Jens Trier Rasmussen

User experience changes when participating in a meeting with 75+ participants

Jens Trier Rasmussen [MSFT] — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 01:04:00 GMT

When you are participating in a Lync meeting with 75 and more participants the experience will change to optimize the experience. The client will remove the participant list (roster), the gallery view will not be available and IM errors will not be displayed. The client will display the notification shown below.

In the title line of the conference window we will show the number of participants in the meeting. The presenters in the meeting will still get the participant list, such that they can take actions on the attendees.

We will not re-instate the normal user experience, even if the number of participants drops below 75. The experience will stay the same until the conference has ended.

The above change in user experience is not directly related to large meeting support in Lync 2013. It happens regardless of large meeting being enabled in the conferencing policy.

Please let me know when you can see this

Jens Trier Rasmussen [MSFT] — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 07:20:12 GMT

When I participate in Lync Meetings, I often hear the above sentence, when someone is presenting a PPT deck, the whiteboard, their desktop or a program. However, there is really no need for this, since the presenter (and the rest of the people in the meeting) can see from the roster or participant list, who can see the content. The color of the icon represents the modality status of the participant:

Grey means that the participant is not connected to the modality
Blue means that the participant is connected to the modality
Turquois means that the participant is currently sending this modality

In Figure 1 below the first participant is currently sending both audio and content, but has not started video. The second participant is connected to audio and content, but has muted the microphone. The third and fourth participant are connected to both audio and content. However the fifth participant is connected to audio, but is not connected to the content.

Figure 1 Modality Status

Join button missing on Lync Meetings from federated partners

Jens Trier Rasmussen [MSFT] — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 11:43:56 GMT

You might have the situation that you are receiving Lync Meeting invites from federated partners using Exchange 2013 and Lync 2013, but when Outlook 2013 or OWA 2013 CU1 brings up the reminder dialog for the meeting, the Join button is missing. Outlook and OWA will show the Join button based on the existence of the MAPI property OnlineMeetingExternalLink on the calendar item representing the meeting in the attendee's mailbox.

It is the Lync Meeting Outlook add-in used by the organizer of the meeting, which sets the property on the meeting invite, before it is sent. However the MAPI property might be stripped from the message, when it is sent from the organizers Exchange 2013 environment to your, i.e. the meeting attendee, Exchange 2013 environment. You need to ensure that in the organizer's Exchange 2013 environment, the remote domain matching your Exchange 2013 environment, has the parameter TNEFEnabled set to True (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb232174.aspx#External). When TNEFEnabled is set to true Exchange 2013 does not strip MAPI properties including OnlineMeetingExternalLink and the Join button will be shown on the reminder.

Let us assume that the SMTP domain of the attendee is contoso.com. In the organizer's Exchange 2013 environment it is necessary to create a remote domain with TNEFEnabled = True representing contoso.com. One way of doing it is by using the following commands in Exchange Management Shell:

New-RemoteDomain -Name contoso.com -DomainName contoso.com
Set-RemoteDomain -Identity contoso.com -TNEFEnabled:$true

Creating Online Meetings from Outlook Web App in Exchange 2013 CU1

Jens Trier Rasmussen [MSFT] — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 12:53:00 GMT

One of the new features in Exchange 2013 CU1 is support for creation of Online Meetings in Outlook Web App (OWA). When you create a new event in OWA you can click on Online meeting, and the meeting is created as an Online meeting. You can also update an existing event to be an Online meeting. See Figure 1 for a screenshot showing the Online meeting button.

