You will notice that in the 2007 documentation we moved to the phrase of reverse proxy when discussing the publishing of content, but obviously if we document any product it will be ISA. We never state you can't use another product, it is just that we don't test or document any of the competing products.
Chris forwarded his work and I hope it helps you -
http://chrislehr.com/2008/11/how-to-publish-your-ocs-2007-address.htm
November 5 edit - In my haste I failed to mention that we didn't test the product in the topology that Chris mentions which means it would not be officially supported.
Walter sent me an email today via the blog contact form and it was about Archiving levels. One of his colleagues had mentioned the idea that there were values of 0, 1, 2 and 3 controlling the amount of archiving.
Admittedly I was not aware of the levels however it seemed reasonable because you would have no archiving, full archiving and archiving header information only. So I started to look in the Archiving and Technical Reference guides which gave a few of the msrtcsip- archiving values. I began my search on MSDN with msrtcsip-archivingenabled and didn't find much so I looked internally and found some really interesting data. That new data revealed changes from 2005 to 2007 and showed 16 values for OCS! I chose just one of the attributes RecordIMCallDetails as it would be a rather unique search string. I did one more Internet search and found the data on Technet. Here is the link and just an abbreviated portion of the link's contents. Office Communications Server 2007 Attribute Descriptions
msRTCSIP-ArchiveDefaultFlags
This attribute specifies the global default within the forest boundary for whether all users’ communications are to be archived. This is enforced by the Archiving Agent layer.
The range of values for this attribute is as follows:
- TRUE: Archive all users
- FALSE: Do not archive all users
This attribute globally controls, within the forest boundary, how users’ communications within an internal network are archived.
Live Communications Server 2005 behavior (now retired)
The range of values for this attribute is as follows:
- 0: Archive the message body [bit 0]
- 1: Do not archive the message body [bit 0]
Office Communications Server 2007 behavior
The range of values for this attribute is as follows:
- 0: ArchiveFederationDefaultWithoutBody (retired)
- 1-2: ArchiveInternalCommunications
- 3-4: ArchiveFederatedCommunications
- 5: RecordPresenceRegistrations
- 6: RecordIMCallDetails
- 7: RecordGroupIMCallDetails
- 8: RecordFileTransferInstances
- 9: RecordAudioCallDetails
- 10: RecordVideoCallDetails
- 11: RecordRemoteAssistanceCallDetails
- 12: RecordApplicationSharingDetails
- 13: RecordMeetingInstantiations
- 14: RecordMeetingJoins
- 15: RecordDataJoins
- 16: RecordAVJoins
msRTCSIP-ArchivingEnabled
This attribute controls whether a single user’s communications are to be archived. This is enforced by the Archiving Agent layer. It is marked for global catalog replication.
This attribute is an integer used as a bit field to control whether the user’s communications are archived. This control is enforced by the archiving Agent. The scope of this attribute is specific to a single user or contact.
The valid values in Office Communications Server are as follows:
- 0-1: Retired
- 2: Archive internal communications
- 3: Archive federated communications
Previously valid values in Live Communications Server 2005 are as follows:
- 0:Use the default value defined by msRTCSIP-ArchiveDefault and msRTCSIP-ArchiveFederation in this order of precedence:
- 1: Archive
- 2: Do not archive
- 3: Archive without the message body
msRTCSIP-ArchivingServerData (Live Communications Server 2005)
This attribute is reserved for future use.
msRTCSIP-ArchivingServerVersion (Office Communications Server)
This attribute defines the version of the Archiving Service. This attribute is a monotonously increasing integer type that increments with each official product release.
The possible valid values are:
- Undefined: Live Communications Server 2003
- Undefined: Live Communications Server 2005
- Undefined: Live Communications Server 2005 with SP1
- 3: Office Communications Server 2007
Thanks Walter for asking a question prompting me to learn something new!
