Monday, May 16, 2011

Put Your Mac to Sleep Now!


From Mac|Life see the article here (Put your Mac to Sleep Now!)
screen shot of Expose and spaces of options
Active Screen Corners can put your display to sleep, but not your Mac.
Is there a way to put my Mac to sleep with a series of keystrokes, instead of going to the Apple menu and selecting Sleep? 
Absolutely! For a quick-sleep keyboard shortcut, hold down Command-Option-Eject for two seconds. If you’re looking for a keyboard shortcut to put all displays—but not your Mac itself—to sleep, press Control-Shift-Eject. To get that handy Restart/Sleep/Shut Down/Cancel dialog (the same one you got by pressing the Power button on older Mac keyboards), just press Control-Eject.
It’s also possible to put your display (not your whole Mac) to sleep in an instant whenever you drag your mouse cursor to one corner of the screen. Go to System Preferences > Exposé and Spaces > Exposé, and set one of the Active Screen Corners to Sleep Display

10 Coolest Keyboard Shortcuts You Never Knew About

10 Coolest Keyboard Shortcuts You Never Knew About from Mac|Life.com...

Keyboard shortcuts are the lifeblood of many productive Mac users. Not only can keyboard shortcuts make for a nicer user experience and cut down on the time needed to do a task, they can also just be plain cool. Mac OS X has many shortcuts ready and willing to do your bidding, but also has many hidden and unknown shortcuts. That's why we've compiled a list of 10 of the coolest keyboard shortcuts you never knew about.




1.Control + Option + Command + Eject

Use the keyboard combination of Control + Option + Command + Eject to instantly shut down your Mac. This is a great time saver because it bypasses the shut down counter that you get when using Apple menu > Shut Down. As an alternative, you can also press Option + Command + Eject to sleep your Mac.

2. Command + Shift + A/U/D

These keyboard shortcuts are used to navigate around the Finder. To open the Applications folder on your Mac, press Command + Shift + A in an opened Finder window; press Command + Shift + U to open the Utilities folder; and, press Command + Shift + D to open your Desktop folder in the Finder. These keyboard shortcuts can also be used when in an opened save dialog to navigate to these folders.

3. Shift + Command + I

When used inside of Safari, this keyboard shortcut (Shift + Command + I) will automatically generate a new email message inside of Mail.app and paste the link of the web page you were browsing in the body text. This shortcut is great for quickly sharing a website address with a friend via email.

4. Control + D

To the bane of many Windows to Mac switchers, the Mac's "Delete" key doesn't actually function as the delete key does in Windows. The "Delete" key on the Mac instead functions as a backspace. To remedy this, you can instead use Command + D in any text area on your Mac to delete from the front of the cursor.

5. Control + Option + Command + 8

Use this keyboard shortcut to invert the colors on your Mac's screen. This high contrast display is used by individuals with visual impairments needing high-contrast screens, but can also provide a cool effect. Warning: this keyboard shortcut may be useful when doing April fool's pranks, but Mac|Life will not be responsible for any damages resulting from the prank recipient trying to beat their Mac back into shape.

6. Control + Command + D

When writing, we often need to quickly look up the meaning of a word; however, it can be a pain to open Dictionary.app and type in the word we want to look up. Instead, we prefer this nice way to quickly look up a word. With your mouse cursor over top of the word you'd like to look up, press Control + Command + D. A dialog will then pop up with the word defined by the built-in Mac OS X dictionary. While holding down the keyboard combination, you can mouse around to different words in the document.

7. Command + Shift + 4 + Space bar

At Mac|Life, we deal with a lot of screenshots on a daily basis, and this little-known keyboard combination allows us to capture a screenshot of only the window we need. To grab just a one-window screenshot, press Command + Shift + 4, then when the cross hairs appear, press the space bar. The cross hairs will change to a picture of a camera that can be placed over top of the window to be captured and clicked. The resulting window-only screenshot will appear on your Desktop.

8. Option + Command + M

Sometimes when you're working on a large task, you lose track of just how many windows you've opened on your Mac. To minimize all of your opened windows and de-clutter your screen, just press Option + Command + M to have all of the windows minimized to the Dock.

9. Option + Shift + Command + Esc

Mac applications can sometimes get unruly and crash. When this happens, you can press and hold Option + Shift + Command + Esc to instantly Force Quit the application, and bypassing the Force Quit app.

10. Command + `

Exposé and Command + Shift is a great way to cycle through all of the different applications and windows opened on your Mac, but what if you only want to cycle through the current application's opened windows? In that case, use Command + ` (the ` is located on the key above tab and next to the number 1 key). This keyboard combination will cycle through all of the opened windows in the currently active application.

