The South Asia Microsoft MVP Award Program

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

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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

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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

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

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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)

Developers

Windows Azure Storage and Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) – Lets Have Some Fun

By Gaurav Mantri published on 12-01-2013

In this blog post, we will focus on CORS and that too for blob service. We will talk about how you can enable CORS for blob service….(more)

Adding custom buttons to iOS Keyboard in C# & Xamarin

By Nishanth Anil published on 12-02-2013

The area above the keyboard is an extra UIView known as Input Accessory View which you can customize to add your extra keyboard buttons. To add an accessory view….(more)

Creating Android Client for Team Foundation Server 2012

By Subodh Sohoni published on 12-03-2013

This article explores a unique scenario for TFS data access using an Android Client and presents an innovative use case….(more)

Product Review: Collabion Charts for SharePoint

By Karthikeyan Anbarasan published on 12-05-2013

Collabion Charts for SharePoint is a handy product which provides a quick and easy way to create insightful dashboards in SharePoint, without the need for MOSS….(more)

Using generic List as key in Dictionaries

By Amit Choudhary published on 12-05-2013

Dictionaries in CSharp are datastructure which represents hash maps. You can store key value based data easily also it prevents to insert….(more)

Logging Database Operations in Entity Framework 6 - EF6 New Feature

By Abhimanyu Vatsa published on 12-07-2013

In this blog post you will learn a new feature ‘Logging Database Operations’ introduced with Entity Framework 6. This features works for models….(more)

IT PRO

SharePoint: Unknown Error Accessing Storage Allocation Page

By Amardeep Singh published on 12-03-2013

After clicking on Storage Space Allocation (Site Actions, Site settings, Site Collection Administration), you get an "Unknown Error on page" error….(more)

How to solve Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0 error "Unspecified error"

By Visakh Murukesan published on 12-03-2013

When trying to use Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0 provider in a linkedserver or distributed query you'll get the….(more)

Exchange 2013 OAB troubleshooting: Task reported error (0x8004010F): ‘The operation failed. An object cannot be found.’

By Ratish Nair published on 12-04-2013

When you have an issue with OAB, first thing to check is whether you can see the address list you're trying to download in Outlook. If it's missing, outlook just can't locate….(more)

Lync Server integration with Exchange Outlook Web Access

By Balasaheb Ilag published on 12-05-2013

Recently I have deployed Lync integration with Exchange Outlook Web Access. Whenever you accessing Outlook web access….(more)

Office 2013

Long presentation with photos in few clicks

By Dr. Nitin Paranjape published on 12-01-2013

Needless to say, most of us take the laborious and inefficient path of adding one slide and inserting a picture repeatedly….(more)

Learn PowerPoint 2013 for Windows: Advanced Glow Options

By Geetesh Bajaj published on 12-02-2013

Applying a Glow effect adds a nice halo around a selected shape or most other slide objects. You may find that the Glow effect defaults….(more)

Making a slick on/off switch using Excel & little bit of VBA

By Purnachandra Duggirala published on 12-05-2013

As you know, there is a form control in Excel that behaves like on/off switch. It is called check box. Although they are easy to use….(more)

Compute configuration count using Set Theory and Venn Diagrams

By Ashish Mathur published on 12-07-2013

Assume a table which lists attendees for a Company's Annual day function.  In this Table, data for every attendee….(more)

Developers

Table Manipulation using jQuery - Performance Tips and Best Practices

By Suprotim Agarwal published on 11-17-2013

HTML Tables can be pretty boring to look at! Although you can add a dash of CSS and beautify them, users demand more interactivity….(more)

How to launch the Map settings page to download maps in WP8

By Kunal Chowdhury published on 11-18-2013

You might have used maps in your Windows Phone applications to help the user navigate from one place to another place. Windows Phone 8 supports downloading….(more)

Create your First MVVM based JavaScript App in two simple steps using Knockoutjs

By Dhananjay Kumar published on 11-20-2013

Okay purpose of this post is very simple to explain you why Knockoutjs. I will try to put it in simplest way that Why we need to work….(more)

Upcoming changes in ECMAScript 6

By Vasu Jain published on 11-20-2013

ECMAScript is a standard that scripting languages like JavaScript and ActionScript are based on. ECMAScript is owned….(more)