TomL LCSKid
So MSN/Live/Hotmail offers alternate domain names for corporate use (sometimes referred to as vanity names) and you can IM between OCS and MSN/Live/Hotmail with the following syntax username(contoso.com)@msn.com (original post).
AOL offers this service (unsure of Yahoo!) but that same syntax won't work with AOL as their gateway doesn't support that syntax.
No word on when or if this will change in the future.
TomL LCSKid, today's post credited to Ken
The long awaited release of the OCS 2007 Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) 2007 has been completed:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=A1832431-54B7-4070-9B10-14EFB231FF0C&displaylang=en&displaylang=en
TomL LCSKid
<Sept 8 2009 rewording as Elan shared that some thought I meant director role as a job instead of about OCS. Now if I hear he got a raise or options, I expect to see a nice thank you gift. (grin)>
Elan contacted me via my blog regarding how one would use the OCS Director server role and in conversing he shared his blog. He writes about Exchange and OCS and I wanted to call out this thread on OCS deployment, I chose to start with the fifth in the series as he provides links to 1-4 in the beginning -
http://www.shudnow.net/2008/08/18/office-communications-server-2007-enterprise-deployment-part-5/
LCSKid
While I work for Microsoft, I am not blind to the fact that other software solutions exist and may be better or easier. There was a time when I did not use our sites for search. Live.com has improved greatly and today I experienced what I think a search engine should do - it gave me the actual answer I wanted. I received permission (we have 3 kids) to head out with a friend to see an afternoon movie. When he called I didn't know the times so I simply put <batman movie concord> into the search engine and this was the first result shown (technically the first thing was a sales item from a sponsored sight).
I didn't have to click on the movie site and then find a local theater, I didn't have to click on the my local theater and browse its listings, this showed me all the right theater's and the times, in fact it even included the duration of the movie too.
Another cool one to do is with conversion queries <28 celsius fahrenheit> <1 pint conversion>
I was always a big fan of the simple start pages for search sites and Live.com didn't do that as well as they do know with the picture in the background. The Olympics going on right now lent itself to some great pictures.
TomL LCSKid
One of my main responsibilities is managing Microsoft Consultants to work with our customers and partners in our beta/TAP programs. With both consulting and support involved each group gains product familiarity early and helps prepare their organization for when the product releases. One of the consultants was able to take his wealth of knowledge on our Edge Server roles and the challenges of configuring to be used for the purposes of creating this planning tool. One neat thing about this project is that we had a college intern (Miru) functioning as the Program Manager for this project as well this was an excellent example of cross-group collaboration (forgive me, it is review time).
I have asked the consultant to provide us a write up on the tool and likely that will be posted on the http://communicationsserverteam.com/default.aspx blog so stay tuned.
The Edge Planning Tool for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 provides settings for configuring your perimeter network based on information that you provide to the tool.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=149e5dd5-eaae-46b6-afba-01c31e88a275&displaylang=en
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
TomL LCSKid
In my role I am on a distribution group with our Most Valuable Professional's (MVP), which allows us to gain valuable insight into trends with deployment problems, questions or documentation items as well they share input on future product plans to help us avoid problems based on their experience. I know a good many of these folks in person and others simply via email and blogs. Tonight I realized that I don't know enough people as Jeff Schertz shared a blog entry from one of our discussions on the Edge Interfaces. When I went to check it out I realized I was missing a lot of valuable information, here are just a few of the recent post titles -
- Disabling Instant Messaging in OCS
- Clarification on OCS Edge Interface Support
- Deploying OCS 2007 in a Windows 2008 Domain
- Programmatically Enabling Users for OCS 2007
I then asked the MVP alias to share their blogs so I wouldn't get surprised again.
TomL LCSKid
I never claim to know everything about certificates but I do feel I know a fair amount. In working with a customer issue we had some questions on whether the certificate would be trusted by the PIC partners given the intermediate authorities. When asking one of the partners to look I simply provided the cert we had, both in the P7b (entire certificate chain) and then an export of the specific cert as a cer file. The partner wanted an X509 text version which I didn't know how to generate so I played around.