Do you know of another time-saving keyboard shortcut that you use? Let us know about it in the comments section below.

Monday, May 9, 2011

Insight 6.5.X Support Being Discontinued

Are you using a Supported Version of Scribe Insight? If not, you are at risk of not being able to receive help when you have an issue. The Scribe Insight 6.5.x platform will be discontinued the end of June 2011. What does this mean to you? If you are running on Scribe Insight 6.5.x or older, you will not receive support for your installation.

Scribe Online RS is ready to purchase

We’re excited to announce that the first service built on the Scribe Online platform has been released and is ready to sell. Scribe Online Replication Services (RS) significantly simplifies the data extraction and replication of Dynamics CRM 2011 Online and Dynamics CRM 2011 on-premise data. Contact your Scribe Regional Business Manager if you are interested in selling Scribe Online RS, and be sure to ask them about our Scribe Online RS webinar series.

Welcome to extreme 2011 Las Vegas

extreme is the premier partner event focused exclusively on Microsoft Dynamics CRM and dedicated to advancing best practices and strategies for Microsoft Dynamics CRM organizations.

Prepare for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
Technical Readiness: Extreme provides a unique opportunity to gain deep technical readiness on Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 in a face-to-face environment - with content delivered by Microsoft product team, technical support and MVP technical experts within the channel.
Evolve Your Business
Business Readiness: You’ll also learn best practices from professionals who are subject matter experts in marketing, sales and business leadership, providing a well-rounded approach to building your practice. You’ll gain insights on how to evolve your business to take advantage of the transforming Microsoft Dynamics CRM strategy including the new marketplace and how to build a successful cloud practice along with growing their current business.
Connect with the Channel
Business Connections: extreme provides a great multi-day opportunity to connect with other successful CRM partners, creating important business relationships to help your business grow.




Salesforce.com to Microsoft Dynamics CRM Migration Template

We now have a template that will help you migrate data from Salesforce.com to Microsoft Dynamics CRM version 4 or version 2011. The template takes care of the basics of account, lead, and activity data. Here is a list of the data the template migrates.

  • Account records
  • Contact records
  • Activity records
  • Un-converted Leads
  • Attachments

When the template runs, it creates key cross reference relationships for the primary IDs for accounts, contacts, and leads. With the graphical environment in the Scribe Workbench it should be relatively easy to extend the template to handle other types of data related to these three objects, or to other objects. You can learn more about the template and how to implement it by watching this tutorial video, or by reading the template guide.

The guide has more details about the template including the field mappings. You can download the template from the Samples section of our  template download page.

Friday, May 6, 2011

Setting up a SalesLogix Development Environment


1.     Backup & Restore a copy of the Production Database:
1.     Create a backup of the SalesLogix database. Restore the backup with a new name on the database server.
2.     Run Sysdba Update Script against the development SalesLogix database.
sp_change_users_login ‘Update_One’, ‘sysdba’, ‘sysdba’
2.     Move the Production logging path to the development server:
1.     On the development environment server, create a folder to act as the development logging path directory.
Example: C:\SalesLogixQA
2.     Right-click the C:\SalesLogixQA folder, then click Properties.
3.     On the SalesLogixQA Properties window, click the Sharing tab.
4.     Select the Share this folder radio button
5.     Click the Permissions button.
6.     On the Permissions for SalesLogixQA window, click the Add button.
7.     On the Select Users, Computers, or Groups window, in the Enter the object names to select field, enter the name of the domain user running the SalesLogix services.
User: slxservice
8.     Click the Check Names button
9.     Click the OK button.
10.  On the Permissions for SalesLogixQA window, in the Group or user names field, click slxservice.
11.  In the Permissions for slxservice area, select the Full Control checkbox
12.  Click the Apply button.
13.  Click the OK button.
14.  On the SalesLogixQA Properties window, click the Security tab.
15.  Repeat steps 6-13 to add the slxservice user to the folder’s security properties.
16.  On the SalesLogixQA Properties window, click the Apply button.
17.  Click the OK button.
18.  Copy the Documents and Library folders from the production logging path to the C:\SalesLogixQA folder. 
Note: For each development environment, create a separate logging path to avoid cross-environment contamination.

3.     Change the Logging Path for the development database:
1.     Use a SQL tool such as SQL Server Management Studio to perform the following statements:

Note: The following statements must not be executed through the Execute SQL tool in the SalesLogix Administrator.  Doing so will cause data corruption in the production environment.  These steps MUST be performed before creating a connection to the development database via Connection Manager.

