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Outlook 2010 beta and E.164 number format updater
06 October 09 09:26 PM | Ewan | 0 Comments   

Well hello again; it’s been a while. Normal service should now infrequently resume. I thought I’d update the instructions of a previous post, after I was showing someone how to use my old “ Contacts updater ” application to make all their Outlook contact Read More...

Filed under: Exchange, Outlook, Office, Unified Comms, OCS

Microsoft Roundtable transitions to Polycom
31 March 09 02:44 PM | Ewan | 4 Comments   

Microsoft & Polycom announced yesterday that the Microsoft Roundtable conferencing device (used with Live Meeting or OCS 2007 to present a 360° view of the room to participants joining from elsewhere), will be replaced. Polycom are taking over the Read More...

Filed under: Unified Comms, OCS

Business continuity – it’s a people thing, not just a premises one
12 February 09 08:44 AM | Ewan | 1 Comments   

I had a really interesting discussion with a customer last week, when we were musing over the effects that the snow had on UK businesses. It was another example – like the floods which have hit parts of the country over the last few years – of a threat Read More...

Filed under: Outlook, Unified Comms, OCS, Business

Custom presence states in OCS – revisited again
06 February 09 09:15 AM | Ewan | 5 Comments   

I posted a while back about custom presence states ( here and here ). Well it turns out that a change made to an updated version of Communicator, requires (by default) that the custom state XML file is downloaded from a “secure” URL (so ruling out the Read More...

Filed under: Unified Comms, OCS

When the weather outside is frightful…
04 February 09 09:21 AM | Ewan | 1 Comments   

… the UC technology is soooo delightful. OK, it’s cheesy as you can get, but very true. The weather forecast on Sunday night was for heavy snow, and sure enough we awoke on Monday to about 4-6 inches of fresh snow – something that many countries would Read More...

Filed under: Unified Comms, OCS, Business

Bulk update Outlook Contacts' phone numbers to be E.164 compliant
30 November 07 09:10 AM | Ewan | 1 Comments   

Here's a quick & dirty tool I put together for Outlook to be able to update all the phone numbers of contacts to make them E.164 compliant. It relates back to a post a while back around the challenges of formatting numbers 'correctly', particularly Read More...

Filed under: Exchange, Outlook, Office, Unified Comms, OCS

Custom presence states in Communicator, reprise
03 October 07 11:37 AM | Ewan | 4 Comments   

A quick follow on to my post the other day about having custom presence states in Office Communicator 2007 - the Communicator Deployment Guide has a couple of minor errors which could frustrate you, as one commenter pointed out, and I've had comments Read More...

Filed under: IM, Unified Comms, OCS

Custom presence states in Office Communicator
27 September 07 11:22 AM | Ewan | 7 Comments   

I just discovered how to modify presence states in Office Communicator 2007: it's documented in the Office Communicator Deployment Guide (page 21, if you're interested), and allows for either the managed deployment of Communicator with additional corporate-set Read More...

Filed under: IM, Unified Comms, OCS

Identity & presence: the key to anyone's Unified Communications strategy
07 September 07 10:55 AM | Ewan | 1 Comments   

I spend a lot of time talking with customers about what Microsoft is doing with various new technologies, mostly involving or revolving around the Unified Communications stuff with OCS and Exchange. It's really interesting to see how many people just Read More...

Filed under: IM, Unified Comms, OCS

OCS2007 trial edition now available
06 August 07 09:37 AM | Ewan | 1 Comments   

If you want to get your hands on trial software for the recently-released Office Communications Server 2007 and its client, Office Communicator 2007 , then you're in luck... OCS trial download (both Standard & Enterprise editions) Communicator trial Read More...

Filed under: IM, Unified Comms, OCS

OCS 2007 RTMs
30 July 07 10:02 AM | Ewan | 0 Comments   

The title says it all really - Office Communications Server 2007 released to manufacturing on Friday. Mark posted about it then, so I guess it's official (though there's not much hoo-haa yet on Microsoft.com). It's getting pretty exciting with the use Read More...

Filed under: Unified Comms, OCS

Living the dream with Office Communicator 2007
25 July 07 03:06 PM | Ewan | 4 Comments   

I've been a long-time fan of instant messaging and pervasive "presence", especially the cultural changes it allows organisations to make in order to communicate and collaborate better. As a result, I've been really interested to see what's been happening Read More...

Filed under: Exchange, IM, Unified Comms, OCS

Communicator phones sneaking out
27 April 07 01:20 PM | Ewan | 0 Comments   

When Microsoft first announced the Unified Communications strategy & partnerships last year, one of the pictures that was shown off was of a prototype "Communicator phone" - a networked device which could be used to make phone calls through the Office Read More...

Filed under: Unified Comms, OCS