Customize User's Profile in ASP.NET Identity System

By Abhimanyu Vatsa published on 11-23-2013

In this post you will learn how to customize User’s Profile and add some more fields like FirstName, LastName, EmailID etc with….(more)

Building a Node.js Web Site on Windows Azure using Node.js Tools for Visual Studio

By Shiju Varghese published on 11-24-2013

In this blog post, I will take a look at Node.js Tools for Visual Studio and will demonstrate how to build a Node.js web site in Visual Studio….(more)

Code Optimization Tools in Visual Studio 2013

By Subodh Sohoni published on 11-26-2013

Development Productivity is always a matter of concern for the management of organizations that develop software. The biggest portion of spending in development process….(more)

IT PRO

Lync Server 2013 Deployment options

By Balasaheb Ilag published on 11-18-2013

There are many article found on Lync 2013 and they are explained the deployment process however did found the article where all Lync 2013 deployment combination….(more)

Unable to save site as template + unexpected error has occurred

By Amol Ghuge published on 11-19-2013

Here we go, it’s been a long time I didn’t publish an article which consist of hardcore troubleshooting! Yes, you are correct. It took some time to resolve….(more)

Exchange: Calendaring Items Protection

By Prabhat Nigam published on 11-21-2013

Microsoft Active Directory Right Management Services can only protect emails. So how will we protect Calendaring….(more)

Re-create OWA virtual Directories in Exchange 2013

By Manu Philip published on 11-22-2013

Sometimes, you may be fed up with some sort of issues related to ‘owa’, ‘ecp’ or any other virtual directories. Any repair or fine tuning….(more)

CodeTwo Exchange migration for Exchange 2003 to 2010/2013: Operational review

By Ratish Nair published on 11-24-2013

CodeTwo Exchange Migration needs a source server's MAPI profile to work under which you create while configuring the source server's connection. Therefore, if the profile is not configured, the program….(more)

Solution deployment stuck on deploying: SharePoint 2010

By Amardeep Singh published on 11-26-2013

Solution deployment is the task that we do on daily basis. This is the task in which SharePoint developer and administrator….(more)

New Changes to Windows Azure Storage – A Perfect Thanksgiving Gift

By Gaurav Mantri published on 11-28-2013

This has been one of the most anticipated changes in Windows Azure Storage. The support for CORS had been with other cloud storage providers….(more)

Implementing Multivalued Parameter Filtering Using Logical Operators

By Visakh Murukesan published on 11-28-2013

Being extensively involved in report development projects, I've come across numerous occasions where requirements asks for the ability….(more)

Consumer

How to set up & use Remote Desktop Connection in Windows 8.1

By Anand Khanse published on 11-18-2013

Remote Desktop Connection technology helps you establish a connection between client computer and host computer from afar. The feature is not very popular….(more)

Fix: Broken libraries in Windows 8.1 | Restore Default Libraries

By Shantanu Kaushik published on 11-24-2013

This post will help you fix broken libraries in Windows 8, 8.1 & Windows 7 | Restore Default Libraries. This post also shows you the steps….(more)

Office 2013

Artificial Intelligence at work: Remove Background

By Dr. Nitin Paranjape published on 11-20-2013

This feature is available across Office tools from version 2010 onwards. It helps you remove unwanted parts of pictures….(more)

Learn PowerPoint 2013 for Windows: Shape Effects

By Geetesh Bajaj published on 11-20-2013

 Effects are different than fills and outlines -- with the plethora of effects available in PowerPoint, you can make a shape stand apart….(more)

Find last day of any month with this simple trick

By Purnachandra Duggirala published on 11-21-2013

Assuming y and m contain the year & month for which you want to find the last day’s date, write….(more)

Move List-box Items up & Down

By Ashish Koul published on 11-22-2013

To move list-box item up and down. Try….(more)

Append data from two worksheets with different structures

By Ashish Mathur published on 11-26-2013

Assume a file with two worksheets.  The first worksheet has data in column A:H (8 columns) and the second one has data from….(more)

