By Martin on 13.07.2010 15:07
If you're a Swyxware partner or customer you probably have installed a quickfix before. It's a rather tedious, error prone process. You have to unzip the quickfix, stop services, backup files, copy new ones, run Configwizard, etc. Starting with v7.0 Quickfix 3 we'll have a small installer to simplify the process. You unzip the quick fix ZIP file and run install.cmd, which starts the installer. It's able to
Check SwyxWare version Detect SwyxStandby Configuration and warn about DB replication Making backup copies of existing files Copy files Make a SwyxWare Database backup Update the SwyxWare database Update script or other files in the database Stop and start services What it is not
It's no replacement for a full-featured installer like Windows Installer, the technology we're using for our normal setups. It has no graphical user interface It's in English language only (but can update all SwyxWare language variants)
We'll plan to improve the quick fix installation... Read More » |
By Martin on 16.06.2010 07:31
In the software industry "eat your own dog food" means to use the software you create for yourself. At Swyx we did this from the beginning. We never had another PBX*. Every new SwyxWare version is used internally first. In the past we hand-selected interim builds to be installed on our production system.
We keep this policy for for our main SwyxServer system to ensure maximal availability. We start updating that system to beta versions after we made sure that it works well enough. Swyx Development/QA has a separate system connected to the main one via SwyxLink. That system is used by all Swyx Development/QA staff for their day to day work.
With SwyxWare v8.0 we go a step further. We have a build system which builds [sic!] SwyxWare from the latest source code automatically every night. About two weeks ago we started to install and use these daily build on our Swyx Development/QA department SwyxWare system.
The update of the system is done automatically with a small Windows Powershell script... Read More » |
By Martin on 22.01.2010 09:30
I have a computer at home which sometimes automatically powers on during the night. Windows event log was of no help. My main suspect was Windows 7 task scheduler, which is able to wake the computer to run a scheduled task. But clicking through all tasks is tedious, therefore I used my favourite tool, Windows Powershell: get-scheduled-task –recurse | where { $_.definition.settings.waketorun } That all. It produces a list of all tasks which are configured to wake the computer if necessary. I found the task, switched off the wake flag and now have to wait and see if that has been the culprit.
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By Martin on 21.01.2010 20:13
What’s the output of this c# code? Is the result always the same?
string s = "I";
Console.WriteLine(s.ToLower()); Read More » |
By Martin on 09.01.2010 22:21
Tom’s last blog entries about getting the right perspective about our home in the universe reminded me of a photo made in 1990. Carl Sagan urged NASA to let Voyager 1 turn around at the end of it’s mission to take pictures of the planets in the solar system. Here’s the result:
Carl Sagan definitely got the right perspective about us:
The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator... Read More » |
By Martin on 04.01.2010 20:37
When we designed extended call routing and remote inquiry ten years ago, we never imagined this design to last a decade. The function to announce a date like “January 1st, 2004” was implemented using a fixed set of audio files. We shipped files for years 2000 to 2009. For SwyxWare v6.10 we added audio for 2010 to 2030, because 2010 was not that far in the future anymore.
Today we had to learn that this was not sufficient. The ECR script function loading and playing the date audio files fails for years greater than 2009. You can observe this using remote inquiry or if you have a custom ECR script using the “Say Date” block. Instead of the correct announcement you’ll get “invalid date”. It is rather embarrassing that we didn’t recognized this during v6.10 tests. 
For v6.12, v6.20 and SwyxWare v7.0 you will find a fix here:
http://www.swyx.com/support/ssdb.html?kbid=kb4081
... Read More » |
By Martin on 28.10.2009 10:15
The most exiting new product Microsoft made in recent years is Windows Powershell. Yesterday they released version 2.0 as part of the
Windows Management Framework
While Microsoft positions it as the Windows management tool every administrator must know, I find it equally useful in software development. As soon as you start using it and write Powershell scripts you’ll never go back to batch files. But besides the great scripting the shell itself make day-to-day work of a developer much easier. I often see colleagues doing this to stop a service:
Navigate through Windows start menu to find the Services mmc snapin Make the MMC window bigger, because the default size is always too small Sroll through the services list to find the service Select the service Click the Stop button in the toolbar to stop the service. Even if you have the services snapin already open,... Read More » |
By Martin on 20.10.2009 18:43
Wow!
Hint: Mute it, the sound is horrible :-)
... Read More » |
By Martin on 13.10.2009 08:06
If you’re a SwyxWare Partner it’s a good idea to have a look into the Swyx Partner-Net Forum. You’ll find information and download links to SwyxWare v7.0 BETA. Enjoy.
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By Martin on 05.10.2009 06:42
Convince your boss to twitter: 
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By Martin on 05.10.2009 06:39
What’s better than to start the week with a smile:
... Read More » |
By Martin on 03.10.2009 11:48
No, this is not about Microsoft’s latest and greatest, but about SwyxWare. In the same way as Windows 7 technically is a rather small step from Vista, SwyxWare v7.0 is based on the foundation of v6.20.
Tuesday I wrote that we were planning to install v7.0 on our main production system next week. Well, we did it Thursday instead :-) As we expected, our Swyx colleagues immediately found some bugs. I spent the whole Friday hunting and fixing a nasty problem causing wrong “logged off” state to be shown for some SwyxIt! users.
