The OCS deployment guides have step-by-step instructions on creating the necessary DNS SRV records in Windows DNS Server , but what if you're using BIND as your external Internet-facing DNS server? First you'll need an A record for the external IP...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Yes it can be done. Outlook Web Access Premium can't be rendered using the Firefox engine - when you try to login you'll notice that "Use Outlook Web Access Light" is ticked by default (see below)... Firefox without IE Tab There is an add-on for Firefox...

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...

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...

Cisco Unified Communications Manager (aka CallManager) version 4.2, 5.1 and 6.1 (specific version/release below) is now certified for Direct SIP connectivity with Office Communications Server.  Direct SIP allows connectivity between the OCS mediation...

This poster highlights the architecture and feature set of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. Aside from showing the high-level architecture, this poster highlights the feature set of Exchange Server 2007. Sections include: Management and Monitoring High...

Video: The Devil wears prada .. and does Unified Comms!

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...

We have released a sample toolkit that is designed to enhance the adoption of Office Communicator and Office Communications Server 2007 within organisations using IBM Lotus Notes. This toolkit focuses on the following objectives: 1. Allow Notes...

Sure is!  (but I am also happy to see you)  This beast was recently purchased on eBay and is currently sitting in Microsoft's Melbourne office.   I love seeing the old 1950s phone next to the Communicator Phone Editions (aka Tanjay). ...

Office Communicator 2007 has rich presence states such as Available, Busy, In A Meeting - but it is very easy to enhance this further by creating your own custom presence states. It's as easy as creating an XML file and importing it into Communicator...

A 180-day evaluation version of Office Communications Server is now available for download. So download now and it fire it up in your lab! Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Trial Download Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, formerly...

One of the huge improvements we're making in Office Communications Server 2007 is in the area of speech quality and Quality of Experience in VoIP phonecalls. We have a document available for download with an overview of our RTAudio advanced VoIP codec...

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

The Microsoft Exchange Server ActiveSync Certificate-Based authentication tool provides several utilities to assist an Exchange administrator in configuring and validating client certificate authentication for Exchange Server ActiveSync. The Microsoft...

Thanks to Anthony Vitnell for passing this on... This stencil and template provided enable you to create Visio drawings that contain Exchange Server 2007 objects. These shapes include icons for Exchange 2007 server roles, networking, telephony and...

TechNet Webcast: Windows Mobile Series: Providing Mobile Access to Corporate Data and Applications (Level 200) Friday, April 04, 2008 - 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM Pacific Time Vik Thairani, Senior Mobility Consultant, Microsoft Corporation http://msevents.microsoft...

We are pleased to announce official support for server virtualisation for Office Communications Server 2007 R2. We are introducing support for both a fully distributed virtualised topology across several hypervisors and for a single server virtualised...