offline Access:

If you lose connection with the server, it would display offline status as can be seen in the below screenshot.

It will not display the charts in the Dashboard. As it does not store records locally, only the records that were accessed earlier and cached would be available for viewing.

Entity configuration for tablet access

In the entity customizations you need to enable access to the entity through tablet client. You also have the option to allow Read-Only access which means users can only read the records for the entity. No edits or creates allowed.

Any changes made in the customization require you to close and re-open the tablet client. When you open the client it will prompt you to download the latest changes.

Privileges required

A new privilege has been added in the Business Management tab under Security Role

Enable this privilege to allow users to configure and access tablet client.

Go ahead and check out this awesome offering from the product team.

About Guest Blogging

South Asia MVP Award Program introduces Guest Posts by the MVPs from the region. These posts would help readers to be in touch with the recent trends in technology and be up-to-date with knowledge on Microsoft products.

Author

Our second guest blog on Community Day 2014 is from our ASP.net/IIS MVP Abhishek Sur. He writes about one of the most favorite features of Windows Phone 8.1, Cortana which makes your phone your personal assistant.  

The Windows Phone 8.1 comes up with a lot of interesting features, some of which are really interesting while some are just for eye candy. Among all the features that has been released, one of the most interesting and eye catching feature that people are awaited of is Cortana.

Cortana is a special app that is installed by default with Windows Phone 8.1 and automatically configures itself to run on the hardware search button. This special application invokes a Personal assistant which not just capable of helping you through various settings and invoking various tasks, it can also go beyond the boundaries of the Windows phone. Cortana is your guide, which stores all the settings that you do with your phone, creates a list of your personal choices, create alarms, and remind you something which interests you automatically. The best thing with Cortana is it understands natural language commands.

Here are some of the interesting things that Cortana can do:

1. Phone : Cortana is capable of understanding relationships and can allow you to say commands to call your friends and family. For instance, if you want you can say either “Call my wife” or “Call Riya” to do the same thing, where Riya is the contact saved in my contact list. It will prompt you if it does not know, or otherwise it will go ahead and call that person.

2. Messaging : Cortana can literally send text messages to the contacts. For instance, you can say “Text Abhijit I am busy will be calling you in short while”. This will automatically find “Abhijit” from my contact list and send this message.

3. Calendar: One of the most common issues with people is to deal with Calendar. For a very busy person, adding a calendar entry and reminding on time is quite a big deal. Cortana handles it very good. You can say “Add an appointment to Kunal tomorrow at 3 pm”, and Cortana will do just that. Also you can say, “What do I need to do next?”, and it will tell you the next calendar entry.

4. Reminders: Well, reminders are another interesting problem that people face daily. You can simply say something to remind later, and your Cortana will do just that. For instance, you can say “Remind me tomorrow to call Abhijit on his birthday”, it will add the reminder and work accordingly.

5. Notes : Cortana as it deals with natural language can also add notes. Say “Take notes: Me and Cortana is best friend”, and it takes it on its note book.

6. Alarms: Just like reminders, you can also set Alarms with Cortana. For instance, you can say “Wake me up at 6 O’clock in the morning” or “Set alarm for 6 AM”, and Cortana understands it and add an alarm.

7. Music: Oho, You can start, pause, and change music simply by saying it to Cortana. You can say “Play my music” to start music you recently played, or you can also play a specific song by saying just that.

8. Places: You can also use Places, distance between your locations with the place you say very easily with Cortana. Just say “How much is the distance to Northern Avenue” and it will get you the info.

9. Search: Cortana integrates Bing search engine. Anything and everything, it doesn’t pick up from the list will automatically go to Search. You can say anything to Cortana like “How is today’s weather” or “show me today’s headlines” and Cortana shows it from Bing.

10. App Integration: Not only dealing with Phone features, Cortana can also invoke the Apps that have been installed in your phone and do something it supports. For instance, you can say “Twitter new Tweet Today it could hashtag rain here in hashtag Kolkata need to get an umbrella quick”. Cortana will understand this, open Twitter and add “Today it could #rain here in #Kolkata, need to get an umbrella quick”.

The above image shows the Cortana APP. When you open, you will see something very similar to above. The very right side bottom of the screen is the mike which you can press once and interact with Cortana. The initial screen also allows you to change different settings which can be accessed by the button on the top right section and in the centre, Cortana greeted you with a nice message and also you can click on “see more” link to know more about it.

This is all that exists with Cortana.

Integrating your .NET App with Cortana

Now that you know that Cortana is getting popularity within the Windows Phone ecosystem, it would not be a bad idea to integrate your app with Cortana. Integrating means dealing with voice commands that is passed to your application and do something that your app is capable of. As I gave the example already, Twitter can recognise the command “new tweet” and create the new tweet after opening the Twitter app, it also replaces the hashtag with actual #.

To integrate your application with Cortana, you need to understand three things:

1. Create Voice Command Definitions.

2. Register the VCD file on Start-up.

3. Handle Voice commands when the page is navigated with it as argument.

How to do it…

To do these steps, let us first open Visual Studio 2013 and create a Blank Windows Phone App. Let’s name it as Integrating Cortana Sample. It will prompt the Target OS version, choose it and click Ok.

1. Open WMAppManifest.xml from Properties node of Solution Explorer and double click to open. Add ID_CAP_SPEECH_RECOGNITION, ID_CAP_MICROPHONE, and ID_CAP_NETWORKING as Capabilities, save the file and Close.

