Bill & Greg's Most Excellent Adventure : OCS

OCS Reference Tools you can use!!

bill hagen — Sat, 31 May 2008 03:00:00 GMT

All Unified Communication End User Reference Guides

Favorite OCS Deployment guide

End User Content for UC

Microsoft Office Communicator Quick Reference

Using Communicator with Office Applications

Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Demo

Office Communicator Overview

Top 10 Benefits of Microsoft Office Communicator

Also, some on Exchange/Outlook:

Better together: do more with Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 and Exchange Server 2007

Up to Speed with Outlook 2007

Outlook Calendar Basics

Introduction to Unified Messaging

Work with Microsoft Exchange content when offline

Exchange How To Videos

http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/evaluation/demos/default.mspx

OCS Ignite Tour (IT PROS)- Get Trained!!

bill hagen — Wed, 07 May 2008 23:06:00 GMT

As a valued member of the Microsoft community, we would like to extend to you an official invitation to an Office Communications Server 2007 Ignite event!

This 2-day hands-on technical workshop is intended to provide you with key information regarding Office Communications Server 2007.

Topics:

· An Overview of Office Communications Server 2007

· Building an Office Communications Server 2007 Architecture

· IM and Rich Presence in Office Communications Server 2007

· Deploying and Using Conferencing Solutions in Office Communications Server 2007

· Management and Troubleshooting Tools in Office Communications Server 2007

· Voice in Office Communications Server 2007: Scenarios, Architectures and Topologies

(Enabling and Configuring Users for Voice in Office Communications Server 2007)

· Integrating Exchange Server 2007 Unified Messaging and Office Communications Server 2007

· Compliance and Archiving in Office Communications Server 2007

Event Dates:

Honolulu, HI
May 8-9,, 2008
8:30AM-5:00PM

New Horizons Computer Learning
1585 Kapiolani Boulevard
Suite 1000 (10th Floor)

Honolulu, HI
Local: (808) 947-4474

Dallas, TX
May 8-9, 2008
8:30AM-5:00PM

Tekfocus
1950 Stemmons Freeway

INFOMART Suite 2062

Dallas, TX 75207-3107
Local: 214-800-5611

Los Angeles, CA
May 12-13, 2008
8:30AM-5:00PM

Quickstart
1515 W. 190th St. S Tower, Ste 450

Gardena, CA 90248
Local: (310)-327-1201

Iselin, NJ
May 19-20,, 2008
8:30AM-5:00PM

Solartech
194 Wood Avenue South

(Prudential Building), Sixth Floor

Iselin, NJ 08830
Local: (201) 807 9889

Salt Lake City, UT
May 21-22, 2008
8:30AM-5:00PM

MindCenter
5505 S 900 East, Plaza 1, Suite 225

Murray, UT 84117
Local: (201) 807 9889

San Jose, CA
June 2-3, 2008
8:30AM-5:00PM

Quickstart
2665 North First Street, Suite 214

San Jose, CA 95134
Local: (408) 441-2720

Let's have a little Focus

gkatz — Wed, 07 May 2008 00:55:00 GMT

I figured I'd talk a little about the OCS conferencing architecture in this blog. The OCS Conf architecture consist of 3 main components: The focus, focus factory, and the MCUs. The Focus is the traffic cop. It is a conference state server that coordinates all aspects of a conference. The focus runs in the user services module on all FE servers. A separate instance is used for each "active" conference. The Focus is responsible for authenticating particpants for a conference, managing roles, managing conference state, calling for the MCUs, Maintaining SIP signaling between participants and MCUs, activating conferences, and accepting subscriptions to conference.

When a new media type is introduced into a conference the focus is responsible for calling the MCU and establishing connections for the new client and new media. This happens to all clients when new media is introduced.

The focus factory is used to create, delete, and modify meetings in the conference database. The focus factory receives a SIP SERVICE message with C3P cmds in payload from the client. The focus factory updates the database with a new meeting and sends the conference URI to the client.

There are 4 different MCU or conferencing servers for OCS:

A/V
Web Conferencing
IM Conferencing
Telephony Conferencing.

The A/V provides for multilparty audio and video mixing and relaying using RTP.

For IM the MCU provides for multiparty IM. Up to 100 participants.

For Web Conferencing this server component manages all aspects of the web conference including the ppts, document sharing, whiteboarding, app sharing, polling, q&a, etc. The web conferencing server using PSOM (Persistent Shared Object Model), a live meeting protocol, for operations including slide uploading to the web conference.

External Connectors for OCS

gkatz — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 20:51:00 GMT

In reviewing OCS licensing and pricing with the field we received some questions regarding the OCS External Connectors (Standard and Enterprise). To help mitigate any additional confusion below is a mini FAQ on OCS External Connectors.

When do you need an OCS External Connector?

OCS External Connectors are required for external users who would need to be authenticated by the server. This includes, external on-prem conference participates, external users with IM accounts hosted on your server and external users with voices extensions hosted on your servers. This does not include placing a call to, or receiving a call from an external party or external users covered via PIC.
Why do you need have two OCS External Connectors and what configuration do I need?

OCS External Connectors enable the capabilities associated with the OCS CALs for external users. The OCS Standard External Connector enables the capabilities associated with the OCS Standard CAL, and the OCS Enterprise External Connector enables the capabilities associated with the OCS Enterprise CAL. Since the OCS Standard CAL is a requirement for the OCS Enterprise CAL, so too is the OCS Standard External Connector a requirement for the OCS Enterprise External Connector?

How many OCS External Connectors do I need?

OCS External Connectors are purchased per server, for servers that would interact with external users.

MSIT and deploying OCS

gkatz — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 18:09:00 GMT

Our Internal IT just posted a whitepaper and presentation on deploying OCS at Microsoft to 85K users worldwide. Great info on scaling to meet our availability and security requirements.

Technical White Paper | PowerPoint Presentation

customize Office Communicator

gkatz — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 17:58:00 GMT

A colleague asked me if I was feeling better the other day and I asked him why he thought I was feeling bad. He said your IM says you have a headache "do not disturb". What he was referring to is the ability to customize Office Communicator. I customized mine and you can too!!!

Communicator 2007 client allows you to configure and use customized presence information. So how do I do it:

Create an .XML file (any name will do it - i.e: custom.xml) with a content similar to this :
<customStates>
    <customState ID="1" availability="online">
        <activity LCID="1033">Working from Home</activity>
    </customState>
    <customState ID="2" availability="busy">
        <activity LCID="1033">working at customer site</activity>
    </customState>
    <customState ID="3" availability="busy">
        <activity LCID="1033">Meeting on Campus</activity>
    </customState>
    <customState ID="4" availability="do-not-disturb">
        <activity LCID="1033">Have a headache</activity>
    </customState>
</customStates>
Make the file you have created above accessible. As rule of thumb if you can access at the file through any of the following protocols you're in a good shape.
- File share
- HTTP(s)
Create the following registry key:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Communicator\CustomStateURL = file://server/share/custom.xml

Restart Office Communicator.

That's it. :)

Planning Tool

gkatz — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 17:49:00 GMT

We have a new OCS Planning Tool to help you plan your upcoming OCS deployment. The tool is still in beta and some of the links aren't available yet but it does provide you with a quick visio and initial sizing of your environment by looking at the design parameters you define. Download it and check it out.

You can download the Planning Tool for Office Communications Server 2007 at http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/0/7/207bb9fb-bffe-478f-91b7-8339d25f7fdd/OCSPlanningTool.msi.