December 7, 2010

Satisfy your Email Addiction while on Tour of Colombia!


The quintessence of Colombia exists in the mountains; in Bogotá, Medellín and Cali, and Zona Cafetera. Even when in this beau place, you can’t be away from your mailbox for long. However MS Exchange Server along with hosted BlackBerry allows synchronization with Blackberry phones.

Exchange hosted email gives easy access to mails on your phone. But prior to setting up with shared Exchange hosting, check what kind of mobile phone you are carrying and whether it is compatible with the local wireless provider. Also, as you are a non-resident of Colombia, to buy Microsoft Exchange, first verify with your home country’s local mobile provider regarding their arrangements with the wireless providers in Colombia. Also, find out the schemes offered by the wireless providers in Colombia. Comcel is the biggest wireless provider in Colombia. What more, the Spanish speaking natives of Colombia can use the Exchange Email features in their own native lingo as Exchange 2010 hosting is available in an assortment of languages.

All in all, using Exchange Hosting on your phone is simple. It provides the opportunity to both equally.

October 13, 2010

Use Desktop Pop-up Application with Asterisk PBX

Reminders, alerts, pop-ups, etc. are very important in this busy running world. Multi-tasking is what all of us do and so chances of overlooking certain alerts is likely. But what if we overlook something which is really significant? Not done, right? Yes! As a result, to avoid this confusion, desktop screen pop-up was introduced. Desktop pop-up application delivers integrated web searches with GoogleMaps and GoogleSearch to locate, dial and save new contacts.

Desktop popup application combines the power of the Microsoft, the power of Google, and the power of your Asterisk PBX based phone to speed up and simplify all your phone communications. Desktop applications use Asterisk AMI link to control any phone connected to a hosted Asterisk server, or control any phone connected to a Broad Soft server.

Possible instant messaging and other Asterisk call notification tools you could utilize: include the following:
1. smbclient (SAMBA)
2. YAC (windows & TiVo listener)
3. YAACID (open source in .NET/C#): Yet Another Asterisk Caller ID
4. Jabber (various methods), ICQ, MSN, …
5. Covide (CRM software)
6. FOP (Flash Operator Panel)
7. HooDaHek (collection of CallerID scripts and tools for Asterisk VOIP PBX)
8. App_notify network caller notification. Mac OSX client available (3rd party tool)
9. app_broadcast: Works with YAC etc. (3rd party tool)
10. asteroid (Open source, JAVA)
11. iBCallMan (Windows Desktop Call Manager)
12. PL Call Notify
13. MythTV OSD
14. NetCID (talking callerid)
15. Emerald Caller-ID Search
16. ADM – Asterisk Desktop Manager
17. U-Rang II (Screen Pop Utility for Windows)
18. Asterisk Dial & Announce Tool (ADAT). Free call-notifier (Outlook/CRM integration, event handling, click-to-dial, BLF panel and more).
19. Pbx Screen Popper (Opens a web page on incoming calls based on specific matching criteria)
20. StarJunction Free Edition Caller ID pop. Integration with Salesforce and SugarCRM
21. OutCall (Pop-Up as well as Outlook integration, free and open source)
22. Email
23. CallerIDpop Perl Script
24. DialApplet, Windows, Mac & Linux
25. AsteriskCallNotification Mac
26. Asterisk+Twitter
27. VoIP Operator Free Windows call notification and dialer for Asterisk. Very easy to use and install.
28. InGenius Connector Search-and Dial PC Application, Caller ID pop, integration with MS Outlook, Active Directory and Google. Optional Softphone.
29. Thirdlane Dialer Free dialer and screen-pop application for Asterisk based PBXs. Integrated with Thirdlane PBX and Thirdlane PBX MTE, MS Outlook, any web based CRM, dual-mode – floating or Outlook toolbar, supports call to URLs.

To add to all this, Apps4Rent offers you the best application hosting solutions, such as, hosted VOIP PBX, Exchange, SharePoint, etc. These software hosting solutions has become the preferred way for companies to implement business software.

