So I finally purchased a new laptop to replace our existing Toshiba Satellite Pro. The system is showing its age in its performance given the processor and memory, the experience we get the most and hate is when the system (many times just IE) hangs.
I purchased a Lenovo laptop through my employee discount and I bought an Ideapad. I didn’t want the cheapest laptop but I also didn’t want a workstation replacement. Both my wife and daughter commented on how cute/stylish it was and I noticed that the touchpad had the technology that Mac originally put out where your fingers can resize information on the screen. I haven’t had a lot of time to play with that but I had not realized the feature was on this model.
Ok so the reason to post this – I can’t believe the amount of software (I see it more as junk) that gets preloaded on the computer. With one exception, a browser solution called KidZui there was nothing I wanted yet I had to walk through numerous configuration screens and I now have all these icons in my taskbar. I am not an extreme minimalist but argh this is too much. What frustrated me most is that to get this new laptop up and running so I could use it without interruption is about the same time it is going to take me to insert a Windows 7 RC disk and format the whole thing.
I always cringe when I see family and friends computers at the amount of stuff they have loaded and now I see how it starts.
TomL
We had an internal question about a deployment where an upgrade from OCS 2007 to OCS 2007 R2 was resulting in the error: Could not create the query dialog in the MMC. Here is how the consultant described the customer problem:
I just completed a migration from OCS R1 to R2 and almost everything is working fine. My environment consists on two Front-Ends and one Back-End server. I have installed OCS R2 Admin Tools on both Front-Ends, but I have a problem with one of the servers when I launch the OCS R2 admin console, browse down to "Users", right-click and do a "Find users", I get an error that says "Could not create the query dialog".
The Front-End servers are Windows Server 2008 SP1 x64. I also installed the OCS R2 Admin Tools on other two servers, one with Windows Server 2003 x86 and the other one with Windows Server 2008 x86. The Windows 2003 server works fine without errors but I get again the "Could not create the query dialog" error in the Windows 2008 server.
Is there any problem with the console in Windows Server 2008 or any hotfix to correct this? I have found some posts indicating the same error with W2K8. Apparently it could be replicated. Any help would be appreciated.
I did some searching and found what ended up being the solution for his problem, obviously you always want to confirm exact details when dealing with a hotfix. When requesting a hotfix, you may be charged or your issues decremented to start the call, you should receive a refund or the call added back your available issues when the hotfix is confirmed to be the solution.
FIX: When you run a common language runtime (CLR) application on an x64 computer that is running the .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 1, you may receive an access violation in the mscorwks!SetAsyncResultProperties object
By the way, it turns out this was documented in the Supportability guide but I don’t believe that with the problem description you would realize this was the solution you needed. Here is that section as an FYI >
The following operating system updates are prerequisites for deploying Office Communications Server 2007 R2:
- Microsoft Knowledge Base article 953582, "You may be unable to install a program that tries to register extensions under the IQueryForm registry entry in Windows Server 2008 or in Windows Vista," at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=131392.
- This update must be installed before you install Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Administrative Tools in the following situations only:
- On computers running Windows Vista, if you also install Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT)
- On computers running Windows Server 2008, if Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) administrative tools are installed
- Microsoft Knowledge Base article 953990, “AV at mscorwks!SetAsyncResultProperties,” at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=131394.
This update applies to Windows Server 2003 SP2 and Windows Server 2008.
I hope that this proves helpful,
TomL LCSKid
We posted about Paul's blog on http://communicationsserverteam.com/archive/2009/06/05/518.aspx and I wanted to add a bit more as the presentation he gave was during our program working to establish a set of trusted consultants globally for OCS 2007 and R2 voice deployments. I think you will find from Paul's post that he certainly fits the bill. The great news is we have added about 40 additional consultants globally in regions of the world that we had no coverage prior.
Read the post and add the site to your RSS reader as well
TomL LCSKid
I have had the distinct pleasure or misfortune to have used the LCS 2005 SP1 capacity planning tools and the unreleased OCS 2007 capacity planning tools with customers. As I loaded the tool, I forgot about some of the feedback that I provided on the toolset which is nice to see exposed. Things like being able to specify the password for users, I am now running through the R2 Capacity Planning tool in my own small lab as we have a customer who was monitoring the load on their pool and by querying SQL they were not showing a balanced load. We don’t document a SQL query checking load but of course this does beg the question of what that query is reporting on.
