SeanDaniel.com - Small Business Server and Other Technology

Windows SBS 2008 Public Newsgroups

2008-07-24T22:04:00.001-07:00

You are probably familiar with the Windows Small Business Server 2003 newsgroups. And you are probably also wondering where are the 2008 newsgroups? Well, the good news is the newsgroups have started. The bad news is the spammers have gotten a hold of our 2003 newsgroups, and making them more spam then anything else.

As a result, the public newsgroups have gone to Connect!

Yep, head on over to Connect to sign up for the newsgroups to get an insight view of SBS 2008, even if you don't have time to install the Release Candidate of SBS 2008.

Engage!

SBS Signs off on RC1!

2008-07-18T15:22:00.002-07:00

We are one step closer to a final release of the Windows Small Business Server 2008 product. Today we signed off on the last release candidate. To celebrate the sign-off, we decided to dunk our management team in whip-cream

For more information on the last release candidate (known as RC1) visit the Windows SBS 2008 Connect Website. The RC1 will be available to the general public sometime next week, register today to get notified!

Allowing OWA and Mobile Devices to download files from SharePoint and the File-System without a VPN connection

2008-07-14T19:47:00.002-07:00

The Power of Exchange 2007 is amazing. Did you know that with Exchange 2007, that's included with Windows Small Business Server 2008 you can have your Outlook Web Access and Mobile Device users click a link to download files directly from the Internal Company Web Site (http://companyweb) or file shares?

Well, you can and it's easy to use, and easy to configure.

To Enable Remote File Access for Outlook Web Access Users:

Click Start, All Programs, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, and then select Exchange Management Console.
Once the console opens up, expand Server Configuration and then click on Client Access.
Right-click on the owa (SBS Web Application), and choose Properties
Once the property page loads, click on the Remote File Servers tab, and click the Allow button.
In the pop-up that opens, type in "companyweb" without the quotes
Click Ok and then Ok again to get back to the console.

Now when users send email with http://companyweb/shared%20documents/myfile.txt as a link in email, Outlook Web Access users will be able to click the link and download the file directly through OWA.

This technique can be done with file-servers as well, simply by putting the SBS server name into the Allow list. The user would just put in \\server\share\filename.ext into the email and the user would be able to download it via OWA.

Finally, you can also do this for mobile devices, by switching tabs to the Exchange ActiveSync tab and repeating the same steps.

Windows SBS 2008 Certificate Installer

2008-07-10T09:42:00.001-07:00

A couple of days ago, I made a post to help you understand the self-issued certificates. Today I wanted to extend on that and show what's been built for 2008 to help you install the self-issued certificate. If you open the Company Web Site inside the company, you'll notice an announcement that tells users how to obtain this package. They can browse to "\\contoso-server\users\public downloads" on the server and obtain the zip file shown on the left. This zip file can then be copied to a USB key or floppy drive and taken to the remote PC. Alternatively, it can be run inside the network to install the certificate onto a Windows Mobile device that is connected to the user's PC. It is not necessary to use this package on client computers that are joined to the domain because Group Policy will push the certificate to these client computers, for the case of a laptop that leaves the domain, it will already have the certificate installed in the trusted root store.

One thing to note, is that each time the Fix My Network wizard is run, it checks the validity of the certificate, if it's invalid, it'll go ahead and re-create the certificates and fix everything up for you.. including dropping a new package to the Public Downloads share.

Once you have the tool at the remote location, un-zip it, and run it. The tool is very simple, and runs on XP SP2 or higher clients, including Vista. When you run it, you will see the following UI:

As you can see from the screen shot, you can install the certificate on the remote PC, or any device running Windows Mobile 6.

While using self-issued certificates got easier with 2008, its still a pain to have to install the certificate every 5 years onto remote devices, it's far easier to use a Trusted Certificate.

Dean on what's new in SBS 2008

2008-07-09T14:06:00.002-07:00

It's apparently a Video Fiesta! Dean talks about what are the key areas that we focused on in Windows Small Business Server 2008, down at the World Wide Partner Conference

Video: WPC Video 15 - Dean Paron

SBS 2008 Migration PM with a Demo!

2008-07-09T09:06:00.003-07:00

Hey look! The videos are just rolling out this week. Up now is the Migration PM, Chris Almida and his video demo of the product! Watch this video to learn all about the steps in a migration and how easy it is compared to the Microsoft migration solution for SBS 2003! Chris has done and outstanding job on the migration path to SBS 2008

SBS 2008 Migration demo and interview

If you want to read and comment on the post, visit TechNet Edge.

