This is huge - in case you haven't heard the news yet - Office Communications Server 2007 has been Released To Manufacturing (RTM)!!!! I have been using Communicator 2007 as my primary phone for several months now, along with Exchange 2007 for voicemail...

I've been playing with Windows Mobile 6.1 for the last few days, so thought I'd share some of my favourite features. Today screen - minus Exchange E-mail/calendar (see below) About Exchange Auto-discover Now there's no need to know your CAS server URL...

Do you get more email each day than you can handle? Are you up until midnight doing email? Do you miss important emails? I receive literally hundreds of emails every day, most of which need some sort of action, and not being able to process them effectively...

I recently posted on a new email management system called Pay It Forward Email Management (PIFEM). The response has been amazing, however some of you have asked for screenshots of how I use this system day-to-day. Well here are some screenshots of...

If you're a rugby nut like me then it's probably very important that you have the times of all of the World Cup games in your calendar. Well here is an Outlook public holidays file that will pre-populate these for you :) UPDATE: the originally linked...

Office Communications Server and Communicator 2007 have audio codecs that provide the best possible audio/video quality over any network - but it goes without saying that audio codecs are only as useful as the quality of the sound you put into the packet...

You may have heard me talk about this at TechEd, and some of my customers will recall long discussions with me about the merits of using Direct Attached Storage rather than SANs in Exchange 2007. Storage Area Networks (SAN) have become increasingly...

In case you haven't heard the news, we have released Hyper-V into the wild. In fact did you know that 25% of microsoft.com is already running on Hyper-V VMs? So what about Exchange Server? As we recently announced at Tech.Ed USA, Microsoft will...

Supportability is available for Office Communications Server 2007 R2 member server role on a Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system.  Details at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982021

Research In Motion (RIM) have had a BlackBerry LCS client for some time, but in case you hadn't heard they have now released a client for OCS 2007. BlackBerry® Client for use with Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 allows you to engage...

Recently I posted on fellow uber-geek Anthony Vitnell and his OCS setup at home. In that post my mate from Nortel, Dave Lloyd, left a comment describing his home setup which sounded very impressive. Well I just got some photos of Dave's setup and...

Ok so this post isn't really related to UC at all, but what the hey ... Over the Christmas/New Year period I finally got around to playing with my media setup at home (yep, I'm a geek alright). I now have the following hooked up and working nicely...

At the Microsoft Australia company meeting earlier this week I demonstrated the RoundTable camera to the local team. Some photos were taken, including a beautiful shot of Kleefy and half-a-me. Read the post at http://blogs.technet.com/itproaustralia/archive...

This week I've been asked a lot about what tools I use for designing and managing OCS platforms. Here are some recommendations: OCS Resource Kit tools - this is definitely the best collection of utilities available. My personal favourites from the Resource...

I just got an email from Anthony Vitnell from HP who is one of Australia's leading UC consultants, and who is also a geek. " Without fear of being labeled a geek, I have decided to embrace Unified Communications as much as possible. For 2 years I have...

Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile is a Unified Communications client for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. Communicator Mobile runs on Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 or 6.0 software for Pocket PC and smartphone devices. Here are some screenshots...

I've been a bit quiet on the blogging front for the last few weeks, but it's not because I don't love you guys - it's because I'm currently in the middle of speaker recruitment and content development. Here is an early draft of some (not all) of the sessions...

Outlook automatically includes presence indicators for all email recipients/senders/etc. But if you spend most of your day inside Outlook, this utility allows you to access the rest of your Communicator functionality without switching applications. Available...

At the Office Communicator Team blog we’ve just released information on the soon-to-be-released Communicator Mobile (aka CoMo) R2 client. Those who have used CoMo 2007 will be happy to know that we have made huge improvements in data consumption and battery...

Office Communications Server 2007 is the first Microsoft product to combine enterprise-ready IM, presence, video-conferencing, web-conferencing, and VoIP telephony in one solution. In addition, OCS 2007 includes real-time videoconferencing solutions running...

There is an interesting article over at SearchUnifiedCommunications.com about how the tables have turned between Microsoft and Cisco in Unified Communications.  Two years ago the Yankee Group recommended Cisco, but that now seems to be changing....

Jabra have recently announced a few new products for Office Communicator – the M5390 headset and the Dial 520 OC handset . I’ve managed to get my hands on the Dial 520 handset, and am happy to say that it is now my preferred device for softphone calling...

Today is the official launch of OCS 2007 R2 ( sign up for the Virtual Launch! ). What’s new? Streamlined Communications Call management capabilities let receptionists and team assistants take a large volume of incoming calls and quickly route them to...

The Microsoft Unified Communications “How-To” training tool is a Silverlight 2 application that provides step-by-step instructions for common UC tasks. You can customize the How-To application to your company’s needs based on the UC features you’ve installed...

My after-hours pet project over the last week has been assembling a new Vista Media Center PC. I decided against buying a pre-built machine and instead bought the components to assemble myself. Antec Fusion case - absolutely awesome. Excellent...