LCSKid

ToninoF launches blog with Office Communicator SIP Trace Analysis – Registration

2009-11-02T16:54:02Z

One of the first projects I had when joining this team was working with a team of top level Microsoft Consultants along with the customers in the OCS 2007 and 2007 R2 TAP (technology adoption program). That was my first time working with the top tier of our consultants and it also was an eye opener to the skills across the globe. Tonino was one of the team members that I had no prior working experience with but I quickly valued his technical and communication skills. Tonino has launched his blog with a very detailed post for SIP Trace Analysis.

http://blogs.technet.com/toninof/

TomL LCSKid

The value of history and your elders

2009-10-16T01:02:30Z

Today as part of a program I am participating in I was able to hear from Bill Buxton, Principal Researcher with Microsoft Research. The historical knowledge of touch interfaces he possessed was fascinating. I appreciate how he mentioned that with poor definitions for touch interfaces the keyboard is a touch interface.

Below are just 4 examples of technology that existed in our history that I found amazing, absolutely amazing. He made a statement along the lines of, within Microsoft we have all the people who know the history of modern day computing. As I thought about this, I realized that it was a current day example of the need to value our older generations. I can remember as a kid going to IBM with my dad and walking down a hallway and the entire room that we walked past was ‘the’ computer. Obviously my Dad would know more about that piece of equipment and someone 10-20 years older would know even more.

I put these in the order of how I personally found them fascinating

Wang Freestyle – make sure to select the Videos link and see the other historical systems.
IBM Simon
Casio watch – see the link for Finger-trace for a picture. From the article linked below: "I have a Casio watch that I bought in 1984," Buxton says. "It allows me to use my finger to operate a calculator. I was able to trace '1 + 1 =' on the screen and it would say '2'. That's how long this stuff has been available."
Plato IV Computer

For a small bit of reading here is Bill’s site and an article discussing touch

TomL LCSKid

Innovative web page using pictures with presence - Wortell

2009-10-14T15:45:14Z

One of our Microsoft Gold Certified Partners has a great page showing their team with images for their presence status. Today you don’t have the ability to invoke an IM but that is rumored to be coming in the future.

http://www.wortell.nl/nl-nl/ourpeople/pages/onze-mensen.aspx

TomL LCSKid

Urgent: Known issue under investigation with KB974571 and LCS/OCS

2009-10-14T13:29:16Z

October 15 Update: Main blog post has been updated to reflect the addition of Known Issues in the patch article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/974571

Please be notified of this issue http://communicationsserverteam.com/archive/2009/10/14/632.aspx

~~------------------------------------------------------------------------------~~

We need to alert you to an issue that is under investigation with the applying of KB974571 (MS09-056: Vulnerabilities in CryptoAPI could allow spoofing) that will cause the LCS or OCS server to show running with the evaluation version and then noting it as expired.

~~The post below provides a great write up for reference and for the sake of those using a reader I will also reproduce that content.~~

~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------~~

~~Doug’s link and post content~~

~~http://blogs.technet.com/dodeitte/archive/2009/10/13/do-not-apply-kb974571-to-lcs-ocs-servers.aspx~~

Update #1 - Until this issue can be resolved, I am only suggesting that you either hold off on deploying this update, or test very throughly to make sure that this won't cause an outage in your environment. Security updates are VERY important, and once this issue is resolved, you should deploy this update to all of your LCS/OCS servers.

Currently an issue is being observed after applying KB974571 (MS09-056: Vulnerabilities in CryptoAPI could allow spoofing) to LCS/OCS servers, that is causing them to believe that they are running an evaluation version of LCS/OCS and that it has expired.

~~http://support.microsoft.com/kb/974571/~~

~~If you apply the patch, the LCS/OCS services fail to start and you see these errors in the event log:~~

Event Type:        Error
Event Source:    Live Communications Server
Event Category:                (1000)
Event ID:              12290
Date:                     10/13/2009
Time:                     8:28:57 PM
User:                     N/A
Computer:
Description:
The evaluation period for Microsoft Office Live Communication Server 2005 has expired. Obtain the released version of this product and upgrade to the non-evaluation version by running setup.exe

~~For more information, see Help and Support Center at~~ ~~http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp~~.

Event Type:        Error
Event Source:    Live Communications Server
Event Category:                (1000)
Event ID:              16417
Date:                     10/13/2009
Time:                     8:28:57 PM
User:                     N/A
Computer:
Description:
Unable to initialize the protocol stack. The service has to stop.

~~For more information, see Help and Support Center at~~ ~~http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp~~.

