Beyng Customer Mitdasein

MFCMAPI

2010-03-04T10:48:00.000-08:00

MFCMAPI is an application that displays oodles of MAPI information about your Outlook client.

BCM version 4

2009-07-22T10:27:00.000-07:00

Business Contact Manager for Office 2010 now in technical preview. The BCM team blog has the details.

How to restore a database the hard way

2009-07-17T15:58:00.000-07:00

This is for when the regular backup through BCM doesn't work. Be sure to change domain, user, database, and paths to your circumstances.

You have a backup file c:\temp\foobar.sbb of your database MSSmallBusiness.

Rename the file to foobar.zip.

In Explorer double-click on it to go into (like a folder). Inside you will find an xml file and a file named like en-US#3.0.5625.0. Copy the second file to c:\temp\en-US#3.0.5625.0.

Open a cmd window (On Vista+ as administrator).

Use sqlcmd to connect to the master database: sqlcmd -E -S .\mssmlbiz -d master

Run this command to restore the database:

RESTORE DATABASE MSSmallBusiness  FROM disk = 'C:\temp\en-US#3.0.5625.0'
with replace,
move 'MSSmallBusiness_dat' to 'c:\users\luther\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Business Contact Manager\MSSmallBusiness.mdf',
move 'MSSmallBusiness_log' to 'c:\users\luther\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Business Contact Manager\MSSmallBusiness.ldf'
GO
EXIT

If you've moved to another machine (e.g. you are restoring because the machine you created the backup on is no more), you will probably need to take ownership.

Connect to the database: sqlcmd -E -S .\mssmlbiz -d MSSmallBusiness

Then:

sp_changedbowner 'wuming\luther'
GO
EXIT

Now you can restart Outlook/BCM. If you were not using database MSSmallBusiness before, you will need to select that database. If you run into errors, try restarting Outlook.

If you run into trouble with the SQL, here are the docs for RESTORE.

Have you seen the movie?

2009-06-25T10:19:00.000-07:00

Office 2010

New sync solution for Palm

2009-06-11T15:30:00.000-07:00

CompanionLink'll sync it.

EU wants guaranteed software

2009-05-11T13:49:00.000-07:00

This is amusing.

Licensing should guarantee consumers the same basic rights as when they purchase a good: the right to get a product that works with fair commercial conditions.

Software generally works when installed on a clean machine with the configuration it was built to work with. If it crashes there's usually something on the machine that the software wasn't expecting. So when software ABC doesn't work, because software XYZ changed something about the machine (e.g. used up all the free disk space), who's fault is it? ABC's or XYZ's? The one with the deepest pockets? I'm sure this law will provide much work for lawyers.

BCM 2007 SP2

2009-05-06T13:53:00.000-07:00

Descriptions of the Business Contact Manager problems that are fixed in the 2007 Microsoft Office suite Service Pack 2.

AKA KB957324. Download.

Disapearing tech

2009-03-23T16:46:00.000-07:00

Salesforce.com's Director of Platform Research, Peter Coffee, explains how to make better tools.

Today, a Dell Adamo or a MacBook Air competes for the distinctions of being thin, light, and long-lived on battery power: in short, for making its technology as nearly invisible as the world's best technologists can manage.

As Martin Heidegger said in The Origin of the Work of Art, the proper tool is one that disappears into its function; as Alfredo Ruibal further observed, "The less one notices the tool, the better it fulfils its function as a tool."

I remember talking to Peter Coffee, at some CASE conference years ago, when he was reviving Aristotlian taxonomy as a basis for Object-Oriented Analysis.

BCM Contacts not in address book?

2009-03-03T08:49:00.000-08:00

Add them. Here's how:

I went to Contacts, right-clicked on Business Contacts, clicked on Properties, clicked the Outlook Address Book tab and checked the Show this folder as a e-mail Address Book. I closed the BC Properties window and the BContacts were once again an option in the Address Book.

Can't connect to the database?

2009-02-20T08:37:00.000-08:00

This article from Microsoft support has oodles of info on diagnosing connection issues: How to troubleshoot a shared database in Outlook with Business Contact Manager Update.