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

Developers

Updating Lock Screen from Windows Phone App

By Abhishek Sur published on 11-11-2013

It is sometimes important for an application to change lock screen of the project. The Lock Screen can be set from….(more)

Events in NodeJS : Write your first event

By Dhananjay Kumar published on 11-14-2013

Each objects in NodeJS emit an asynchronous event. That event is handled by an object EventEmitter is underneath every….(more)

Create & deploy an AzureWebsite from Visual Studio 2013

By Rami Vemula published on 11-14-2013

In this short tutorial we are going to see how to create and deploy an AzureWebsite to Windows Azure Cloud, without using Azure Management….(more)

Debugging in Smarty template

By Vasu Jain published on 11-14-2013

While trying to debug a variable in PHP i love the var_dump() method. Off course i have debugger tools like xDebug enabled….(more)

Visual Studio Online Monaco Code Editor Walk-through

By Abhimanyu Vatsa published on 11-16-2013

In this post series I will show you how we can take advantage of Visual Studio Online “Monaco” to edit codes….(more)

IT PRO

Windows Azure Scheduler Service

By Gaurav Mantri published on 11-10-2013

Let’s first talk about what exactly is this service. As the name suggests, this service allows you to schedule certain tasks which you wish to do on a repeated basis….(more)

Exchange 2013: Remote host said: 451 4.7.0 Temporary server error. Please try again later. PRX2

By Manu Philip published on 11-10-2013

Incoming emails were not arrived at the mailboxes. The NDR shows “Remote host said: 451 4.7.0 Temporary server….(more)

Deploying Socket.IO App to Windows Azure Web Site with Azure CLI

By Shiju Varghese published on 11-11-2013

In this blog post, I will demonstrate how to deploy Socket.IO app to Windows Azure Website using….(more)

Working with Event Logs using PowerShell

By Aman Dhally published on 11-12-2013

I do believe that, it doesn’t matter ,which server application are you using or if you are troubleshooting any client’s desktop, when any problem arise, the first step for troubleshooting….(more)

AD RMS: Template Copy Process

By Prabhat Nigam published on 11-12-2013

Below is the AD RMS Template copy Configuration for different Client side computers. RMS Client Deployment For Windows Vista, 7 and above AD RMS client 1.0 (MSDRM) is installed with….(more)

Item level permissions in SharePoint: User should add/edit/read only their own items- SharePoint 2010

By Amardeep Singh published on 11-14-2013

A user requested that he need to have a permission configured on the item level where user can see only their own documents or can read all the items….(more)

T-SQL tips: Pattern Search and Replace within XML using Xpath Functions

By Visakh Murukesan published on 11-14-2013

T-SQL provides good support for generating and manipulating XML data from SQL 2005 onwards. Using the functions like query()….(more)

Error: An unbalanced X++ TTSBEGIN/TTSCOMMIT pair has been detected

By Deepak Agarwal published on 11-16-2013

Check all code for form or class from where this error comes and count the ttsbegin and ttscommit there must be same like if u write 2 ttsbegin….(more)

Consumer

Group Policy Settings Reference Guide for Windows 8.1 | 7 | Server

By Anand Khanse published on 11-11-2013

The Group Policy is an integral part of the Windows operating system, on which many a IT Pro, Beginners and Tweak enthusiasts count on to customize and enforce….(more)

Learn PowerPoint 2013 for Windows: Formatting Lines (and Shape Outlines)

By Geetesh Bajaj published on 11-12-2013

A fill is something that is contained within the confines of the shape. Similarly, shapes have another attribute known as….(more)

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

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

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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

Developers

Questions Developers Ask When Moving From ASP.NET Web Forms to MVC

By Suprotim Agarwal published on 11-05-2013

Some common questions that arise when seasoned WebForms developers tread in ASP.NET MVC, for the first time. It’s not an ASP.NET MVC vs. WebForms article, but rather focuses….(more)

Adding/Altering a column with default value

By Madhivanan JR published on 11-08-2013

In an existing table you can add or alter a column to have a default value. However often I hear from newbies that default values are not updated with….(more)

IT PRO

The operation that you are attempting to perform cannot be completed successfully

By Amardeep Singh published on 11-03-2013

The operation that you are attempting to perform cannot be completed successfully.  No content databases in the web application were available to store….(more)