September 24, 2010

Monitor your page load performance using SharePoint 2010 Developer Dashboard

I’ve been continuously saying that SharePoint Server 2010 and SharePoint Foundation has been launched with some really great features and when saying that I cannot afford to forget its yet another cool feature Developer Dashboard. The Developer Dashboard allows you to monitor page load performance on SharePoint. Simply put, you can see how each element on the page loads! Now isn’t that really cool?

The Developer Dashboard in SharePoint Server displays diagnostic information gathered during the loading and rendering of the SharePoint content. The dashboard, in conjunction with FireBug or the IE Developer Toolbar, helps developers and designers identify issues in their custom projects. This can be set to always display or to only display on demand. The Developer Dashboard has three different states—On, OnDemand, or Off. When the Dashboard is set to On, it will always be shown on every page. When it is set to OnDemand, you have the ability to show and hide the Dashboard. When it is set to Off, it is, as you may have guessed, not available. OnDemand is the best setting when troubleshooting a page or during development since a Site Collection Admin can turn it on or off and for a particular site only. The cool thing about this is that the Site Collection Admin who turned it on will be the only one to see the Developer Dashboard output. Everyday users won’t see the Developer Dashboard output even if it is turned on by a Site Collection Admin.

The Developer Dashboard contains more configuration options than just to turn it on or off. With this feature you can configure all of the options available for the dashboard:
o Display mode (On, Off, On Demand)
o Auto Launch of Developer Dashboard when critical events are tracked
o Enable the ASP.NET tracing output
o Configure the maximum amount of SQL queries traced
o Configure the maximum amount of critical events traced
o The required permission to view the Developer Dashboard (Full, None or Custom)

Summary
The Developer Dashboard is an effective tool that you can use to gain a better understanding on how your various SharePoint components are performing. Take advantage of features available in SharePoint product line of SharePoint 2010, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, and associated free SharePoint templates and web parts.

September 22, 2010

What is LINQ to SharePoint

What is LINQ? and why use it with SharePoint List data?
LINQ stands for Language Integrated Query, and what LINQ does is add a native querying syntax reminiscent of SQL to .NET Framework programming languages.
Where to get LINQ to SharePoint?

LINQ to SharePoint Server is available in several forms. Next to a regular installer (MSI-package) the project’s source code is also available for download. The reason for making the code available is to help others in implementing custom LINQ query providers. In order to use LINQ to SharePoint Server 2010, one needs the .NET Framework 3.5. If you want to profit from the Visual Studio 2008 integration, you should have Visual Studio 2008 Professional or higher.

The installer and source for the latest release can both be found in the “Releases”-tab on http://www.codeplex.com/LINQtoSharePoint. The latest sources can be found via the “Source Code”-tab on the same web site.

To install the LINQ to SharePoint libraries, run the installer and this will automatically install the libraries and configure Visual Studio 2008. To use the library you can simply add a new LINQ to SharePoint file. You can do this by right-clicking the project, Add, New Item, selecting the LINQ to SharePoint file and clicking Add. This will automatically add a reference to the library to your project.

If you want to manually add this reference, follow these steps:

1. Add the reference to the library by clicking the “Add Reference” item on the properties menu of your project (right-click on the project node in Solution Explorer and choose Add Reference…)
2. In the .NET-tab of the Add Reference dialog, select the LINQ to SharePoint runtime library (BdsSoft.SharePoint.Linq) and click OK
3. In Solution Explorer, the library has been added to the references
4. In your project’s source code, add a using-statement using BdsSoft.SharePoint.Linq;
5. Now the library is ready to be used

Features of LINQ to SharePoint include the following:
o Custom query provider that translates LINQ queries to CAML, the Collaborative Application Markup Language used by SharePoint for querying
o Support for LINQ in C# 3.0 and Visual Basic 9.0.
o Entity creation tool SpMetal to export SharePoint list definitions to entity classes used for querying
o Visual Studio 2008 integration for entity creation (a.k.a. SPML)
o Can connect to a SharePoint site either using the SharePoint object model or via the SharePoint web services
o Planned support for updating through entity types

Take advantage of the SharePoint family of products including SharePoint Server 2010, SharePoint Foundation 2010, MOSS 2007, and associated free SharePoint templates and web parts.