2. Once this is done, Right click on the Project node in Solution Explorer, and Add è New Item. Select Voice Command Definition file, name it as “CortanaCommands.vcd”, and add it to the project.

The figure shows the exact item that you need to select to add a VCD template to the solution. The Voice Command Definition is just an XML file which has a schema that Cortana can understand.

3. After the file is added to the Solution, Right click on the file (CortanaCommands.xml) è Select Properties. Choose “Build Action” to Content and choose Copy if newer for” Copy to Output Directory” property.

4. Once this is done, open the file. We will now try to understand each nodes defined inside the VCD file. Let’s see how we change the VCD file.

Let us know see individual elements of the VCD file.

a. Command Prefix: It defines a nick name through which we can call the app. For instance my APP can be named as “Great MVP Dictation Lists” while I can put a nickname as “MVP” such that I can say “MVP” then some series of content and Cortana will pass the content to the app after opening it.

b. Example: This is the example which is shown when you open the List of all apps that is supported.

c. Command: From each sentence you speak, Cortana identifies Command. For instance, in case of Twitter “Twitter new tweet …” the new tweet is the command. In our case we can just say “Text” after “MVP”.

d. Example: This is the example which is shown while opening the App.

e. Listen For: You can say some keywords in forms of square braces which would be ignored and in curly braces which is the command label which is identified when passed to the Application as text. That means whatever I say after “MVP text” goes to the variable {dictation} ignoring the create word.

f. Feedback: This is what Cortana is going to reply.

g. Navigate: This is the target page where Cortana will navigate to when app is opened.

h. Phase Topic: You can improve the experience by defining phase topic for each variable you pass to. The Phase topic could be a Dictation, Commands, Short Message, Natural Language, Search etc. It should be worth noting that “PhaseTopic” are recognised in cloud, not in the device itself. This is an optional key.

While defining each of the elements, don’t forget to hover over the element directly inside Visual Studio. The editor also provides great info as tooltip.

5. Now after the VCD file is created correctly, let us see the step to register the VCD file. The VCD file needs to be registered only once when the Application is first run. We Open App.xaml and go to Application_Launcing event to write this step.

The above code registers the VCD file hence created such that it could be identified by Cortana.

6. Finally let us add some code on MainPage.xaml to do things in real time. We add three TextBlocks on the Content area.

In the above code, the UI creates three TextBlock to show text stacked vertically.

7. As we specified Navigate to “MainPage.xaml”, the page gets automatically opened when Cortana opens the app and a command is identified. Let’s override OnNavigatedTo command with the following code:

8. In the above code, three commands need to be noticed.

a. The reco is the entire recorded Text that you say after your command.

b. The voiceCommandName is the name of the command identified by the app.

c. The {dictation} is the identified key defined on the VCD file at element ListenFor.

9. You can also notice, the text would be displayed on the nodes created on the UI.

10. Run the code, open Cortana and Say “MVP Text I love being an MVP” and see that gets displayed on the screen.

In the above figure it demonstrates how Cortana identifies the command correctly and shows in the App. The three lines define each command identified from the QueryString.

Download Source code

http://1drv.ms/1q5zDVW  

Conclusion

As it is open framework to integrate your app with Cortana, it is very easy to expose each and every feature of your app through Natural language, thus giving great user experience of the app to the users.

More References …

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/jj206959(v=vs.105).aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/jj721592.aspx

I hope you like my post, do comment, and keep in touch.

In this post, our Dynamics CRM MVP, Roohi Shaikh introduces the image attribute in Dynamics CRM 2013.

With Dynamics CRM 2013, you can now associate an image with a record. So you always wanted to add faces to contacts or pictures to products, well now you can do it OOB without any need for Customizations.

Yes with the introduction of image attribute you can now add fields to store images. Currently however you are restricted to being able to attach only one image per entity. On the entity design you can now specify the attribute to be used to display images for the records.

Once the entity is setup to accept images, the record form would show an image placeholder in the header area using which you can add/remove images from the record

You can add/update the image using the following code

//update the record with a new image

string path = @"C:\test.png";

byte[] uploaddata = null;

//download the image

using (System.IO.FileStream fileStream = new FileStream(path, FileMode.Open))

                    {

int size = (int) fileStream.Length ;

                        uploaddata = new byte[size];

                        fileStream.Read(uploaddata, 0, size);

                    }

Entity contact = context.CreateQuery("contact").Where(c => c.GetAttributeValue<Guid>("contactid").Equals(contactid)).First<Entity>();

                     //set the image data

                    contact.Attributes["entityimage"] =  uploaddata;

                    context.UpdateObject(contact);

                    context.SaveChanges();

Now that images have been added, you might want to have them included in the reports too. The current preview option that displays a report of a record does not include the image. Let us check how we could display images on custom reports.

The image field is available for reading through queries executed using the RetrieveMultiple API call. The following code will let you read the image file in the image format.

//Retrieve and download the binary images

string binaryImageQuery =

                @"<fetch mapping='logical'>

                <entity name='lead'>

                <attribute name='fullname' />

                <attribute name='entityimage' />

                </entity>

                </fetch>";

EntityCollection binaryImageResults = _serviceProxy.RetrieveMultiple(new FetchExpression(binaryImageQuery));

foreach (Entity record in binaryImageResults.Entities)

                {

String recordName = record["fullname"] as String;

String downloadedFileName = String.Format("Downloaded_{0}", recordName);

byte[] imageBytes = record["entityimage"] as byte[];

var fs = new BinaryWriter(new FileStream(downloadedFileName, FileMode.Append, FileAccess.Write));

                    fs.Write(imageBytes);

                    fs.Close();                   

                }

But if this same code is executed using the ExecuteFetch API call, the results are returned in xml format and therefore the image attribute returns only a string “System.Byte[]” not the actual image binary data in Base64 string.

