Archive for category technology
Exchange 2003: Message Auto-Reply
Posted by Bloggylife in technology, troubleshooting, windows on October 16, 2008
How do I set up an email auto-reply message?
If you have a distribution group like “customer service” and when someone sends to this group, a reply is sent “Thank you for contacting us, we’ll look into this matter soon”, how is this done??
Sounds simple enough … NO … I looked it up and since we setup a distribution group, there was something about associating the group with a public folder (see link), when following the procedure some weird error kept popping up when trying to save the auto-reply template:
“Changes to the Rule could not be saved.”
From the error, you automatically think “permission problem”, but that didn’t solve the problem and even the procedures to solve this problem didn’t work!
I had to find another way. So this is what we did
1. Create an email account (sales@company.com), because we want to associate rules and with distribution group you can’t because it doesn’t have an email box in exchange
2. Login using that account and configure office outlook as exchange mail
3. Go to tools -> rules and alerts
4. Under “Start from a blank rule” select “Check messages when they arrive” -> next –you can’t do it through OWA-
5. Click Next again and you will get a message “This rule will be applied to every message ….”, click Yes
6. In the next window choose the following actions
a. Have server reply using a specific message
b. Redirect it to people or distribution
c. delete
7. In (a), you’ll get an email message box, write the subject and email body
8. In (b), instead of adding individual users to receive a copy of all emails sent to sales account. Create a distribution group (salesGroup@company.com), add the group in the redirect field. Then add users to the distribution group. This way it is easier to modify the recipients’ list instead of logging everytime and adding or deleting users
9. In (c), I think step (b) automatically deletes the emails in sales account after redirecting them. Nevertheless, this rule to ensure all emails goes to the delete box. This is emptied after specific days. This ensures sales email account size never fills
10. Click Finish
And that’s that 
If anyone has a better solution, PLEEEAZZZEEE share …
Don’t make the alternative solution too easy, because it took me whole day to get this ;P
Microsoft Way
Posted by Bloggylife in technology, windows on October 14, 2008
These days, I have no energy, maybe because I am fasting. Anyway, to run from dealing with the real issues, like upgrading to exchange 2007, I poke around other stuff!
I had the network monitoring application installed, it should expire by the end of the week. I’m pretty sure we’ll not go with this solution, though I like it. We’ll explore Cisco options or some other high end solution
This was supposed to be light, a brisk breeze configuration, I decided to look into Microsoft and see their Microsoft office server solutions
With Microsoft, it’s never simple! So I wanted to implement Project Server and perhaps Form Server, I just want that! See what I benefit from. But NO they talk about having infopath, sharepoint, etc. OK I know all can be integrated together, but let’s take it one step at a time! I have no idea what infopath is ??? and their site on their products, confuses me more. So I got fed up and just went ahead and shot up my VmWare machines and downloaded the stuff to test
But I am thinking of utilizing live servers, because my PC slowed down plenty and it’s killing me slowly
I’ll start with the Project Server and see where we go from there
Desperately waiting for the weekend …
Thoughts on Infrastructure
Posted by Bloggylife in technology, thoughts on September 23, 2008
So how about your infrastructure?
What do you mean by infrastructure?
Your network
Aha … well …
Once we have your infrastructure ready …
…. !!!
Your Microsoft infrastructure, your domain, your active directory, and then we can build your applications atop of it
So you see one word has many meaning in different people’s vocabulary. One can even say the country’s infrastructure and mean by that its streets, cabling, piping, etc.
That’s the confusing part of having to deal with different people, using the same words but each meaning it differently!
Bad Skype
Posted by Bloggylife in technology on September 18, 2008
I just got off the phone with my friend in Jordan. When she called me, I told her I’d call back in 20 minutes through my Skype account and surprisingly the quality was awful compared to the last experience (link)
My ISP is KEMS and I am not sure if they decided to throttle VoIP traffic or what ?? See how I’m blaming ISP directly 
The voice quality was bad, I called her mobile, after some seconds she couldn’t hear my end clearly and my voice breaks and I can’t hear her that well either! After three failed attempts we resorted to the old mobile way
Well since one experience went well and another straight down the drain, I think I should give it another chance before deciding the verdict
ManageEngine – OpManager 7
Posted by Bloggylife in technology, windows on September 18, 2008
I was looking for a network management solution to monitor all our network devices, router, switches, servers, etc. and I came across this application OpManager
I formatted a server -hate this task- and downloaded the application. The specification of my server: Pentium III, 1.4 GHz, 1 GB RAM with win2003 installed. That I discovered after the 3 hour formatting process, I couldn’t find the CDs, found them but broken, endless issues, anyway so WTH is this machine still doing here!!!