Figure 1 Creating an Online Meeting

Prerequisites

In order for this feature to work, the following needs to be in place:

The scheduling user needs to be Lync enabled and homed on a Lync 2013 pool
The mailbox of the scheduling user needs to be hosted on Exchange 2013 CU1
Server to Server authentication (S2SOAuth) needs to be configured between Exchange 2013 and Lync 2013
The Lync Autodiscover service needs to be configured (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh690030.aspx) with DNS records for lyncdiscover.<SIP domain> and lyncdiscoverinternal.<SIP domain>

How it works

OWA use the Unified Communications Web API (UCWA) interface to create the Online Meeting. When OWA boots, and whenever you create a new event in Calendar tab, OWA checks, if UCWA is enabled for the user. OWA uses the Lync Autodiscover service to find the user's pool and the UCWA Url. If UCWA is enabled (happens automatically if the user is homed on a Lync 2013 pool) OWA shows the Online meeting button.

The communication between OWA and Lync happens via Server to Server OAuth (S2SOAuth).

When the Online meeting button is clicked, OWA is creating the Online Meeting. It sets the parameters used for the meeting based on the relevant CsMeetingConfiguration setting (Global, Site or Service scope) in Lync 2013. The parameters used are:

PstnCallersBypassLobby
LogoUrl¹
LegalUrl²
HelpUrl
CustomFooterText

In addition to these parameters, it creates the meeting with the options that all company employees joins as presenters and bypass the lobby.

You are able to join the Online Meeting from the OWA calendar peek via the Join button (see Figure 2). You can also join from the Calendar read form (see Figure 3).

Figure 2 Calendar peek with Join button

Figure 3 Calendar read form with the Join button

Configuration

Let me show how to configure the integration. I will use the following sample environment to illustrate the configuration:

One Exchange 2013 CU1 Client Access server with FQDN e15fe.contoso.com
One Exchange 2013 CU1 Mailbox server with FQDN e15be.contoso.com.
- The test user has Exchange 2013 CU1 mailbox with the primary SMTP address test1@contoso.com
One Lync Server 2013 Enterprise Edition pool with one Lync Server 2013 Front End Server lyncfe1.contoso.com
- Pool FQDN is lync.contoso.com.
- One test user is enabled with SIP URI test1@contoso.com
A DNS record for autodiscover.contoso.com points to e15fe.contoso.com
A DNS record for lyncdiscoverinternal.contoso.com points to lync.contoso.com
The url pointing to legal text is https://web.contoso.com/legalurl.txt
The url pointing to help text is https://web.contoso.com/helpurl.txt
The custom Contoso logo is https://web.contoso.com/logo.jpg

Step 1: Exchange 2013 Autodiscover Service

Configure the Exchange 2013 Autodiscover service to be available on the FQDN autodiscover.contoso.com. Use the following Exchange Management Shell command on e15fe.contoso.com.

Get-ClientAccessServer | Set-ClientAccessServer -AutoDiscoverServiceInternalUri https://autodiscover.contoso.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml

Step 2 Exchange S2SOAuth configuration with Lync

We now need to configure the Exchange 2013 side of things. Use the following Exchange Management Shell commands:

cd \Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Scripts>
.\Configure-EnterprisePartnerApplication.ps1 -AuthMetadataUrl https://lync.contoso.com/metadata/json/1 -ApplicationType Lync

Step 3 Lync S2SOAuth configuration with Exchange

We now configure the Lync side of things. Use the following Lync Server Management Shell commands:

New-CsPartnerApplication -identity Exchange -ApplicationTrustLevel Full -MetadataUrl https://autodiscover.contoso.com/autodiscover/metadata/json/1
Set-CsOAuthConfiguration -Realm contoso.com

Step 4 Lync Meeting Configuration

We now configure the Lync meeting configuration for the pool. Use the following Lync Server Management Shell commands:

Set-CsMeetingConfiguration –LegalURL https://web.contoso.com/legalurl.txt
Set-CsMeetingConfiguration –HelpURL https://web.contoso.com/Helpurl.txt
Set-CsMeetingConfiguration –HelpURL https://web.contoso.com/Helpurl.txt
Set-CsMeetingConfiguration –LogoURL https://web.contoso.com/logo.jpg
Set-CsMeetingConfiguration –CustomerFooterText "This is the footer text"

