MICROSOFT BI = FREE ?

What a day,

Yesterday saw an interesting change in BI. One small part bad, and a HUGE part good. Microsoft has made a very aggressive move against its competition in the BI space. Everyone will put their own spin on this however from my standpoint its pretty simple math as to the outcome and the roadmap for the future.

First move, the bad news. Microsoft will be sun setting the planning application that is part of Performance Point Server. There will be one more update in the summer in the form of a service pack, then no further updates to the product.

Second move, the rest of the Performance point tools will be delivered in the future through SharePoint and Office.

Third move, effective immediately all PPS licenses are now covered by eCal of SharePoint.

So what does it all really mean?

Let’s look at the product direction. Many customers were having issues with having to buy a SharePoint license and then buy PPS licenses to view embedded objects in SharePoint. It seemed like a double bill (Yes I know the competition does this as well…, but that doesn’t make it right). Also, the future of the analysis tool ProClarity was in some doubt, between excel, and the new tools demoed (Gemini) this was not clear. Now Microsoft has indicated that information would be delivered in the next release of Office through Excel, and most of the functionality on the server side would be part of SharePoint. So this is all great news.

Licensing. Well the number of companies that already have SharePoint and SQL Server 2005/8 are rather vast, so in a reporting / BI game Microsoft is now available to most customers with no additional costs. This means that your implementation and consulting are the only costs to deliver BI (Provided that you ready have SQL Server and SharePoint eCals.). That is AMAZING!! It’s like free BI for a LOT of the clients that I currently deal with.

It’s going to be a pretty big and impressive year with BI, that much is for sure. Talk to you soon!

See the announcment for more info.

Fraser

Task management has always been near and dear to my heart. Basically because I was never any good at it. I found a solution a few years ago to the many issues that I had with work, home, emails, things to look at in the future. This was David Allen’s Getting things done, Known as GTD. Well one issue that I had was that the IPhone does NOT have a task list. so you have to download one. I use Remember the milk. It is a web based task list and has an IPhone client. You have to pay to get the IPHONE client but the cost is VERY LOW! (The app is free, but you need a pro account to enable use of it.)

The app can be VERY intimidating to use at first. I recommend ONE list.. youi will figure out how to tag things and sort them later, but if you are implementing a GTD solution I highly recommend getting a free account and trying this out.

2 things to do this year.. 1) learn to search google, more on this later. 2) get your task list under control.

This email leads into 2 more topics that I will talk about later.

1) getting your email under control

2) Google search

I was just at a fantastic event held by

The Calgary Entrepreneurs.

We learned about Maximizing Search Engine Optimization and how a company can drive people to its site by simply making some minor changes to their site. It was a fantastic look into the world of how Google and like search engines function.

No one is finding you on the Internet

Was the title for this meetup.

David West from eKzact Solutions

shared some fantastic tips on how to get your
web site noticed and how to drive results from it.

It was also great to see some people there like my good friend

Stuart Crawford. I also met another fantastically interesting person ,

Ronda Bertram, author and Entrepreneur extraordinaire. You can

visit her web site at http://www.circlesofsand.com/ and http://www.rondabertram.com .

Now I’m off to fixup my web site.. Yikes!!!!

The Southern Alberta Microsoft User Community (SAMUC) will be hosting a very special luncheon with SMB Phones on January 20, 2009 at 11:30 AM. Our feature speaker is Trent Johnsen, Vice-President of SMB Phone.

From POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) to SIP; How Microsoft is changing all the rules in small business communications with Response Point.

Join Trent Johnsen, Vice President, SMB Phone to see how Microsoft Response Point is changing small business communications and what it means for you and your customers. SMB Phone is Canada’s newest Microsoft certified Internet Telephony Service Provider (ITSP). Along with a working demo/overview of Response Point, Trent will provide an insider’s industry perspective on how you can improve your customer’s business communications and enjoy significant income opportunities working with Response Point and SMB Phone.

To register for this free luncheon in Calgary visit http://www.samuc.com

Event is open to all IT Professionals, Microsoft Partners and Microsoft Small Business Specialists. Lunch is provided.

So here is a little gem for those of us with multiple computer, be them desktops plus a laptop, or 2 desktops.

You can hide all the boxes these day and you may have one or 2 monitors, but one thing that you can’t hide is the need for multiple keyboards and mice. With Synergy you can have just one mouse and keyboard on your desktop and move between systems without the need for a kvm switch, it is also cross platform!!

http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/

Ever want to start up a VPC to do a demo and you have too many things running and want to maximize your memory.

So you go into services, kill everything that you can find, close all your apps. and then you do your demo, but sometimes you kill the wrong things, or too much, then you need to reboot after?

Well here is a little trick that I picked up in order to make your life just a wee bit better.

Net STOP

and

Net Start

i.e.:

net stop “SQL Server (MSSQLSERVER)”

net stop “SQL Server Analysis Services (MSSQLSERVER)”

net stop “SQL Server Integration Services”

net stop “SQL Server Reporting Services (MSSQLSERVER)”

in one bat file and

net start “SQL Server (MSSQLSERVER)”

net start “SQL Server Analysis Services (MSSQLSERVER)”

net start “SQL Server Integration Services”

net start “SQL Server Reporting Services (MSSQLSERVER)”

In the other.

Now make sure you right click and run these as administrator under Vista. To check what services you want to / need to stop or start simply go to the services under the control panel / administrative tools.

Good Luck!

 Fraser

I was hunting for a way to get rid of the issues that I was having with CAPS LOCK !!

I hit the key without realizing all the time. As I try to move closer and closer to pounding out documents and code the frequency of caps lock abuse has increased.