For environments that do not contain a Synchronization Server license, steps 1 and 2 below must still be followed to avoid accidental deletion or corruption of production attachments and library documents.
§  UPDATE sysdba.BRANCHOPTIONS SET AttachmentPath = '\\SERVERNAME\SalesLogixDevSync\Documents' WHERE SiteCode = (SELECT PrimaryServer FROM sysdba.SYSTEMINFO WHERE SystemInfoID = 'Primary')
§  UPDATE sysdba.BRANCHOPTIONS SET SalesLibraryPath = '\\SERVERNAME\SalesLogixDevSync\Library' WHERE SiteCode = (SELECT PrimaryServer FROM sysdba.SYSTEMINFO WHERE SystemInfoID = 'Primary')
§  UPDATE sysdba.SYNCSERVER SET ServerPath = '\\SERVERNAME\SalesLogixDevSync' WHERE SiteCode =(SELECT PrimaryServer FROM sysdba.SYSTEMINFO WHERE SystemInfoID = 'Primary')
§  DELETE FROM sysdba.SYNCSERVICEFILE
§  DELETE FROM sysdba.SYNCTRANSFER
§  DELETE FROM sysdba.SLXWEBSERVER

4.     Create a new connection in the SalesLogix Connection Manager.
For SQL 2008 database servers you must perform the following steps in order with creating a new connection.
1.  Provide connection name and the new connections property dialog window will open.
2.  On the Connection tab provide database server name.
3.  Enter sysdba user name and password. 
4.  Check the box to remember password.
5.  Select the SalesLogix database for the connection.  DO NOT TEST CONNECTION  AT THIS POINT.
6.  Navigate to the tab named ‘All’.
7.  Scroll down to Persist Security Info and double click to open.  Set the value as True.
8.  Click OK.
9.  On the All tab, scroll up to Integrated Security and double click to open.
10.  Click reset value.  Although the value is initially blank, after resetting value should still be blank.
11.  Navigate back to the Connections tab.
12.  Test Connection.
13.  If connection test succeeds click OK to save connection and exit the Connection Manager.

5.      Navigate to SalesLogix Client and set up datalink to the development database. 

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

The Best Windows 7 Tablets at CES 2011

While most of the 80 tablet PCs rolled out at CES 2011 were Android-based, a good chunk actually run on Windows 7. We give you a list of the best we saw at the show.

Scores of tablets were announced and demoed at CES 2011, and while most of them were Android-based, a good chunk ran on Windows 7 and an Intel processor. And why shouldn't there be a bunch of those floating around, what with Google screwing over every other tablet maker by delaying its Honeycomb Android OS? Almost every Android tablet ran on a 2.2 build that was buggy and clearly unfinished. Even the Motorola Zoom, which had an early version of Honeycomb running, demoed the user experience via a video because it didn't want anyone touching the unit. Interestingly enough, the closest thing to a finished tablet at CES 2011 was one that ran on a full-blown version of Windows 7. Though I wouldn't call them all winners, there were several that stood out from the crowd.

Samsung Sliding PC 7 Series

A sliding screen on the Samsung Sliding PC 7 Series reveals a physical keyboard (if one is absolutely essential). 


Viliv X70

The Viliv X70 weighs less than a pound, thanks, in large part, to a 7-inch screen that boasts a 1,024-by-600 resolution. 


Lenovo IdeaPad Windows Slate

The Lenovo IdeaPad Slate’s screen is also equipped with a digitized layer (made by Morgans Touch) and pen. 






Lenovo IdeaPad Slate (an official name hasn't been chosen yet)

Lenovo U1 Hybrid Tablet

The Lenovo U1 Hybrid, which isn’t available in the U.S., is a Windows 7 laptop that undocks to form a slate, with each portion running on a different processor and operating system, allowing you to experience Windows 7 and Android in one system. 

Asus Eee EP121 With an Intel Core i5 ULV CPU, the Asus Eee EP121 is easily the most powerful slate tablet 


Asus Eee EP121 PC Mag Article


The Asus Eee EP121 is easily the most powerful slate tablet coming out of the show, as it runs on an Intel Core i5 processor (an ultra-low voltage variant) and can be configured with up to 4GB of memory. Its 12-inch screen is among the biggest for tablets, and the 1,280-by-800 resolution is nothing short of spectacular. One of the characteristics that make it a viable tablet contender is its Wacom digitized screen and pen, which take advantage of Windows 7's handwriting recognition engine. And because it's a Windows operating system running on robust parts, it can handle full blown apps like Adobe's Creative Suite or Microsoft's Office 2010(more)...