ExecuteFetchRequest fetch = new ExecuteFetchRequest();

fetch.FetchXml = binaryImageQuery;

_service.Execute(fetch);

As a result of this, reports designed using FetchXML (reports in CRM Online) would not be able to include images on the report.

The sql queries executed from FilteredViews would however provide you access to the binary data of the image and you can attach this field to an image control in SSRS to display the image.

Use the following query to generate the DataSet

select con.FullName, con.Parentcustomeridname,con.entityimage from FilteredContact con

Add the image control to the report and bind it to the entityimage field

The result would be

Conclusion:

1. Images can be read through queries executed through Retrieve Multiple calls

2. You need to explicitly specify the image attributes to be included for it to be returned through API calls.

3. Images for now can only be added to reports through SQL queries for On-Premise installs.

About Guest Blogging

South Asia MVP Award Program introduces Guest Posts by the MVPs from the region. These posts would help readers to be in touch with the recent trends in technology and be up-to-date with knowledge on Microsoft products.

Author

1^st April, we don’t celebrate the way it supposed to be in rest of the world  

We celebrate it by announcing the names of newly awarded & re-awarded individuals for the prestigious Most Valuable Professional Award.

Please join me in welcoming them in this elite technical group. We thank them for their past contributions and looking forward for their active participation in all future engagements.

Thanks and have a great evening!!

Regards,

Biplab Paul, PMP

Community Program Manager, MVP Award Program – South Asia

The following post was written by SharePoint MVP Destin Joy

To use SharePoint Web services in InfoPath form which is configured using Claim based SharePoint sites we have to create SSO for Web service connection and have to be mentioned in the connection file(.udcx).We can see the detailed steps for the same in this article.

1. On the Central Administration home page, in the Application Management section, click Manage service applications then click on Secure Store services.

Note : We should configure Secure store Services before doing this configuration

Generate Keys

2. Before using the Secure Store Service, you must generate an encryption key. The key is used to encrypt and decrypt the credentials that are stored in the Secure Store Service database.

3. The first time that you access the Secure Store service application, your only option is to generate a new encryption key. Once the key has been generated, the rest of the Secure Store functionality becomes available.

4. In the Key Management group, click Generate New Key.

5. On the Generate New Key page, type a pass phrase string in the Pass Phrase box, and type the same string in the Confirm Pass Phrase box. This pass phrase is used to encrypt the Secure Store database. Click “OK”

Note :

Creating Target Application

1. In the Manage Target Applications group, click New.

2. In the Target Application ID box, type a text string .This is the unique string that you will use externally to identify this target application. This Application ID we could mention in the UDCX connection file.

3. In the Display Name box, type a text string that will be used to display the identifier of the target application in the user interface

4. In the Contact Email box, type the e-mail address of the primary contact for this target application

5. In the Target Application Type drop-down list, choose the target application type: Group.

6. Click on “Next”

7. Use the Specify the credential fields for Secure Store Target Application page to configure the various fields which may be required to provide credentials to the external data source. By default, two fields are listed: Windows User Name and Windows Password.

8. In our case choose default option i.e. Windows User Name and Windows Password and click Next

9. In the Target Application Administrators Field, list all users who have access to manage the target application settings.

10. In the Members field, list the user groups to map to a set of credentials for this target application.

11. Click on “OK”

12. Select the Created “Target Application” and click “Set” Credentials

13. Mention Windows UserName and Password of Admin account and click “OK”

Publishing InfoPath Data Connection for modifying Connection file

Create Connection Library for Publishing InfoPath form connection files

1. Open the Site collection in browser

2. Click on “Add App” to create new connection library

3. Click on “Data Connection Library”

4. Click on “Create”

Publish Data Connection to newly created connection library and edit the published Data Connection file to mention the SSO.

1. Navigate to the custom list which we need to modify the InfoPath form data connection.

2. Click on “Customize Form”

3. Click on “Manage Data Connection” from right bottom corner of “Action” section.

4. Select Web service data connection to modify the data connection. In our case select “GetUserCollectionFromGroup” and click on “Convert to Connection file”

5. Enter the Newly created Connection Library path with UDCX file name and click “OK”

6. Follow the same step 3 to 5 for “Get UserProfileByName” connection.

7. Navigate to Newly created Data Connection Library.

8. Download both the UDCX files.

9. Modify the Authentication section with SSO Application ID and Credential Type.

10. Save the files and upload again to same Data Connection Library.

Configure InfoPath form Services

1. On the Central Administration home page, in the General Application Settings section, click Configure InfoPath form services.

2. Select “Authentication to Data source” Check box and click “OK”

You are done with the configuration

About Guest Blogging

South Asia MVP Award Program introduces Guest Posts by the MVPs from the region. These posts would help readers to be in touch with the recent trends in technology and be up-to-date with knowledge on Microsoft products.

Author

Learn PowerPoint 2013 for Windows: Creating Half Circle

By Geetesh Bajaj published on 02-10-2014

An Indezine reader asked a long time ago if one could create three circles next to each other, and make sure that they looked….(more)

Don’t save files to Desktop

By Dr. Nitin Paranjape published on 02-12-2014

Windows 7 onwards the rightmost area of the taskbar can also be used to view desktop quickly….(more)

NetSetMan: Network Settings Manager for Windows 8

By Shyam Sasindran published on 02-12-2014

NetSetMan is a very useful utility to manage different network settings like IP address, DNS, etc. It can easily be used to switch between 6 different profiles….(more)

How to resize Non Resizable windows in Windows 8 | 7

By Anand Khanse published on 02-13-2014

The program attaches itself into Windows via three ‘Hooks’. The first hook is so that it can see which windows are created or destroyed, in which it attempts….(more)

Learn how to create these 11 amazing dashboards

By Purnachandra Duggirala published on 02-14-2014

Dashboard reports allow managers to get high-level overview of the business and help them make quick decisions. A dashboard is usually a one page report….(more)

SSD Trim issue

By Soumitra Sengupta publlished on 02-15-2014

Many users who are using Surface or latest laptops which comes with SSD ask regarding TRIM command for optimization….(more)

Visual Studio 2013 Tips & Tricks – Disable All Caps in Menu title

By Senthil Kumar published on 01-12-2014

In Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2013, the menu titles are shown in caps by default….(more)

A Simple CRUD Demo with Koa.js

By Shiju Varghese published on 01-12-2013

In this blog post, I will demonstrate how to write a web app in Koa.js with basic CRUD functionalities. The source code of the demo web app is available….(more)

Calling an External Process from Windows

By Abhishek Sur published on 01-13-2014

You might have developed many projects and want to deploy them to the clients but want to avoid….(more)

Create Echo Server in Node.js

By Dhananjay Kumar published on 01-14-2014

Before we move ahead, let us understand what an echo server is. In echo server, client sends data to server and server returns….(more)

How to retrieve Free Space details in WP programmatically?

By Kunal Chowdhury published on 01-17-2014

In this small but useful post, we will discuss about the API and will share a small piece of code, which will allow you to know the available free space….(more)

HTML5 Geo-Location, SQL Server Geography Data Type, Entity Framework and ASP.NET

By Brij Dammani published on 01-17-2014

In this article, we will implement to save current geo-location(latitude, longitude) of user in Sql Server Geography data type column using Entity framework and ASP.NET Web Form….(more)

Visual Studio Online 2013 (VSO) – Developing in the Cloud

By Gouri Sohoni published on 01-18-2014

Visual Studio Online (VSO) has new features like Project Repository, Tools for Project Planning, Testing with VSO, Distribution of work, CI Build, Collaboration between team members using Team Room….(more)

Rowset Concatenation with Special Characters

By Visakh Murukesan published on 01-16-2014

Whenever we think about row set concatenation in SQL Server the first method that comes to our mind is by the use of….(more)

Staged Publishing support for AzureWebsites

By Rami Vemula published on 01-17-2014

The concept of staging deployment is not new in Azure world, we have this support from long time for Cloud….(more)

Yet another quarter begins with the announcement of newly awarded & re-awarded individuals as the Most Valuable Professionals. I’m sure it would be a New Year Gift for all the individuals whose names are mentioned below. Please join me in welcoming them in this elite technical group. We thank them for their past contributions and looking forward for their active participation in all future engagements.

With the above announcement, unfortunately few of our friends are also moving to the alumni state (seven in total). I’m sure all those individuals who are moving to the alumni state, would make a New Year Resolution today to come back soon in the active group.

Thanks again and have a fantastic year ahead!!

With best regards,

South Asia MVP Community

It’s time to announce the names of newly awarded and re-awarded individuals for the prestigious Most Valuable Professional Award. Please join me in congratulating following individuals for their recent achievement and welcome them in this vibrant group of professionals, the MVPs. We thank them for their past contributions and looking forward for their active participation in all future engagements.

But now here is the sad part With the above announcement, there are few of our friends retiring and moving to the alumni state (six in total).

We do respect their contributions but due to limited number of seats in each product area, we had to consider not only the numbers but also the contribution categories as well as the feedback from local subsidiary in terms of their presence (online/offline both) in various activities.

I hope they will take it up positively and work towards coming back in the active group soon.

Thanks and have a great evening!!

In this post, our Windows Phone Development MVP, Vikram Pendse talks about a feature of calling a number from Calendar Appointment.

Windows Phone device gives you a lot of features and functionalities which you can leverage in your daily life. Let it be Camera, Music, Socials, Games, Emails etc. “Calendar” is one of the must have features on any phone. Enterprise and Business people just can’t live without it. Usually Lync Meetings/Other Meetings syncs up with Calendar. But there are lot of other scenarios in life which are more personal.

Let us take an example: Your family member is undergoing some Medical treatment and you need to collect Blood Report. You can very well set a reminder on your phone or some short/sticky notes. Now if you want to call the Lab and wish to know status of the report. Usually you go to People Hub or somewhere in the Notes or old SMS reference and try to get Numbers. How about I can attach a Telephone Number to the Appointment and more over how about I can place a call from there itself. Saves lot of Time and Navigation. But is it possible to do such things? On device yes! Manually you can do it on device. Programmatically? Or via some App? That is what I am going to talk about in the below article.

