Anderson Patricio Get-news Blog : Office Communications Server

Exchange Server 2007 will be supported on Windows Server 2008 R2

Anderson Patricio — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:58:55 GMT

Hi Folks,

If you are planning to upgrade your entire infrastructure to Windows Server 2008 R2, then Exchange Server 2007 (in case you still have it :)) won't be an issue. Today, it was posted a note about that in the MSExchangeTeam, as follows:

We always talk about listening to customers and sometimes this is written off by many as 'marketing speak'. In fact, we do take feedback seriously and no input is more important to our engineering processes than your voice.

Earlier this year we made a decision in one direction, and due to the feedback we have received on this blog and elsewhere, we have reconsidered. In the coming calendar year we will issue an update for Exchange 2007 enabling full support of Windows Server 2008 R2. We heard from many customers that this was important for streamlining their operations and reducing administrative challenges, so we have changed course and will add R2 support. We are still working through the specifics and will let you know once we have more to share on the timing of this update.

Talking about Windows Server 2008 R2 and UC products, at this point OCS 2007 R2 is not supported on Windows Server 2008 R2, so keep your OCS infrastructure running on Windows Server 2008 for now. :)

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio
http://msmvps.org/blogs/AndersonPatricio

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How to broadcast a message from OCS console

Anderson Patricio — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:29:00 GMT

Hi folks,

In this post I'm going over the process to broadcast a message using LCScmd to all OCS users. Sometimes you want to warn all users that a server is going down and you can do that in several different sending messages, instant messages and etc. In this post I will go over the process to send a broadcast message to all logged users on OCS.

The first step is make sure that the user that is going to run the LCScmd utility belongs to the RTCUniversalServerAdmins group.

Second step is to open the command promtp and go to X:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Office Communications SErver 2007 R2 folder and run the following syntax and after that hit enter.

LCScmd /Server /Action:BroadcastMessage /Role:SE /Message:"Type here your message"

Done, all users logged users will receive the message, as shown in the figure below. By the way, the output of the previous LCScmd gives you information which users received the message as well.

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio

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OCS 2007 R2 Deploying Certificates document Availabe

Anderson Patricio — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 18:00:28 GMT

Hi folks,

The OCS Team has just blogged about a new document that covers the Certificate Deployment in OCS 2007 R2. It's worth while to read.

Download it here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=e9f86f96-aa09-4dca-9088-f64b4f01c703

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio

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Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Web Scheduler

Anderson Patricio — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 21:04:28 GMT

Web Scheduler is a 64-bit tool for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2. It provides a Web-based alternative to the add-in for the Microsoft Outlook messaging and collaboration client for the purpose of scheduling a meeting using Office Communications Server 2007 R2. It also provides a browser-based conference management experience that includes operations such as:

Scheduling a new Live Meeting conference or conference call.
Viewing and modifying details of an existing conference.
Listing all existing user schedules of a Microsoft Office conference.
Deleting an existing conference.
Sending an e-mail invitation to conference participants by using a configured SMTP mail server.
Joining an existing conference.

Get it here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=6d6848ec-e7d6-41f4-82d9-5bed3526fcbd

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio

Announcing The Office Communications Server Remote Connectivity Analyzer

Anderson Patricio — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 14:52:20 GMT

Hello folks,

Do you remember Exchange Server Remote Connectivity Analyzer (https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com/)? Well, now we have a similar tool for OCS as well, check this out: https://www.testocsconnectivity.com/

Summary:

Following on the heels of success of the Exchange Remote Connectivity Analyzer (created by Shawn McGrath and Brad Hughes), Premal Gandhi (UC Support Escalation Engineer), Matthew Fresoli (Supportability Program Manager) and Jason Stine (Senior Lead Program Manager) have been busy designing and writing a complimentary tool: The Office Communications Server Remote Connectivity Analyzer.

The tool is available at https://www.TestOcsConnectivity.com

Overview:

The Office Communications Server Remote Connectivity Analyzer is a web site for IT Administrators to validate and diagnose end-to-end Office Communications Server scenarios. The site simulates multiple Office Communications Server client access scenarios from outside the customer's infrastructure and reports whether the test was successful. If the test fails, we inform the IT Admin exactly where in the process it failed as well as provide troubleshooting tips on resolving the issue.

In this beta version, the tool provides the following end-to-end tests:

· Office Communications Server Remote Connectivity

· Office Communications Server Remote Connectivity w/AutoDiscover

Coming Soon:

We will be expanding the Office Communications Server scenarios in the next few months to include the following:

· Deeper level of diagnostic information - MSDiagnostics header

· More detailed troubleshooting information based on MSDiagnostic header

· Additional tests

Feedback:

If you have feedback on the tool or suggestions for additional tests or improvements, please use the feedback link provided on the site.

