19th Aug 2014 | General Information
Salesforce Connect for Office is a brilliant utility that allows you to import information directly from your Salesforce Org into either Word (for mail merge) or Excel for data manipulation.
It has recently been updated to version 1.8.1.3
If you are using Office 2007, then the installation works faultlessly. However, if you are using Microsoft Office 2010 or later the requisite template files do not get installed. Just to give you a bit of help, I have zipped them up into a zip file
Just put the files into STARTUP (for the Word templates) and XLSTART (for the Excel templates) in your c:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office 14 or c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office 14 folder. (The folder will be different for Office 2013. I have been unable to test it.)
When you run Word or Excel, you will get a security warning. Just click to allow and you will be able to import Salesforce data directly into the application. Enjoy!
(Due to the security model of Office, you will always get a warning when you run Word or Excel.)
13th Aug 2014 | General Information
Exactly a week ago, 6 August 2014, the WordPress update 3.9.2 was released. This was to fix a number of security vulnerabilities that affected WordPress, as well as other content management systems.
If you have earlier versions of WordPress on any of your websites, you should update immediately.
How about having someone look after the plug-in and WordPress updates for your website, without you having to worry?
If you are operating an e-commerce website, or other websites with frequent updates, it would make sense to have a daily back-up. (In case your site is accidentally/maliciously damaged or your website hosting fails.)
We can offer both of these services.
https://cloud-genius.com/safe-secure-websites/
If you apply for any of these services before the end of August 2014, we will give you £5 off your monthly bill.
8th Aug 2014 | Event Bridge, Eventbrite, Salesforce, Security and Safety
You could say that it has been a good week, but that would be a lie. It has been a fantastic week! Bear with me… I will get to that security flaw.
I have to start with Salesforce – Cloud Genius Ltd now has registered partner status. This will let us give you even better service and give you sneak peeks at new features. It will also enhance our ability to offer training environments.
As you may have read before, we have been developing an Eventbrite -> Salesforce connector. Why? when there are others? Well this one has features that are unavailable in the others (and unlikely to be, because of their nature) and ours does not have the usage/limit costs associated with the others. We have finally come up with a name for the product (Event Bridge) and are in the process of developing a website that will tell you all about its features, pricing and why you could really do with using it. We are also in the process of re-vamping the CG website. (Yes, I know it is looking ‘tired’, but if you go to an electrician’s home and turn on the light the kettle boils.)
In the process of developing Event Bridge we discovered a subtle security flaw in Eventbrite. Talk about rapid reaction – within hours they had deployed a fix. I always say that you can just a company not in the good times, but in the bad. On that score, Eventbrite has certainly come up trumps. Even better, Cloud Genius will now appear on their security Hall of Fame… so we managed to help make the internet a safer place. (I always like it when a small company in Wales helps out a multi-national.)
So, that’s it for this week. Just off to get my super-hero uniform re-tailored.
15th Apr 2014 | Defeating spam, General Information, Salesforce, Security and Safety, Web Hosting, Websites
Some of you may have heard about a massive flaw in the security of the internet.
This is really serious and everyone should be aware of the implications.
Heartbleed is the sort of flaw that gives systems admins huge nightmares.
On vulnerable websites there is a significant possibility that your passwords have been revealed to hackers making use of the bug. Worse than that, if a site has been compromised there is no evidence!
It would be good practice to change all the passwords you use on the internet. Now.
…unless you have evidence that the services you use are not part of the problem.
At Cloud Genius, we have performed a full review of the services we use.
- Services to back up websites/update plug-ins. For clients that subscribe to this services one was not vulnerable, the other service has been secured and we have taken steps necessary to prevent any problems. No action required on your part.
- Website hosting – our provider has informed us that they are vulnerable. Until they update all their systems you may wish to change the password on your account at https://webhost.cloud-genius.com. Once their patching process is complete you should change your password again on the account. We will endeavour to let you know when this is.
- Paypal – our understanding is that Paypal is not affected.
- Teamviewer – our remote control solution of choice is not affected.
- Salesforce – To the best of our knowledge is not affected.
- LastPass – our password management software of choice is not affected. (And helped a lot in fixing services that were affected.)
Here is a list of other networks that were affected – these include people like Google, Yahoo and many others.
https://mashable.com/2014/04/09/heartbleed-bug-websites-affected/
This is really serious. Make sure you are not caught out!
One positive – LastPass was able to scan all the services we use, list the affected services and make password changing a doodle! Highly recommended… and much more secure than any other system we have come across.
10th Apr 2014 | Email, General Information, Transferring, Web Hosting, Websites
Many of you who have grown up with the internet will be aware of the DynDNS service.
This allowed you to host services from home and get to them with a website address that ended .dyndns.com (or one of a variety of other endings). Mine was jd10k.dyndns.com.
Very soon it will be no more. Dyn want you to subscribe to their ‘Pro’ service, at $25 per year! (There is a temporary, discount.)
There are other options. A similar free service is provided by no-ip for free!
But perhaps you were hosting your email and/or website from home (not the best idea), in that case you might want to check out our low-priced email and web services on WebHost. You may want to add a personal domain name to that, too. You can do all that and still save on the price of the Dyn offering (and a personal domain name will look far more professional).
Anyway, there are lots of better options that signing up for Dyn’s service. Good luck!
Time for a change.