Roll-up of SBS/EBS World Wide Partner Conference Announcements

2008-07-08T14:19:00.003-07:00

Looks like our Marketing man, Joel Sider has a video too: telling us what is being announced at the World Wide Partner Conference.

Wrap up of SBS/EBS announcements from World Wide Partner Conference

Check read the comments or leave a comment over on this post at TechNet Edge.

SBS 2008 System Health PM Interview & Demo

2008-07-08T14:04:00.002-07:00

Looks like Adrian Maziak is online over at TechNet Edge. Adrian is the Program Manager for all of the SBS 2008 System Health infrastructure. That's the reports, the alerts, and he also takes care of including OneCare and Forefront Security for Exchange.

You can learn all about the System Health for SBS 2008 by watching his video here:

SBS 2008 system health PM interview and demo

Click here to go to the post over at Technet Edge

Microsoft Support responds to Q&A for Call-Back Support Announcement

2008-07-08T13:22:00.002-07:00

Since there seems to be some confusion about the removal of "Server Down" support, I wanted to make sure this got some broad reach. In case you haven't seen over on the Official SBS Blog, Microsoft has responded with corrections to assumptions.

Most importantly, the "Server Down" support will continue on until it's announced officially on a Microsoft web site. For details, point your browsers over to this post at the Official SBS Blog.

Understanding Self-Issued Certificates in SBS 2003 & SBS 2008

2008-07-07T18:10:00.005-07:00

I'm not going to make a statement that understanding self-issued certificates is hard, but I do get enough questions on them that it's prudent for me to do a post regarding them to help folks understand how they work.

First, what's a Certificate used for?

An SSL Certificate is used for two reasons, to validate the remote server to the client, before the client sends any data to that server, and to encrypt the data between the client and server over an un-secure network (ie. the Internet). The former prevents DNS attacks such as Man in the Middle Attacks, or Phishing, by having the server present you with some valid Identification that it is who the server says it is. Think of it like Identification for you at a party or club. Let's say you work for a company called Contoso, they have photo id at the company which you have, and you also have a valid drivers license for the state you're in. Let's say you go to an invite-only party. If you show up at that door, you can show your drivers license to prove that you are who you say you are, this has your picture on it that the door man can see, and your name. The door man can look at the picture, and at you, and because he trusts the state government, knows that you are you. Think of the state-issued drivers license as a Trusted Certificate, because the door man trusts the issuer (or the state government).

Now let's say you show up at the same party, but this time the party is a party for Contoso. You could show your drivers license because the door man will trust the state-issued ID, or you could show your company ID badge, because the door man works for this company and trusts the badges issued by Contoso. Think of the company ID badge as a Self-Issued Certificate. Because the badge and ID was maintained by the company, not all locations will trust it, just the ones that trust that Issuing Authority (or the company Contoso's badges).

Back in the land of computers, let's take a look at what happens when a client connects to a secure server. To the left is the process that clients and server goes through. The client will resolve the server's IP address via DNS and end up at a server's web-site. That client will want to verify the server's identity, so it will request the server's certificate, or Identification. The server will provide this certificate to the client.

The client then looks at the certificate and validates 3 key things:

1) The date range for validity of the certificate. Is the current date on the client within the start/end dates for the certificate provided by the server?

2) The URL the client was attempting to go to is the URL of the certificate (e.g. www.contoso.com is both the URL that the client wants, and what the certificate was provided)

3) The Certificate is from a trusted provider. The client will look at the certificate chain and validate that the root certificate is located in the client's local trusted certificate store as a valid trusted certificate.

If all three of these checks pass, the client will then agree to trust the server and use the certificate to encrypt traffic when talking to the server, and request the web page the client was originally looking for. Please note here, that the client doesn't get to the web-site (including any IIS headers) until the certificate is validated. So if the server is hosting multiple web-sites, it has no idea which one the client is asking for until the process of validating the certificate is complete.

Once the certificates first purpose is completed (to ensure the client is actually talking to the correct server on the Internet), the second purpose kicks in and the client uses the public encryption key to send and receive information to and from the server. The server is the only machine on the whole Internet (if it's not, the root certificate needs to be recreated, unless there is trust between those multiple computers, as in a cluster.) that has the private key and can decrypt the network traffic.

You may wonder how the server identifies the client computer through all this? That's the easy part, the user logs into the web-site with a username and password, and sometimes additional authentication keys using 2-factor authentication.