Rahul Thomas Blogs

2009-02-19T08:33:00.000-08:00

Good BCM info on this Microsoft blog:

How to enable Logging in BCM

How to create a "New Business Contact from the Same Company"

Send a letter to a contact

2009-02-13T10:10:00.000-08:00

The canonical way to write a letter to an Outlook or BCM Contact is to go to Word, start the letter, and then pick the contact from an address book inside Word. More people work in an Outlook, instead of Word, centric world, and want to start the letter from the Contact, and not work backwards. Here's how to do that: Add Outlook Toolbar Buttons to send Letters and E-mail to Business Contacts

Chapura PocketMirror

2009-02-12T23:07:00.000-08:00

Chapura PocketMirror claims to let you control which Outlook folders to sync with your device. What a concept! It's 2009, why doesn't ActiveSync let you pick what to sync?

Can't get rid of Outlook reminders?

2009-02-05T14:30:00.000-08:00

Try running Outlook with a /cleanreminders parameter once.

Outlook command-line switches

Cleaning up after failed uninstalls

2009-01-30T15:23:00.000-08:00

It's a job for the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility.

being in the context of the customer

2009-01-27T08:05:00.000-08:00

From "An Ethical Perspective on ICT in the Context of the Other" by J. Ola Lindberg and Anders Olofsson, in the Handbook of Researchon Digital InformationTechnologies: Innovations, Methods, and Ethical Issues.

In accordance with Heidegger, human and world is one. This unavoidable participation and presence in the world is understood as conditioned by relational and socially defned aspects of human and world. As Arendt puts it, humans are born into an already existing world of humans, and all individual actions and speech are thereby preceded by a web of human relations. Humans become humans through a process of always being in the world (Bourdieu, 1995) and in accordance the world is understood as social, built on relations and in which the human, through language, embrace joint understandings, and conceptual constructions that decides the world (Gadamer, 1976). This togetherness, or Mit-dasein if speaking with Heidegger, is the world as it is shared with others. It lays the ground for humans to understand both world and others. The understanding humans make of the world is not to be understood as static or unflexible, a world inherited rather than constructed. It is more a question of a dynamic and reciprocal co-construction allowing the world and thereby the humans to be in an always changing and evolving mode. Due to the relational and social conditions that frame the togetherness, change is an open possibility. As these conditions evolve, they leap ahead of things, making the understanding humans may have of themselves and the world dependent upon a being-in-the-world always ahead of itself in an instable way, always potentially becoming something else, something unpredicted.

Interpreting install failures

2009-01-23T11:20:00.000-08:00

When BCM Setup installs or uninstalls, it calls the Windows Installer (AKA MSIEXEC) to add or remove MSI files. The actions of MSIEXEC are logged in a file in the %TEMP% folder.

Sometimes the logs contain MSI error codes; just a number with no explanation.

Here's a list of Windows Installer Error Messages, with remarks, to help interpret such error codes.

Where the databases are

2009-01-19T09:43:00.000-08:00

Xp:
In MDF files in folder C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Business Contact Manager

Vista:
In MDF files in folder C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Business Contact Manager

BCM data in Excel and Access

2008-11-05T12:46:00.000-08:00

Connect to Business Contact Manager data from Access 2007

Connect to Business Contact Manager data from Excel 2007

Those two articles are from the Business Contact Manager for Outlook Developer Guide, whose contents will help anyone needing to understand how BCM works.

Faster BCM

2008-10-07T07:50:00.000-07:00

From Officepoint, three ways to improve BCM performance.

All Windows

2008-09-20T15:23:00.000-07:00

The new Microsoft marketing campaign is Life Without Walls.

The slogan brings to mind Jeremy Bentham's panopticon prison without walls. Your punishment is your loss of privacy. Here's an earlier implemention.

TCP port 445 required for sharing

2008-09-17T09:23:00.000-07:00

If BCM cannot connect to a shared database on another machine, but you can ping the machine and sqlcmd can connect to the database, then check that TCP port 445 is not blocked by a firewall. That port is used for NETBIOS traffic and that's how Windows detects other machines.

More here.

News in the sync with other devices topos

2008-09-10T21:37:00.000-07:00

CompanionLink Software for Business Contact Manager Synchronization With BlackBerry, iPhone and Palm OS Devices.

BCM SDK

2008-09-08T22:49:00.000-07:00

The BCM v3 SDK docs move around, without automatic forwarding.

Today they are here: Business Contact Manager for Outlook Developer Guide.