But altogether the update went rather well. After a rather quiet Friday we’ll see how the new version holds up on Monday and the coming week in a real-life environment.
There’s one thing I’d like to share. Until now, SwyxFax and SwyxWare technically were separate products which their own administration tools and configuration store. We finally integrated both in SwyxWare v7.0. Now you only... Read More » |
By Martin on 29.09.2009 19:37
This blog is not abandoned. I’m still alive and well. As everybody else, we had a rough time this year at Swyx. The world financial and economical crisis left it’s marks. We had to reduce costs, which slowed us down, of course, had changes in management and advisory board, etc.
On the plus side, we released a great SwyxIt update, iPhone support and continued working on SwyxWare v7.0. If everything goes well we will install SwyxWare v7.0 on our production SwyxServer end of next week. It’s planned to have a beta version available roughly at the same time via the Swyx Partnernet forum.
Compared with our original plans from last year, SwyxWare v7.0 got... Read More » |
By Martin on 17.07.2009 16:59
No funny things this time, but something for everybody who knows C++. Somebody (not me) changed this line
if (str.find(‘x’)==0)
to
if (str.find(‘x’)>=0)
This is not made up, but a real code change, a little bit simplified. The intention is to find ‘x' everywhere in the string, not only at the first position. str is a std::string. Why does this change not work as expected?
... Read More » |
By Martin on 31.05.2009 10:45
If you’re a regular SwyxIt! user, you probably know F11, the global hotkey to dial a number from any application. Select a number, press F11 and SwyxIt! will dial it. This works very well with applications where you have the number in textual form such as Word, Excel, Outlook, Notepad, etc. But what if the phone number you want to dial is not available as text, e.g. in a scanned document or a fax you received with SwyxFax.
Wouldn’t it be great to be able to dial numbers in arbitrary images? That’s much easier than I thought. Office 2007 has a component called “Microsoft Office Document Imaging”, which includes an optical character recognition (OCR) module with a documented API. I’ve written a small prototype to demonstrate dialing from images.
You need:
SwyxIt! v6.25 (I do not use any specific SwyxIt! v6.25 function, but that’s the version installed on my system) Microsoft Office 2007 (I’m not sure if all editions have the OCR functionality. Furthermore, it’s an optional... Read More » |
By Martin on 30.05.2009 13:44
On Thursday I visited a jazz club in Iserlohn, which is about a half-hour drive from here. Swedish jazz band Oddjob had a gig there that evening. I stumbled over their fourth album last year on the website of my favorite jazz label. I think the most interesting things happening in European jazz are coming from Scandinavia. And Oddjob is a prime example. Read More » |
By Martin on 12.05.2009 17:18
Most commercials are either boring or annoying or both. But this one is cool: Read More » |
By Martin on 29.04.2009 16:12
Today, 10 years ago a few people started a new company based in Dortmund, Germany. It’s goal: Realize a pure software-based Voice over IP PBX running on Windows Server. We called the company: 
Astonishing that it’s already ten years. And it’s still a lot of fun :-) Update: I found a photo from that time. That’s Swyx in 1999: 
I’m not sure of the exact date of the photo. It’s sometime in 1999.
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By Martin on 18.04.2009 22:21
That’s incredible: http://vimeo.com/keithloutit Look closely. It’s no stop-motion animation, even if it looks like it.
Bathtub II from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.
... Read More » |
By Martin on 28.03.2009 10:28
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By Martin on 17.03.2009 08:40
Last week we released an internal beta of the upcoming SwyxIt! version. At the moment it looks like we’re right on schedule for the official release. I won’t post a picture, yet. The skin is not the final one and I do not want to risk disgruntling our marketing department :-) When it’s released you’ll get a SwyxIt! installation package to be deployed to client systems and a set of skins you have to upload into the SwyxWare database on the server. The new set of skins won’t work with SwyxIt! v6.20 or older. There won’t be a new SwyxServer or SwyxWare Administration version. An existing v6.20 will be sufficient. My impression is that while the new client version still lacks some useful items it’s better than any SwyxIt! we ever released before. There will probably a lot of users who discover “new” features we already have for years, but which were not easily recognizable.
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By Martin on 08.03.2009 20:21
I’m pretty sure this ingenious invention will be a huge commercial success:
I probably would buy some if a software development kit would be available for it :-)
... Read More » |
By Martin on 27.02.2009 20:50
Here’s my contribution to the funny friday blog posts Read More » |
By Martin on 20.02.2009 14:01
… and cool new skin, designed by graphical user interface experts. That’s in the next SwyxIt! version. I’m using an internal build on a daily basis for some time now. Would love to show a screenshot, but I can’t. You’ll have to wait for official announcements. Ok, just a tiny snippet: 
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By Martin on 13.02.2009 17:50
Sometimes small features make the difference. A few minutes ago I recognized a new context menu entry on music files stored on my Notebook:
If you click it, a small player opens which allows you to control a Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) media device. In this cases it’s my Roku Soundbridge network MP3 player which Windows discovered automatically. The player looks like this:
 ... Read More » |