Outlook for iPhones

On 1/29/15, Microsoft released a new iphone and Android app for email.  This app is listed as Microsoft Outlook (and should be the first choice when you search for "Outlook" in the app store) The Outlook app isn't that different from the native iphone mail app , but overall, I've learned to like the new Outlook app better.  The main selling points for me - 1) focused inbox (where the most important messages are listed together separate from most other stuff you get) and 2) one swipe delete (where it took a swipe and a press to delete in the native mail app for iphone), 3) a consolidated inbox (my Exchange, Yahoo, and gmail inboxes are all together instead of three separate inboxes).

I've created instructions for installing the new Outlook app and the setup of an Exchange account here:

www.t-solve.com/clients/instructions/iphone-outlook-app

Manual setup of Office365 (on Exchange 2013)

If for some reason autodiscover isn't working or you can't put autodiscover in place, here are manual instructions for setting up Outlook for Office365 (when using Exchange 2013):

http://blogs.perficient.com/microsoft/2014/01/manually-configuring-outlook-for-office-365-exchange-2013/

Paychex Preview Payroll to do list

Preview Payroll for Paychex needs a couple things to be in place.

You need to use Internet Explorer.

If using IE 11, you need to make sure that paychex.com and *.paychex.com are listed in compatibility mode.

You should make sure that https://paychex.com is listed in trusted sites.

You need the latest version of the Citrix receiver from here:
http://www.citrix.com/go/receiver.html

You may also need the latest version of Java and *may* need to add paychex.com as an exception in control panel -> Java on the security tab.

Virtual Network Queuing causes poor performance on Dell servers

In troubleshooting some poor network card behavior on my Dell PowerEdge T420 running Windows Server 2012 with three virtual machines on it, I came across these articles that describe problems with virtual network queues enabled on Broadcom NICs.

https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2902166/EN-US?wa=wsignin1.0

http://www.experts-exchange.com/OS/Microsoft_Operating_Systems/Server/Windows_Server_2008/Q_27985670.html

I upgraded to the latest drivers and disabled the virtual machine queues.  My sample size was small and problems intermittent, so it's hard to say if I resolved the issues, but it's worth noting.

Enabling advanced features in Fortigate firmware 5.0

You can enable some hidden/advanced features in Fortigate OS 5.0 via System -> Config -> Features and turn on Advanced Routing,

In my case, I was looking for "dead gateway detection" so I could switch to my secondary ISP when my primary ISP failed, but the option wasn't there in Router -> Static -> Settings.  Once Advanced Routing was turned on, I had the option for dead gateway detection.

Troubleshooting Quickbooks PDF problems

Here's a good list of steps for troubleshooting problems printing/saving to PDF in Quickbooks.  In my case, I was troubleshooting errors when saving to PDF on Quickbooks 2009 for a user.  I use the PDF repair utility and it solved the problem.

1. Make sure you have the most current revision of your year of QuickBooks, as earlier revisions are more likely to have problems. For example, QuickBooks 2013 R6 has at least 7 fixes that directly relate to correcting PDF problems in various circumstances
2. Try the the PDF Repair Utility from Intuit, which works through a number of different issues with the various drivers and Windows settings. This works for MOST cases.
3. Make sure you have proper access permissions to the “temp” folder in Windows (details for how to do this are in my article on QuickBooks/Windows 8 PDF problems, which has a few additional tips).
4. If this is QuickBooks 2011 or older, check the outline below.
5. If all else fails, try the Intuit support site for PDF problems, which has some other things to try.

Intel cloning tool for future clones

I wrote about using Clonezilla to clone a drive in an upgrade here.  The one obstacle was that the cloning mirrored the drive size on the new drive.  If the old drive was 128 GB and the new drive was 512 GB, Clonezilla would create a 128 GB partition on the new drive and 384 GB of unallocated space.

For my next clone, I'll try Intel's data migration software:
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=19324

I almost always buy Crucial drives - I don't know if this Intel software will work on the Crucial drives (or if it'll only work on Intel drives), but we'll see.  The person who used the Intel software raved about ease of using it.