Troubleshooting

In situations, where the Online meeting button does not appear or the creation of the Online meeting fails, the administrator will have to enable logging in OWA to get diagnostic information about the potential issues. Logging is enabled by editing the web.config file in C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\ClientAccess\Owa on the Exchange 2013 CU1 mailbox server and changing the line <add key="OWAIsLoggingEnabled" value="false" /> to <add key="OWAIsLoggingEnabled" value="true" />. After saving the changed web.config, recycle the MSEXchangeOWAAppPool in IIS Manager for OWA to pick up the change. OWA will now log information to log files in the directory C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Logging\OWA\server\.

Ask the user to repro the problem and examine the log file in the directory above. Look for lines with the keywords GetUcwaUserConfiguration and CreateOnlineMeeting and timestamps matching the repro. Hopefully he information in the log file can point to the root cause of the issue.

In Exchange 2013 CU1 the logo will only be shown, if the CustomFooterText has text in it
In Exchange 2013 CU1 the hyper link for the legal URL will always be empty no matter, if it is set or not

Creating an Office Web Apps Server 2013 farm with 2 machines

Jens Trier Rasmussen [MSFT] — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 14:40:27 GMT

Office Web Apps Server 2013 provides the ability to create a farm with one or more machines in it. Recently I had to create a farm with two machines, and it took a little bit to get my head around how to do it. Here is how I ended up doing it

I had the following environment:

Two servers: wac1.contoso.dk and wac2.contoso.dk
The internal fqdn of the farm should be wac.contoso.dk and the external fqdn should be wacext.contoso.dk
Hardware load balancer configured for wac.contoso.dk

On wac1.contoso.dk

I did the following steps:

Installed Office Web Apps Server 2013 and the March 12, 2013 update.
Used the MMC certificate snap-in to create a certificate from my internal CA based on WebServer template with:
- Subject name WacFarm
- Friendly name WacFarm
- Subject alternate names of wac1.contoso.dk, wac2.contoso.dk,wac.contoso.dk,wacext.contoso.dk, wac1 and wac2
- Allow private key to be exported
After the certificate was loaded in the personal local computer certificate store, I exported the certificate with the private key to a file
Used PowerShell to create the Office Web Apps Farm with the cmd:
- New-OfficeWebAppsFarm -InternalURL https://wac.contoso.dk -ExternalURL https://wacext.contoso.dk -CertificateName WacFarm -Verbose -AllowHttp:$true

On wac2.contoso.dk

I did the following steps:

Installed Office Web Apps Server 2013 and the March 12, 2013 update
Used the MMC certificate snap-in to import the certificate, I had exported on wac1.contoso.dk, into the personal local computer certificate store
Used PowerShell to join wac2 to the Office Web Apps Farm, which has wac1.contoso.dk as the Master
- New-OfficeWebAppsMachine -MachineToJoin wac1.contoso.dk

The tricky part to get right was the last command. You have to run it on the machine you wish to join to the farm, and you have to reference an existing machine in the farm. It needs the reference to be able to read the farm settings.

Updating Office Web Apps Server 2013 with March 12, 2013 update

Jens Trier Rasmussen [MSFT] — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 13:04:56 GMT

We have made an update available for the Office Web Apps Server 2013 (used by Lync 2013 for PowerPoint presentations). The update is from March 12, 2013, and is available at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2760445. It is important that you follow our guidance on how to install the update. The guidance is available at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj966220.aspx.