Event Type:        Error
Event Source:    Live Communications Server
Event Category:                (1000)
Event ID:              12299
Date:                     10/13/2009
Time:                     8:28:57 PM
User:                     N/A
Computer:
Description:
The service is shutting down due to an internal error.

Error Code: 0xC3ED0804.
Resolution:
Check the previous event log entries and resolve them. Restart the server. If the problem persists contact product support.

~~For more information, see Help and Support Center at~~ ~~http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp~~.

~~Uninstalling the patch is the only way to currently fix this issue.~~

~~The issue is currently being escalated, but until a fix can be found, delaying the install of KB974571 is recommended.~~

UC How To and UC Adoption and Training Kit

2009-10-09T19:47:25Z

I found these resources a few months back and failed to blog about them for some reason. These represent content that is created with and for our own deployment as well as customer deployments. I like that the UC How To can be modified for the workload of the end user. If you have feedback on this content feel free to use the contact form as I don’t mind emailing you or calling you for follow up.

UC How To The Microsoft Unified Communications “How-To” training tool is a Microsoft Silverlight™ 2 application that provides step-by-step instructions for common UC tasks. You can customize the How-To application to your company’s needs based on the UC features you’ve installed. For example, if you have installed all UC features except Communicator Mobile and Communicator Group Chat, you can modify the XML file so that those features and topics do not appear in the interface.

Unified Communications Adoption and Training Kit 2007 R2 The Unified Communications Adoption and Training Kit for 2007 R2 provides guidance and resources for IT Pros, Helpdesk, and Trainers to speed adoption and usage of Unified Communications technologies in the enterprise. The kit includes Planning Checklists, Awareness materials, including Poster, Door Hangers, and E-mail samples, and User Education Materials such as Quick Reference Cards, Flash Cards, and links to Web-based Training.

TomL LCSKid

Looking for information on upgrading OCPE (Tanjay)?

2009-10-06T19:16:00Z

Rick Varvel, Microsoft Consulting Services comes through with another great paper. I mentioned his papers for the Edge Server in the past and he has now dedicated time to the OC Phone Edition (OCPE, Tanjay) upgrade process.

Due to some of our programs purchasing devices in advance of program needs for budget reasons we ended up with multiple firmware versions. In fact we even had devices with the .199 build for which Rick was testing with.

Here is the text of his blog and url -

This document provides best practices for upgrading an OCPE device (Tanjay) from build 199 to 522 and then to 6907 using just the Office Communications Server 2007 R2 (OCS 2007 R2) Device Update service.

For those familiar with the process, there is a high level walkthrough in the “OCPE Device Upgrade Steps (Summary Version)” section; otherwise the detailed process begins with the Step 1 in the “OCPE Device Upgrade Steps (Detailed Version)” section.

Also included:

Background information on how the different Tanjay firmware builds behave during the sign in and download process to assist with troubleshooting
Environmental dependency settings for DHCP, NTP, certificates, and DNS
Pool configuration changes required to successfully sign in and upgrade a Tanjay
Syntax examples and a sample scenario to simplify the deployment process
A sample NetMon trace file highlighting a successful sign in and upgrade
Log file locations and URLs used in troubleshooting common issues
An Appendix with step by step instructions for many common tasks

http://blogs.technet.com/rickva/archive/2009/10/03/ocpe-device-tanjay-upgrade-guide.aspx

OCS End User Experience – my devices are bad…

2009-10-02T18:03:39Z

I had a meeting today with my team of which we all work remote (Washington State, Colorado, Ohio, North Carolina, New York, Denmark and Switzerland). Obviously we all work with Office Communications Server technology and thus know quite a bit about doing things right. To add to this my work this year is to help with various end user experience issues within the company as well as with customers.

This actually started yesterday when I was dropped from a call and connected back with my mobile phone. There was a brief comment about a better device this time. The other device was one listed on the optimized device list but when I use it there is almost a comment about echo or being in a tunnel. I unplugged the device and threw it in the draw.

So today it was a bit embarrassing to have folks say they stopped hearing me despite me hearing them. So I ran the audio tuning wizard and all seemed ok until it happened again. The suggestion was to remove the webcam given we are working over home DSL connections (and wireless for me). Doing that showed that somehow it was the audio device despite the tuning. This webcam was not listed on the optimized device and I knew it but I haven’t purchased a supported webcam given how infrequent we need them.

Both devices have been properly placed in the trash today. I no longer want to hear about problems. This leaves me with my Jabra GN 2000 headset but I will be asking our admins if other devices are available including a webcam. I would choose a High Definition model but I don’t have a quad proc laptop :)

The one thing that troubles me most is I don’t know if my logs are helpful in this situation or not so I will be investigating. Get an optimized device and if you keep hear reoccurring comments on one, maybe your setup just isn’t right for it (speakerphone) so consider another one.

