Johann's Unified Communications : tools

OCS Remote Connectivity Analyzer

jkruse — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 10:19:55 GMT

A great tool for testing remote connectivity to your OCS Edge Server is now available from the UC Team.

Check it out at https://www.testocsconnectivity.com/

Edge Planning Tool for OCS 2007

jkruse — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 03:20:00 GMT

Confused about Edge Server configuration and security? The best idea is to come to UNC316: Office Communications Server 2007 Security: Architecture and Edge Services with Derrick Buckley and Craig Pringle at Tech.Ed in Sydney next week :)

But if you can't make it to Tech.Ed then it might be worthwhile checking out the Edge Planning Tool.

The Edge Planning Tool asks questions about your proposed or current edge server deployment. The tool uses your answers and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 best practices to generate the following reports:

Settings that you can use to configure your certificates, DNS services, and firewalls
Custom documentation for configuring your edge servers, reverse proxy, and next hop server
A comparison of your answers to Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 best practices

Download it from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=149e5dd5-eaae-46b6-afba-01c31e88a275&displaylang=en

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Office Communications Server 2007 VoIP Test Set

jkruse — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 03:00:00 GMT

Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 VoIP Test Set enables you to simulate a SIP endpoint to test connectivity.

VoIP Test Set for Office Communications Server 2007 supports emulation of a SIP endpoint to test connectivity. Emulation options include the following:

Client emulation - To emulate a Microsoft Office Communicator client, you specify a SIP-enabled user account to register with Office Communications Server. This can be useful for troubleshooting problems with incoming or outgoing Enterprise Voice calls. For example, an Office Communications Server engineer can use the tool in client emulation mode to quickly change user location profile information and validate that outbound routing is properly configured.
Server emulation - You can use VoIP Test Set to emulate a Mediation Server or a gateway. To emulate a server, you specify the IP address, port number, and other settings of the server to be emulated. This can be useful for emulating components during the setup of the Office Communications Server 2007 infrastructure to verify the functionality of components that have already been deployed. For example, you might use the tool to receive and make calls directly from an IP/PSTN gateway to ensure that it is completely functional before deploying the complete Office Communications Server 2007 infrastructure.

Download it from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=7b6ab4f3-2949-4e97-856e-9c4ae323c75a&displaylang=en

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Technorati Tags: ocs, download, testing, voip, mediation, sip, tools

Help designing and planning your OCS deployment

jkruse — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 02:26:01 GMT

I've just designed a high-level OCS architecture for a large organisation, including IM/presence, conferencing, Enterprise Voice, external access (inc. conferencing/voice), federation and PIC.

I have also discovered and included all of the relevant documentation for planning and deployment of this architecture.

Total time spent designing this architecture - < 5 minutes!

How did I do this so quickly and easily? The Planning Tool for Office Communications Server 2007.

The planning tool provides you prescriptive guidance to get you started with planning your Office Communications Server 2007 topology. The tool asks you a series of interview questions about the features that you are interested in, as well as information about your organisation.

Based on the answers you provide, the planning tool draws out a recommended topology based on Microsoft’s Office Communications Server 2007 User Model that has been tested.

The planning tool also provides customised links to the appropriate documentation to help you plan and deploy your topology.

Links to the relevant planning guides

Links to to the relevant deployment guides

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.

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Technorati Tags: ocs, planning, doco, tools, download

Useful tools for working with OCS

jkruse — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 00:43:29 GMT

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 Kit:
- Bulk/Single Move Users Script (moveusers.wsf)
  The Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Single/Bulk Move Users script, Moveusers.wsf, is used to move users from one computer running Office Communications Server 2007 to another. This script produces an ANSI file as output. It can accept an ANSI or Unicode file as input for bulk user moves and can accept a SIP URI and a destination pool as input for single user moves.
- ArchivingCDR Reporter (ArchivingCDRReporter.exe, ArchivingCDRReporter_Config.xml)
  This reporting tool has built-in SQL queries to retrieve and view information from the Archiving and Call Detail Records (CDR) Backend. The tool enables the user to view Office Communications Server 2007 usage reports based on the Archiving and CDR tables.
- ABS Configuration Tool (absConfig.exe)
  ABS Configuration Tool is a graphical user interface application that enables administrators to configure AD attributes and WMI settings, related to ABS.
- Enterprise Voice Route Helper
  Route Helper is a graphical user interface application that helps visualize, test, modify, archive, and share voice routing configuration information. Route Helper is an alternative to the MMC snap-in for viewing and modifying Enterprise Voice number normalization rules, location profiles, voice policy, and routes.
- Topology Designer
  This tool, which is based on the Microsoft Office Visio drawing and diagramming software, enables the user to visually design a deployment configuration and generate an XML file that can be used to import the settings during setup.
- DMINSIDER
  The OCS Web conferencing server saves conference contents in encrypted format in the content file share. Therefore, even if the user has access to the content file share, the administrator cannot view the actual content. The DMInsider tool helps an administrator find and view conferences content managed by the Web Conferencing Server. The tool can also help administrators to find and view XML-based conference compliances logs.
- DMDEL
  The Dmdel tool helps an administrator to find conferences content that is older than a specified date and delete that content. The OCS Web Conf server will automatically delete content that has not been activated for ~28 days. This tool allows you to manually delete inactive content.
- DMHASH
  The content of all conferences organized by one user is stored in the same directory. The directory name is a hash string that is computed based on the organizer’s SIP URI.
  The Dmhash tool helps an administrator generate the hash value for a user URI. The hash value is used to create content folders for each organizer. It is useful for administrator to move user’s conference content when user’s SIP URI is changed.

Download the Resource Kit tools from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b9bf4f71-fb0b-4de9-962f-c56b70a8aecd&DisplayLang=en

In addition to the Resource Kit Tools, these are very useful:

Office Communications Server 2007 Visio stencil - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=543705f6-d02a-436e-8b34-5c796550022a&displaylang=en
Rad Software's Regular Expression Builder - perfect for number normalization, thanks to Rob Dolphin from Nortel for passing this on - http://www.radsoftware.com.au/regexdesigner/

Do you have any other useful tools or utilities you use? Let me know and I will update this post with details.

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Technorati Tags: ocs, management, tools, utilities, download, visio, reskit

Exchange ActiveSync Certificate-Based Authentication Tool

jkruse — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 12:21:43 GMT

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.

These utilities include:

A tool to assist the administrator in configuring certificate enrollment for mobile devices connecting to Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2. Specifically, the tool will help the administrator populate the Active Directory with the following information to be used by the mobile device when enrolling for a certificate:

Certification authority (CA) server name
Certificate template that will be used
Other settings, such as custom Web enrollment URLs

Because the tool writes information to the Active Directory, it must be run by someone with domain administrator privileges.

Additional tools to validate that a mobile device can successfully retrieve the above configuration information from the Active Directory.
Documentation outlining the server configuration steps necessary to enable & require certificate-based authentication for Exchange ActiveSync.

Download it now from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=82510e18-7965-4883-a8c3-f73f1f4733ac&DisplayLang=en

Technorati Tags: activesync, windows mobile, wm6, exchange 2007, tools, management, certificates, download

Significant update to the Exchange 2007 Mailbox Server Role Storage Requirements Calculator - v 11.8

jkruse — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 01:50:58 GMT

Please go on our Mailbox Server Role Storage Requirements Calculator updates tracking page to see what is in this new version!

A blog post explaining the calculator (updated for this new version) is here.

Technorati Tags: exchange, storage, tools