JonWhite's WebLog

Microsoft Convergence Orlando FL

JonWhite — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 17:24:00 GMT

I've got a lot to blog about but no time to do it. I've been busy with the CRM launch events that have been going on the past week. I'll be in Charlotte, NY, BOS over the next few weeks. In addition, we have the partner conference going on in FL this coming week. A group of us are going to catcht the Space Shuttle Launch.

So, what have I got to blog on....I've been trying to crack the use of MSIDCRL40.dll on server enviroments. So far not much luck. This is the authentication component for Windows Live ID. I've been building out additional functionality on our team's internal CRM implementation. I've also done some scriptting for integration of Virtual Earth mapping with geocoding for our demo's. Next I want to show how to use jscript from CRM Live to push data off a form to a web page.

Don't forget to check out CRM Live TS Team Blog : http://blogs.msdn.com/dynamicscrmlive/default.aspx

Microsoft Online Services

JonWhite — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 21:29:00 GMT

I've been at TechReady all this week. This is the Microsoft internal technical readiness conference. It's a great chance to meet up with other Microsoft employees and to hear about the latest going ons. I've been a few sessions on the Online Services offering and futures. http://www.microsoft.com/online/default.mspx . Lots of good stuff. Last night I had dinner with other MS employees from Poland, Russia, and Canada. In the 5+ years I've been with Microsoft this is an experience I've had many times yet, it's always a bit humbling. The truth is there are not many organizations where such a collection of diverse individuals from all over the world get to interact.

The Online services will give you the ability to host your data, email, portal needs, etc to a Microsoft managed service. As business's begin to engage in this online model, the IT industry will surely change. Traditionally over the years, the role of the IT person has been to manage, update, maintain, troubleshoot, and administer the software infrastructure. As we move into the online world, this role will be more business focused then 'techno-mechanico'. Lets call this new role, the IT Business Admin. Also developers will shift to the added value role as opposed to building out complete solutions. Developers will need a breadth of knowledge to bridge together different services to enable additional business needs. I think the next 5-10 yrs will have big changes for how companies manage IT needs as well as the traditional technology roles. Compare to the auto industry, there was a time when if you owned a car, you were part mechanic. Today, few have the knowledge to work on their own cars and high schools don't offer the vocational training for automechanics any more.

Integrating WebLead to CRMLive

JonWhite — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 22:19:00 GMT

http://blogs.msdn.com/dynamicscrmlive/default.aspx

I've posted on the CRM Live blog about integrating to CRM Live. I also have a link to a sample app that I have hosted on my SkyDrive.

Supporting Virtual Earth Maps in your web page

JonWhite — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 19:16:00 GMT

Adding maps to your web page can be a great tool to help determine locations. You can use Virtual Earth to serve up the maps based on geo location data.

Here's a html code sample for serving up virtual earth maps.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head runat="server">
    <title>Virtual Map</title>
      <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>
      <script type="text/javascript" src="http://dev.virtualearth.net/mapcontrol/mapcontrol.ashx?v=6"></script>
      <script type="text/javascript">
         var map = null;
         var qsParm = new Array();

         function GetMap()
         {

            qsParm['Lat'] = null;
            qsParm['Long'] = null;
            qs();

            // Get Lat & Long
            if (qsParm['lat'] && qsParm['long'])
            {
            }
            else
            {
                document.write("Missing Lat & Long");
                return;
            }

            map = new VEMap('myMap');
            var geolat = qsParm['lat']
            var geolong = qsParm['long']
            map.SetDashboardSize(VEDashboardSize.Normal);
            var latlong = new VELatLong(geolat,geolong);
            map.LoadMap(latlong, 20 ,'h' ,false);
            map.SetCenterAndZoom(latlong,15);
            return;
         }

        function qs()
        {
            var query = window.location.search.substring(1);
            var parms = query.split('&');
            for (var i=0; i<parms.length; i++)
            {
                var pos = parms[i].indexOf('=');
                if (pos > 0)
                {
                    var key = parms[i].substring(0,pos);
                    var val = parms[i].substring(pos+1);
                    qsParm[key] = val;
                }
            }
        }


      </script>
</head>
<body onload="GetMap();">
<div id='myMap' style="position:relative; width:400px; height:400px;"></div>
</body>
</html>

Notes on SilverLight

JonWhite — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 21:53:00 GMT

I’ve to my SilverLight app up and running at www.crmlivets.com

This app is a viewier for screen cast demo’s of CRM Live. It uses a tree control that I developed.