Exchange 2013: Cross Forest/ORG Migration from Exchange 2010/2007

By Prabhat Nigam published on 11-03-2013

Cross forest has changed little bit and requires 3rd party cert in the source domain….(more)

Unable to Share a desktop or application with a Response Group

By Balasaheb Ilag published on 11-05-2013

Recently I came across one Response group issue, where peoples are unable to share desktop and application with Response group….(more)

Windows Server 2012 Naming Information cannot be located because: The specified domain either doesn’t exist or could not be contacted

By Manu Philip published on 11-06-2013

I met a difficult situation while setting up a DC for a new forest in Windows Server 2012 . ADDS has been setup and promoted the server as the Domain Controller….(more)

Cloud MBaaS: The Next Big Thing in Enterprise Mobility

By Shiju Varghese published on 11-07-2013

In this blog post, I will take a look at Cloud Mobile Backend as a Service (MBaaS) and how we can leverage Cloud based Mobile Backend….(more)

Using a Single Windows Azure Active Directory tenant for All EA Azure Subscriptions

By Niraj Bhatt published on 11-09-2013

As you know by now Windows Azure Active Directory is at the root of every Azure subscription….(more)

SharePoint 2013 Approval Workflow With Dynamic Approvers From Another List

By Brij Dammani published on 11-09-2013

In this article, we will create a simple approval workflow in which approver is selected dynamically from another list using….(more)

Consumer

How to Fix A Corrupted Windows Media Player Library in Windows 8.1

By Soumitra Sengupta published on 11-03-2013

To repair or fix a corrupted Windows Media Player Library go through the following….(more)

Windows Update and Recovery options in Windows 8.1

By Anand Khanse published on 11-03-2013

Windows 8.1 has revised PC settings – they have undergone minor changes that make it appear somewhat different from the settings that are present….(more)

Closing gaps in this Gender Equality Gap chart

By Purnachandra Duggirala published on 11-05-2013

Recently I saw this interesting chart on Economist Daily Charts page. This chart is based on World Economic Forum’s survey….(more)

Learn PowerPoint 2013 for Windows: Add Pattern Fills to Shapes

By Geetesh Bajaj published on 11-06-2013

Pattern fills for shapes are two-color designs comprising lines, dots, dashes and checks. PowerPoint includes 48 patterns such patterns….(more)

Open a delimit notepad file in Excel

By Ashish Koul published on 11-09-2013

Macro to open a delimit notepad file in Excel….(more)

Developers

Testing with Team Web Access using Visual Studio 2013

By Gouri Sohoni published on 10-27-2013

Team Web Access gives us the ability to plan tests, manage full test suite and executing test cases using Visual Studio 2013….(more)

Different ways of getting Path

By Abhishek Sur published on 10-29-2013

It is a very common requirement to get the path of a file relative to the path of the current location which accesses the path. In .NET there are a number of ways….(more)

WPDev Tips: How to pass an object to WP Navigation Service?

By Kunal Chowdhury published on 10-29-2013

While working on an application last weekend, I was in need to pass an object as query string parameter to the other page of my Windows Phone application….(more)

Merge objects using $.extend() in jQuery

By Dhananjay Kumar published on 10-31-2013

Have you ever come across a requirement in which you need merge many objects in one….(more)

Sass: A simplified way to write CSS

By Brij Mishra published on 11-01-2013

Once AJAX came into the market and become popular, it changed the whole web development and web experience as a user. Microsoft came up with the whole new AJAX….(more)

Generate Format Files Based on Table Metadata

By Visakh Murukesan published on 10-28-2013

I'm explaining a method using bcp command to generate a format based on table metadata which can be utilized for the data export through….(more)

IT PRO

High Availability and Load Balancing of a Azure Virtual Machine Cloud Services within a Data Center

By Rami Vemula published on 10-27-2013

Virtual machines in Windows Azure comes under as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). When we want to have complete control on our application deployment environment, then Azure Virtual Machine Service….(more)

Exchange 2013 Outlook anywhere issues when InternalHostname value is set to Server FQDN