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Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Site Resiliency White Paper

Anderson Patricio — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 15:47:30 GMT

Using backup and restoration procedures for site disaster recovery as described in the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 documentation library topic Backup and Restoration, can entail some downtime for users.
This white paper describes a site resiliency solution for Office Communications Server 2007 R2. The solution includes an Enterprise pool that spans two geographically separate sites. The solution provides a failover mechanism between the two sites to ensure that Office Communications Server functionality such as instant messaging, presence, and conferencing remains available even if one of the sites becomes unavailable.
This white paper is divided into three main sections:

The Solution section provides an overview of the tested and supported site resiliency solution described in this paper.
The Test Methodology section describes the testing topology, expected behavior, and test results.
The Findings and Recommendations section provides practical guidance for deploying your own failover solution.

To successfully follow this paper, you should have a thorough understanding of Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering.

Download it from: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=c930febb-3a44-4bf3-969d-1c52675a7063

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio
http://www.andersonpatricio.org

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OCS 2007 R2 Documentation

Anderson Patricio — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 20:40:20 GMT

Hello guys,

OCS 2007 R2 has an extensive documentation spread in different documents, one for each role/component/process you named it. So I found a link that may help you to find all of them in a single place, check this out:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=E9F86F96-AA09-4DCA-9088-F64B4F01C703&displaylang=en#filelist

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio

Unified Communications How-To

Anderson Patricio — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 21:01:58 GMT

Hello folks,

This package can help you out to explain some of the Office Communicator, Communications Server Attendant, Live Meeting through a desktop or web application. It is really helpful if you want to improve your end-user knowledge of OCS using self-training. You can also customize the tool to display only the features that you have deployed in your environment.

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.

Download it from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=aba240af-b5ba-4e14-bc12-c98eae1f6d15

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio

Unified Communications Adoption and Training Kit 2007 R2

Anderson Patricio — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 20:51:40 GMT

Hello folks,

There is a training kit available to help us out to deploy OCS 2007 R2, there are information for IT Pros, Help Desk and trainers. There is also some examples of e-mail messages that you can send to your users to improve their experience during the POC process.

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.

Get it here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=eb18d016-64f7-4aae-b491-65636a186c1a&displaylang=en

Free e-books: Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and Programming for Unified Communications

Anderson Patricio — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:43:02 GMT

Microsoft Press is giving away two e-books about OCS, as follows:

Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Resource Kit
You can get it here: http://csna01.libredigital.com/?urws8un4p7
Programming for Unified Communications
You can get it here: http://csna01.libredigital.com/?urrs4gt63d

Enjoy it!

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2

Anderson Patricio — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 01:34:39 GMT

Hello folks,

Last Friday the Exchange Server 2007 management pack for SCOM R2 was released. Check this out:

The Exchange Server 2007 Management Pack is designed to monitor Exchange 2007 key health indicators, collect Exchange component-specific performance counters in one central location, and raise alerts for operator intervention as necessary. By detecting, sending alerts, and automatically responding to critical events, this Management Pack helps indicate, correct, and prevent possible service outages or configuration problems, allowing you to proactively manage Exchange servers and identify issues before they become critical. The Management Pack monitors and provides alerts for automatic notification of events indicating service outages, performance degradation, health monitoring, and centralized management.

Note: This Management Pack requires Operations Manager 2007 R2.

Feature Summary

A number of synthetic transactions ensure the Exchange servers are available and responding in a timely manner. The synthetic transactions are maintenance-mode aware, so that if the target of a transaction is in maintenance mode, the source will not run the transaction, and not alert unnecessarily.
This Management Pack includes a Management Pack template that provides a wizard-like interface for configuring synthetic transactions against Outlook Web Access (OWA), Exchange ActiveSync, Web Services, POP3, and IMAP.
This Management Pack includes a Management Pack template that provides a wizard-like interface for configuring mail flow synthetic transactions between agent-managed Exchange 2007 Mailbox servers.
This Management Pack provides 30+ reports specific to Exchange 2007 that track availability and performance compared to service level objectives. For the list of reports and for more information about the reports, see the Management Pack Guide.
All the synthetic transactions in this Management Pack use an Operations Manager 2007 R2 hosting feature for Windows PowerShell technology that provides a performance improvement when running synthetic transactions.
A significant number of rules and monitors that are not actionable or may be noisy are disabled. Note that many of these rules are still in the Management Pack so that you can enable them if necessary.
Support for monitoring any number of Exchange organizations using a single Operations Manager 2007 management group.
Full support for Microsoft clustered configurations. For more details, see the Management Pack Guide.
Discovery of Exchange 2007 server roles is disabled by default, and no Exchange 2007 monitoring is applied by default. This allows you to discover and monitor your servers gradually, as well as tune the Management Pack as you bring more agent-managed Exchange 2007 servers into the Operations Manager environment.

