Customers ask questions regarding the configuration of time out values for LCS and their Hardware Load Balancers. There are 2 partner load balancer solutions of which we have documentation on at the http://office.microsoft.com/livecomm site. ...

I am currently the Beta Engineer for our Budapest product which is a web browser solution for clients not running the Microsoft Office Communicator client. The goal of this client is to reach those with older operating systems, i.e. pre-Windows 2000 SP4...

This really deserves (needs, mandates) a complete posting on Certificate issues but I don't have the time at the moment. Do keep a look out as it might impact the other posts about client behavior and certificates. While I might remove the post, I will...

Many customers want to know about minimizing their hardware usage especially if they are smaller deployments 1) What is supported for LCS and Archiving using the same SQL server - same instance, different instances? From a performance perspective...

I am happy to provide the following information straight from one of our LCS Development Leads. Getting this information is invaluable because they know the ins and outs of the component so well they know the answer to your problem immediately. Permission...

LCS 2005 – Why no NLBs ? There are a couple of reasons why we are recommending a 3rd party LB for LCS2005 EE deployments (particularly those that for large number of clients): 1. The traffic patterns and hold times are different when compared...

Have a mobile device and want Instant Messaging to your corporate Live Communications Server? http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/apr05/04-19RTCMobileClientPR.asp http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1787862,00.asp Given that this...

This post is about the ports in use for Windows Messenger and Live Communications Server. VERY IMPORTANT: only the IM traffic goes through the LCS server, all other traffic is peer to peer. Firewalls and Windows Messenger Options exist for using...

UPDATE <4/06/2005> Thanks Randy! The customer having this issue followed up and identified the root cause to be an invalid Certificate Revocation Path on the certificates. REPORTED PROBLEM Users connecting to LCS 2003 configured for TLS...

Interesting customer issue reported in that they could connect using TLS when providing the FQDN but when using Autoconfiguration it failed to connect. Normally when a customer tells us this we know that it is NOT a certificate issue, otherwise TLS would...

Update: I am focusing on our upcoming release of Istanbul and the telephony integration. Unfortunately this is a beta product so I won't be able to post information here until it becomes public. Here is the press statement from the Fall 2004 VON Conference...

A quick modification to this post is that the analysis is accurate and this is current behavior. Bug/By Design are just semantics but we don't build the DNS query for a single label suffix for the SIP-URI. At this time, the solution is to not use Automatic...

First reported by Fairfax county the backup and restore procedure in the LCS 2005 Deploy SE document leaves you in a state of which clients cannot log in and the Admin can not view the Allow and Block List: Problem behavior: After restoring the following...

There is a known issue with LCS 2003 and Windows Messenger being signed out overnight. The root cause is a known issue with fix for Kerberos. The KB article is still being published so not everyone knows about the issue. You will want to enable the client...

A really cool feature with Windows Messenger is the ability to customize it via Branding. Graham Tyler has a great post on customizing Windows Messenger to support Outlook Web Access (OWA). http://blogs.msdn.com/grahamtyler/archive/2004/08/17.aspx Cheers...

A common question we recieve is around Alerts (also IM to groups which will be a separate post) Customer question - Alerting Services Is there a way to inform all LCS users by Corporate Alert like MSN Alerts does it. The idea is to build a solution when...

This is an issue one of my team mates Kevin shared with me about the new Aggregate Presence behavior in LCS vs. Exchange IM. For those customers who have used Exchange IM with WM 4.6, 4.7, 5.0 you may have noticed that when you sign in to multiple machines...

I am updating this topic to ensure that you never come here for information that is located elsewhere. The KB should always be authoritative, what you find here would be a supplement or clarification. I will post here the summary of main presence related...

LCS 2003 & Windows Messenger 5 Connectivity Overall the behavior below is applicable for LCS 2005 but given the new feature of Pools there may be some slight/subtle difference, so for now this is about 2003 and I will edit at a later time with 2005...

LCS 2003 Certificates * For those looking for LCS 2005 data, information will be documented and does vary slightly due to the use of a pools (collection of Home Servers), which will require the use of SUBJECT_ALT_NAME One of the main calls received for...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Updated April 29, 2005 New subject as I will post another entry that is more specific to the Windows Messenger client and...

Why view/read this blog? I provide support for Live Communications Server and will use this as a place to put lessons learned while playing with the product, trying various configurations and also those lessons learned from the customers who call. I am...