In this blog post series I will share MEA Applications of the month for Microsoft Windows 8 (W8) Devices, Windows Phone 8 (WP8) Devices and Xbox, these applications were selected by real application users, you will find a short description about each application as a why question this application was selected, then from where you can download it,

Oct 2013 Apps of the Month can be found here.

Nov 2013 Apps of the Month can be found here.

Jan 2014 Apps of the Month can be found here.

Applications selected as MEA Apps of Feb 2014 month are as follows:

Shortcuts:

WP8

Why?

Instead of going to “Settings” of your WP8, finding the setting (Wi-Fi, BlueTooth, Airplane mode etc.) you are looking from there , just pin those commonly used settings to your Windows Phone’s home screen. It is extremely simple  and free!

From Where to download?

WP8: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/shortcuts/d9455162-815a-44a0-bd0d-c4f9d8ef659f

Nokia Music:

W8, WP8

Why?

Love music? Nokia Music for Windows 8 is a complete playback and discovery experience for your computer. Many of us use our Windows 8 tablets and Phones every time when we are mobile; so Nokia Music app offers the best Mixes as well as the Offline Mixes.

My favorite feature of the app is the “Play To”; so you can stream your music to any DLNA-enabled devices like your TVs, pretty cool…..

From Where to download?

http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/en-us/app/nokia-music/4e9de0ba-ed72-4ffc-866d-cf964def6ddf

http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/nokia-music/f5874252-1f04-4c3f-a335-4fa3b7b85329

Bing Translator 

WP8, W8

Why?

Bing Translator is an indispensable resource for helping with on the fly translation.  It supports some great features with the ability to translate from voice, text and a photo!  Pin it to your Windows Phone or start screen and get the “Word of the Day” in your default language.  Perfect for those people in MEA HQ who need to visit multiple countries :-)

From Where to download?

WP8:  http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/translator/2cb7cda1-17d8-df11-a844-00237de2db9e

W8:  http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/app/bing-translator/1489bb69-3e78-4085-96f5-2a9a6f303559

CheckMyTrip Mobile for Windows Phone:

WP8

Why?

Being always on the move and having several trips to manage can be very difficult, you can easily forget your flights dates/times.

With this very useful app, I can have a single repository for my flights and check if any time changes have been made.

From Where to download?

WP8:  http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/checkmytrip-mobile-companion/9f666b7b-0b77-41d7-8d17-2542fe7df3ea

Camera360 for Windows Phone:

WP8

Why?

Great app with tons of customizable options, I use it to take photo and video when travelling.

The different modes integrated with it (Auto, Portrait, Scenery, Food, Night, Microspur) and the variety of effects make easy to get wonderful picture that you can edit and share  immediately on Facebook or Twitter .

From Where to download?

WP8:  http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/camera360/38397f3d-e54c-40d3-ae35-cebbaa23be1b

Enjoy these great application and keep tuned for next month applications.

In this blog I’ll describe the manual deployment process for secure WCF service on windows server 2008 R2 hosted on IIS, I will cover some common issues as well that you may face during the deployment

First you have to prepare the server to host WCF service as follows:

Install .net framework 4.5 by downloading and installing it from Microsoft site: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30653

On deployment server add web server role from server manager

then Add the following role services to web server role

After adding the role services and web server role ,the IIS will be shown in web server node from server roles

Next we will prepare the IIS host for the service, first we create app pool and set the identity for it

Then we add application on default websites assuming you will deploy to IIS default websites group.

Now to secure the service channel we have to install certificate on IIS server, this could be accomplished by selecting the server node from IIS server then select server certificate

From you here you could install the certificate to server

Now after installing the certificate we configure site binding by adding HTTPS on server bindings and select installed SSL certificate that is created from trusted Certificate authority

Check and Install latest updates on server

The server is ready to host the WCF service ,now am assuming you are done with development and your service is ready and configured as secure service

We will publish the service using visual studio to local desk drive , this could be accomplished by Right click on web project on visual studio that host WCF service then publish to local desk

Now we will copy the generated service files to production server created IIS website , the generated files mainly consist of bin folder that holds the DLLs configuration file and svc service files

Now if you face error “unrecognized attribute target framework” once you navigate to service, this is mainly caused by selecting .net framework 2.0 from app pool ; Just change the .NET framework version from App pool

another common error you may face could not find a base address that matches scheme https for the endpoint with binding WSHttpBinding

This is mainly caused by missing HTTPs configuration on IIS server, if you configure your service security with

<security mode="Transport">

</security>

Or

<security mode=" TransportWithMessageCredential">

</security>

You have to configure HTTPs on IIS

other common issue you may face is Having internal server name in URL and WSDL URL which cause clients not being able to add service reference

To fix this add <useRequestHeadersForMetadataAddress/> to behavior section in WCF configuration

Remove address="" in from endpoint configuration

Add host header in IIS with service URL

Symptoms:

Installing Exchange 2013 on Windows 2012. When trying to add the Mailbox server to the DAG:

Add-DatabaseAvailabilityGroupServer -Identity dag1 -MailboxServer mbx2

We get the following Error:

WARNING: The operation wasn't successful because an error was encountered. You may find more details in log file "C:\ExchangeSetupLogs\DagTasks\dagtask_2013-12-09_16-07-39.297_add-databaseavailabiltygroupserver.log".

A server-side database availability group administrative operation failed. Error The operation failed. CreateClustererrors may result from incorrectly configured static addresses. Error: An error occurred while attempting a cluster operation. Error: Cluster API '"CreateCluster() failed with 0x5. Error: Access is denied"' failed.

The following Snapshot shows the error:

Reason:

Because of permission changes in Windows 2012 for computer objects, when implementing DAG and the Mailbox servers are running on Windows 2012the Computer Name Object (CNO) must be pre-staged and provisioned.

Solution:

The following article is explaining the details of creating and pre-staging the CNO:

 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff367878.aspx

The important note is after creating the CNO in the Active Directory the computer object must be disabled first, then us the following cmdlet can be used to refresh DAG properties:

Set-databaseavailabilitygroup

Using the above cmdlet with no parameters will refresh all the parameters already used when creating the DAG.

Then members can be added to the DAG.