Outlook and MAPI providers

2008-08-27T11:39:00.000-07:00

Although BCM shows up in Outlook, and is well integrated in the user interface, there's a important distinction between the two.

The Outlook program is a user interface for data stores and messaging systems - both types of MAPI providers - and Outlook can host multiple MAPI providers. In your Outlook folder view you may see several top level nodes: Mailbox, Archives, Public Folders, SharePoint Lists, Business Contact Manager, etc. Each of those is a different MAPI store. Because some program (e.g. Outlook Connector, ActiveSync) synchronizes the Mailbox store, it doesn't mean it will sync BCM, or any other store.

This is usually a surprise to new users of ActiveSync, Outlook Connector, and other programs to synchronize Outlook with devices (PDAs, Smartphones) or the cloud. Most of these programs were designed to synchronize the Mailbox only. A proper contacts synchronizer for Outlook would ask you which MAPI stores and folders you want to synchronize, instead of only synchronizing the Contacts folder in the Mailbox store.

.NET Reflector news

2008-08-25T13:46:00.001-07:00

.NET Reflector, an essential tool if you are trying to figure out how managed applications - like BCM - do their stuff, has moved to Redgate.

How to manually uninstall packages

2008-08-06T17:03:00.000-07:00

Sometimes uninstalling a package from Add/Remove Programs (ARP) fails because of an error in the package's setup program, or the package is gone from ARP, but there are indications it is still installed - for example, running setup to reinstall jumps straight to the maintenance mode.

Windows tracks all installed packages in the Registry, in HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall. Run regedit and go to that location. From that node search (menu: Edit|Find...) for the package (e.g., "Business Contact Manager"). For each one that you find, get the value of the UninstallString key (generally: "msiexec /X{...some GUID...}" or a Setup.exe command line) and run it.

That should remove the packages from the machine. After removing a package, refresh (F5) regedit.

If that doesn't remove everything, you can proceed to manually removing BCM files.

BCM cheatsheet

2008-08-01T10:40:00.000-07:00

I discovered this Business Contact Manager 2007 How-To laminated pamphlet this morning.

New BCM book announced

2008-07-30T10:32:00.000-07:00

Laura Leist has written Business Solutions Using Microsoft Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager. It's expected out August 1st, but I couldn't find it on Amazon this morning.

Perceptual Vista

2008-07-24T14:21:00.000-07:00

Mojave, the OS everyone's been waiting for.

Microsoft last week traveled to San Francisco, rounding up Windows XP users who had negative impressions of Vista. The subjects were put on video, asked about their Vista impressions, and then shown a "new" operating system, code-named Mojave. More than 90 percent gave positive feedback on what they saw. Then they were told that "Mojave" was actually Windows Vista.

"Oh wow," said one user...

Equipmentality, and the beings of Office Equipt

2008-07-03T09:17:00.000-07:00

Correctly quibbling over signifiers.

Indeed, the name is more succinct than Microsoft has used for some other Office products, including unwieldy names like Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007 and Microsoft Office Outlook with Business Contact Manager.

Hear, hear.

Got iPhone?

2008-06-19T09:48:00.000-07:00

iClink syncs BCM with your iPhone.

Advice from the Ventura County Star

2008-06-07T19:20:00.001-07:00

Getting rid of Business Contact Manager.

When Sql Server 2005 installations go bad

2008-05-07T16:35:00.000-07:00

How to: Manually Uninstall an Existing Instance of SQL Server 2005.

Three new BCM videos

2008-05-07T06:17:00.000-07:00

Business Contact Manager for Outlook 2007 demos .

BCM v2 on Sql Server 2005

2008-04-25T07:53:00.000-07:00

And many other good bcm-database-on-server installation tips here.

To run BCM v2 on Sql Server 2005, I would first consider installing Service Pack 4. Although SP4 is intended for folks upgrading from Xp to Vista, or upgrading from BCM integrated with Small Business Accounting to Micorsoft Office Accounting, the major change with SP4 is migration from Sql 2000 MSDN (not supported on Vista, nor with MOA) to Sql 2005 Express SP2. On a good day the upgrade should go smoothly. If not, read the article linked to above.

BCM vs Avidian

2008-04-17T07:11:00.000-07:00

Only users with a certain level of business acumen and experience should try BCM.

The toughest part of installing Outlook 2007 with BCM is extracting the CD from its hard plastic case, which must have been designed by a sadist. I nearly resorted to attacking it with a hammer before finally flipping it open.

