In the previous post, I recommended a few resources about what is Solr. In this post, I am going to introduce how to install Solr on your windows.

1: check your java version
you will need the Java Runtime Environment(JRE) version 1.7 or higher. At a command line, check your Java version like this
-> java -version


2: Download Solr
Solr is available from the Solr website at http://lucene.apache.org/solr/

3: Unzip Solr 5.2.1.zip

4. Run script to start Solr
Under the Solr folder, i.e. C:\solr 5.2.1\bin. At a command line, type
-> solr -e dih

5. Access admin UI
http://localhost:8983/solr

There is a specific requirement from client to use TFS, and we still prefer to use Git to manage the repository internally. However, apparently VS2013 has an issue with GIT, when GIT has been setup as repo, VS 2013 always use Git sittings. The only way I can make it work with TFS is to remove .get folder. It caused me many issues and I spent 2 days to find a solution. After researching online, I found there are two options:

Solution One
git-tf (https://gittf.codeplex.com/), but I am prefer the solution below:

Solution Two

1. Change .git folder to _git
2. Open commend ( type null >> .git)to create an empty .git file
3. Add gitdir: _git

Now you open visual studio 2013, it is connecting to TFS and soucetree is still working fine with the Git repo.

References

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25466073/attempting-to-connect-to-tfs-closes-solution
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20101211/disable-git-in-visual-studio-2013

Recently I am asked to integrate client Salesforce dataextension centre. After digging into salesforce official website, I found there is an easy way to insert data in Salesforce data extension by calling a RESTfull API (POST /dataevents/key:{key}/rowset)

Here is the API Overview

POST https://www.exacttargetapis.com/hub/v1/dataevents/key:SomeKey/rowsetor POST https://www.exacttargetapis.com/hub/v1/dataevents/11954DDF-28A3-4FE8-BF77-646C37506621/rowset
[ { "keys": { "Email": "someone@example.com" }, "values": { "LastLogin": "2013-05-23T14:32:00Z", "IsActive": true, "FirstName": "John", "FollowerCount": 2, "LastName": "Smith" } } ]

However, there is an issue of this API, which only validate the email address. If email address is matching, the user's profile will be updated. Imagine if someone trying to hack the data extension or even if it's a typo. There is a potential risks that the user profile can be overwritten with wrong data.

For avoiding this, we need a bit of more code to work around.

SaleForce supports to trigger email. So instead of bringing member details to a custom form, but sending an email to the user. Here is a basic workflow

The API for triggering an email is
https://www.exacttargetapis.com/messaging/v1/messageDefinitionSends/key:SomeKey/send

In this way, member's details wont be disclosed, if the typed email address was wrong.

I am running on Sitecore CMS 7.2, and Sitecore PowerShell Extensions 3.0. After installing the powershell extension module, Publishing site is always failing. I tried re-install on a vanilla Sitecore instance, but no luck. There is still having the same error. I researched online and found it was caused by script library item, which is an known issue. To walk around. I just need to mark the /Sitecore/System/Module/powershell/Script Library unpublished.