The wizard for exporting defaults to DER encoded binary X.509 (.CER) which has always worked for what I need but that is because I can install the cert and use a few certutil commands to verify the certificate. Turns out if you use the second option of Base-64 encoded X.509 (.CER) you can also open it in a text editor. The format will be as below
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
...<removing actual cert details>
-----END CERTIFICATE-----
So I don't know what toolset the partner uses such that having the text helps them but I know how to give it to them next time!
Today's post revealing a bit of why "kid" is in the name
TomL LCSKid
A team member shared this link (thanks Maureen) and she noted that while navigating the sight the links all referenced LCS until you go to the download section - <link>
Edit August 5, 2008 - Matt McGillen has this post with what he learned about deploying the solution (overall a good blog to monitor)
Edit August 8, 2008 - Giving visibility to Joachim's comment - We also describe what you need to configure on the BES server. Joachim http://unified-communications.blogspot.com
This question came from our MVP's regarding the ability to prevent attendees from marking up the presentation.
The presenter can do this in the following dialog. In the Attendees panel, select Permissions -
I found this posting from Dmitry with an OCS 2007 PowerShell solution and thought I would pass it on - if you have other solutions please comment with links. Since Dmitry's post does a really good job of showing the UI, I won't repeat it here.
PowerGUI
OCS PowerPack for PowerGUI
TomL LCSKid
Check out the latest marketing video for VoIP as you are video. It is 15 minutes long and includes the Sklar brothers of Cheap Seats fame (or at least where I first learned of them)'
http://preview.microsoft.com/video/videoDetails.aspx?video=17648162-1372-4eef-af74-a7362978bc09
If you listen close the quick discussion on security (TLS and SRTP) is accurate and the simple pizza box diagram of including OCS with a PBX and gateway is accurate as well the company references are all legit, in fact they all came through our team's technical efforts to ramp them up. Our team has Customer and Partner programs (TAP/Beta) and Deployment Readiness and this project blurred the lines of both providing deployment readiness via internal Microsoft consultants globally. Our team did not make this video <grin>.
TomL OCSKid
Looks like an adm file will be available for Live Meeting 2007 client and conferencing add-in. The article has been released 948741 here
In order to receive the actual adm file you will need to open a support incident. The process, at least when I was in support, was you opened the case and either paid or incurred a decrement to your support contract but after you get to support they are supposed to reverse that. Make sure you keep the email with your initial connect because it includes their contact information as well as their manager if you need to follow up on reversing charges.
Tom
This post comes courtesy of an MVP and partner in our voice program, John Lamb with Modality Systems (www.modalitysystems.com)
Tom-LCSKID: Many partners and customers are reporting problems using the script used for configuring the Update Server. We, Microsoft, are aware of the issue and looking at how best to resolve these problems (my guess is a mix of documentation and likely script update (do not read this as confirmed or committed, simply my personal conjecture))
John shares the information below
Instead of running ConfigUpdateServer.vbs, do this instead:
Step 1:
LcsCmd.exe" /Web /Role:UpdatesServer /Action:Activate /User:<RTC Component Service Acct Name> /Password:******** /ExternalWeb
fqdn:<public fqdn of ISA Server>/RequestHandler/ucdevice.upx /PoolName:<host name of pool>
example:
LcsCmd.exe" /Web /Role:UpdatesServer /Action:Activate /User:RTCComponentService /Password:******** /ExternalWeb
Fqdn:portal.modalitysystems.com/RequestHandler/ucdevice.upx /PoolName:OCSPool01
Important: Don’t use “https://” in public FQDN.
Step 2:
Update these WMI properties manually:
WMI Attributes
Examples
ISA Web Publishing Rules
TomL-LCSKID on behalf of John Lamb