TomL LCSKid

Updated article for UC Clients in Application Virtualization environments

2009-09-30T00:04:00Z

See article Support for the Microsoft unified communications clients in Application Virtualization environments for updates on the client feature support in a virtualized environment.

Key words for folks concerned about this area include – Citrix, Terminal Services, Remote Call Control, sharing, and meetings.

TomL LCSKid

UC World - On Demand Why UC? Why Now? A Conversation with Gurdeep Singh-Pall

2009-09-29T22:30:02Z

In the event you have not heard about UC World, allow me to share the site and information on one of the speakers.

Website: http://www.ucworld.com

To truly explore the question: Why UC, Why Now?, we have taken the opportunity to speak with one of the unified communications industry's most noted thought leaders, Gurdeep Singh-Pall, Corporate Vice President for the Unified Communications Group at Microsoft. In his role, Gurdeep leads the vision, product strategy, and R&D for Microsoft's Unified Communications offerings. For nearly 20 years, Gurdeep has played various integral roles at Microsoft. Recognized as one of the 15 Innovators & Influencers Who Will Make A Difference by Information Week, Gurdeep shares his thoughts on what UC is, what immediate benefits can be realized by organizations, and his vision for UC over the next five to seven years.

Disclosure – My role had involved me working with Aspect on their internal deployment during the OCS 2007 beta. As part of that work, I have a very high opinion of the internal Aspect IT team and their skills.

TomL LCSKid

OC 2007 R2 and PIC with AIM Express

2009-09-11T17:29:00Z

October 1, 2009 Update - The issue has been resolved. Please do note the details below as some have mistaken other problems for this.

A quick heads up on an issue we are looking to resolve. Currently if an AOL user is signed in to AIM Express an OC 2007 R2 client will see their presence state but will not be able to initiate an IM to the AOL user. If the user logged in to AIM Express first sends an IM to the OC 2007 R2 client then the conversation is successful.

While we have reproduced this with a few accounts consistently there also some accounts that it does not reproduce with.

No ETA for an update but worth mentioning.

TomL LCSKid

0-1-492 in Communicator Web Access 2007 R2 on Windows 2008 (French)

2009-09-09T17:46:30Z

We had some discussion among our MVP and OCS Master’s teams about 0-1-492 errors with CWA. Benoit mentioned having an existing blog post in French.

http://unifiees.blogspot.com/

I used the Bing translator option to read in English.

TomL LCSKid

OT: The glorious empty inbox

2009-09-05T00:28:45Z

Like many I receive a good amount of email, as well due to Xobni, I found I also send a lot of email which made me realize I am probably the cause of most of my email volume. Anyway I really try hard to manage my inbox so that I never have more mail than fits on a screen, typically between 20-50 messages. Today I reached a moment, trust me I know its a moment (2 messages came in while typing this sentence) of no unread email and 1 message in the Inbox. I will admit that I did mark 2 folders as unread but I could easily simply stop subscribing to the distribution group so I don’t feel bad about that.

Also I will readily admit that the empty inbox is like a white washed tomb, the ugliness is that I still have a bunch of work and action items to follow up on, and thus I have only mastered 1 minor part of the overall organization effort. I have been using OneNote for about 2 years now for project work and this year I started by including my fiscal year 2010 commitments in there to formulate my reporting and assessment around. I hope this keeps me on task and successful.

So I will take this small victory right before the Labor Day weekend (and pray there isn’t an email backlog just waiting to release its fury on me)!

TomL LCSKid

Group Chat – plugging others blogs…

2009-08-14T06:12:02Z

I am preparing for a presentation on Group Chat installation to the UCVUG next week and what I am trying to do is to go through the process after having asked many others for their setup process modifications and suggestions based on numerous customer efforts. My goal is to help provide a very solid and linear approach to setup all while documenting the nuances in order to improve our own Group Chat documentation. When I first asked my peers about this, out of the gate 2 pieces were quickly identified as top notch, one was from a Microsoft Consultant in Denmark and the other was Elan’s blog: http://www.shudnow.net/2009/03/08/office-communications-server-2007-r2-group-chat-deployment-part-1/

I think it would be hard pressed to find a more thorough walk through of the process to setup the SQL database and apply the necessary permissions as Elan has done. It is so good in fact I already have it as a comment to be inserted to the current documentation for update consideration.