So my mission

Neuter the CAPS LOCK

So the simple solution is to pull the dang thing off, but there are better ways, as you may at some point want to use it. Or why not use it for something else.

So I found an answer : AutohotKey

What a great APP!

Not only can you change the key to something else, you can make a SHIFT CAPS LOCK actually turn it on!

And then it hit me, That I could use this tool for much much more….

For One, I use GMAIL. I love gmail, but why it does not have a reply signature or proper html / rtf signatures I will never know. So I added CTRL + ALT + S to insert my signature

I also added ty -> Thank You

yoiu -> you :: My biggest and most common typo..

CTRL + ALT + M : to open my email

yt =

Yours Truly,

Fraser

ty = Thank You.

and

Ok -> OK another common typo / brain malfunction

There are many many more uses here is an example of parts of my script :

Most of these are direct grabs from the website  : http://www.autohotkey.com/

!m::Run http://gmail.google.com

;^!w:: msgbox, WinActive ahk_class

^!n::

IfWinExist Untitled – Notepad

          WinActivate

else

          Run Notepad

return

; Only allow capslock if it’s shift-capslock

$SC03a::

   GetKeyState,caps,CapsLock,T

   if caps = D

      SetCapsLockState,Off

   return

; ———————- EMAIL SIGNATURE ———————-

#IfWinActive ahk_class Chrome_VistaFrame

^!s::

Send — {Enter}

send ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ {Enter}

send Fraser Dowall {Enter}

send {Enter}

send {Enter}

send fraser@dowall.com {Enter}

send ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ {Enter}

return

#IfWinActive

; ———————- EMAIL SIGNATURE ———————-

; ———————- ————— ———————-

; ———————- EMAIL SIGNATURE ———————-

;Quickies

printscreen::end

numlock::home

::ty::Thank you

::sig::Thank you,{enter}Fraser

::yw::You are welcome,{enter}Fraser

; tip#3 – Adding the timestamp quickly while taking notes

:*:ndate::

FormatTime, CurrentDateTime,, M/d/yyyy h:mm tt  ; It will look like 6/29/2008 10:35 AM

SendInput %CurrentDateTime%

return

Is the IPhone ready for business?

For those who know me I go through a lot of tech, and very fast. I’ve had, or tried out just about every phone technology out there.

The 2 winners so far were

1) Symbian OS on a Sony Ericsson P990

2) Windows Mobile on an HTC

I loved some of the multitasking and interactivity on the Windows Mobile suite but the OS seemed too large for the hardware that I was running it on. It reminded me of when Windows 95 came out and everyone was trying to run it on their 386 machines.

Plagued with daily re-boots and the machine not being fast enough to switch to phone mode in order to answer an incoming call, the device quickly became a fantastic GPS and PDA, but as a phone it was lacking.

I decided to give the IPhone a try.

So the quick answer: as a phone the IPhone is awesome. Free updates, Applications galore.. have you every heard of Windows Mobile having a free automatic update?

So what is it missing, Well both the IPhone and the Windows mobile device fail when it comes to long distance calling cards, I’m not sure why neither  of them have figured this out the way that the Symbian OS has done since the start. You can use 3^rd party apps on windows mobile to get the same functionality, but so far I have not found the perfect app for the IPhone.

The IPhone also does not support exchange calendar invites, this is a huge miss, for business I have to go online and open the attachment in notepad or equivalent to try and read it, although Google seems to have figured this out for the calendar app.

Cut and Paste, yeah we are still waiting for this pretty basic feature, although, I will admit to having only needed to use the feature a couple of times…

I am very happy with the IPhone though, it is by far the best overall phone that I have ever used, the big screen, one button interface has so far won me over. I can’t wait for the next set of updates and perhaps a tomtom app on the IPhone to complete the win for me. As for the lack of real push email, I’m not sure that I miss it as a feature, and even more, I’m not sure if I believe that it is necessary. I mean is it email or SMS?

Please IPhone let me choose custom message sounds and email sounds though.. this is really missing. As well as customize the backgrounds and look and feel without jail breaking the dang thing.

Winner so far – IPhone – I am able to do my business and I use IMAP to keep my world in sync.

Many people ask me about technical skills and training. What I do not hear much of these days is requests for some of the more basic ‘SOFT’ skills that help everyone on a day to day basis. Everyone would like to think that they are efficient users of time, organization and email. The truth, however is that most people struggle daily with their task lists and get stuck up in E-Mail Hell and have what I like to call Email anxiety (Not sure where I heard that). But the truth is that we either push everything in rules to folders or we archive it so it’s there somewhere, but we always wonder if we did in fact respond to X.

One easy way to see if you are one of these organized email keepers or not, is to check and see if you have ever asked someone for an email or information, only to have them forward an email that they had already sent you containing the information.

More on Email later…

A few years ago I started re tooling my time management. I decided to use a technique that I found on one of my favorite blogs. Lifehacker.org.

David Allen’s book “Getting things done”, “The Art of Stress-Free Productivity” has led to some significant ways that I organize my tasks emails I highly recommend buying his book and trying it out for yourself.

Alternatively there is an Audio book version that may be more handy for those who prefer to listen!

Links :

I ran into a customer using the old Y2K Date that I hhadn’t seen for a while and thought that I would take a moment to blog how to convert to and from.

TO : 

CASE WHEN SUBSTRING(CAST(dKey_TimeByDay AS VARCHAR),1,1) = 2 THEN ’1′+

SUBSTRING(CAST(dKey_TimeByDay AS VARCHAR),3,6)

 ELSE ’0′ +

SUBSTRING(CAST(dKey_TimeByDay AS VARCHAR),3,6)

END