So a Trusted Certificate is more secure right?

Wrong! A Self-Issued certificate, and a Trusted Certificate often provide the same level of encryption. The big difference between a self-issued and trusted certificate is the ease of use. Many trusted certificates are good for 1 year, and have 1024 bit encryption. The SBS self-issued certs are good for a period of time (5 or 2 years as you'll see below), and also have 1024 bit encryption. Where they differ is distributing the root certificate. In order for a client (PC, Windows Mobile, MAC, etc) to trust that certificate it must know about the root cert, which means in a self-issued scenario, that this cert must be distributed to all clients that are going to connect to the server. In a trusted certificate scenario, the trusted root certificate is already distributed by Windows Update, or at the time the PC, MAC or Windows Mobile device was built! So there is no need to distribute the root cert if you're using a trusted certificate, because the client already trusts the root cert.

So, your choice between Trusted and Self-Issued really comes down to how much work you want to do to distribute the root certificate, more so then the security level of the certificate. You need to consider all the devices that will connect. If one of those is a kiosk at an airport or hotel, in which you cannot install the root cert, then there is a clear choice for you towards Trusted Certificates. If you have remote workers, it's probably easier to get a trusted certificate as well.

(As a side note, 1024 bit encryption was chosen primarily because the processors in Windows Mobile devices get bogged down encrypting and decrypting traffic using higher numbers. I'm sure this will change over time)

Windows Small Business Server 2003 Self-Issued Certificate

In SBS 2003, the root certificate was also the leaf certificate. This means that the root certificate was the certificate used to validate trust, and also encrypt the traffic on the web.

As you can see, the certificate is the root certificate. This certificate needs to be sent to all the remotely connecting devices. If this certificate is not in the remote computer/device trusted authority certificate store, then the user will always receive a certificate warning that the certificate is not trusted. This root certificate is valid for 5 years.

Windows Small Business Server 2008 Self-Issued Certificate

In SBS 2008, we went a step further with the self-issued certificate, and provided a root certificate and a leaf certificate. The root certificate needs to be distributed to all the clients, and the leaf certificate is installed onto the IIS web site. This adds slightly more security over SBS 2003, because the leaf certificate is valid for 2 years, and the root certificate is valid for 5 years, similar to SBS 2003. The reason this is more secure, is because if the leaf certificate is compromised by any way, you can simply re-issue a new leaf certificate and not have to replace any of the certificates on the computer/devices. In fact, the Fix My Network wizard will do this for you when the certificate is about to expire.

You can see the chaining from the certificate path above. In addition to the new improved design of the certificate infrastructure, we also provided a ZIP file that can be used to distribute the package. This Zip file is available from "\\contoso-server\public\public downloads\" internally to the network only. Users will copy this ZIP package to a USB disk and take it with them to their home PC to install it.

Important: People always ask me why this isn't available directly from the Remote Web Workplace. Well, it goes back to the flow chart above. You can't download a certificate to trust a server from an un-trusted source! Essentially if you agree to go to the un-trusted source, you have no guarantee that the package you download is the right one. Not only that, but you will have already provided your username and password to an un-trusted server which could be the wrong one! If the un-trusted server was malicious, they could log into the actual server as the user and do all sorts of damage! Taking the package home on a USB key in your pocket is the safe way, because the certificate is traveling through a trusted path out to your remote PC.

In addition, because the Certificate Authority is configured and set up by default in SBS 2008, you can entertain the idea of using the certificate infrastructure to configure secure wireless, or IPSec, or secure VPN.

Recommendation

So, if you're still reading (long post today!), you understand how certificates work to secure network traffic and ensure you're communicating with the correct server. You understand the differences between the self-issued certificates, and trusted-authority certificates, and finally, how they are used in the two versions of Windows Small Business Server that use certificates.

If you wanted the Microsoft recommendation, for ease of configuration and explanation to your end users only, we recommend going with a trusted certificate for your network. Prices on trusted certificates have fallen to less then it would cost to pay a consultant a hour to install the remote devices, not to mention the education you need to provide your users. In speaking with many consultants, they'd rather spend their efforts elsewhere any ways! The self-issued certificate is really a means to provide encryption level security to businesses that absolutely cannot afford a trusted certificate. Trust me, it's worth it...

For bonus points, who can tell me why I call them self-issued instead of self-signed?

Fun with Windows SBS 2008 Car Screening

2008-06-02T23:29:00.001-07:00

You run a bunch of sites with SBS 2003, you've gone over to the Windows Essentials Family Website and have jumped into the public beta, you've joined Connect to provide feedback. You may consider yourself as an Small Business Server enthusiast.