I ran into a problem and amazingly I found a forum post of someone else experiencing the issue so I asked them to follow up with me so I could ensure I resolve theirs too. Even more amazing is that I looked in a forum location that isn’t supposed to exist since we migrated to the Technet location - http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/uccommunityreadiness
If you see a forum post with just social.microsoft.com then you should know that nobody is likely monitoring them and that the data should eventually be migrated: http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/ucccommunityocsdeployment/thread/86a971fc-df26-4bf6-9688-230cf6be2acc
In my testing I found a problem in the XML generation tool. The xml file does not include the proper syntax for the password. Copy the data below and replace with your password -
<UserGlobalPassword>password</UserGlobalPassword>
Yesterday I ran the query and showed 2 endpoints which was correct but the R2 MMC reported 3 endpoints. Highlight your R2 pool in the left tree view and then select the database tab in the right hand contents pane. Hit Go on – To retrieve current user summary statistics for the selected pool, please click Go. Seeing a discrepancy with so few clients I thought I would try to put some stress through the system and see if I can get the SQL query to report one item while the SIP TLS Performance Counter shows another. I don’t seem to recall being able to run the tool on actual OCS roles but dedicated stress boxes, in the R2 version I run the tool to create users for simulation from the SQL Back End (or Front End if you choose).
I will be continuing to work with the tool, my plan is to use this through the Edge Server role and if I get enough time, I might even try it with a federated lab topology as well.
TomL LCSKID
We had a question asked internally today about these templates. Turns out the online documentation states to get UCDocumentation.msi but it doesn’t exist. We are following up on that piece but know that the templates do exist as a separate download
Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Dial-in Conferencing E-mail Templates
<Edit Friday May 15, 2009 >
There is a reason that I shouldn't allow my testing to cross from one day to the next, I forgot what I was supposed to testing. The subject was about converting the case of the url and sure enough in my repro this was confirmed. While it appears to be a bug, it will require a customer/partner to report it and request a hotfix with business justfication.
<End Edit
One of our partners reported that hyperlinks were being converted to lowercase and when I investigated the problem I did find an old bug for Communicator 2007 during the beta but nothing for 2007 or R2 released clients. This issue is dependant on the Intelligent Instant Message Filter and by default the settings look like this -
The 2007 R2 client receives a url with mixed case pre-pended by an underscore from both the 2007 client (Nick) and R2 client (OC2007R2). I will note that while the account used is called R2CWA, I am using the Communicator client and not CWA for this test.
I will first try to changing the options to Allow instant messages that contain hyperlinks, the 3rd radio button in the image above. The first attempt did not result in changed behavior. Because I would like to see the progression of urls in my client, I am choosing to restart the services of the Front-End in the pool, which is easy enough due to it being a small lab. This changed the behavior of receiving the url without the pre-pended underscore however you should notice that I can’t click on these urls so they are not actually a hyperlink.
I have now disabled the URL Filtering for the pool and I still get a mixed case url of plain text. Using the product documentation I am now going to investigate my client registry (I don’t use Group Policy in my lab setup) for EnableURL. I did some searching on the web to find online documentation to share but Group Policy data is always something you download. I did find this forum post which had a cool command syntax to add the regkey:
c:\> reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Communicator /v EnableURL /t REG_DWORD /d 1
This of course does mean I have to exit my client in order to apply the registry key.
Ok so unless I overlooked something in my testing the solution is a combination of both the server settings for IIMF as well as the client side registry for enabling the url.
Here is the client without the registry setting
and the client with the registry setting
If you are still encountering issues with this feature feel free to use the contact form on the page and I will follow up with you and confirm my testing.
TomL LCSKid
I am not a developer nor do I play one on TV, but I have good news for those of you that are developers for this technology. Marshall Harrison is a Microsoft MVP and very active in UC development. Please see his post today about a UC Developer Sandbox opportunity -
http://gotuc.net/blogs/gotuc/archive/2009/05/13/sign-up-for-the-uc-developer-sandbox.aspx
TomL LCSKid
I was chatting with a friend last night in our documentation team and he mentioned DrRez. I checked it out and found they have been broadcasting information for the OCS Community. Just like any big company most of the time you don’t know all that is going on. With a recent reorg our two teams now report to the same General Manager which should help us keep in sync much better which I hope will improve awareness both internally and externally about the product offerings.
While I work in technology and am familiar with a fair amount, twitter is not one that I use personally or professionally. Maybe this will be my start.
DrRez
The Office Communications Server 2007 R2 documentation has been online for a while although really only the client content. The server content has been loaded this week. I will share that due to logistics around the site the R2 content exists in the Server Products and Technologies hierarchy for the current time and we expect it to be under Office System again soon. I also noticed today that I was not able to successfully navigate using the left hand menu navigation so please be patient as that is also worked out.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd572505(office.13).aspx
While there are those of us who have been working with the product for a some time due to beta use, most people will be seeing the product for the first time and that is why I have highlighted the migration content explicitly. In case the navigation is still a problem this is the link for the top of the R2 server content hierarchy allowing you to select content in the main (content) pane. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd250572(office.13).aspx
TomL LCSKid
Please see the below link for the kickoff meeting for the Unified Communications Virtual User Group. While not presenting, I will be in attendance.
