Phone Number on Windows Mobile 6 Phone

Not at all related to CRM:

Someone was asking how to find your number on a Windows Mobile 6 phone...I believe if you go to
Start
Settings
Personal
Phone

you should see it listed in the titlebar. Correct me if this is wrong, but I think that is where it is. Just FYI.

RDP to Console

In our line of work, we have to utilize RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) access to client servers. With the limitation of 2 RDP sessions and a console session, it can be hard to juggle access. A trick that was told to me a while ago (and I thought I should pass along) is the ability to RDP to the console of a Windows 2003 Server.

If you "run" this (Start Run) and replace servername with the (surprise...) server name:

mstsc /v:serverName /console

For more information on connecting to a console of shadowing a console session, see:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/278845

Thanks,
Mark

Data Integrity: Mass editing text to picklist

Recently, we migrated data from a source to CRM 4.0. The client's previous field was a textfield but they wanted to control the data in a picklist in their new CRM system. In order to keep all of the information, we migrated the data from a textfield into a textfield. (If you try to map values from a textfield into a picklist, you can run into many errors if the data isn't scrubbed well).

In order to update the picklist in an efficient manner, I instructed the client to create an Advanced Find that displayed the picklist and textfield, filtered where the picklist was null and ordered by the textfield. This way you can look at what should be similar (in not the same) values in the textfield, can highlight the records and then mass edit the picklist to equal the correct value. When you have done several records, you can refresh the search result and it will only return the records that still need to be updated.

I have seen people do similar updates in more taxing ways and wanted to post my thoughts on what should be an easy (although slightly manual) way of keeping the integrity of your data.

Thanks,
Mark

Determing the SQL Server 2005 version and SP

Hello,

I find that I need to figure out what version of SQL build and SP is applied to a client's SQL Server. For 2005, running either of these two queries is extremely helpful:
SELECT @@Version
or
SELECT SERVERPROPERTY('productversion'), SERVERPROPERTY ('productlevel'), SERVERPROPERTY ('edition')

I found excellent information on this Microsoft page:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/321185

In general, I have been looking to see if the build is: 9.00.3054 or 9.00.3159 to figure out if the installation is SQL Server 2005 with SP2.

Thanks,
Mark