However ...

If you haven't screened your new Volkswagen, you aren't a fanatic!

Oliver has two employee cars that have been screened, check 'em out!

Windows Small Business Server

The car is available for all to see in Germany, browse on over to Oliver's website for more details.

Windows Small Business Server 2008 Public Preview Now Available!

2008-05-28T18:43:00.001-07:00

I know a lot of you are itching to get your hands on the Windows Small Business Server 2008 Public Preview build. Well, it's finally available for your testing pleasure. To obtain the download, you should point your browsers over to the Technet Eval Center. This will allow you to download the actual ISO images of the build. Please keep in mind the following notes about the ISOs

DVD1 - SBS 2008 Standard edition
DVD2 & DVD3 - Windows Standard 2008 server (your second server for Premium edition)
DVD4 - SQL Server standard edition also for premium

Also to note, this version is not supported in production, and has a 180 day time-bomb.

Finally, we are interested in your feedback, to provide feedback or participate in the newsgroup for the product, point your browser over to the SBS 2008 feedback over on Connect, register and provide feedback, suggestions, problems, and read the newsgroups to fully participate in the Public Preview. You can file new issues, or vote on existing issues and suggestions.

Here are some neat things to try:

An un-attended setup via the answer file
Buying and automatically configuring a domain name
Adding client computers to the network
Configuring server backup, and doing a disaster recovery test (you will need an external USB drive for this)
Configuring an SMTP smart host, with authentication if you have it.
Sending reports & customizing your own server reports

To learn more about the Public Preview, our Group Program Manager Dean talks about it on the Official SBS Blog.

Make your voice heard!

Windows Small Business Server 2008 World Wide Community Survey

2008-05-27T18:57:00.001-07:00

Like or don't like Microsoft's involvement in the community? Now is your chance for your voice to be heard. For the third year in a row, Kevin, our community lead has launched the Small Business Community Survey.

We do look at the survey results, and we value your feedback. If you want to participate, simply head over to Kevin's blog and participate in the survey.

Windows SBS 2008 - Setup & Advanced Setup Interview

2008-05-19T00:08:00.004-07:00

Becky, whom you'll be familiar with from places like SMB Summit, and other SBS events owns and manages our "Setup" feature team, responsible for ensuring all the goodies of SBS successfully install both in a manual and unattended fashion.

SBS 2008 Setup PM demo and interview

The TechNet Edge folks cornered here for a 23 minute video with a 7 minute "over the edge" at the end. You watch the video, point your web browser over to the SBS 2008 Setup PM demo and Interview video.

If you're interested in getting the Public Preview for SBS 08, simple register to be notified here.

Essential Business Server (EBS) Demo with Bjorn!

2008-05-15T10:57:00.003-07:00

For those of you who weren't aware, SBS has a big brother now, a monster 3-server sku specific for Medium Businesses called Essential Business Server. If you aren't aware, it's time to fix that! (details on the Essential Family web site)

Essential Business Server (EBS) demo with Bjorn

Bjorn gives you a demo of EBS over on TechNet Edge. The specific link to the demo video is here.

If that gets you super excited, and you just can't wait to get your hands on this 3-server power-house, then you might want to jump into the EBS Public Preview!

Windows Live for Windows Mobile available

2008-05-13T16:00:00.003-07:00

Do you have a Windows Mobile device? Interested in getting IM, Search and your Hotmail down to your phone? well, now you can, with the new Windows Live Mobile!

Point your Windows Mobile devices here: http://wl.windowsmobile.com

There is something to be weary of though:

Q: Why am I seeing duplicate contacts when I choose to save Windows Live contacts on my device?

A: Upon first time sign in to Windows Live, if you choose to save Windows Live contacts to your device’s contacts store, they will then be accessible via the Windows Mobile Contacts application and will appear alongside the contacts you have created on your device (either manually, via Microsoft Outlook, or via Exchange ActiveSync). If you did not check "Merge duplicate contacts", Windows Live contacts that have the same First Name and Last Name as contacts already on your device will appear as duplicates. If you checked "Merge duplicate contacts", a merge will take place but there will still be likelihood that some of your Windows Live contacts may not be merged correctly.

https://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/mobile/wl/faq-en-us.mspx

Note: Standard is the Smartphone, non-touch screen version, and Professional is the Pocket PC touch-screen version.

Announcing an SBS 2008 Public Preview and Pricing!