I thought I would spend a bit to explain some SilverLight development stuff that I don’t think is obvious to most. There are lots of blogs with code examples and such so don’t expect much in that from this blog. I’ll try to keep it relative to content that I didn’t find easily in other places.

The simple model is a pure html application that host the Silverlight control and uses jscript to code against the control. The next model up the food chain is to have an ASP net application that includes a silver light control. Again, not to hard. The tricky stuff is interaction between your code and control. First off, the control is run on the client machine so you can’t just code to it from ASP. You can build .Net components that manage the control but still, you’re not directly talking to those objects from ASP. A simple way to interact between the code that manages he control and the logic in your ASP application is with hidden fields. The fields are available to both the managed code and jscript that you use to handle events, etc in SilverLight. The thing to remember is that the code, whether it’s jscript or .Net runs on the client side with the control. You can also use both and have both managed code and jscript code call methods in one another. Handy… there’s a ton more you can do in managed code than jscript but jscript is useful.

How to add SilverLight to my existing ASP.net apps ?

An easy model to implement is to first create a VS2008 SilverLight Control. For example, a simple bar chart. Add the control to the html of your asp.net application. Include a reference to the library. You’ll also need to reference the SilverLight.dll library. In your xaml, you’ll have a object of your control. When the page loads, the silverlight control is loaded which process’s the xaml, which has a object of your control type and creates an instance of your control. Great, I now have a ASP.net application that has a silverlight control in it. To interact with it, create hidden fields on your form and initialize them during the Page_Load event. Next, during the Canvas load event you can retrieve the values and use them accordingly in your control. It’s a simple way to have a control that gets load with dynamic data.

Windows Live ID

JonWhite — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 00:28:00 GMT

What is a Windows Live ID ?
Most folks think that Windows Live ID ( WLID ) is simply an email address and password. Sorta.
WLID uses an email address to identify your WLID account. The reason is that it is a unique value to you.
Your password is the authentication to your account. A WLID is a set of claims that your account makes. The claim
is specific to the owner of the account. This is not only specific to people but can be used for organizations,
devices, and services. Example of claims are user' email address, type of indentify of the account, relationships,authorization
of other claims such as parental control. The account can be authenticated using name/password, smart cards, and security pins.
WLID will be the authentication system for existing and future Microsoft online services. Orginally, Microsoft offered a similiar
service known as Passport. WLID is the evolution of Passport.

How do I get WLID ? Easy, go to http://home.live.com/ click Sign Up
Cost: 0$
Secure: yes

With your WLID you'll have access to lots of free services like email,your own space, in the cloud storage,
photo gallery, editing tools.

You'll need a WLID to log into Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live also. I found it useful to have a couple of WLID accounts.
One I use for employement related services and the other I use for personal. I can also link accounts together. That way, I should
have access to services that are with my other WLIDs. I have found that this doesn't always work. I think that during the
login process a service can determine that your using a linked account and deny. Make sense. Some serivces wouldn't want you
sharing your access.

Windows Live Dev

JonWhite — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 19:31:00 GMT

Windows Live development provides a collection of services for building rich web applications.
Photos, Video, Contacts, Maps, Search, Authentication. Here's a link to map of the services http://dev.live.com/img/wlp-mix.pdf.

With these new services, developers will be able to quickly build applications focusing on the app and not the infrastructure.

I'm still working on my silverlight streaming application that will allow for demonstrations of MS CRM Live. I'll post a link once it's complete to give you an idea of the types of things you can do with SilverLight Streaming.

SilverLight Live Streaming

JonWhite — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 01:09:00 GMT

SilverLight Streaming http://silverlight.live.com/ is probably one of the most exciting things I’ve seen from MS.

Basically it’s a Live service where you can host a silver light application and stream video.

What makes is so great is you actually write C# code into a package and upload to the server where it runs.

I’ll repeat that …write C#\VB\etc code against a limited .Net framework that is hosted on a server. This is very cool. I can see other products doing the same thing.

They’re will be a whole new model of Live Developers focused on writing apps for all the different services.

We are switching from a procedure model to a declarative world. Big change.