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
The post below comes courtesy of one of the partners in our voice program. I took the liberty of modifying the format of his email alias to reduce spam. He provided permission to include the details of his auto signature. I am also retaining the use of the term Tanjay in the body of the message given many do know this code name and may help in searches.
Mark Hickson
Practice Lead – Microsoft Unified Communications
Professional Services
UNIS LUMIN – Technology Based Business Solutions
mhickson (at) unislumin.com
Recently I noticed that work numbers for contacts were appearing as simply ‘+’ on my Tanjay phones. Attempting to dial this number would fail (not surprisingly!). If I entered digits on the Tanjay manually, however, my normalization rules would take effect and the number would both appear and dial correctly.
This is a particularly poor quality picture (sorry!) of my Tanjay exhibiting this behavior…
My company has 3-digit internal extensions, so in Active Directory in each User’s Telephone (i.e. Work) number field there is 3 digits, such as “328”. I have a normalization rule in OCS that adds a ‘+’ … so “328” becomes “+328”. This normalization occurs correctly when entering digits on the Tanjay, and the call succeeds. The work number, however, listed on my Users’ contacts cards displayed only ‘+’. It should have shown “+XXX”.
This is what my Active Directory User properties look like…
At the same time that I was trying to figure out my Tanjay problem, I had a another problem within Office Communicator. These same 3-digit extensions would appear in the contact card for users, but they would appear without the ‘+’. So “328” would be displayed just as “328” and not “+328”. (I would have expected that the behavior be the same on both clients – so either both displayed just “+” or both displayed just “328”)
Furthermore, attempting to dial this number in a click-to-call scenario (i.e. selecting the number from the list of numbers for a Contact) would result in a failed dial. Communicator would attempt to dial “328” and not a normalized “+328”. Once again, typing in “328” in the MOC Find box would result in a correctly normalized number of “+328” and a successful dial.
So, to summarize…
MOC
Displayed number on contact card: “328”
Click-to-call “328”: FAIL
Enter digits “328”: Normalize to “+328” and SUCCESS
Tanjay
Displayed number on contact card: “+”
Click-to-call “+”: FAIL
Enter digits “328”: Normalize to “+328” and SUCCESS
In the end, fixing one problem fixed them both. Gotta love it when that happens! :) Here’s what I did…
I needed to place a normalization rule in a file called Company_Phone_Number_Normalization_Rules.txt in the ABS shared folder. The rule is a standard 3-digit normalization rule, like I have in my Enterprise Voice settings for the Location Profile. In the file, it looks like this…
##
## ddd
##
(\d{3})
+$1
The first part with the # characters is just a comment, the (\d{3}) line is the pattern to match, and the +$1 is the translation.
I also had to enable the use of both Generic and Custom rules on the Address Book Server. This is done using the ABSConfig.exe utility that comes with the Resource Kit Tools. It looks like this…
![clip_image001[4]](http://blogs.technet.com/blogfiles/toml/WindowsLiveWriter/WorkNumberdisplaysasonPhoneEditionandfai_8D98/clip_image001%5B4%5D_thumb.jpg)
Now, initially I didn’t think this did anything because the display of the 3-digit number on my contact card in MOC did not change – it still displayed “328”. Dialing the number, however, started to work! Turns out the displayed number and the dialed number are different. Both of these numbers come from the local GalContacts.db file. Opening the file (in Notepad) and inspecting it revealed data that looks like this…
![clip_image001[6]](http://blogs.technet.com/blogfiles/toml/WindowsLiveWriter/WorkNumberdisplaysasonPhoneEditionandfai_8D98/clip_image001%5B6%5D_thumb.jpg)
Of note here is that my extension “328” is included twice, once simply as “328” and once as “tel:+328”. So the conclusion here is that the “328” is used for display in my contact card on MOC and the “+328” is used as the number dialed in a click-to-call scenario. Before I made the changes to the ABS Server, both of these numbers were just “328”, for example “328” and “tel:328”.
Now, I mentioned earlier that changes made to correct one problem also corrected the other. The day after I made these changes the phantom “+” on my Tanjays disappeared! The reason makes perfect sense…
Numbers dialed as a result of digits being entered are subject to normalization rules specified against the Location Profile in your Enterprise Voice settings. This is true for both MOC and Tanjay as both download the normalization rules on sign-in. This is why number display and dialing worked fine on both devices.
Numbers listed on users’ contact cards come from Active Directory and normalization rules for these numbers are applied by the Address Book Server. So once the normalization rule for “XXX to +XXX” was added to the Normalization Rules text file and the Address Book Server was configured to use them, the Work numbers were correctly normalized and made available to both MOC and Tanjay. It turns out Tanjay uses a slightly different set of Address Book Server files (a reduced set of information to decrease download time) but both clients rely on ABS to perform normalization for these numbers.
I hope that my experience will save you time in troubleshooting, but more importantly help you gain a better understanding of what’s going on behind the scenes because that’s what I got out of this experience, apart from solving a very large company-wide problem, of course! :)
Cheers,
Mark
Partners and customers deploying Office Communications Server 2007 with enterprise voice still require a media gateway for a supported configuration. The definitive place to determine supported vendors, models and the qualification level (direct sip via gateway, direct sip, dual forking and dual forking with remote call control) you need to check the Open Interoperability Program site: http://technet.microsoft.com/ucoip
I wanted to share a common configuration that we are seeing our partners asking to deploy that is not part of the certification process and thus not supported - dual usage of a Cisco router (other vendors use term gateway thus my referencing both names).
Below is a diagram we used amongst ourselves when first asking about this being supported (thanks Jochen). You can see that there is only 1 gateway servicing both a CCM and OCS deployment. If you refer to the diagrams in the planning workbook (still lacking a post discussing the doc), the diagrams show what we sometimes refer to as back to back gateways.
At this time this is not supported simply because it was not a part of the certification process and thus nobody knows what issues may or may not exist. If this topology is of interest to you then please communicate it to your account manager (partner or customer).
TomL LCSKid
I had a partner ask the question of the differences between the 2 clients and I didn't know, so you can thank Henry for finding it.
From the link, look to the left navigation for these other items -
Getting Started
Overview
What's new for corporate accounts in Messenger for Mac 7
System requirements for Messenger for Mac 7
Upgrading and interoperability
Messenger for Mac 7 compared to Office Communicator 2007
Architecture and Planning
Messenger for Mac 7 topology
Security best practices
Installing and Configuring Messenger 7 on a Corporate Network
Installing Messenger for Mac 7
Connecting to Office Communications Server
Uninstalling Messenger for Mac 7
Post-Installation
Setting audio/video preferences
Deploying Messenger for Mac 7 preferences
Using Messenger for Mac 7 with Office 2008 for Mac
Technical Reference
Messenger for Mac 7 preferences
