Blackberry Support for Lync and OCS 2007 R2

After a long wait the latest service pack for BlackBerry Enterprise Server now adds support for the IM Client for Lync and OCS R2. As many will know up until this release the only way to use the IM Client on your Blackberry was to retain a legacy OCS 2007 RTM Communicator Web Access (CWA) server running.

The release noted for BES for Exchange SP3 is available here as a PDF.

BES for Exchange SP3 can be obtained from here.

I’ve not had a chance to look how well this works, so if you try it please comment with your thoughts.

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OCS Training Resources

Microsoft has produced some tremendous end user training materials for OCS. When implementing systems for customers you can give them this material knowing their users will then have access to the resources they need to be productive with Communicator etc from the start.

Microsoft haven’t stopped there and they now have a training course for the help desk. The course is designed to help you in supporting Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2. You will learn some of the most common Office Communicator 2007 R2 support scenarios that might be encountered, as well as how to troubleshoot the issues and how to resolve them.

The prerequisite for the Help Desk training includes the UC Tutorial which is also a good resource for users.

The main material I recommend for an end users reference is the UC How To. This is a Silverlight 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.

For material you can put together before, during and after rollout the UC Adoption and Training Kit 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.

On the Office online website there is a selection of links that provide a variety of Communicator 2007 R2 resources that can be used for end-user training and adoption, including online demos, Quick Reference Cards, Getting Started and Troubleshooting Guides, help articles, product tours, and online tutorials.

Communicator Mobile for Nokia

Microsoft and Nokia announced Communicator Mobile for Nokia last week, initially for the Nokia E72 and E52. Plans are to release it for further models and to also be pre-installed on select Nokia Smartphones. The press release can be found here.

Communicator Mobile for Nokia can be found here on the Ovi store.

UC Voice Specialization Exam 74-404

The new OCS R2 version of the UC Voice Specialization exam was released on the 4 May 2010. Details of the areas covered in the exam and training available (just the OCS R2 Voice Ignite Workshop). Full details can be found here.

I can’t give details of the exam beyond what is in the Microsoft Learning site but if you know your OCS voice and have attended the Voice Ignite Workshop this should be straight forward for you. I think it is a better test of knowledge than the old 74-924 R1 version of the exam but that is my personal view of it.

Good luck if you decide to take the exam.

OCS 2007 R2 Workload Poster Update

Back on the 25th January 2010 I blogged about the OCS Architecture poster being available for download. Last month there was an update to correct some of the minor errors on it. So make sure you update your copy from the same location.

Although it isn’t 100% comprehensive is does give a great overview which you can share with customers.

Disable the CX700 (Tanjay) Inactivity Phone Lock

Recently I have been asked about how to stop the Polycom CX700 from automatically locking after the default 10 minute period of inactivity. This is particularly important where the phone is in a shared area and therefore you do not want the people to have to key in the pin code before being able to dial.

Fortunately this is easy to do. On the Pool Front End properties go to the Voice tab. Here you can untick the Enforce phone lock or alternatively change the timeout period and PIN length (note that the shortest pin allowed is 4 digits).

The only caveat with this change is that it is now no longer possible to even lock the phone manual either from the phone or if you have the USB connection then locking your PC will no longer lock the phone. If you need to secure your phone when you are away you will now need to sign out of the CX700.

OCS with Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010

Applications integrated with OCS to leverage the power of presence is really good news for everyone. Customers using Dynamics GP 2010 can see the presence of contacts within the product. Obviously it requires Federation to enable cross business presence but this is a great driver to bring even more emphasis on B2B unified communications.

Below is screen shot from the Microsoft Dynamics GP Product blog which also discusses the features in a little more detail. http://blogs.msdn.com/gp/archive/2010/03/30/feature-of-the-day-unified-communications.aspx

What sort of Certificate Authority am I running?

One of the requirements when setting up OCS with RCC for the Avaya PBX is you need to have a Enterprise CA running on Windows 2003 Enterprise or 2008 Enterprise.

Quite often I find if the customer isn’t using the CA extensively in their environment they are not sure how the CA was installed.

An easy way to tell is to run certutil –cainfo from the command line and you can ask the customer to run this in advance of arriving on site. You can see below the output for a rootCA

OCS2007R2 Supported on Windows 2008R2

 

Microsoft had scheduled support for OCS on Windows 2008R2 in 1Q2010. On the last day of the quarter we finally have confirmation of support.

There are a few still a few issues, Group Chat support being the main one.

Support is also only for new installations of Windows 2008 R2 you cannot upgrade an existing OCS 2007R2 system.

Two knowledge base articles have been released

When you upgrade a domain controller to Windows 2008 R2 x64 OCS does not function correctly. To fix this you need to rerun the ForestPrep.  Full details are in this knowledge base article 982020

For full details and the process required to install and prepare Windows 2008R2 for OCS look at the knowledge base article 982021