Lync Server simple URLs

When you setup the topology for your Lync deployment you need to setup 3 simple URL’s. These URLs are used for administration, dial-in and Meet

The administration URL you keep within your internal network but the Meet and dial-in are required internally and externally. By default these are set to dialin.domain.com and meet.domain.com.

This may not seem to be a problem however if you have multiple SIP domains the number of SAN’s you require can become quite costly. A simple solution to these simple URL’s is to change them to use the same sub-domain for example lync.domain.com/dialin and lync.domain.com/meet.

Using this format halves the number of SAN’s required at the expense of slightly lengthening the actual URL.

The other consideration is that these URL’s expect you to have split brain DNS as there is no external/internal option for defining these. However if you don’t have split brain DNS the request can route externally and the meeting GRUU that is returned enables you to connect either directly internally or externally.

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Wave 14 Official Name and Release Candidate Available for Download

After months of talking about Wave 14 and CS2010 the product has finally been given its official name ready for release. We now have Microsoft Lync Server 2010. The full rebranding is as follows

If you want to try out the Release Candidate then you can download everything you need from here

Over the next few weeks I’ll be blogging about the new functionality.

TechEd 2010 Wave 14 Presentations

The presentations from the sessions from the New Orleans TechED have been about for a while but as I couldn’t find my notes on them when I thought I’d do a blog entry on them.

CS“14”: Transforming the Way People Communicate

CS“14”: What’s New in Communicator

CS“14”: Architecture

CS“14”: Voice Architecture and Planning for High Availability

CS“14”: Network Considerations

CS“14”: Voice Deployment

CS“14”: What’s New in Conferencing Experience and Backend

CS“14”: Management Experience

CS"14”: Interoperability: Voice, Video, Conferencing, IM and Presence

CS“14”: Monitoring and Reporting

CS“14”: Setup and Deployment

CS“14”: What’s New in Devices

CS“14”: Building Communications Enabled Business Processes

CS“14”: SDK: Integrating, Extending and Adding Contextual Data to the New Communicator Experience

CS“14”: Advanced SIP-Based Solutions Built on the Microsoft Unified Communications Managed API 3.0 & Microsoft Communications Server “14”

Problems installing OCS and not finding .NET 3.5

If you install all the current patches to your server before installing OCS it will install .NET Framework 4.0. When .NET 4.0 is installed OCS cannot detect .NET 3.5 and you receive the error message

Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2, Microsoft Unified Communications Managed API 2.0 Core Redist 64-bit installation requires Microsoft .NET Framework version 3.5. Installation cannot continue.

Microsoft has put up a knowledge base article kb2224981 describing the issue and also the work around.

To resolve this problem, follow these steps:

1. Remove .NET Framework 4.0 from the server. 
2. Install the OCS products that you want to have on the server
3. Install .NET Framework 4.0 on the server

Response Group Service Language Packs

By default OCS only installs the US English language pack for Response Groups. There are 11 other language packs you can install. The RGS uses the UCMA 2 Speech language packs which can either be found on the OCS install CD in the \Setup\amd64\Setup\Speech\ directory. You can also download the packs from here. 

After running the msi to install the language pack you need to register the language pack. To install the language packs you need to run the rgslang.exe application from the OCS 2007 R2 Resource Kit. From a cmd prompt run RGSlang sync then restart the RGS service. Full details of the install process can be found on TechNet.

As well as the speech packs you can also manage OCS in different languages or display the OC Tab in a different language by downloading the Response Group Service Language Pack.

July Cumulative Updates for Communications Server 2007 R2

The July updates have been released and can be downloaded from here.

For details of what is included in the patches can be found here http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=968802 along with installation details.

A few people have mentioned issues with the latest update but this appears to be because the OCS2009 DBUpgrade hasn’t been applied. This needs to be applied separately for a good description of how to apply this patch there are a number of blog entries such as the one on msunified.

Update 30 July

I left off the other updates below when I initially posted this

Office Communicator 2007 R2

Group Chat Patches 2007 R2

Communicator Phone Edition (OCPE)

Communicator Mobile

Exchange 2007 Certificate Manager

I still find that customers are using self signed certificates for their Exchange servers. When you install Exchange UM and want to link it to OCS you need to use a properly trusted certificate from a CA. To do this requires some messing around in Powershell and can be inconvenient. Today I spotted a blog post from Rui Silva highlighting a Certificate Management Tool from U-BTech which gives a quick and easy GUI to manage the Exchange server certificates. I haven’t tried it yet but I think it is definitely worth investigating.

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.