Create an account from a business contact

2008-04-16T08:23:00.000-07:00

"With the Business Contact Record open, click on the "Account" button under the section lettered "Linked Account" (just above where the phone #'s are. This will open a dialog box enabling you to create a new Account to link to Bob. Click on the "New" button inside of this dialog box and BCM will automatically create a new Account record linked to Bob with most of the data fields populated from Bob's record."

Hat tip: mrtimpeterson

.NET failures? Try reinstalling .NET

2008-04-15T09:18:00.000-07:00

If you get an error like this,

Business contact manager failed to initialize the common language runtime Ecall methods must be packaged into a system module,

try reinstalling .NET.

How to do that on Xp and Vista is explained here.

Hat tip: Lon Ornstein

Problems installing Sql Server?

2008-04-08T13:38:00.000-07:00

If BCM Setup is failing because Sql Server Express won't install, then you can try installing SQL manually. That way you'll get the sql setup user interface and it can guide you through any problems it finds, or at least tell you about them so you don't have to go hunting for the problem in the install log files.

Go to the folder where the BCM setup.exe is. Look in a folder named SSE for a file named SQLEXPR.exe and double click on it to run the Sql install.

Once Sql is installed, run the BCM setup again and it'll create BCM's Sql instance and install BCM.

Got .NET and can't un-get it?

2008-03-09T11:09:00.000-07:00

You may need the .NET Framework cleanup tool.

BCM V3 Logging

2008-03-08T09:04:00.000-08:00

You can enable logging from menu Help | About Business contact Manager for Outlook, check the checkbox for "Enable Logging for Business Contact Manager".

After turning on logging, when you see a BCM error message, you can open the logging file in XP on folder Document and Settings\\local settings\temp\bcmlog_v3.log; on Vista users\\AppData\Local\Temp\BCMLog_V3.log. The latest logged messages will be at the bottom of the file.

Setting a user property on a new Account in VBS

2008-03-06T09:06:00.000-08:00

Here's a short script that creates an Account and sets the Active property to true. Have Outlook/BCM running in the profile you want to use.

Dim olYesNo olYesNo = 6 Dim objOL Dim objNS Dim objFolder Set objOL = CreateObject("Outlook.Application") Set objNS = objOL.GetNamespace("MAPI") set objBCMFolder = objNS.Folders("Business Contact Manager") set objBCMObjectsFolder = objBCMFolder.Folders("Business Objects") set objBCMAccountsFolder = objBCMObjectsFolder.Folders("Accounts") ' create new account set newAccount = objBCMAccountsFolder.Items.Add("IPM.Contact.BCM.Account") ' give it a name newAccount.FullName = "accountname" ' create an Active property, ' because it doesn't exist yet set uProperties = newAccount.UserProperties set newProp = uProperties.Add("Active", olYesNo) ' we could use newProp but let's confirm that UserProperties ' can be accessed through the ItemProperties array set iProperties = newAccount.ItemProperties iProperties("Active").Value = 1 newAccount.Save()

Aladdins Office Documents

2008-03-02T13:57:00.000-08:00

Create Office documents from BCM. Integrates with BCM's history folder!

BCM and Sql, in general

2008-02-29T09:06:00.000-08:00

BCM uses Sql Server to manage its data. BCM asks Sql Server client software to connect it to its data using a string to identify the server and database. Sql manages everything else. Sql Server is a Windows NT service running on the same or another machine. BCM does not directly access the file where the database stores its data, Sql does that itself, although BCM does ask Sql to put the file in a folder owned by the user.

BCM does surface some database management features in its UI--e.g., asking Sql to create a new database, select another database, and backup or restore the database--but BCM doesn't have UI for every feature of Sql Server, like changing the physical location of the database file or moving it to another server.

To do any database operations that aren't in the BCM UI you need to use Sql Server directly.

Lacan’s three psychoanalytic orders in software development

2008-02-24T18:36:00.000-08:00

It occurred to me while watching a Zizek lecture [starting around minute ten] that the symbolic-real-imaginary triad of Jacques Lacan’s three psychoanalytic orders mapped directly to the three different disciplines--program management/marketing, development, and testing--used in companies developing software. The first imagines what product consumers need, how to sell it to them, and comes up with the specification of a desired "imaginary real" product. This gets passed on to the developers who must convert the specification into symbols understood by the computing machinary. They produce the "symbolic real" programming code, which the machine transforms into binary code. The resulting binary program, such as it is, is passed on to the testers who must then ascertain that it actually works, the "real real".