By Ratish Nair published on 10-28-2013

This was a multi-site Exchange 2013 deployment with a 10MBPS - 30PMBS dedicated pipe running across site. We had a requirement to ensure local users contact local servers….(more)

How to install Ready-to-Use business processes in CRM 2013

By Roohi Shaikh published on 10-30-2013

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 provides ready to use Business Processes and it is as simple as we install sample data….(more)

Apply Field Validations without writing Java Script in MS CRM 2013 

By Mahender Pal published on 10-31-2013

In Microsoft Development Forums many times we found posts where new CRM users are asking for help to write JavaScript….(more)

The option for the SharePoint 2013 Workflow platform is not available

By Brij Dammani published on 10-31-2013

I installed Sharepoint Designer 2013 and tried to create SharePoint 2013 workflow but there was no option to select platform….(more)

Exchange 2013: DBs not mounting after DC Removal

By Prabhat Nigam published on 11-01-2013

To reduce the load on the server I decided to remove domain controller from one of the node so that I can reduce the hardware….(more)

Best Practices Analyzer cannot collect all data points from the environment unless Lync Server 2013 backward compatibility tools are installed on this computer.

By Balasaheb Ilag published on 11-02-2013

When you run BPA on Lync 2013, you will see the above warning message. If you have not install all prerequisite then you will receive….(more)

Visual BCD Editor- An Advance Boot Configuration Data Editor

By Shyam Sasindran published on 10-27-2013

Whenever we have boot related issues mostly we use to check and repair the boot loaders. Windows has a build-in….(more)

Consumer

Learn PowerPoint 2013 for Windows: Add Gradient Fills to Shapes

By Geetesh Bajaj published on 10-28-2013

Gradient fills are typically blended fills between two or more colors that graduate from one color to another. Although shapes filled with gradients….(more)

How To Fix Skype Windows Store app crashes in Windows 8.1

By Soumitra Sengupta published on 10-30-2013

When you start the Skype Windows Store app in Windows 8.1, the app immediately crashes, and Windows returns….(more)

How to Copy Process Details in Windows 8 Task Manager to Clipboard

By Ramesh Srinivasan published on 10-30-2013

The Windows 8 Task Manager has several new features and improvements. Of which, one of the nice additions to the Windows 8 Task Manager….(more)

How to: Enable Local Administrator Account in Windows 8.1

By Shantanu Kaushik published on 10-31-2013

This post is a collection of steps on How to enable local administrator account in Windows 8.1. The same steps can be followed….(more)

Work Folders in Windows 8.1

By Anand Khanse published on 11-01-2013

Windows 8.1 introduces a new feature called Work Folders. If you have to work from anywhere from your different devices, then Work Folders….(more)

Live Chat

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Webcasts

 
In-Person

Quite a few in-person activities are also organized on Community Day by the MVPs in association with the local User Groups. Please follow the South Asia MVP on Facebook for further updates on In-Person activities.

Developers

“Place Explorer” app for #WindowsPhone users

By Kunal Chowdhury published on 10-14-2013

Here comes my another application for Windows Phone users, named “Place Explorer”. The app is currently available in Windows Phone Store for free….(more)

What is SecureString ?

By Brij Mishra published on 10-15-2013

In this post, we are going to discuss a class SecureString. Although this class is available since .NET 2.0….(more)

Category and Sub Category in single Drop Down List (DDL) in MVC

By Abhimanyu Vatsa published on 10-17-2013

In this article you will learn how to create a Drop Down List in MVC that can display States and its associated Districts in a single Drop Down….(more)

Timeout in Regular Expressions

By Abhishek Sur published on 10-18-2013

Regular expressions are common forms of parsing a document and get meaning. It has been very popular and….(more)

Deep Dive into IntelliTrace using Visual Studio 2013 for ASP.NET & other .NET Applications

By Gouri Sohoni published on 10-21-2013

Using IntelliTrace in Visual Studio 2013 helps in understanding and pinpointing any problem encountered while executing….(more)

CakeRobot - A Gesture Driven Robot That Follows Your Hand Movements Using Arduino, C# and Kinect

By Anoop Madhusudanan published on 10-22-2013

Over the last few weekends I’ve spend some time building a simple robot that can be controlled using Kinect. You can see it in….(more)