2008-05-13T08:00:00.004-07:00

Back in February, Microsoft announced the Essential's Family, and of course, the coming of Small Business Server 2008. At that time we held off tell things like pricing, and when you will be able to get your hands on it. As of today, we can disclose some more of this information for you with the release of this press release.

First of all, We'd like to announce that a public preview is coming! The Public Preview should be available near the end of this month or beginning of next month. I will post here the instant it's available, or e-mail the address on this page to be notified via e-mail. To prepare, make sure you've got hardware ready. Requirements can be found here.

The second and most important reason for this blog entry, is I want to alert you to the new SBS pricing. By now, you're probably familiar with the two SBS editions.

Before telling you the new pricing, I wanted to fill in some background information:

Our current SBS 2003 pricing is backwards from our research. Having a lower server price and higher CAL prices is counter intuitive to what people actually want
We have seen a strong desire for SQL Standard edition, instead of SQL Workgroup edition
There is a strong desire to separate Line of Business applications from the machine running your IT Infrastructure.
There is frustration with "over-buying" CALs, and having to buy 5 CALs for 1 new employee
Research has shown, if the server is too inexpensive there are negative perceptions
- e.g. contains less than full versions of products
- e.g. less capable then Windows Standard Server

Given all of these changes and mind-sets, here is the new pricing:

Windows SBS 2008 Standard Edition

	Box includes 5 CALs	Additional CAL
Full Package Price	$1,089	$77
Compare to Stand Alone product Cost	$2,033	$106

Windows SBS 2008 Premium Edition

	Box includes 5 CALs	Additional CAL
Full Package Price	$1,899	$189
Compare to Stand Alone product Cost	$4,031	$258

There you have it. Some important things to note here:

Special notes about the Premium CAL:

You can mix CALs against the same server
You only absolutely need Premium CALs for users who will access the copy of SQL that comes with Premium.
If the 2nd server of Premium is used for something other than SQL, the Standard CAL will cover you.
SQL Standard with Premium can be installed on either the first or second server.

Windows SBS 2008 Standard edition is cheaper for the vast majority of 1-75 user CAL scenarios! How great is that deal?
Windows SBS 2008 Premium edition is more expensive in all cases then SBS 2003 Premium edition, because of the upgrade from SQL Workgroup edition, to SQL Standard edition, and an extra copy of Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition. You wanted it, and you got it!
You can now purchase CALs one at a time!

There are still minor pieces of information that still need to be locked down that we don't have answers to and are actively working on. So please bear with us as we finalize this information. One of the major ones is when will it be released, and the best we can do at this point is the 2nd half of this year.

Finally, we also announced rebates of up to $200 (U.S.) for solution provider partners configuring Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2 for their clients who acquire the software and purchase Software Assurance within a certain time period. Terms and conditions of the rebates are available at SBSrebate.com.

Feedback/comments are welcome.

Can't get a VPN connection?

2008-05-12T09:35:00.002-07:00

Well, VPN is old-school connection technology. For remote access you should be using the Remote Web Workplace, the experience is far greater, the speed is faster, and it's lighter use on your networks broadband available bandwidth.

However, there are still times when VPN is necessary. For example, the user doesn't have a client within the network, and there is a need to use a Line of Business application of some sort.

Well, if you're having trouble getting data to flow over your VPN connection, you might think about the low-level infrastructure. If your server network is 192.168.1.x, and your VPN client is also on a 192.168.1.x network, the traffic stays on the local network instead of sending it out to the VPN client. Make sure these two networks are different. This is primarily why SBS 2003 set itself up on 192.168.16.x, because this is different then most home networking routers (192.168.0.x and 192.168.1.x).

If your DHCP server is running on SBS 2003, you can change your network subnet simply by running the ChangeIP task from the Internet and Email tab in the console. Make sure if you have a router, that you change the IP address of the router to the new subnet of choice first! If DHCP is running on the router, you'll have a bit more configuration to do.

Good luck!

Preparing your Network for Small Business Server 2008

2008-05-01T15:56:00.003-07:00

Well, as you know, Small Business Server 2008 is scheduled to be released at the end of this year, and it's coming with a rather big change that I wanted you to be ready for. That change is the server will be a single-nic solution only. Thus moving forward, you should start to think about removing the dual-nic solutions at your sites to prepare to migrate to SBS 2008, if you choose to.

Why was this decision made you ask? Well, it comes down to customer research showing that the majority of installations are single-network card solutions with a hardware firewall router. The second reason is OS support for a network firewall.