The second blog I found was tonight and I found it because while I started with Elan’s work last week, I was walking through some account work again with new names but forgot about my database security requirements. The event ID I focused on was a failure to create the Group Chat log so I opened my browser and tried the following query:

ocs mgc error creating log file group chat

Looking at that query you probably have the same thought I had, good luck! Oh but look what I found from Mark who had a post on The Three UC Amigos. http://blogs.technet.com/ucedsg/archive/2009/05/22/i-am-having-problems-getting-group-chat-administrator-console-working.aspx

In my case I started with 6 given it worked for Mark’s customer, it didn’t work so I then chose 4 after thinking about my awkward process and that fixed the Channel service but not the Lookup service and then I tried step 2 and sure enough I was up and running.

I bought dinner for the consultant when we were in Seattle last month so I offer him another thank you, but I owe Elan and Mark a bit more than a thank you on this one.

TomL LCSKid

Archiving high available beyond just a cluster (OCS 2007)

2009-08-05T23:54:03Z

This is a guest post from John Lamb of Modality Systems. John is an MVP and in a recent dialog about architecting a solution that addressed the lack of support for Archive Server clustering John mentioned having completed one. In John’s words:

“We designed a very large EE Pool with 3-tier OCS Archiving and this is how we worked around the lack of support for Archive Server clustering:

We deployed Archiving Servers 1:1 with each OCS FE.

This is massive overkill in terms of hardware required, but it was the only way to archive the goals for this design. If we lose an archiving server, it shuts down the corresponding FE. This means we had to design the pool with N+2 FEs, where N is the number of FE’s required to support the user population. This way we could lose 1x FE and 1x Archiving Server (which would shut down the corresponding FE) simultaneously and still continue to run at full capacity with archiving.”

Here is the document he shared with me, the customer chose the 3rd option.

OCS 2007 Archiving and CDR Decision Points

John Lamb, OCS Architecture 13-November-2007

The following provides background information and lists the major decision points to consider for the planning of the Archiving and CDR Service for the OCS 2007 deployment.

Background Information

The Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 product includes functionality that enables Archiving and “Call Data Recording.” This functionality is provided as a software-based service.

· Archiving – provides a mechanism for archiving the content of Instant Messaging conversations only

· Call Data Records – provides a mechanism for capturing usage data for IM and Web Conferencing sessions. Web conference meeting content is not captured.

The Archiving and CDR Service is included in the base license of OCS 2007 Standard Edition/Enterprise Edition and does not create an additional licensing cost. However, additional physical server infrastructure must be deployed to support the scalability and availability requirements for a deployment of this size.

Decision Points

1. IM Archiving and/or Call Detail Records

Determine if the requirement is to capture:

a) Only IM content

b) Only CDRs

c) Both IM content and CDRs

NOTE: CDRs will include call data for both IM and Web Conferencing sessions. It’s not possible to capture CDRs for IM, but not Web Conferencing, or vice versa.

2. IM Archiving: Internal and/or External IM Communication

Determine if the requirement is to

a) Archive only IM conversations for conversations between internal users

b) Archive only IM conversations for conversations between internal users and Federated partners

c) Archive all IM conversations

3. IM Archiving: Global vs. per user policy setting

Determine if IM archiving should be:

a) Enabled globally for all users, and then disabled on a per user basis.

b) Disabled globally for all users, and then enabled on a per user basis

NOTE: If a user is set for “Do not archive” (either through a global or per user policy), that user’s conversations will never be archived, even if they engage in a conversation with a user who is set to “Archive”.

4. Criticality of Archiving and CDR

The Archiving and CDR Service can be configured as “critical”, which means that OCS will shut down if archiving fails.

Determine if:

a) Archiving and CDR service is critical

b) Archiving and CDR service is not critical (OCS will continue to operate even if Archiving and CDR fail. IM archive content and CDRs will be lost)

5. Archiving and CDR Architecture Requirements

Due to the size and scale of the OCS deployment (up to 55k concurrent users) , only 2-tier archiving architectures will be considered.

Option 1: 2-Tier archiving with a single Archiving and CDR Server

This option would include a single point of failure in the Archiving Server tier and would only be suitable if the archiving service is configured to be non-critical.

Note: More analysis is required to determine if a single Archiving Server can meet the scalability requirements.

Option 2: 2-Tier archiving with two Archiving and CDR Servers

This assumes the archiving service is configured as critical.

This option would remove the single point of failure in the Archiving Server tier, but half of the pool (2x FE servers) would be unavailable in the case of a single archiving server failure. Furthermore, if you had an FE failure from “group 1” and an archiving server failure from “group 2”, only 1 FE server would be available, which would be inadequate to support the global user population

Option 3: 2-Tier archiving with dedicated Archiving and CDR Servers

This assumes the archiving service is configured as critical.