If that is taken as such, then product pathologies (bad software) could be understood as impedences and dissonances between the different realities. And resolving them is somewhat akin to psychoanalysis.

How to use OR in BCM filters

2008-02-03T21:32:00.000-08:00

Filters with multiple fields AND the fields, and the user interface does not have an option to use OR instead. You can however get at the text of the command that runs the filter and edit it, replacing AND with OR.

Details here.

BCM and web search

2008-02-01T09:27:00.000-08:00

Woke up today to the news that the number three web search company offered to buy number two.

I tried a couple searches to see how the search engines rate today.

If I search from "Outlook BCM", Yahoo's first link is to the Outlook page on the Office web sites, Google's first link is to instructions for Outlook Web access at the Baylor College of Medicine and number two to the BCM page on the Office web sites, and on Live Search the first link is to a Google page for the BCM newsgroup and there are no links to BCM product pages--but there is an ad for Avidian.

Searching for "BCM blog", this blog shows up a couple pages down on Google, but not on Yahoo or Live Search when I gave up paging through their results.

Helping Microsoft customers find the information they need; another reason Google owns the search market.

Outlook rates BCM's welcome message as spam

2008-02-01T09:01:00.000-08:00

This is pretty entertaining, although it doesn't happen on my machine and I'm surprised something a message rated as spam didn't get moved to the Junk E-mail folder.

How to get Microsoft support

2008-01-31T07:37:00.000-08:00

Here's a page with the contact information for Microsoft support; for those situations where your mates can't fix it for you.

Why is Outlook 2007 so slow? (ongoing)

2008-01-25T08:41:00.000-08:00

On one machine, Outlook startup went from forever to reasonable by deleting the file C:\Documents and Settings\wuming\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\outcmd.dat.

On another, Calendar items still take over a minute to open.

More here.

Look, I'm a star of the Lichtung variety!

2008-01-21T19:55:00.000-08:00

mapisvc.inf can be a problem on Vista

2008-01-21T19:47:00.000-08:00

Imagine Kitty had trouble installing BCM and worked around it by changing mapisvc.inf so that the user installing BCM could write to it.

PollingInterval

2008-01-16T18:36:00.000-08:00

BCM checks (polls) the database regularly to see if any data has changed. This is expecially useful with shared databases, to automatically pickup changes others have made.

BCM's default polling interval has been one second. That's good in the sense that every BCM client picks up any changes within one second or so. But it can stress the database is there are many changes and every BCM client requeries the database to refresh folders and so. If the shared database is on your desktop you've probably noticed the performance difference from other users' BCM clients hitting the database.

In BCM v3 Service Pack 1 the polling interval was increased to one minute. That should decrease database activity in busy offices, but clients may not get updated with changes for a minute.

If you want play around with the polling loop frequency, you can set its value and experiment.

BCM checks in the Registry for a poll interval value, and uses that value if it finds one.

Add PollingInterval to the default BCM Registry folder for a user and give it a number value in seconds; i.e.:

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Business Solutions eCRM\PollingInterval

Note that's in the user hive, so different users of a machine can set a PollingInterval without affecting other BCM users on that PC.

BCM packaged with Outlook 2007

2008-01-10T21:17:00.000-08:00

Amazon's announces Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager.

And there's a new book too.

BCM on YouTube

2008-01-03T08:41:00.000-08:00

Get Connected Office 2007 Business Contact Manager

and here's another flick about integrating with Office Accounting.

The first Service Pack for BCM v3

2007-12-11T12:26:00.000-08:00

Business Contact Manager for Outlook 2007 Service Pack 1

BCM v3 SP1 coming soon

2007-11-19T08:45:00.000-08:00

It says so here:

We are hoping to make the service pack publicly available through automatic update before Christmas. Please look out for the post here when we are closer to the release date.

An example of using categories in BCM

2007-11-16T09:40:00.000-08:00

Small Business Building Blocks on Tracking Customer Anniversary Dates in BCM.

SBBB has other posts on BCM. Look around while you're there.

How to bulk edit in Outlook

2007-11-16T08:42:00.001-08:00

Making a common change to multiple contacts.