This article is about SaveAppointmentTask in Windows Phone 8 SDK. This is pretty handy and you can save appointments from your application. Basically it is a Launcher, Those who don’t know about Launchers & Choosers in Windows Phone, I recommend to read more here (MSDN Link)

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsphone/develop/ff769542%28v=vs.105%29.aspx

SaveAppointmentTask comes handy and we can customize various parameters and aspects programmatically via C#. First let us see how we can get SaveAppointmentTask.

SaveAppointmentTask is a sealed Class comes from Namespace Microsoft.Phone.Tasks. We can create new instance of SaveAppointmentTaks and will be then able to play with its various attributes. Let’s see the Home Screen first. There are 2 Buttons with a Result Textblock which shows the recently added Appointments once you click on Load Appointments, but in this article our focus will be on “Take Appointment”, so here we will be looking at adding a new Appointment.

Now let’s see the Code Snippet here which will Display up the Appointment Wizard from our application and we can either Edit or Delete it. Currently we have set the entire attributes from Code and we can just Save and let it go, here is the snippet:

var saveAppt = new SaveAppointmentTask();

saveAppt.StartTime = DateTime.Now.AddHours(1);

saveAppt.EndTime = DateTime.Now.AddHours(2);

saveAppt.Subject = "Call and Check Blood Reports is ready or not at Ruby Hall";

saveAppt.Location = "Pune";

saveAppt.Details = "tel:+911234567890";

saveAppt.IsAllDayEvent = false;

saveAppt.Reminder = Reminder.FifteenMinutes;

saveAppt.AppointmentStatus = Microsoft.Phone.UserData.AppointmentStatus.Busy;

saveAppt.Show();

Here StartTime and EndTime specifies the duration of Appointment. Subject gives the details about appointment where Details gives the metadata. Rest of the parameters like “IsAllDayEvent”, “Reminder”, “AppointmentStatus” depends on your business requirement.

This will add Appointment to your Calendar and it will look like this on device:

Once you tap on Calendar and on the particular Appointment

and click on this appointment

Now Just Tap on any Phone Number and it will ask you whether you want to Edit the Number or wish to go ahead with the same

Now Call will actually put a call to given Number and you now don’t need to go anywhere to hunt the Phone Number since its now part of your appointment itself. Saves lot of time especially in case of important appointments or business activities. So on call it will look like following

SaveAppointmentTask gives you the default window where like other Appointments, you can always edit the things you want in the Appointment and save or delete the same. So we saw a unique combo of SaveAppointmentTask and URI. We can take it to next level by adding other complex operations like Maps, Mails, URLs, etc. All you need to do is set the “Location” property or “Details” property of SaveAppointmentTask Class.

“Location” property is String Property and instead of just giving Phone Number or Location as pure text, we can play with things like URLs, Email Address like shown below

saveAppt.Location = "http://maps.google.com/maps?q=18.58073000,73.73740000";

saveAppt.Location = "view-source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URI_scheme";

saveAppt.Location = "tel:+919922210345";

saveAppt.Location = "mailto:johndoe@example.com";

Maps URL string will redirect to the default Internet Explorer Browser and it will open the given location in the string.

View Source will show the URL given in the string inside a default Internet Explorer Browser.

For “tel:” it will open a window for confirmation asking Edit this Number and give with Call and Cancel Button, On clicking on Call it will place a call to selected Number.

We can leverage “mailto” URI scheme for sending a quick email via appointment. In more advance case we can even set Subject and Body as well but that will be too complicated and tricky! Here is the example :

mailto:johndoe@example.com?subject=A%20Test&body=My%20idea%20is%3A%20%0A

Hope you like this quick short article on SaveAppointmentTask and I am sure you will leverage this feature in your ongoing App Development.

About Guest Blogging

South Asia MVP Award Program introduces Guest Posts by the MVPs from the region. These posts would help readers to be in touch with the recent trends in technology and be up-to-date with knowledge on Microsoft products.

Author

Developers

Building Store Ready Apps for Windows Phone

By Mayur Tendulkar published on 12-09-2013

With mobile device proliferation, there is a large number of mobile devices available in the market, exceeding even laptops & desktops….(more)

Getting Started with Basic Github Shell Command Operations

By Rami Vemula published on 12-10-2013

In my continuous journey I was learning some basic Shell commands through which Git management can be easily….(more)

JavaScript Functions is a Statement or Expression?

By Dhananjay Kumar published on 12-17-2013

Answer of above question is JavaScript functions can be used either as statement or expression. JavaScript functions can be treated….(more)

Compass APIs for Windows Phone

By Kunal Chowdhury published on 12-19-2013

Before using the compass in your game, make sure to check whether the device supports it or not. The SDK provides APIs to check….(more)

IT PRO

Configure delegates for call-forward and call-ringing on Lync 2010 and Lync 2013

By Balasaheb Ilag published on 12-08-2013

Recently one of client asked about delegate his Lync calls. Actually when the client is unable to attend call then they can delegate….(more)

PowerShell and Active Directory: Active Directory Users Password Expiry Email Reminder Script

By Aman Dhally published on 12-09-2013

Are you a System Administrator and managing Active Directory too? If yes, then i know what is the most annoying problem we do face almost daily….(more)

How to Enable SSO For Web Services Used in InfoPath Form in SharePoint 2013

By Destin Joy published on 12-10-2013

To use SharePoint Web services in an InfoPath form configured using Claim based SharePoint sites we need to create a SSO for the Web Service….(more)

Mobile Client for Dynamics CRM 2013

By Roohi Shaikh published on 12-10-2013

Mobile app for Dynamics CRM is out for Android, iOS and Windows Phone platform. When you navigate to CRM….(more)

