What day is bin day?
We are currently working on making the collection days online, however in the mean time please either e mail us at contactus@bridgnorth-dc.gov.uk or telephone …blah blah blah
How difficult can it be?
Who Killed the Webmaster?
There’s an interesting write up about the demise of the traditional Webmaster role at http://blog.rightbrainnetworks.com
The author suggests the following reasons
- The march of technology
- The economy
- The rise of Web 2.0
Personally I blame Content Management Systems.
He also has a good definition of Web 2.0
As far as I can tell, Web 2.0 is mostly about rounded corners, low-contrast pastel colors, and domain names with missing vowels.
I wonder if jmprnc.co.uk is available?
[tags]Webmaster, web 2.0[/tags]
Importing data into MS Dynamics CRM
Over the last few weeks, amongst other things, I’ve been trying to import records into MS Dynamics CRM. We have a pretty straightforward spreadsheet containing some 6000 rows of account and contact details. Now the documentation, if that’s what they call it, suggests that you can either use the bulk import wizard built into the MS CRM application or the Data Migration Framework (DMF).
Unfortunately I was unable to use the bulk import wizard as it lacks support for custom attributes. So my only option was to use the DMF and what a painful process it turned out to be.
Here are a few tips for anyone else who needs to go through a similar process.
- Backup both the cdf_mscrm and MSCRM databases before you start and after every step.
- Use the DMF Detailed Data Planning Spreadsheet to document the records that you are importing and how they map from your source data to the MS CRM attributes. It’s also invaluable in ensuring that the data types match.
- If your source data is made up of CSV files make sure you strip out any erroneous carriage returns and other control characters.
- When using Data Transformation Services (DTS) make sure the properties of the DTS load have fast load disabled. Otherwise the triggers that insert into the cdf_
_ext table will not run. - Before importing log into CRM as an administrator and navigate to Settings > Business Units > Users
You should then disable “Restricted Access Mode” for BOTH the user you’ve set as OwningUserName and the user you’ve logged in as to run the DMF. If you don’t do this the data will not import but it won’t tell you why!
There is of course more data to import and from a myriad of sources, so I’ve suggested that we take a look at Scribe Insight. We have acquired thirty day trial so it’ll be interesting to see just how good it is and whether it’s any better than using the DMF.
[tags]Dynamics, CRM, Microsoft, DMF[/tags]
Five Things
Sam must have been desperate as he’s tagged me as part of this Five Things meme thingy that’s been doing the rounds. So in no particular order here are five things you don’t know about me.
- My Grandard was from County Mayo in Ireland which makes me a quarter Irish. If I could earn the same money doing what he did as I currently do in IT I’d change my career in an instant.
- When I was younger my best friends dad was a huntsman and I used to go fox hunting.
- I did 12 months of a degree in Construction before switching to Computer Science.
- Duing my A-Levels I worked as a Picture Framer in a small Antique Shop.
- People think I like Buffy the Vampire Slayer because of Sarah Michelle Gellar, it’s actually because of Alyson Hannigan.
I don’t know many other people that blog that haven’t already been tagged, so I’m going to tag some people that work or have worked at Talis. These are Marmalade Girl, Just another Nerd, Deep Sea Shrimp, ZimmerBlog and See My Dinners.
[tags]Five Things, FiveThings, Talis[/tags]
Bust Disk
Over the Christmas break my secondary hard disk failed, no great problem as I had most stuff backed up. However, after replacing the offending hardware, I descovered that performance was absolutely abysmal. After some digging it turned out that the driver for my primary hard disk controller had been downgraded to PIO mode rather than DMA. According to a Microsoft knowledgebase article:
After the Windows IDE/ATAPI Port driver (Atapi.sys) receives a cumulative total of six time-out or cyclical redundancy check (CRC) errors, the driver reduces the communications speed (the transfer mode) from the highest Direct Memory Access (DMA) mode to lower DMA modes in steps. If the driver continues to receive time-out or CRC errors, the driver eventually reduces the transfer mode to the slowest mode (PIO mode).
The easiest fix is to uninstall the controller from device manager then reboot at which point Windows reinstalls the driver and resets to the default faster DMA mode.
[tags]PIO,DMA[/tags]