The imp in the software

2007-11-03T16:25:00.000-07:00

The inherent analysis of 'cultural capitalism' thus brngs us to a new type of subjectivity that emerges out of the disintegration of paternal authority. This disintegration has two facets: on the one hand, symbolic prohibitive norms are increasingly replaced by imaginary ideals (of social success, of bodily fitness, etc.); on the other hand, the lack of symbolic prohibition is supplemented by the re-remergence of derocious superego figures. So, we have a subject who is extremely narcissistic, i.e., who perceives everything as a potential threat to his precarious imaginary balance (this is the universalization of the logic of the victim: every contact with another human being is experienced as a potential threat -- if the other smokes, if he casts a covetous glance at me, he is already hurting me); however, far from allowing him to float freely in an undisturbed balance, this marcissistic self-enclosure leaves the subject to the (not so) tender mercies of the superego injunction to enjoy. This so-called 'postmodern' subjectivity thus involves a kind of direct 'superegoization' of the imaginary Ideal, caused by the lack of preoper symbolic Prohibition: exemplary are here the 'postmodern' hackers-programmers, those extravagant eccentrics hired by large corporations to pursue their programming hobbies in an informal environment. They are under the injunction to be what they are, to follow their innermost idiosyncracies, they are allowed to ignore social norms of dress and behaviour (what they obey are just some elementary rules of polite tolerance of each-other's idiosyncracies); they thus seem to realize a kind of proto-socialist utopia of overcoming the opposition between alienated business (where you actually earn money) and private hobby-activity (that you persue for pleasure). In a way, their job is their hobby, which is why they spend long hours at weekends in their workplace behind the computer screen: when one is paid for indulging in one's hobby, the result is that one is exposed to a superego pressure incomparably stronger than that of the old 'Protestant work ethic'. Therein resides the unbearable paradox of postmodern "disalienation': the tension is no longer between my innermost idiosyncratic creative impluses and the Institution that either doesn't appreciate them or wants to crush them in order to 'normalize' me: what the superego-injunction of the postmodern corporation (like Microsoft) targets is precisely this core of my idiosyncratic creativity -- I become useless for them the moment I start losing this 'imp of perversity', the moment I lose my 'counter-cultural' subversive edge and start to behave like a 'normal' mature subject. There thus emerges a strange alliance between the rebellious subversive core of my personality and the external corporation.

The Universal Exception, Slavoj Žižek, P. 231-232

Outlook Blog

2007-10-26T09:20:00.000-07:00

Lots of useful tips on the Outlook Team Blog.

See your Business Contacts in a web page

2007-10-19T12:14:00.000-07:00

Here's HTML to load the Outlook View Control and point it to a BCM folder.


<OBJECT classid=CLSID:0006F063-0000-0000-C000-000000000046
        id=ViewCtlFolder
        width="100%"
        height="430"
codebase="http://activex.microsoft.com/activex/controls/office/outlctlx.CAB#ver=9,0,0,3203">
   <param name="Namespace" value="MAPI">
   <param name="Folder" value="\\Business Contact Manager\Business Contacts">
</OBJECT>

The plan for Office online services

2007-10-01T11:16:00.000-07:00

According to this roadmap, the future will include Microsoft Office Live Small Business and Office Live Workspace. No details on the former, but about the latter:

Office Live Workspace is among the first entries in the new wave of online services. Available at no charge, Office Live Workspace lets people do the following:

• Access documents anywhere. Users can organize documents and projects for work, school and home online, and work on them from almost any computer — even one not connected to the company or school network. They can save more than 1,000 Microsoft Office documents to one place online and access them via the Web.
• Share with others. Users can work collaboratively on a project with others in a password-protected, invitation-only online workspace, helping to eliminate version-control challenges when e-mailing drafts to multiple people. Collaborators who don’t have a desktop version of Microsoft Office software can still view and comment on the document in a browser.

That should make it easier to share documents linked to from BCM's history grids.

Start Outlook as you like it

2007-09-27T11:36:00.000-07:00

Outlook 2007 command-line switches

When the BCM Add-in gets disabled

2007-08-01T11:05:00.001-07:00

In the Registry go to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Addins\Microsoft.BusinessSolutions.eCRM.OutlookAddIn.Connect.3

and make sure that the LoadBehavior is 3. With any other value, Outlook won't load the add-in.