Enter your credentials to connect to the following web service: InfoPath 2007

By Amardeep Singh published on 12-12-2013

While submitting the credentials user can open the form, however, when he try to pull some of the information from the drop down menu which….(more)

Error while executing web part

By Amol Ghuge published on 12-14-2013

Recently I was working on user ticket in which we have restored one site collection from development environment to production one.  This site has been heavily customized….(more)

Exchange 2013 Migration checklist

By Ratish Nair published on 12-17-2013

Use various tools available and create a plan as to how many users should be active on a server at any given point and how many users will be active during….(more)

Generating Nested XML Structures with FOR XML PATH

By Visakh Murukesan published on 12-17-2013

This blog gives you some insight on how nested XML structures can be easily built using FOR XML PATH construct….(more)

Consumer

Fail Safe Presentations: Best Practices

By Dr. Nitin Paranjape published on 12-08-2013

The more important the presentation, more things will go wrong. If you want to prevent that, you must be….(more)

Learn PowerPoint 2013 for Windows: 3-D Rotation Options For Shapes

By Geetesh Bajaj published on 12-09-2013

PowerPoint 2013's 3-D options that allow you to rotate or bevel shapes are surprisingly powerful. In fact, some of these options….(more)

How to find what is in the hidden cells?

By Purnachandra Duggirala published on 12-11-2013

You have been there. ….(more)

Microsoft makes it easier to switch from Gmail to Outlook.com

By Vasudev Gurumurthy published on 12-13-2013

Outlook.com users earlier were allowed to import Gmail mails, but now Microsoft has made it much easier & convenient to switch from….(more)

WMP 12 Switches To ‘Now playing’ Mode Automatically in Windows 8.1

By Soumitra Sengupta published on 12-16-2013

Every time I try to open WMP 12 in Library mode it switches to “Now playing” mode immediately….(more)

Bug Check 0×124: WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR – How to Troubleshoot

By Shyam Sasindran published on 12-18-2013

Even though the proper way to troubleshoot BSOD is to use the Windows Debugger. The debugger will give you a bug check parameters which will give you further information….(more)

Story telling with Excel Power BI

By Ashish Mathur published on 12-21-2013

With Power Business Intelligence (BI) tools of Excel 2013, one can metamorphose raw data and/or results of complex calculations into stunning and interactive….(more)

It’s a festival time in India so let’s double the celebrations by announcing the winners of the prestigious Most Valuable Professional Award for the October cycle.

Please join me in welcoming them in this elite technical group. We thank them for their past contributions and looking forward for their active participation in all future engagements.

With the above announcement, unfortunately few of our friends are also moving to the alumni state.

We do respect their contributions but due to limited number of seats in each product area, we had to consider not only the numbers but also the contribution categories as well as the feedback from local subsidiary in terms of their presence (online/offline both) in various activities.

Thanks and have a great evening!!

Our SharePoint Server MVP Destin N Joy wrote this amazing post around Rest API of SharePoint as part of his contributions in Community Day 2014. Let’s read it together:

SharePoint 2013 introduces a Representational State Transfer (REST) service that is comparable to the existing SharePoint client object models. Now, developers can interact remotely with SharePoint data by using any technology that supports REST web requests. This means that developers can perform Create, Read, Update, and Delete (CRUD) operations from their apps for SharePoint, solutions, and client applications, using REST web technologies and standard Open Data Protocol (OData) syntax.

In this article we can see some example of accessing SharePoint list data using REST service

SharePoint 2013 adds the ability for you to remotely interact with SharePoint sites by using REST. Now, you can interact directly with SharePoint objects by using any technology that supports standard REST capabilities.

To access SharePoint resources using REST, construct a RESTful HTTP request, using the Open Data Protocol (OData) standard, which corresponds to the desired client object model API. For example:

Client object model method:

List.GetByTitle(listname)

REST endpoint:

http://server/site/_api/lists/getbytitle('listname')

The client.svc web service in SharePoint handles the HTTP request, and serves the appropriate response in either Atom or JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) format. Your client application must then parse that response. The figure below shows a high-level view of the SharePoint REST architecture.

Create a console application

From the Visual Studio IDE select a console application to start our project. Please provide a location and other details before you create the project

How to install JSON.NET

From the Solution explorer click on Manage NuGet Packages.You will get below screen

Select on Json.Net and click install

In this article, I am explaining you two approaches for Accessing REST service one using JSON.Net and another method using XML.

Code to Access REST Using JSON

REST USING XML

Community is not just a word but an attitude. We, the human race are community focused from the very beginning. We all do a little bit of community work some or the other way.

Someone believes in Environment so does planting…that’s community, someone has a soft corner for animals and pets so saves a street dog…well that’s also community.

A story published on FB and became viral….The story titled “Shila Ghosh is young at 83”.

Her fingers don't tire; her eyes don't water, as her grandson helps her put together her day's work. Every day she travels to Kolkata to sell homemade fries.

A girl named Soofiya Khatoon met her one day and she was so much impressed with the hard work that she published the story. Now people know this 83 years lady. What did Soofiya achieve?

Nothing…but she tried to convey what she learnt/felt from her own experience within her friends/family (the community) and indirectly helped this old lady.