This option provides a dedicated archiving server for each front-end server, which improves the overall resilience of the system to the same standard that was available before archiving was included.

Option 4: 2-tier archiving with dedicated Archiving and CDR Servers, and 2 SQL Clusters

This assumes the archiving service is configured as critical.

This option is the same as Option 3, except with an additional SQL Cluster. More analysis is required to determine if 1x or 2x SQL clusters will be needed to meet the scalability/performance requirements of the system.

TomL LCSKid

OT: Bellevue Art Fair / Festival

2009-07-26T07:32:17Z

I am in Washington for 1 of the 2 yearly events bring our consulting, sales and support members from around the globe. Groups send people to 1 every 12 or 18 months. I tend to have a speaking opportunity but this year chose to be a proctor during some instructor led labs and in doing so stayed in Bellevue vs. Seattle so I could easily go between campus and the event.

Having arrived early for a team event on Saturday I had the morning to myself and found I lucked into the Bellevue Art Fair / Festival and I think it is possible that 3 were going on at the same time. The one that I was at had a booth with art from a young artist Mary Yap and her work was beautiful, the piece that I liked was of a tree as it was losing its leaves in the fall but still just a few on the limbs, it had great reds and yellows but it was one of the sentimental pieces she was showing but not selling. Anyway she did that piece when she was 11 I think and here she was trying her hand at a booth but she wasn’t there to really sell her work. No she was looking to sell prints of a few pieces in order to raise money for the teachers and librarians in the Bellevue school district. While she was obviously talented a few things stood out, the first is that she stepped out and introduced herself with a handshake, she talked about herself, her schooling and why she was here. She even paused to thank a prior customer again as he was leaving. Both her and her mother had firm handshakes and looked you in the eye. This was a young lady who was poised for more great things in her life.

This young lady thought that what she was doing wasn’t that much but she’s wrong, she is doing what she can to help the situation; she isn’t thinking it is someone else’s problem or shying away from a first time experience involving the public. In fact she mentioned that she was planning on medical school and art will be her continued hobby.

Here is a site with one of the pictures - http://curriculum.bsd405.org/C7/Visual%20Arts/Document%20Library/BSD%20Student%20Gallery/High_S_Gallery/2009_Onda_M_Behm_Winners/index.htm

Best of lucky Mary,

TomL LCSKid

LCSKid

ToninoF launches blog with Office Communicator SIP Trace Analysis – Registration

The value of history and your elders

Innovative web page using pictures with presence - Wortell

Urgent: Known issue under investigation with KB974571 and LCS/OCS

UC How To and UC Adoption and Training Kit

Looking for information on upgrading OCPE (Tanjay)?

This document provides best practices for upgrading an OCPE device (Tanjay) from build 199 to 522 and then to 6907 using just the Office Communications Server 2007 R2 (OCS 2007 R2) Device Update service.

For those familiar with the process, there is a high level walkthrough in the “OCPE Device Upgrade Steps (Summary Version)” section; otherwise the detailed process begins with the Step 1 in the “OCPE Device Upgrade Steps (Detailed Version)” section.

Also included:

Background information on how the different Tanjay firmware builds behave during the sign in and download process to assist with troubleshooting

Environmental dependency settings for DHCP, NTP, certificates, and DNS

Pool configuration changes required to successfully sign in and upgrade a Tanjay

Syntax examples and a sample scenario to simplify the deployment process

A sample NetMon trace file highlighting a successful sign in and upgrade

Log file locations and URLs used in troubleshooting common issues

An Appendix with step by step instructions for many common tasks

OCS End User Experience – my devices are bad…

Updated article for UC Clients in Application Virtualization environments

UC World - On Demand Why UC? Why Now? A Conversation with Gurdeep Singh-Pall

OC 2007 R2 and PIC with AIM Express

0-1-492 in Communicator Web Access 2007 R2 on Windows 2008 (French)

OT: The glorious empty inbox

Group Chat – plugging others blogs…

Archiving high available beyond just a cluster (OCS 2007)

OCS 2007 Archiving and CDR Decision Points

John Lamb, OCS Architecture 13-November-2007

Background Information

Decision Points

1. IM Archiving and/or Call Detail Records

2. IM Archiving: Internal and/or External IM Communication

3. IM Archiving: Global vs. per user policy setting

4. Criticality of Archiving and CDR

5. Archiving and CDR Architecture Requirements

OT: Bellevue Art Fair / Festival