Using sqlcmd with BCM v3 databases

2007-07-30T11:33:00.000-07:00

From a command line, on the same machine as the database and logged in as a user with permissiion to access the database, run:

sqlcmd -E -S .\MSSMLBIZ -d MSSmallBusiness

That should connect to database MSSmallBusiness. You'll see a prompt.

Type in a command, e.g.:

SELECT BusinessAddressStreet FROM PublicAccountsView
GO

That should dump the results to the screen.

Type EXIT to get out of sqlcmd.

Changing dbo (database owner)

2007-07-02T08:50:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you need to change the user (login) that owns a database.

For example, you may need to restore a database backup, and the user that made the backup is not a user on your current machine.

There's a Sql Server sproc (stored procedure) to change owner: sp_changedbowner.

Opportunity

2007-06-15T09:14:00.000-07:00

opportunity, noun. A favorable occasion for grasping a disappointment.

-- Ambrose Bierce

Seven BCM videos from Office Online

2007-04-24T08:32:00.000-07:00

Gotta watch them all.

Outlook 2007 update requires BCM update

2007-04-24T08:26:00.000-07:00

There's a new Outlook 2007 update here.

However, it is not compatible with BCM 2007 as shipped. You will also need to update BCM to fix a version number mismatch. Here are the details. And here is the BCM patch.

Hat tip Mauricio Freitas.

Must be someone now

2007-04-11T00:17:00.000-07:00

Stewart Home on Luther Blissett on You Tube.

New tool for configuring BCM databases

2007-03-30T11:13:00.000-07:00

Database Admin Tool for BCM V3

This should be easier than typing in the sql commands from last year's document.

BCM V2 SP4 available

2007-03-05T17:41:00.000-08:00

Read this on the BCM Team Blog.

I would take their advice and only install this if upgrading to Vista or MOA 2007. This SP installs Sql Server 2005, and that causes problems for some user, judging by the traffic on the BCM newsgroup. So, if you don't need the features provided by this service pack, avoid potential problems by sticking with what works.

Social network mapping application works with BCM

2007-03-05T11:48:00.000-08:00

Cortege.

A cortege is a retinue of followers.

What are the databases on the BCM instance?

2007-03-05T10:41:00.000-08:00

Run this command:

sqlcmd -E -S "localhost\mssmlbiz" -Q "select substring(name,1,20), state_desc from sys.databases"

BCM V2 SP4

2007-03-03T09:39:00.000-08:00

For people who want to use BCM V2 (AKA Microsoft Office 2003 Outlook with Business Contact Manager Update) on Vista or with SBA V2 (AKA Microsoft Office 2007 Accounting).

Download SP4 here.

Hat tip SBS Diva.

Sql Express SP2

2007-02-19T22:17:00.000-08:00

Express is now Vista certified! Install it today.

BCM flash demo

2007-02-19T22:14:00.000-08:00

There's a new demo at the Office Outlook site.

Software with a :-) face

2007-02-19T08:43:00.000-08:00

Microsoft execs have in the past cast aspersions on open source software, calling it "communistic", so this news story can't help: Cuba Embraces Open-Source Software. I generally agree with free software saint Richard Stallman that people should know what's running inside their machines, especially in publically significant ones like voting machines. But here I'm mostly entertained by what the dregs of Stalinism say and plan.

And students in [Comandante Rodriguez's] own department are cooking up a version of Linux called Nova, based on Gentoo distribution of the operating system.

"No va" being Spanish for "doesn't go", they're anticipating their users' reactions.

"It's basically a problem of technological sovereignty, a problem of ideology," said Hector Rodriguez, who oversees a Cuban university department of 1,000 students dedicated to developing open-source programs.

Dedicated is right, because they're not doing it for remuneration. As Raoul Vaneigem points out in the Situationist critique of Surealism, ideology is the state's replacement for religion and divine right; the self-justifying mythology for its exercise of economic power. The unpalatable alternative to state controlled operating systems is people picking their own software with their own funds. Lenin proteje nos del capitalismo! It's going to big a long march for commie programmers.

Even so, most of the computers at this week's technology conference showed the red, green, blue and yellow Windows start button in the bottom left-hand corner of their screens.

And the start of the open-source sessions was delayed as organizers fiddled with the computer running their projector. The conference room screen had been displaying the words "Windows XP."

Heh. Big brother billg is everywhere.