Getting Internal Server Error 500 when creating New-CsPartnerApplication for Exchange 2013

Jens Trier Rasmussen [MSFT] — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 08:22:00 GMT

One of the steps in creating OAuth integration between Lync Server 2013 and Exchange Server 2013 is to create a New-CsPartnerApplication on Lync 2013 referencing the OAuth metadata document from Exchange 2013 (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj688151.aspx):

New-CsPartnerApplication -Identity Exchange -ApplicationTrustLevel Full -MetadataUrl "https://autodiscover.litwareinc.com/autodiscover/metadata/json/1"

When running this cmdlet you might get the error "New-CsPartnerApplication: Cannot bind parameter 'MetadataUrl' to the target. Exception setting "MetadataUrl": "The metadata document could not be downloaded from the URL in the MetadataUrl parameter or downloaded data is not a valid metadata document, error: The remote server returned an error: (500) Internal Server Error."

When you look in the IIS log on the CAS server you will see a corresponding entry similar to this "2012-11-20 14:03:57 192.168.200.40 GET /autodiscover/metadata/json/1 - 443 - 192.168.200.35 - 500 0 0 265".

I have seen this in a couple of cases and the common root cause has been that the "Microsoft Exchange Server Auth Certificate" has been missing from Local Computer\Personal certificate store.

The "Microsoft Exchange Server Auth Certificate" certificate is used by the OAuth implementation on Exchange 2013. You can see it referenced in the output of Get-AuthConfig:

Get-AuthConfig

RunspaceId : b7de8683-bd90-4e24-a78f-d6933871cd48

CurrentCertificateThumbprint : A33E4C629AE9553E186F93474E796D598B1F7424

PreviousCertificateThumbprint :

NextCertificateThumbprint :

NextCertificateEffectiveDate :

ServiceName : 00000002-0000-0ff1-ce00-000000000000

Realm :

Name : Auth Configuration

The certificate with CurrentcertificateThumbprint needs to be listed, when you do Get-ExchangeCertificate on the Exchange 2013 servers. If it is not, there you will see the problem with Internal Server Error.

The fix is to create a new "Microsoft Exchange Server Auth Certificate" by using the following sequence of cmdlets In EMS on the MBX server:

New-ExchangeCertificate -KeySize 2048 -PrivateKeyExportable $true -SubjectName "cn= Microsoft Exchange Server Auth Certificate" -FriendlyName "Microsoft Exchange Server Auth Certificate" -Services smtp
1. Do not accept to replace the SMTP certificate when prompted
Note the thumbprint of the new certificate. Let us assume it is 7A39541F8DF58D4821967DD8F899B27410F7C081
$a=get-date
Set-AuthConfig -NewCertificateThumbprint 7A39541F8DF58D4821967DD8F899B27410F7C081 –NewCertificateEffectiveDate $a
1. Accept to continue despite the fact that the certificate effective date is not 48 hours into the future
Set-AuthConfig –PublishCertificate
Make sure to remove any potential reference to the previous certificate (which might not exist anymore) by doing Set-AuthConfig -ClearPreviousCertificate.

Remember to do iisreset on both CAS and MBX servers. Then finally, you can try to re-issue the New-CsPartnerApplication cmdlet.

Update: Jan 15. 2013: Matt reported that he had to add a step, 6) Set-AuthConfig –clearpreviouscertificate, to get it to work in his lab.

Using Lync 2010 client against Lync 2013 server and high-resolution photos from Exchange 2013

Jens Trier Rasmussen [MSFT] — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 12:25:34 GMT

Imagine a scenario where Alice is homed on a Lync 2013 server, but has never signed in with the Lync 2013 client. Alice has an Exchange 2013 mailbox and she has loaded a high-resolution photo via Exchange 2013 OWA.

Will other users in the company, using the Lync 2013 client, see Alice's high-resolution photo in peer-to-peer and conference sessions?

No, they will not. The users will see the lower resolution version of the photo from Active Directory.

Why you might ask?

The reason is that Alice has not yet signed in with the Lync 2013 client. As soon as she does it, the Lync 2013 client will see that the high-resolution photo exists for her, and it will update the presence information for Alice to show that she has a high-resolution photo in Exchange 2013. When the other Lync 2013 users sees that presence information update, they will access and display the high-resolution photo for Alice.