My associate keeps throwing some or other videos and concepts to me because he knows that I don’t like them. He actually enjoys when I scold him for watching those techs :)

Few days back he sent me this video of Google Glass. AND I FOR SURE DON’T LIKE GOOGLE. But just to make him feel happy, I was watching this video - http://www.upworthy.com/a-woman-shares-her-day-through-google-glass-it-seems-lovely-and-ordinary-until-the-end?c=ufb3

The video was nicely produced with cool music. I was liking it till the end when suddenly the women was attacked by her partner….I was shocked and felt very bad. Why would you feel bad about another human even though you don’t know him/her….I call it an impact of community. You feel so connected and try to imagine if the same would have happened with you.  

Community is not an alien concept. The smallest form of community is your family itself. What we are saying is come forward…everyone has something to share. We will make a platform for you….join us and make a best use of it.

And keep in mind that the Community doesn’t just mean learning. It means lot more. Making new friends, understanding what is the trend in the industry, looking for new opportunities, may be finding a job ;) showcasing what you know and many more.

You can make your own community of likeminded people or just join one of the existing ones. Communities grow exponentially and have lot of potential. Only thing which we need to be cautious about communities that even though there is a lot of personal benefits being part of community, but that should not supersede the basic essence of community.

In the community, there is no small or big, there is no ego, there is no right or wrong. Community is all about collaboration and making sure your common goals are met. It can’t be one person driving the community…..it’s the whole group.

Today, industry is heading towards Mobile Computing with smaller and more smaller devices coming in to your hands on a daily basis. Storage is getting cheaper day by day and if not physical, you have entire sky to keep your data…and that’s the cloud. Then where is the limit? You just have to explore how far you want to go, set your course and head towards it. And you will find many people are following you. You again got a community :)

We need to make sure that our growing countries in South Asia understand the unlimited possibilities with these technologies. And we are sure that our communities will play a very pivotal role in this. We will give you what you want, it’s your time to leverage it and showcase your skills and your country in the world map.

Happy New Year to everyone!!

Time to announce the Most Valuable Professional Award Winners of January award cycle.

Please join me in welcoming them in this elite technical group. We thank them for their past contributions and looking forward for their active participation, in all future engagements.

With the above announcement, unfortunately few of our friends are also moving to the alumni state.

We do respect their contributions but due to limited number of seats in each product area, we had to consider contribution categories as well as the feedback from local subsidiary in terms of their presence (online/offline both) in various activities.

I hope they will take it up positively and work towards coming back in the active group soon.

Thanks and have a great evening!!

ServerSchemaPreopareTask execution failed on an unrecoverable error

By Balasaheb Ilag published on 02-23-2014

Unable to prepare Schema for Lync Server 2013 on Windows Sever 2012….(more)

Exchange 2007 to 2013: Public Folder Migration Issue

By Prabhat Nigam published on 02-23-2014

This issue is specific to 2007. We are trying to migrate public folders after all the mailbox migration has completed….(more)

CASE Expression Issue in Linked Server Query

By Visakh Murukesan published on 02-24-2014

So the scenario was this. I had a table in a remote SQL Server instance from which I wanted to retrieve some data from. For illustration let the table be named TestLS with columns….(more)

Create Hierarchical Address Books in Office 365

By Manu Philip published on 02-25-2014

The hierarchical address book (HAB) is a feature in Microsoft Exchange Server 2013, Exchange Online (Office 365) and Microsoft Outlook that enables end users….(more)

Troubleshooting Windows Azure authentication in PowerShell

By Aman Dhally published on 02-26-2014

Yesterday we imported the certificate to my machine and it was working well. But today when I tried to connect to my Azure account using PowerShell….(more)

What is loose Truncation in Exchange 2013 Sp1 DAG

By Satheshwaran Manoharan published on 02-27-2014

Normally if one Database copy goes offline in one of the DAG Members, Logs are not Truncated in all the databases copies….(more)

Throw Statement in SQL Server 2012

By Suprotim Agarwal published on 03-01-2014

In SQL Server 2012, Microsoft introduced the THROW statement to throw error/exception during the execution of T-SQL program which will transfer….(more)

Legal Professionals: Searching scanned documents

By Dr. Nitin Paranjape published on 01-05-2014

Legal documents are archived by scanning. Scanned documents just contain an image for each page. Therefor it is impossible….(more)

Throne Together For Windows 8.1

By Soumitra Sengupta published on 01-05-2014

Place blocks to build castles for your royal clients and please the Castle Inspector in this addicting block-based….(more)

Compute “running total in” across years in a Pivot Table

By Ashish Mathur published on 01-06-2014

Assume quantity sold date by date and City in a three column database.  The objective is to determine year wise….(more)

Overview of Office 365

By Niraj Bhatt published on 01-06-2014

Office 365 is suite of Microsoft products delivered software as a service from cloud. For consumers it represents a simplified pay as you go model….(more)

Bar chart with lower & upper bounds

By Purnachandra Duggirala published on 01-08-2014

Let’s say you are looking at sales of various products in a column chart. And you want to know how sales of a given product….(more)

O365: Block sender email address in Exchange Online Protection

By Prabhat Nigam published on 01-08-2014

This blog is explaining the steps to block an email address of the sender in EOP….(more)

Fix: Windows Script Host access is disabled on this machine

By Anand Khanse published on 01-09-2014

Several “HTML viruses” have been reported to use WSH objects as a result of which, those who do not require this feature, tend to disable….(more)

Review: Ultimate Windows Tweaker 3.0 for Windows 8 , 8.1

By Shantanu Kaushik published on 01-09-2014

Tweaking or Customizing Windows is something that  a lot of us want to do. Changing some setting or doing something different….(more)