Hey dummies!

2007-02-01T07:55:00.000-08:00

New book.

New BCM blog

2007-01-24T09:08:00.000-08:00

The BCM team has a blog.

Technorati Profile

2007-01-23T09:11:00.000-08:00

This is just here for technical reasons.

Technorati Profile

It is OK to ignore this post!

Thank you. Move along now.

Cleaning up BCM from registry, folders, and the GAC

2007-01-23T08:48:00.000-08:00

Sometimes bad things happen (e.g. PC crashes in the middle of an uninstall) and you end up with bits of an application left on your machine, and have to remove them manually.

After uninstalling BCM you can manually remove it from the Registry,
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Business Solutions eCRM
and
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Business Solutions eCRM

You can remove any files left behind under Program Files.
In folder C:\Program Files\Microsoft Small Business,
the folder Business Contact Manager will contain BCM files.
You can remove it.
Other folder may contain SBA or POS files. If you don't have those programs installed, you can delete C:\Program Files\Microsoft Small Business.

And you can remove BCM assemblies from the Global Assembly Cache (GAC).
Go to c:\windows\assembly.
All BCM assemblies will have Public Key Token b03f5f7f11d50a3a. Other Microsoft small business applications (like SBA) will the same token. If you don't have any installed, you can remove all assemblies with that token. If not you can inspect them individually and remove the BCM assemblies.

If BCM on your machine is a mess (e.g. you installed several beta versions; had assorted failures), it is worth cleaning the items above before doing a fresh installation.

Create BCM database from the command line

2007-01-22T10:33:00.000-08:00

It's a long command, and easy to get wrong, but you only need to sqlcmd to execute it. The Schlog has it.

BCM v3 Review

2007-01-21T10:46:00.000-08:00

What is the Killer App for Office 2007?

ACT to BCM service

2007-01-08T08:56:00.000-08:00

Have others convert your ACT database to BCM.

When you're not ready to buy yet

2006-12-22T08:58:00.000-08:00

BCM, the product guide.

How to move your BCM database to another server

2006-12-14T08:50:00.000-08:00

Deploying Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager in a Remote Database Configuration

My Technorati claim

2006-10-31T08:56:00.000-08:00

Technorati Profile

Live BCM

2006-10-31T08:45:00.000-08:00

Here's an announcement of Office Live that includes Office Live Business Contact Manager.

There's no explanation on how the Office and Live versions of BCM will work together.

There is a free version of SBA v2

2006-10-30T14:00:00.000-08:00

Accounting Express 2007

Sql Tools for BCM v3

2006-10-27T14:39:00.000-07:00

With BCM v1-2, and the MSDE data store, if you wanted to interact with the database directly you were pretty much limited to using OSQL and had to figure out Sql Server on your own, unless you had a full Sql Server package and installed the tools, or used some other third party tool.

Now, with BCM v3 and Sql Express 2005, the tools and documentation are available for download. You can get both in various packages. Here are a couple:

Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio Express

SQL Server 2005 Books Online

It's on its way

2006-10-20T08:12:00.000-07:00

Generate your own truck sign here.

Moving the BCM database to another SQL 2005 instance

2006-09-26T08:36:00.000-07:00

How to do it.

How to backup and restore using osql

2006-09-18T10:07:00.000-07:00

This step by step guide is super useful if you have to manage your database without BCM.

Move the BCM database

Another useful bit to know in this area: BCM backup files are zip files which contain the file created by the sql backup. To get to the sql file, make a copy of your bcm backup file, rename the extension to .zip. At that point, you should be able to navigate into the "zip folder" using explorer and copy the sql backup out of the zip folder.

Those (final) beta bits

2006-09-14T15:36:00.000-07:00

BCM Beta 2 Technical Refresh

Use your own database server

2006-09-06T21:01:00.000-07:00

Configuring BCM 2007 databases on a server; without having to install and run Outlook on the server; using your own sql server; and so on.

BCM SDK

2006-08-22T19:14:00.000-07:00

BCM for Outlook Developer Guide

MSDE won't be supported on Vista

2006-08-03T10:29:00.000-07:00

You do want to run on Windows Vista - don't you?

Outlook 11 and BCM 2 kept running after I upgraded a machine to Vista Beta, but I didn't try out every feature. It's probably best to upgrade to Office 12 and BCM 3 along with Vista.