The link for the meeting announcement and invite: http://ucvuglaunch.eventbrite.com/
The link for the UCVUG site - http://ucvug.org/default.aspx
TomL LCSKid
Henry pointed out that my original post on Custom Presence was helpful up to the point of actually using it and couldn’t figure out why only https was working.
I have not found this documented and in fact there is no KB article on it so I will start that process as well but the change is that in R2 when your default security level is set to High this also forces the requirement for the customstateurl to be HTTPS.
The setting that controls this Group Policy -
EnableSIPHighSecurityMode
Configure SIP security mode
"Enables Office Communicator to send and receive instant messages securely when using the SIP Communications Service. This policy has no effect on Windows .NET or Microsoft® Exchange Server services.
If you do not configure this policy setting, Communicator can use any transport. But if it does not use TLS and if the server authenticates users, Communicator must use either Microsoft Windows NT LAN Manager (NTLM) or Kerberos authentication.
"
REG_DWORD
2 = Security is medium (default). TLS is not required, but server authentication must use either NTLM or Kerberos authentication. Instant messages and SUBSCRIBE SIP messages must pass through the SIP server.
0 = Security is low. Any transport and any authentication method (including Basic or Digest) can be used. Instant messages can pass directly between clients.
1 = Security is high. TLS transport is required. Server authentication must use either NTLM or Kerberos authentication. Instant messages and SUBSCRIBE SIP messages must pass through the SIP server."
Inband provisioning: ucEnableSIPSecurityMode
For those of you working with earlier product versions you will recall we had a Capacity Planning tool with LCS 2005 Sp1 but nothing for 2007. The R2 version has released as promised to many customers -
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=f8cbddd6-7608-4bbe-9246-16e96c62bef4
Please recognize that the tool is not providing capacity abilities for Group Chat.
TomL LCSKid
When LCS was first introduced we used the terminology of the product being a presence platform and if you think of the solution being a platform in that it provides the core architecture for handling presence of endpoints that you are able to create custom code and workflow for I think it makes sense. Not being a developer I am always intrigued at seeing the solutions customers come up with. Not all of them are possible to share but here you can see a solution from Exact Software - http://vimeo.com/3242513
Maybe this will give you thoughts on your business solutions.
TomL LCSKid
Today Karsten has been added to my list of heroes with an answer to an annoying problem – Live Messenger behavior on Windows 7 now operates differently when you minimize and close (and I don’t like it)!
http://blogs.technet.com/kpalmvig/archive/2009/03/24/windows-7-minimize-live-messenger-to-systray.aspx
TomL LCSKid
<Update May 11, 2009 - Thomas Binder was kind enough to point out this troubleshooter on Technet that one of his partners used to solve their problems>
I had a question last week about my Monitoring Server setup and while we did not get all issues resolved, Windows 2008 and IIS7 involves a learning curve. My entire topology is Windows 2003 R2 which I am thankful for as setup has been rather straight forward but it then limits my ability to share experiences for your Windows 2008 issues. One thing I will share is that IIS7 looks to require that a certificate be requested and imported via its interface and not simply be installed on the system by choosing to import the cert when you requested it via the CA website. We didn’t dig too far once it was working but if you have information to share please share if we missed something.
This post is a result of connecting to the system after about 2 weeks of not touching it, never a good thing with VMs and sure enough when I went to confirm the Devices PSTN report I faced an error – (I made a bulleted list to reduce the amount of space it took up)
- An error has occurred during report processing. (rsProcessingAborted)
- Cannot impersonate user for data source ‘QMSDB’. (rsErrorImpersonatingUser)
- Logon failed. (rsLogonFailed)
- For more information about this error navigate to the report server on the local server machine, or enable remote errors.
Looking at SQL 2005 I noticed my databases weren’t started, scratch that, Monitoring was started but not Group Chat, Archiving, or my pool backend. Needing those I started them and then started the SQL Server Agent (honest – I started any non-disabled SQL service) but that didn’t fix it, so I went to the SQL Server event viewer and didn’t find enough to help there. So I paused and opened a report again, this time noticing it prompted for my credentials and then I remembered the annoying issue with LCS/OCS/OCSR2 setup for service accounts – they are not exempt for account expiration. Sure enough if you change the properties for the user object to never expire password, it works.
Notes per the fact I had to enable/disable this to confirm the error messages and behavior. First, opening the Monitoring Report url on the SQL Server where I have Monitoring installed, the errors improve – The user’s account has expired. Second, to reproduce this I selected the Account Expiration attribute with a date in the past, turns out that field doesn’t get set back to none when you change the password expiration check box – this is what happens when you try to reproduce something in a less than systematic approach.
TomL LCSKid