When to have a Lync Trusted Application Pool for Exchange OWA IM Integration?

Jens Trier Rasmussen [MSFT] — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 08:51:50 GMT

This post describes how to configure Exchange 2013 OWA IM Integration to Lync 2013. It mentions that you need to create a trusted application pool and trusted application in the Lync 2013 topology representing the Exchange 2013 MBX server and OWA. Let me try to explain why this is so and when you have to do it.

Internally OCS and Lync uses the concept of Known Servers and it maintain a list of them, the so-called Known Servers Table (KST). A server needs to be in the KST, before Lync will communicate with it. The KST is created from information found in the Lync topology. You can also add to the table by creating Trusted Application Pools from Lync Server Management Shell or from adding Trusted application servers in Lync Server 2013 Topology Builder. A Known Server has a version number attached to it. The version number is related to the Lync version used when creating the known server: 6 is Lync 2013, 5 is Lync 2010 and 0 is any.

When RTCSRV starts, it will log event 14492 from LS Protocol Stack listing all the known servers. It will also log event 14493 from LS Protocol Stack, when a server is added to the KST, and event 14495, when a server is removed from the KST.

When the Exchange UM Integration was introduced with OCS 2007, we wanted to automate the creation of known servers for Exchange UM servers. Consequently, the Exchange UM Routing component adds the Exchange servers it finds to the KST. The servers it finds are the Exchange servers hosting SipName UM Dial Plans. It logs event 44024 from LS Exchange Unified Messaging Routing at startup listing the servers it found. It will also log events while running; indicating added or removed Exchange servers. When adding Exchange servers to the KST it sets the version to 0.

That was the background. Let us look at what happens.

We will assume an environment with Lync 2013 and an Exchange 2013 server called ex1.contoso.com. It is running all Exchange 2013 server roles, is hosting a SipName UM dial plan and Exchange OWA IM Integration has been configured.

When the Exchange UM Routing component starts it will add the entry {fqdn=ex1.contoso.com, version=0} to the KST. At this point Exchange UM integration and Exchange OWA IM Integration to Lync 2013 both works.

The Lync 2013 administrator then adds Trusted Application Pool and Application representing the Exchange server and OWA to the Lync topology. This means adding the entry {fqdn=ex1.contoso.com, version=6} to the KST. However, it is not legal to have two entries for the same server with different versions. The event 14563 from LS Protocol Stack is logged and both entries are removed from the KST.

This has the effect that Exchange UM and OWA IM Integration stops working, since there is no entry for ex1.contoso.com in the KST.

How to get Exchange UM and OWA IM integration working again?

Option 1

Remove the Trusted Application Pool and Application representing the Exchange server and the integration will start working again shortly.

Note: The caveat with using this option is that you have to remember to add the Trusted Application Pool and Application back to Lync 2013, if the Exchange server stop hosting a SipName UM dial plan.

Option 2

Restart RTCSRV on the Lync 2013 server. The restart will still produce the error event 14563 and a warning event 44030, but afterwards you will see an Information event 14493 from LS Protocol Stack adding the Exchange 2013 server to the KST. At this point, the integration works again.

Access Denied when running Test-CsExStorageConnectivity

Jens Trier Rasmussen [MSFT] — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 15:36:27 GMT

When running The Lync Server 2013 cmdlet Test-CsExStorageConnectivity to test connectivity to Exchange 2013, you might see the error Access Denied as shown below

Test-CsExStorageConnectivity : ExCreateItem exchange operation failed, code=5,

reason=StoreContext{traceId=[18446744072318937492],

activityId=[52a9af76-e3b5-460b-8136-1c02553767e9]}Access Denied

The reason could be that the user running the cmdlet is not member of the local group "RTC Local User Administrators". Membership of the domain group RTCUniversalUserAdmins will automatically give you membership of the needed local group.

Use whoami /groups in a command window to see your group membership.