Category Archives: Updates

System Center Configuration Manager 2012–Release Candidate Comes Along

November 9th, 2011 | Posted in Device Management, SCMDM, Updates

We’re fond of dabbling with Microsoft products at this site, and System Center is no exception (without Virtual Machine Manager my lab would have been less manageable). I’ve done a lot of articles on System Center Mobile Device Manager, and have also taken quick looks at the successor; System Center Configuration Manager 2012 and the Beta releases:
System Center Configuration Manager 2012 Beta 2 Available
SCCM v.Next hits Beta 1

It only seemed natural to at least do an install of the Release Candidate of said product. Now, I have no doubt I can manage my desktop systems and servers with Configuration Manager, but the mobility features…so far they haven’t been causing manic episodes. I have tried to look through the console to see what is available now, assuming that the RC should be pretty much feature complete.
(…)
This time around we get support for more devices, but perhaps not the way we would have wanted to. Read on to see what I mean.

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EAS MD – Looking to The Clouds

October 12th, 2011 | Posted in ActiveSync, Exchange, Updates, Utilities

I’ve grown quite fond of my EAS MD utility, and it’s also been great fun sharing the code powering it for the past weeks/months. When I originally started out coding it I was fueled by what I felt were shortcomings in the official diagnostic utility provided by Microsoft; http://testexchangeconnectivity.com. It only supported Exchange 2003 protocol level, had no means of dealing with security policies, and in general didn’t provide a whole lot of options. It worked OK, but not for the scenarios I wanted to test.

When you’re a programmer at heart this means there might come a moment when you get a feeling of “why not build what I want myself instead of accepting the tools available as is”. Not to mention that other people aren’t going to accept your “whining” either and will eventually challenge you to do better. (I wasn’t pressured by anyone else than myself when it came to this issue though.)

(…)

Today I have come full circle, returning to where we started, and present a web version of EAS MD to you :)

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EAS-MD Version 1.4 – Autodiscover Support

August 8th, 2011 | Posted in Coding, Exchange, Updates, Utilities

This time around it was a long release cycle, but I have gotten around to finishing up a new build of the EAS-MD utility and upping the version number to 1.4.

The main addition to this release is that I’ve added support for testing Autodiscover. This can be a tricky point getting to work properly so I thought it could be relevant for of you. This means I’ve also added support in general for redirection and reading it out if you’re hitting a non-optimal Client Access Server. (The modus operandi for Office 365 is apparently that you should configure your device with m.outlook.com and then be redirected to a specific CAS. They might have changed this by now since Android devices have a couple of problems with this approach – I do not know since I haven’t tested the ActiveSync part of Office 365 yet.)

There are a couple of other changes as well:
- Added Client Certificate Password text box (for pfx-files).
- Added ActiveSync Autodiscover tests. (Please note that SRV record support is not added yet, and thus disabled in the UI.)
- Added scrollbars to output windows.
- Added possibility to use both domain\user and user@domain.com (leave “Domain” textbox empty to use the latter).
- Added support for parsing out the redirect on a HTTP 451.
- Added handling of HTTP 302.
- Added explanation for HTTP 502.
- Added explanation for HTTP 504.
- Disabled “Hex” view option on Main tab. (Code still present, but not sure if this is actually useful, so it’s not active in the UI.)
- Re-designed how HTTP status codes are shown in the output view. (Parses out the individual HTTP codes for errors.)
- Changed default protocol version to 12.1 (Exchange 2007 SPx).
- Major code refactoring.
- Fixed minor bugs.
- Minor changes in the UI.
- Added about tab. (Easier to identify the version you’re running.)
(…)
And a description of how Autodiscover works.

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