Ambiguous Reference issue in WCF RIA Service Generated Code

By Kunal Chowdhury published on 10-22-2013

Ambiguity is the ability to express more than one interpretation in normal way. This can happen in any manner; in our code too. If you are working on WCF RIA Services….(more)

Scripting the definition of computed columns

By Madhivanan JR published on 10-25-2013

One of my friends asked me if there is an easier way of knowing the definion of the computed column. Currently what he does is to script out the table definition….(more)

Different ways to export SQL Server data to text file

By Visakh Murukesan published on 10-14-2013

This blog explains few methods you can use to export data from SQL Server table to a text file….(more)

A New Version of Windows Azure Service Management API Is Available with Delete Specific Role Instances and More Goodies

By Gaurav Mantri published on 10-16-2013

As you know, each release of Service Management API has a unique version number and in order to use the features available in that version you must specify that version number….(more)

Table Hints – NoLock vs ReadPast

By Jugal Shah published on 10-16-2013

When any data in a database is read or modified, the database engine uses special type of mechanism, called locks, to maintain integrity….(more)

IT PRO

How to configure a trusted application server?

By Balasaheb Ilag published on 10-14-2013

I have been publishing issues and their resolution since long, today I want to take break from issue / resolution and want share….(more)

Exchange 2010: Test-IRMConfiguration Failed

By Prabhat Nigam published on 10-14-2013

After Configuring the AD RMS when you integrate ADRMS with Exchange 2010 you run the Test-IRMConfiguration Command which should pass to confirm Exchange Integration….(more)

SharePoint 2010: "This tab has been recovered, a problem with this page caused internet explorer to close and reopen this tab"

By Amardeep Singh published on 10-15-2013

Some of the user has reported that while using the SharePoint sites with IE8 they are getting above error message. Based on the above grounds we started….(more)

Exchange Server 2010 troubleshooting notes

By Ratish Nair published on 10-17-2013

Migration Issues with Mailboxes from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010.User is unable to Move mailboxes in Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010….(more)

Working with PowerShell Preference Variables: $OFS (Output field Separator).

By Aman Dhally published on 10-25-2013

When you open PowerShell console, type $ and start pressing ‘tab’, you will amaze that there are many pre-built variables exists ….(more)

High Availability in Azure WebRoles using Traffic Manager

By Rami Vemula published on 10-26-2013

High Availability (HA) and Disaster Recovery (DR) are most prominent terms we often hear in cloud computing technologies. To be precise I would say they are not….(more)

Dynamics

Accessing custom aspx page from MS CRM 2011 and passing EntityID

By Mahender Pal published on 10-23-2013

Recently we got one request to show custom website page in CRM from left navigation in MS CRM 2011 based on….(more)

Merge forms in CRM 2013 form customizations

By Roohi Shaikh published on 10-14-2013

If you have upgraded from CRM 2011 to CRM 2013 you may have noticed that the forms in 2013 has been redesigned with the new look. After upgrading to CRM 2013….(more)

Abstract Class and Abstract Method in Axapta

By Deepak Agarwal published on 10-17-2013

When we declare a class as abstract, this class cannot initiate in X++ code. To use this class….(more)

Consumer

Perform a lookup with inexact text strings and/or spelling mistakes

By Ashish Mathur published on 10-19-2013

Any lookup function i.e., VLOOKUP(), LOOKUP(), INDEX()/MATCH(), HLOOKUP() requires the text lookup variable….(more)

Fixing 0xc00d11cd (0x8000ffff) error During XBox Music Streaming

By Soumitra Sengupta published on 10-13-2013

When I am trying to stream or,play any song via Xbox music pass , I am m getting the 0xc00d11cd (0x8000ffff) error….(more)

Learn PowerPoint 2013 for Windows: Fills for Shapes

By Geetesh Bajaj published on 10-16-2013

When you insert shapes within a PowerPoint 2013 slide, you will notice that all shapes you insert contain the same fill. Most of the time, the shapes….(more)

Improved Mail app experience in Windows 8.1

By Vasudev Gurumurthy published on 10-20-2013

As you know Windows 8.1 is recently released and with it comes more than 20 new and improved Microsoft apps and services….(more)