I love bundled applications, I mean it is a web based application, I didn’t have to install IIS, it utilizes free Apache and MySQL. You have two options when installing, which is straight forward, either the free version and you can monitor upto 10 devices or the professional edition with which you can monitor unlimited devices for 30 days, I choose the later
Once installed run it access through any browser from within your network and assign devices. There is a discover devices options or you can add the devices manually. Also, to monitor more than what the ping can offer enable SNMP on all devices. On Windows OS, Go to the Services console -> SNMP Services -> right click -> properties -> Security tab and assign them the same community name, ex. “Public” and either accept packets from any host or add the network monitor server to the list. If SNMP is not installed, Go to Add/remove programs -> Add/Remove windows component -> Management and Monitoring tools -> details -> SNMP
On Cisco devices, you should see something like this: snmp-server community public RO
What I love is for every feature there is a test button. If you configure email alerts, you can test. Monitor features and thresholds. I like the fact that you can choose that your session never expires, so you don’t have to sign in again after sometime
I discovered and manually entered the devices. I categorized them in server, router, switch, etc. I set notification profiles and set email alarms. I am looking into monitoring the event logs
Still I am in the exploration phase, I got 27 days till the license expires. Whenever I am free I configure and customize it more
We tried one other application which was Netsmart which wasn’t a successful experience. No matter how good the application is, if it doesn’t have an easy to use interface and it is manageable then it’s a hard sell
xobni – Outlook Plug-in
Posted by Bloggylife in technology, windows on September 15, 2008
I use Microsoft’s outlook for my work mail. As I was reading PC World magazine, I came across this recommended outlook plug-in. I went on and installed it from xobni
After installation, the indexing process started. A total size of 1.5 GB, I am not sure how long it took, because I installed this just before leaving work and I kept it running and I left
The interface is really nice, it’s just another pane added in the view and the most thing I love is how fast the searching feature is and how neat and the information it provides. First I was a bit annoyed that I didn’t get to choose the folders I search, sometimes I just want to search the inbox, the sent items or any other sub-folder I created. I did that because it was such a hassle using the built-in search so I would narrow the search space like that but with xobni it didn’t make much of a difference because it is fast and informs you where the item was found
Another nice feature, it extracts the contacts information in a nice way from the email message itself. And provides information history about that specific contact. The files exchanged, the chain of emails, the contact’s people network and another cool feature are the information some kind of statistics, who you send emails to the most, received from, fastest response, simple funny facts, there are charts, you can take a look at all these facts when you’re bored or need a break!
