January, 2011

These include a couple of tweaks for LIS, client fixes, and IP phone tweaks, etc:

Lync Client 32 bit http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=2467763

Lync Client 64 bit http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=2467763

Lync Attandant http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=2467760

Lync Attandee (Admin Level install) http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=2467762

Lync Attendee (User level install) http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=2467762

Lync Server 2010 http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=2493736

Lync Group Chat http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=2467765

Lync 2010 Phone Edition for Polycom CX700 and LG-Nortel IP Phone 8540 http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=2493722

Lync 2010 Phone Edition for Aastra 6721ip and Aastra 6725ip http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=2493724

Lync 2010 Phone Edition for Polycom CX500, Polycom CX600, and Polycom CX3000 http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=2493723

A question often asked by my education customers. Recently, a well respected and unbiased 3rd party network consultancy company called Miercom conducted a series of tests to validate if Lync Server 2010 could sustain 3 days of a million calls without incident to see if it were on par with other enterprise IP PBX systems. 

After 3 days without Lync showing a hiccup Miercom engineers decided to hammer it for another 10 days to see what they could find. Here are the results of their testing:

The 4.1 million calls completed by Lync Server 2010 without a single dropped call was the highest success rate of any PBX or UC system tested by Miercom to date including several Avaya and Cisco IP PBX systems:

“The delivery rate with sustained operation is the highest capacity test applied to any Unified Communications /IP PBX product we have tested to date” – Miercom analysis

Another amazing fact as a byproduct of the test was:

13,167 calls per hour against a single virtualized Lync Server 2010 Standard Edition server running all the Lync roles (mediation, front end, etc). Total hardware used for 5 VMs including a domain controller, SharePoint 2010 server, Exchange 2010 server, QMS server, and a Lync server was a single Hyper-V host which had 16GB of RAM and an 8 way i7 system.

This 3rd party analysis of the reliability and scalability certainly demonstrates Lync Server can scale to handle large call volumes without a single error using only a single server in a virtualized role! From what I have seen with other UC / IP PBX systems, I would challenge other PBX vendoers to provide this level of call scale/volume or reliability with a single virtualized server/appliance.

Their bottom line analysis of Lync Server 2010 from Miercom:

“Microsoft Lync 2010 is a resilient, scalable, feature rich Unified Communications System.
Microsoft Lync 2010 should be in the short list of top three to consider for enterprises
communications infrastructure upgrades. Quality third party peripherals from Aastra, Polycom and
SNOM will help Microsoft achieve more market acceptance at the Enterprise Desktop. Third party
hardware such as the survivable branch appliance UX 2000 from NET will enable branch offices
the resiliency needed for enterprise communications.” - Miercom analysis

Download the full Miercom analysis and tests conducted against Lync Server 2010 here.

Who is Miercom? Read more about them here.

In some cases you may want to reduce the workload on servers or stage deployment of all the features of Lync until …. (the servers can support the load, the network upgrade is complete, etc). When you did this in OCS 2007 R2 you had to enable GPOs to stage deployment. In Lync most client policies are enabled as in-band from the Lync Control Panel or from Powershell. So what does the experience look like for the user? Do they see that they could do that feature but for some reason the IT team has turned it off? No. They don’t see it.

Looking at a user configuration in the Lync Server 2010 Control Panel I can apply policies to that user. In my case I decided that in telephony audio and video are disabled as shown below.

After I commit this change for the user and log that user out. This is what they see in the UI. The option for calls is grayed out.

If I decided to have a conversation with Holly I can see that Audio calls of any kind have been disabled as well as video calls. In my case I still wanted to enabled conferencing capabilities but this could also be removed to have just IM enabled.

This gives you lots of flexibility in how you deploy. Obviously the greatest value is when all modalities are available but proper planning and deployment are always necessary. Take care.

OK. We don’t support WMI and now the WMI script for bulk user load doesn’t work for Lync clients. I haven’t tested this myself yet but appears that Jeff Fuillet has created a script for doing this with Lync. This tool provides the same type of functionality as LCSAddcontacts.

From ExPTA {blog}

The purpose of LyncAddContacts is to add the same contact groups and contacts to multiple users programmatically.  For example, you may want to import a contact group called "Company Contacts"  that contains contacts for everyone in the company.  Here's how it works:

1. Create a template (source) user in Lync with the contact groups and contacts that you want to export.
2. Run the LyncAddContacts tool to export the source user's contacts
3. Run the LyncAddContacts tool again in import mode and target the user or OU that you want to import the contacts to.

For more information on the tool I would download from his blogsite. Great stuff Jeff. Thanks for recognizing the gap and providing a solution!!!!

It still works. I had a question today about custom states. We are still using four custom states and they are configured with the combination of registry settings and the presence XML file.

2 registry keys are needed.