In Windows Server 2003, when it was originally released, the firewall included with the Operating System was called RRAS (Routing and Remote Access Service). With the release of Windows Server 2003 SP1, (and XP SP2) the Windows Firewall was introduced to the public, leaving administrators of Medium to Enterprise networks with questions on which was the better Firewall solution to use.

With the release of Windows Server 2008, the firewall component of RRAS was removed in favor of the superior Windows Firewall. The reasoning was that the Windows Firewall uses higher-end inspection methods than the RRAS firewall (think of Windows Firewall as closer to ISA, although clearly, not all the way there and RRAS as close to one of those consumer based routers < $50, which does port blocking only). Clearly the Windows Firewall is the better choice.

However, due to the fact that the Windows Firewall is designed to protect the local box only, it does not protect the network (or more specifically, NAT) traffic through the box. The NAT functions that comes with RRAS in 2008 is lower in the network stack then the firewall (where as in 2003, they were at the same level, or at least worked together). The Windows Firewall does not protect NAT, thus if inbound traffic to port “X” not headed for the local machine, is passed through the machine without the Windows Firewall’s knowledge. Thus, as designed, the Windows Firewall is a “host” firewall only, it does *not* protect NAT traffic.

Due to this major change in the Operating System behavior and the customer research, Windows Small Business Server 2008 will support a single network card, with the requirement of a separate firewall to protect the network. This can be your favorite hardware or software firewall solution (or combo of course!)

Internet Security and Acceleration
I wanted to also add some information regarding Internet Security and Acceleration server (ISA). As you probably noted from the website. ISA is not longer included in the Premium offering of SBS 2008. This has been replaced with a second copy of Windows Standard Server 2008, which can be used to run ISA on the edge of your network, or a line of business application with SQL. ISA must be purchased seperately.

For those of you under Software Assurance, Microsoft will have some "make-good", announced around the time of the product, most likely in the next few months.

SBS_Guru meets another Guru, with a card!

2008-04-23T22:32:00.002-07:00

For those of you that know the SBS Guru, one of our MVPs, Wayne Small, hijack'd his webcam for a short time. Check it out!

Most of the links on the card are also along the link on the right of my blog. Enjoy!

If you're not at SMB Summit ...

2008-04-20T14:10:00.001-07:00

The Cougar team is doing some blogging from down there, and they are tossing them on the Official SBS Team Blog.

Tune in for up to date information!

Windows Server 2008 learns a new feature

2008-04-18T11:28:00.002-07:00

Folks,

This video is available over at SBS FAQ, hosted by our MVP Wayne Small. It's one hilarious way to look at Remote Web Workplace.

Enjoy!

How to Share your Calendar with External Folks

2008-04-04T20:32:00.001-07:00

A couple of days ago, we were talking about fancy calendaring systems and the new Exchange 2007 "Rich Text" Out of Office message that can be sent, and we came across something so amazing, so incredible, so.... useful, it just had to be blogged.

This one comes courtesy of Becky, a co-worker of mine.

In our search for the perfect Out of Office message, we discovered a way to send your free busy information in an email to someone who can't normally see it (because they aren't part of the same organization....

Here's how to do it with Outlook 2007.

Crack open a new e-mail message

In the body of the message, click on the Insert tab on the ribbon, and choose Calendar.

Choose the date range you want to publish into the email:

And just like that, Outlook publishes your free/busy information into the email:

With this handy time saving tip, you'll be able to have people schedule meetings with you outside of your company, because they can get a snap-shot of you free/busy time.

Happy scheduling!

SMB Nation here I come!

2008-03-28T07:56:00.002-07:00

This weekend I fly out to SMB Nation to give a chat on Windows Small Business Server 2008.

So, if you're going to the conference, keep an eye out for me. I'll be presenting on Sunday at 10am.

See you there!

BlogTalk Radio - More inside scoup on SBS 2008

2008-03-25T22:34:00.002-07:00

For those of you who don't know, one of my good buddies, Erik Thorsell, gives you a bit of an inside scoup on Windows Small Business Server 2008. To listen to the one-hour show, point your browser over to BlogTalkRadio to listen to blogcast.

Erik and I are involved in the "Technology Adoption Program" together, and talk often about SBS 2008. For those who will undoubtedly ask, I do not know how you get selected to be in the TAP program. The best you can do, is head on over to BlogTalkRadio and check out the podcast, and learn more about SBS 2008!

For those who want to learn more abour Erik, point your browsers to Success Computing Consultants.