Fix: You can’t install Windows on a USB flash drive from Setup, when upgrading to Windows 8.1

By Shyam Sasindran published on 10-23-2013

Microsoft has recently released Windows 8.1 update that will make lots of users happy due the lot of enhancement that was promised….(more)

Nokia Lumia 2520 Hands On

By Nirmal TV published on 10-25-2013

Nokia announced their first tablet running Windows 8.1, the Nokia Lumia 2520 at the Nokia World….(more)

Developers

Route Constraints in MVC

By Abhimanyu Vatsa published on 10-07-2013

Route Constraints allow us to apply a regular expression to a URL segment to restrict whether the route will match….(more)

Conditional Compilation with Precompiler Directives in C#

By Abhishek Sur published on 10-08-2013

Coming from C or C++, C# has always the flexibility to handle directives. The directives are well known in those languages….(more)

ON-OFF Keyboard Lock keys {Caps,Scroll,Num} Using PowerShell

By Aman Dhally published on 10-08-2013

Today one of my user complained that his password is not working, I reset his password but he still complaining about it, I asked him to check….(more)

NavigationService in WP throws Exception when navigating to Web URL

By Kunal Chowdhury published on 10-08-2013

Last day while building a Windows Phone application, one of my friend did a common mistake and used the NavigationService class to navigate to a web URL….(more)

Git Source Control Integration with Windows Azure Mobile Services

By Shiju Varghese published on 10-09-2013

Windows Azure Mobile Services is great framework for mobile backend development on the Windows Azure platform….(more)

Revealing Module Pattern in JavaScript

By Dhananjay Kumar published on 10-10-2013

In Revealing Module pattern we put all code inside a function represented by a variable. This is self-executed function….(more)

Web API, Async and Performance in an ASP.NET MVC application

By Suprotim Agarwal published on 10-10-2013

Async and performance are often a considered to go hand in hand because performance is bracketed with scaling. Today we explore the differences….(more)

Upload large files to Azure Blob Storage through Azure Web Role WebApi services and Azure Cache Service

By Rami Vemula published on 10-11-2013

The main aim of this project is to provide a working scalable solution for uploading large files to server. In this modern era, when web development taking modern cloud workflows….(more)

IT PRO

Using Quick View Form in MS CRM 2013

By Mahender Pal published on 10-07-2013

This form was initially introduced in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Fall 13 Service Update. Quick view forms are associated….(more)

Creating and Deploying Azure based Report

By Visakh Murukesan published on 10-07-2013

This blog post explains the step by step procedure for creating a sql report based on azure datasource and host it on a azure….(more)

XP_LogEvent and RaiseError

By Jugal Shah published on 10-08-2013

xp_logevent extended stored procedure is used to log the message into the SQL Server error log and event viewer application log….(more)

Exchange: Mail attachments are turning to winmail.dat

By Prabhat Nigam published on 10-09-2013

The issue is when one messaging system user is sending an attachment it is becoming winmail.dat. I recently got this issue in mail flow between IBM Lotus notes Domino….(more)

There was a problem acquiring a personal certificate required to sign in. If the problem continues, please contact your support team

By Balasaheb Ilag published on 10-12-2013

When you are trying to sign-in on Lync you may receive above errors. There error look like big however resolution….(more)

Consumer

Internet Explorer 11 New Features and APIs

By Anand Khanse published on 10-07-2013

On Windows 8.1 and Windows 7, it boasts a clean design with some powerful developer tools. To bring these tools up, you are required to press the F12 key….(more)

Windows 8.1 allows to setup Mail App without using Microsoft Account

By Vasudev Gurumurthy published on 10-09-2013

Earlier when you were signed into Windows 8 with Local account, you’re required to sign-in to Mail App using Microsoft Account….(more)

SkyDrive Smart Files in Windows 8.1 & how to Hydrate them

By Vasudev Gurumurthy published on 10-10-2013

Smart Files are one of the coolest features built into Windows 8.1 SkyDrive. In today’s world more and more people are taking more pictures, videos, storing them….(more)

Learn PowerPoint 2013 for Windows: Chart Legend

By Geetesh Bajaj published on 10-10-2013

The Legend within a chart is one of those chart elements that lets you identify all the Series in a chart via color or pattern. Typically, the Legend is a box….(more)

Developers

Carousel Image Gallery With AngularJS UI Bootstrap And ASP.NET MVC

By Brij Dammani published on 09-29-2013

This article explains how to implement carousel image gallery with AngularJS UI Bootstrap and Entitiy Framework database first approach….(more)

Working with flagged enumeration in Csharp

By Amit Choudhary published on 10-01-2013

Let’s take you to the world of Enums where you are allowed to use multiple values rather than using only single value for comparison/storing. To create an Flagged Enumeration you need an attribute...(more)

Understanding Prototype Pattern in JavaScript

By Dhananjay Kumar published on 10-02-2013

In this post I am trying to explain my understanding on Prototype Pattern in JavaScript….(more)

ASP.NET Web API OWIN Self Host on Windows Azure

By Shiju Varghese published on 10-03-2013

In this blog post, I will take a look at Open Web Interface for .NET (OWIN) and will also demonstrate how to deploy….(more)

Reading Event logs efficiently using C#

By Brij Mishra published on 10-04-2013

We’ll be talking about the reading event logs. In my last post I discussed about reading the event….(more)

Getting Started with jQuery.tmpl (jQuery Templates) in MVC

By Abhimanyu Vatsa published on 10-04-2013

There are number of JavaScript templates used these days, some of them works really great. And every JavaScript template library has a slightly….(more)

Just a few steps to make your WP app recognizes your speech

By Kunal Chowdhury published on 10-04-2013

Do you want to add a functionality in your Windows Phone device which can actually listen to users voice or commands….(more)

IT PRO

Type your user name and password to connect for retrieving calendar data from Outlook

By Balasaheb Ilag published on 09-29-2013

Sometime you will receive credential prompt however after typing credential prompt will occur continually because….(more)

Using SSRS to Export SQLServer data to multiple Excel Sheets

By Visakh Murukesan published on 10-01-2013

One of my readers asked me whether we could achieve this using any other method. There's a much easier method using SSRS if you've a reporting server….(more)

AD Based Activation Over KMS Activation

By Awinish Vishwakarma published on 10-03-2013

To minimize the problem of piracy, Microsoft has announced starting from windows Vista & above, office products etc, you need to activate it even though you are using ….(more)

Getting Last Installation Success Date and Last Search Success date of Windows Updates using Powershell

By Aman Dhally published on 10-05-2013

Everyday is a new day, with new problems and new issues, sometime at users side and sometime at Server side….(more)

Consumer

Learn PowerPoint 2013 for Windows: Drawing a Perfect Square

By Geetesh Bajaj published on 09-30-2013

We already showed you how to draw a perfect circle. Now, we'll show you how to draw a perfect square in PowerPoint 2013 using….(more)

Windows 8.1 gets SkyDrive OCR Search indexing & Smart File features

By Vasudev Gurumurthy published on 10-01-2013

SkyDrive photos will use the Bing-powered SkyDrive OCR tool, that will be automatically run on your photos and display the extracted text on….(more)

Sysinternals Autoruns for Windows: Start Up Manager for Power Users

By Anand Khanse published on 10-03-2013

This portable tool, when run, provides a comprehensive list of all programs that are configured to run when your Windows starts….(more)

Different types of Internet Cookies

By Anand Khanse published on 10-04-2013

An Internet Cookie is a small snippet of information sent from a web server to a user’s browser, which then stores it. On subsequent access to the same web server….(more)

Dynamics

Connecting to Databases through X++

By Deepak Agarwal published on 10-02-2013

Connection class is mainly used for accessing the database in which a user has logged into AX i.e. Current Database and carry out the….(more)

Quick Create Form In MS CRM 2013

By Mahender Pal published on 09-29-2013

Quick create form facilitate ms crm user to create entity record quickly as name suggest, just filling key information….(more)

Now Store Images in CRM 2013

By Roohi Shaikh published on 09-30-2013

We got the first hint of the much awaited data type Image with the introduction of activity feeds where we were allowed to provide a profile image….(more)