1. CustomStateURL (Reg_SZ) file:///c:/windows/presence.xml

2. EnableSIPHighSecurityMode (Reg_DWORD) 0

Then you create the XML File such as this one:

<customStates>
    <customState ID="1" availability="online">
        <activity LCID="1033">Out and about - use mobile</activity>
    </customState>
    <customState ID="2" availability="Busy">
        <activity LCID="1033">at Starbucks</activity>
    </customState>
    <customState ID="3" availability="busy">
        <activity LCID="1033">at lunch</activity>
    </customState>
    <customState ID="4" availability="do-not-disturb">
        <activity LCID="1033">Executive Briefing with Customer</activity>
    </customState>
</customStates>

Logout and exit the Lync client and restart. You should see the custom states.

The OIP has been updated to include Lync 2010. If you are looking for what PBXs provide Direct SIP, Gateways, SBA information, etc. Then I suggest reviewing the updated site here.

Updated 3-15-2011 with new RMX screenshots

Updated 2-18-2011 with new interop information

I was asked by a university in Oregon if we work with existing video conferencing solutions such as TANDBERG (now Cisco) and Polycom. The answer is we can coexist with Polycom video conference systems directly and Cisco TANDBERG or Cisco Telepresence indirectly via a 3rd party video gateway in the coming future.

Polycom interop with Lync

With Polycom RMX, you can connect Lync Server to existing Polycom video conferencing investments. 

Here is an example of Polycom RMX conference room integration with Lync:

I joined a Polycom RMX MCU from Lync even via federation and had my other UC amigos Bill and Greg join as well from their Lync clients. The red highlight shows who is speaking actively. Pretty slick. This demonstrated nice interoperability between Polycom and Lync video endpoints. The scenario here is you could have federated Lync off campus users/students join your existing campus Polycom conference rooms over the Internet.

This example below shows how Lync users can connect to existing Polycom VTC device called Polycom HDX. The device is registered in Lync and Active Directory. You can also see device presence, even connect to federated Polycom VTCs and conference rooms in other organizations.

The sample above I have joined a Polycom VTC in Polycom’s organization via Lync federation. This is a pretty powerful way to extend your Polycom investment to Lync video conferencing and even extend your Polycom to federated customers.

With the Polycom video conferencing interop you can also achieve ‘Brady bunch’ style multiparty video conference sessions right from your Lync client such as the sample below:

When I join a  Polycom HDX conference device registered in Active Directory, the presence for the Polycom device turns to busy. I also heard some of their video conferencing devices are slated to adopt Lync Server’s RT Video codec some time soon.

See more here.

Cisco TANDBERG or Cisco Telepresence interop with Lync

Currently, there is no official direct support to connect directly to Cisco Tandberg or Cisco Telepresence video conferencing systems with Lync video endpoints. There is Cisco TANDBERG support for OCS 2007 R2 however. There are video gateway vendors like RADVISION and others working on a way to bridge Cisco TANDBERG and Cisco Telepresence all in one session.

Cisco TANDBERG has been testing some Lync interop. This video below shows an early beta test of some of the TANDBERG and Lync interop however it is not final and not all the features are working.

Lync interop with Cisco Tandberg C90 Telepresence

One way Cisco TANDBERG can help maintain current and future interoperability with other video conferencing/UC systems such as Polycom and Lync is by joining the Unified Communications Interoperability Foundation UCIF org.  Microsoft, Polycom, Juniper, HP and other vendors have joined. See list of UCIF members here.

See OCS 2007 R2 interop with TANDBERG here.

RADVISION UC gateway with Lync

We also work with RADVISION as well using a SCOPIA Unified Gateway for Lync:

This gateway is slated to provide H.323 and H.264 video conference bridging to Lync Server 2010 which means you can connect multiple video conference systems at the same time to Lync such as Cisco Telepresence, Cisco TANDBERG and Polycom.

See more on RADVISION’s interop here.

LifeSize interop with Lync

LifeSize video conferencing systems also support Lync video interoperability.

Read more about LifeSize’s Lync integration here.

This is pretty nice update since it is adding in updates for coexistence and cloud hybrid and cloud only scenarios if you looking at our cloud offering for Exchange Online.

Here is a checklist for moving to the Office 365’s Exchange Online:

Updated Coexistence checklist for deploying Exchange 2010 with both Exchange 2003 and Exchange 2007:

Visit the Exchange 2010 Deployment Assistant tool here.

Some cool Lync dev training available if you are looking to extend Lync into your line of business or web applications:

Microsoft Lync Server 2010, Microsoft Lync 2010 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 provide the communication platform for developers to rapidly build solutions that integrate and extend communications into their business processes based on familiar tools and skills.

The Unified Communications "14" Training Course and the Unified Communications “14” Developer Training Kit provide deep technical training on all aspects of the Lync Server 2010, Lync 2010 and Exchange Server 2010 SDKs to give developers the skills they need to be productive developing communications driven business processes.

This training course includes 22 videos and 20 hands on labs, including the following: