In the time it takes...

...to write this blog, I could have gotten more work on my Help Desk application done. I am currently attempting to program an application using ASP .NET and C# that will allow our clients to post help requests. I know that they are many 3rd party solutions to the "Help Desk" initiative, but whats the fun in that? The problem is that I find that I am getting distracted by every little thing that goes on. Even worse is that these distractions are causing me to re-write code thats already been done and to stray away from my establish programming standards.

So I would like the system to function as follows:

1.1 Main page -> index.aspx
1.2 Side panel navigation
1.3 Capability to log in
2.1 Page to request support ->support.aspx
3.1 Page for user to view all submitted tickets -> view.aspx?user=client
3.2 Page for agent to view all submitted tickets -> view.aspx?user=agent
4.1 Page for agent/client to view individual ticket -> ticket.aspx?ID=ticketNumber
4.2 Depending on login used, a button to respond will be present
5.1 Page for agent to submit a response and update ticket -> solution.aspx?ID=ticketNumber

After the initial shell is working, I would like to add the following functionality:

1.1 Submitting a ticket will send an email to all current agents
1.2 Adding a solution to a ticket will email the client
2.1 view.aspx will be ordered by date by default, by selecting column headers, reorder
3.1 Generation of a knowledge base
4.1 Generation of a FAQ for clients


So this is primarily what I hope to achieve. I want to write it myself because i am always looking for things to add to my resume. Who knows, maybe I will make it easily configurable and then give it to other individuals to deploy.

First things first though. I have to motivate myself.

Upgrading to Exchange Server 2007

So this past week we have decided to update out Exchange Mail Server from the old 2003 to the new 2007. So far the software has been pretty neat. Vast improvements have been made to the outlook web access. In the 2003 version, web access looked just like what it sounds like. It was a web page acting as your outlook mailbox. In 2007, however, the web access is fantastic. It acts entirely like your desktop outlook application does; with all the trimmings.

Setup / Upgrade for 2007 is pretty easy as well. Microsoft has done well to document the steps taken to smoothly transition. I did notice however, and thus the reason for this post, that a pretty major item was either documented incorrectly or bugged. The notes state that upon setting up the mail server, a Send Connector should automatically be created. In the case of out server, this was not the case and it went unnoticed. The resulting issue was that outbound email was not actually reaching its destination. Worse yet is that no failure notification was returned to the original sender. This resulted in an entire office thinking that their email was going out, and after a few angry phone calls we discovered differently.

Ok, so how do you know if this problem applies to you? If you know that outbound emails (emails going out of your network or domain) are not reaching their destination open the Exchange Management Console. From there, navigate to the toolbox and open the Queue Viewer. There should be a section called "Unreachable" filled to the brim with emails being held. When looking in the queue at all the emails, take a gander at the last error recieved. If it says something along the lines of "A matching connector cannot be found to route the external recipient" then this applies to you.

I am going to assume that either you have no Send Connector or a misconfigured send connector. In the management console, navigate to Organization Configuration -> Hub Transport. Then click the Send Connectors tab. If there is nothing there, right click and create a new one. Call it whatever you want and make sure the type is Internet. For the Address Spaces section, type "*" (w/o quotes). OK, now lets make sure your Send Connector is configured correctly. I found that the easiest method was to open the Exchange Management Shell. At the command prompt, type:


get-sendconnector "nameOfConnector"

Once the select is returned, check the AddressSpaces field. If the AddressSpaces is "*", then you should be good to go. If not, type:

set-sendconnector "nameOfConnector" -AddressSpaces: "*"

That should do it for ya! Now go out there and spam mass emails about puppies!

It was bound to happen eventually!

Hello,

Enjoy my blog!

Mike