Callout Sample 03: Curved, Connected Callouts

By Geetesh Bajaj published on 01-10-2014

Continuing our series on how you can use callouts within your slides, here's another sample to share. This is actually quite simple….(more)

Deploying Windows 7 Using SCCM 2012 R2

By Prajwal Desai published on 01-13-2014

We will be creating a device collection first and then we will import the computer information to this device collection. One the computer is added to the collection we will create task sequence….(more)

360 Degrees View of QuickBooks Customer records from within Dynamics CRM

By Roohi Shaikh published on 01-13-2014

Companies generally use 2 different applications to handle their CRM and Accounting needs. If you are a Dynamics CRM user that uses….(more)

Can we enable Circular logging on Exchange database which has Database Copies

By Satheshwaran Manoharan published on 01-13-2014

There are few situations like . where storage is filling up faster because of log files . where databases having more database….(more)

Cannot sign in because the server version is incompatible with Microsoft Lync 2010

By Balasaheb Ilag published on 01-15-2014

When user trying sign-in to Lync 2010 client but Lync client throw an error that server version is not compatible means….(more)

This was one of the common questions in TechEd India 2013. This blog post will try to answer this and some other Frequently Asked Questions:

What is MVP?

MVP Stands for Most Valuable Professional, which is an award given to those exceptional community leaders who are voluntarily contributing to the technical community and helping other understand the true potential of Microsoft Products and solutions.

Is there an Exam to write, to become an MVP?

Please don’t relate it with Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) program. MCP program is part of Microsoft Learning (MSL) and requires successful completion of exam/s. While MVP is an award which is no where related with MSL and doesn’t have any certification requirements.

Then how to achieve the MVP status?

As we mentioned, MVP is an award and you can’t just achieve it because you want it If you are a community contributor and regularly share your knowledge with the broader community in form of Professional/Technical Blog Posts, Speaking Engagements (Online/Offline), Publishing articles, books, e-books etc. and assist others through Online Forums and your contributions are considerably high in terms of both quality and quantity, you can certainly look at the possibility of being awarded as an MVP.  

Am I expected to contribute on both forums and blogs and/or speaking?

Technically yes. MVP Award Program compliments three areas of product life cycle (advocacy, support and feedback). We expect contributions in at-least two areas to process the nominations but there may be exception depending on the product trends etc.

Oh yes, I started doing all these. When will I be awarded as an MVP?

Hold on…let’s first understand the award process. MVP Award Program processes candidates in a quarterly basis. Therefore, every quarter we award many individuals as an MVP. The processing includes assessing/evaluating your contributions for last one year (and nothing beyond that). So let’s say, if you are submitting your nomination on Jan 2014, you need to submit your contributions from Jan 2013 till the date when you are submitting the nomination to be considered. So if you just started, we would suggest you to continue with your contributions and submit your nomination when you really have considerable amount of contributions.

And where do I submit my nominations?

Nominations can be submitted through MVP Global Site: http://mvp.microsoft.com/en-us/nominate-an-mvp.aspx 

What details should I mention while submitting my nominations?

Make sure to provide your online identities (not just your Facebook profile link but the links to your blogs, forum profiles etc.) and detailed list of contributions. Also, don’t provide counterfeit data as it may cause rejection during the evaluation process. Each contribution entry should be supported through some links or reference to the contribution.

Can I expect any confirmation or acknowledgement of processing my nomination?

No. There is no confirmation or acknowledgement process but if your nomination is in the process and more details are required, Microsoft Staff would contact you accordingly. Just follow our blog or Facebook page for quarterly announcements.

I have submitted my nomination for “x” technology but never received any communication?

Depending on country and local communities, we can only award fixed number of MVPs on a particular product area. In you case, we may have already achieved the max number of MVPs possible in your country and that’s why your nomination was not processed. In future, whenever there are any possibility of adding new MVPs in the product area, you nomination would certainly be considered. Please continue with your contributions. Keep in mind that at the time of processing, only past one year’s contributions would be considered.

What happens once I am awarded?

Your award was based on your contributions from last one year and valid till next one year. As an MVP, you are given many options and opportunities to contribute to the community or engage with Microsoft in various forums. Your basic contributions on forums and blogs may continue. You need to continue with your contributions to be awarded again next year. Being an MVP, you are eligible for many benefits (as listed on MVP Global Site) which are also valid for an year.

You said fixed number of MVPs on a particular product area. So does that mean unless one of the existing MVPs retire, there is no possibility of getting awarded in that area?

Yes we have a max cap of how many awards we can give on each product area but fortunately we revisit that number in a quarterly basis to include instances like new product releases, market trends etc. So every quarter, there may be changes in the max cap  

Who can be awarded as an MVP?

Anyone contributing in the community in a positive way and have deep technical insight about the product can be awarded. There are few exclusions such as:

• Microsoft Employees
• Microsoft Contingent Staffs
• Government or State Owned Entity Employees

 

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Do you have more questions? Please ask us through the comments and we would be happy to add them in FAQ.

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Microsoft MVPs are awarded every quarter and recognize the contributions of an individual to technical communities over the past year.

We are extremely happy to welcome the following new MVPs amongst our midst for this quarter:

Congratulations to all the MVP awardees, and the renewed MVPs, for this prestigious award! We are glad to have a Powershell and Internet Explorer MVP amongst us now.

To know more about the MVP Program, please visit: http://www.microsoft.com/india/mvp