Link to download it: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e9f3cd3f-9bc0-45cd-b10f-120e937ee4c4&displaylang=en&displaylang=en

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio

List of available updates for Communications Server 2007 R2: April 2, 2009

Anderson Patricio — Tue, 05 May 2009 23:31:00 GMT

Hello folks,

I read about this kb on the Office Communications Server Team Blog (http://communicationsserverteam.com) and the following kb http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968802 has a descriptive list of all updates for OCS 2007 R2 and its use for each server role.

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio

Edge Planning Tool for Office Communications Server 2007 R2

Anderson Patricio — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 17:58:32 GMT

The Edge Planning Tool for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 provides settings for configuring your perimeter network based on information that you provide to the tool.

You can download the from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=ec4b960c-3fe2-41bd-abdf-ae89cfcb8c6c&displaylang=en

Quick Reference Card for Communicator Mobile for Java

Anderson Patricio — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 22:05:33 GMT

This quick reference card summarizes the common calling, IM, presence, and contact management tasks in Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile for Java.

You can download it from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=7205cd2e-b850-4f26-8e80-df88c83ddd2a

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Quick Reference for Communications Server 2007 R2 Attendant

Anderson Patricio — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 22:03:04 GMT

This quick reference card summarizes the tasks most commonly performed when using Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Attendant. It describes how to navigate the main window, answer incoming calls, make outgoing calls, transfer calls, and take notes. It also covers how to set up conference calls, manage multiple conversations, and search for contacts.

Get it here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=0005b7b9-b40e-4e56-9ece-acc4b1d2f92e

Retrieving OCS Communicator R2 Configuration Information

Anderson Patricio — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 02:45:06 GMT

Hello folks,

The new Communicator R2 has a feature to show the current configuration that the client is using. To retrieve your configuration settings, hold Ctrl key and right-click on the OCS 2007 Communicator icon located on systray area, and then click on Configuration Information.

The tip came from Office Communicatons Server Team, and the original post can be found here: http://communicationsserverteam.com/archive/2009/04/08/400.aspx

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio

Communicator 2007 R2 - Cool Tips by Office Communicator Team

Anderson Patricio — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 05:20:23 GMT

Hello folks,

Office Communicator team has been releasing some tips about Communicator R2 and they reached the "Tip of the Day" number 10. Here is a summary of all tips blogged so far, as follows:

Cool Tip of the Day 1: Start an IM Conference using Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2
http://communicatorteam.com/archive/2009/03/09/493.aspx
Cool Tip of the Day 2: Join an IM Conference
http://communicatorteam.com/archive/2009/03/10/564.aspx
Cool Tip of the Day 3: Start/Join an Unscheduled Conference Call
http://communicatorteam.com/archive/2009/03/11/565.aspx
Cool Tip of the Day 4: Start an Audio/Video Conference
http://communicatorteam.com/archive/2009/03/12/566.aspx
Cool Tip of the Day 5: Join an Audio/Video Conference
http://communicatorteam.com/archive/2009/03/13/567.aspx
Cool Tip of the Day 6: Conduct Conference Calls
http://communicatorteam.com/archive/2009/03/30/568.aspx
Cool Tip of the Day 7: Escalate Conferencing Communication Modes
http://communicatorteam.com/archive/2009/03/31/569.aspx
Cool Tip of the Day 8: Share Your Desktop or Share Information Using Microsoft Office Live Meeting
http://communicatorteam.com/archive/2009/04/01/570.aspx
Cool Tip of the Day 9: Schedule a Conference Call or Live Meeting
http://communicatorteam.com/archive/2009/04/02/571.aspx
Cool Tip of the Day 10: Manage Your Contacts and Contact List
http://communicatorteam.com/archive/2009/04/03/572.aspx

Enjoy!

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio

"Outlook Integration Error" using OCS Communicator on the external network

Anderson Patricio — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 00:27:01 GMT

Hello folks,

If you are receiving the error message "Outlook Integration Error" when you are outside of your network and you are also using ISA 2006, the following post http://blogs.technet.com/isablog/archive/2009/04/01/ocs.aspx can be useful to you. It was blogged by ISA Team and explains in detail the cause and a resolution for that issue.

Cheers,
Anderson Patricio

Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Dial-in Conferencing E-mail Templates

Anderson Patricio — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 02:09:48 GMT

The following e-mail template provides basic instructions to users about how to use the dial-in conferencing feature of Office Communications Server 2007 R2.

Get it from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=e63531ef-a7de-4371-b1b7-ba68158c404c

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Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Client Group Policy Documentation

Anderson Patricio — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 17:49:11 GMT

Hello folks

The spreadsheet containing all group policy settings that can be applied on an OCS R2 client is available.

This download package contains the Communicator.adm file and a Group Policies Spreadsheet that lists the Group Policy settings for Office Communications Server 2007 R2 clients.

You can get it here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5d6f4b90-6980-430b-9f97-ffadbc07b7a9&displaylang=en