Today, I saw another beta module added, where they ask questions, like a survey, today’s question was, Are you happy? didn’t answer this question of course
I’m still happy with this plug-in, it made searching a lot easier and much more faster
Home Networking
Posted by Bloggylife in family, technology on August 13, 2008
So I am looking into improving our home network. The main DSL router is placed in the hall and my room is just across it, but for the wireless signal to reach my room is it kind of weak and it disconnects frequently and to just buy a long cable and plug it seems like a big hassle and I know my mother will never leave me in peace with a long wire dragging all the way to my room and besides my door wouldn’t close
I was telling my brother to bring someone to replace the TV wiring to our rooms with UTP cables, just for a couple of rooms if that can be done but still he didn’t look into this
I went to Jarir and got one of those powerline adapters, what they basically do is utilize the powerline wires to transmit the data
I got Aztech adapters, never heard of them before, for 32.500 KD you get two adapters and two 1 meter long UTP cables which are kind of short and some documentations and a CD. Haven’t look into those yet. Anyway it is straight forward, just get the two adapters out of the box, plug them in any power sockets, connect your laptop to one and the other adapter connect the modem to it and there you go, easy as that, no drivers needed or anything
It says it supports upto 85Mbps, haven’t tested that yet, I need to drag something internally and test the speed. But I noticed that if you ping the router, the average response time is around 4ms which is acceptable I guess, normally it’s less then 1ms if you’re going the normal way using switches
How do they work, well just brainstorming here, but I think it is the same as the broadcasting concept, it doesn’t actually know where the other adapter is plugged, maybe an electrician will be more useful as to how the electricity is distributed, hmmmm, anyway so if they data received is meant to the device connected to the adapter then accept it, if not, then drop it. Don’t take my word, search it
I have alot of wireless modems laying around so I think I’ll just buy a couple more adapters to span our network more over the house instead of using an extender which gives me a headache. My bro had a wireless modem installed in his room, I told him to connect via cables and disable the wireless which you can do under your wireless configuration page, just as below
The other option, hide AP, won’t let your SSID be broadcasted, that is you have to manually insert your wireless network name into your laptop’s wireless configuration, for more security but there are softwares that detect wireless networks that don’t broadcast their SSID
Well that’s done, I believe my next move is to check my two lil bros’ PC, I think both are screwed. I am not sure if the antivirus is even running there! Anyway we’ll see about that laters
How can I turn off the Internet ??
Posted by Bloggylife in technology, thoughts on August 8, 2008
How can I turn off the Internet ?? Interesting question …
Of course it is talking about the Internet concept itself, after watching the video you should understand the meaning
What first came to mind is, if I were to turn off the Internet on world wide level, bring down the root DNS servers, of course the Internet won’t go down immediately and it won’t be total devastation but the impact is huge. DNS is responsible for translating the name to IP so you wouldn’t have to type the number instead of the name of what you are trying to connect to
If you type www.hotmail.com, the computer needs the number to go get it for you. If your DNS doesn’t have the number it queries the second DNS it has on its list and so on until they reach the root DNS and this will forward them to hotmail DNS servers for feedback
So how would you turn off the Internet … just let yourself go wild … though in reality is a near impossible task to carry
K-net Problems
Posted by Bloggylife in technology, thoughts on August 4, 2008
For the past two days and including today, some places are having K-net issues! I am not sure why I haven’t read about this in the newspapers but no one seems to mention this or think this is an issue
On Saturday I had a Dr. appointment and when I used my K-net it stated “Bank Unavailable”, I was thinking did my bank go offline!! and then he suggested to use my Visa/Master card and I thought eventually Visa/Master card has to contact my banks’ servers to check my account but surprisingly it did work
Yesterday we went to the Avenues and all ATM machines were out of services and also some shops accepted K-net and others didn’t. So the problem wasn’t with the complex’s network but what was the issue ??
Brain storming by myself, if I were to visualize all the banks networks’ architecture I would believe that each bank host their own network between their branches and handle their own networking equipment and don’t lease it to an ISP. But of course they would need Internet access for interaction with the outside world but most importantly for on-line banking, this is where an ISP comes to picture. Here comes the back-end front-end scenario, where only the front-end can be accessed from outside and the back-end deals with all the banks’ critical servers storing all the information
But I think this solution will allow only withdrawal from your bank using your card, so here comes the K-net which is a network handled maybe by a third party or a representative from each bank to connect all the banks together
So I am thinking maybe something is wrong with the network connecting all the banks together, because it can’t be that all banks are having issues, this kind of environment needs to be stable and safe
In shops with the K-net issue, I was tempted to ask them to try the Visa/Mater but thought otherwise … “basich legafa”
Maybe the shops who are provided with the K-net through a certain bank are the ones facing a problem
So I am hoping someone who has a better idea about this than I do, reads my post, and enlighten us all
IT Diary
Posted by Bloggylife in technology, work on July 21, 2008
Beauty of translate.google.com
C’est une confirmation pour le message électronique que vous avez envoyé à le 20/07/2008 08:12:15
Cette confirmation vérifie que le message a été affiché sur l’ordinateur du destinataire le 21/07/2008 08:37:38
One Click
It is a confirmation for the electronic message that you sent to 20/07/2008 08:12:15
This confirmation verifies that the message was displayed on the recipient’s computer 21/07/2008 08:37:38
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