Communicator inside Outlook

jkruse — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 00:11:33 GMT

Outlook automatically includes presence indicators for all email recipients/senders/etc. But if you spend most of your day inside Outlook, this utility allows you to access the rest of your Communicator functionality without switching applications.

Available at http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Communicator4Outlook

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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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Johann's Unified Communications : utilities

Communicator inside Outlook

Useful tools for working with OCS