Microsoft Unified Communications & RTC User Group, United Kingdom

In testing Group Chat with an XP workstation for a customer, I found I could not upload a file successfully. The truth is that I haven’t been able to do this for a while but ignored it. I could not ignore it this time as I had to confirm as much functionality as possible. I did a quick search internally and externally and found Doug’s post - http://blogs.technet.com/b/dodeitte/archive/2009/10/07/issues-with-group-chat-file-upload.aspx Turns out that I had to add the certificate as he did in ste... [read more]

We are working on an effort to provide some guidance on monitoring the health of a Group Chat deployment and included are these two counters: MGC:SERVER - 01 - MGC Server Networking.\MGCSERVER - 003 - Active Endpoints MGC:SERVER - 01 - MGC Server Networking.\MGCSERVER - 011 - Active Users When you are monitoring even a small setup the numbers would be assumed to be equal but in fact the Active Endpoints will likely be higher at some point as that counter is for the number of applicatio... [read more]

Today's post comes courtesy of Wes Glockzin, Support Escalation Engineer in Texas, wesglock at microsoft dot com. The following is a synopsis of an issue I had and things I learned with customer that is using three OCS 2007 R2 Edge servers load balanced and NAT/firewalled both internally and externally.    At first, all the edges external interfaces were non-routable IP’s with only the external VIP being a real, routable IP.  SIP traces indicated internet clients were neve... [read more]

Premal Gandhi of our escalation team has started a blog which can be really valuable given he sees the issues that are most problematic which tend to give all of us our most valuable learnings. Due to the type of issues he receives you won't likely find daily/weekly posts but you will most certainly be interested when he reports back on learnings from a recent escalation. http://blogs.technet.com/b/premal/ TomL LCSKid

There was a customer topology which included the same OU name as shown in this simple example Edit - June 14, Keith Hanna of MCS shared the customer issue, his profile is here on Next Hop - Keith Hanna Domain                 Ou = northamerica                              &n... [read more]

A question came up internally about enabling logging on the COMO for Java client. Here is the download link for the Nokia S60 320x240 resolution devices. The key to the logging is the last sentence here - Como for Java requires CWA server to be deployed, along with “Communicator Mobile Component”. Instructions available here - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd637142(office.13).aspx . Settings will be accessible only once you’ve logged in at least once. I don’t have one of th... [read more]

This question was asked in the social forums and I updated my response today to include this company site - http://www.widgetmedia.net/. I don’t have an Android device myself but will be very interested to hear from others that do. TomL LCSKid PS – You can also follow them on Twitter, which is how I first hear of them http://twitter.com/WidgetMedia

Did you deploy Group Chat CU5 and expect the User Colors functionality, I did and so did others, we appear to have an undocumented stored procedure change to communicate. We are investigating whether it truly is undocumented or if a later update has the solution so for now let me share the modification and to link to the social forums where the info was first shared (that I know of). http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/ocsmanagement/thread/ad2fa5fb-9158-4599-baa5-b01c21da4a8a/ No... [read more]

We had a question regarding the whereabouts of the OCS Deployment Validation Solution document. I found it with a helpful hint from Rui by downloading the 2007 version of the tool - DVT.MSIT - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=3596A10D-65CC-4CCA-8470-3F23D5EA55B2&displaylang=en Choosing the default location the doc was found at C:\Office Communications Server Deployment Validation Tool\OCS_Deployment_Validation_Solution.doc The tool did not change between versions tha... [read more]

I saw an email this morning sharing notice of this solution. I have not used it because I install an Enterprise pool given I install all roles which makes it easier in the long run. Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio Express Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio Express (SSMSE) is a free, easy-to-use graphical management tool for managing SQL Server 2005 Express Edition and SQL Server 2005 Express Edition with Advanced Services. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=C... [read more]

The release of Group Chat CU5 was eagerly anticipated by many, however our content was either confusing or inaccurate and we are working to fix that. Here is what we know to be wrong, the change we are making and whether it is in process or under discussion. 1) Support of GC in Windows 2008 R2 Domain CU5 takes care of the issues found during testing KB 982020 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982020) needs to have the ‘not supported’ section removed.  Document update request in pr... [read more]

Yesterday I was reviewing the Office labs Productivity Future Vision video and in reviewing the site I stumbled across Canvas for OneNote . I am a big fan of OneNote, the concept of a Notebook with Sections and Section Groups with Pages is very logical for me. I started using OneNote back when I was the Program Manager for the Partner Voice Certification project. I was working with about 10 Microsoft Consultants worldwide who were getting partners deployed on OCS 2007 with all roles running in... [read more]

I am in Redmond, WA attending the CS ‘14’ Airlift and for dinner Monday we went to Typhoon - http://www.typhoonrestaurants.com/specials.htm  I had the Curry Roma – Shrimp and scallop dumplings wrapped in a sheet of egg noodles, with a delicate green curry sauce and the Hubei Province Keemun Ji Hong black tea. Everyone enjoyed their meal, the only comment was that one dish requested to be level 4 hot was not.

May 3 – The document has been pulled in order to address some last minute edits. I expect an update for ETA this week based on the schedules of those involved. For those of you that were looking for content around load balancing OCS 2007 R2, the doc you want has just been released. The effort is designed to be around the principals of load balancing the product and not be vendor specific, although you will note we did get contribution from one of our partners. To download the document go h... [read more]

I reached out to Unify2 a few weeks ago about their PowerView solution which they state provides “a comprehensive reporting/billing solution for OCS”. I was impressed with the offering and asked if they would share the deck so that I could include some screen shots in the blog post. Determine your needs and request a demo, I think they have filled a reporting gap in the product quite well. Usage Trends by Modality Usage-Based billing summary by Geography or Organization   Disclai... [read more]

I enjoy following Scott Hanselman’s blog, he turned me on to PocketMod and a few months ago I tried 7zip based on his post about the tools he uses. I highly recommend you take a look as it covers a full gamut of tools. http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ScottHanselmans2009UltimateDeveloperAndPowerUsersToolListForWindows.aspx Anyway today I am in the middle of reviewing customer data, it is a collection of data from ~20 servers over a multiple week span of time. I had been highlighting each zip file ... [read more]

Duplicating the post from http://communicationsserverteam.com/archive/2010/03/25/792.aspx  Our friends on the Forefront Server Protection team are conducting research to understand what applications you would like to protect, and how you would like them protected. One of the applications they are soliciting feedback on is OCS. The survey shouldn't take more than 5-10 minutes, and your feedback directly impacts product decisions. Please head over to http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/forefront... [read more]

The question that was asked: How come Communicator works with the Polycom HDX solution but not Mac Messenger? Office Communicator supports both RTVideo and H.263 and it is the later codec that the Polycom HDX solution works with today. The codec is the result of a library being supplied by Intel of which there is no equivalent for the Mac. <March 23 edit - You never want to omit folks that help you with a discussion and alas I did omit Steve Lessard unintentionally. Thanks Steve > <... [read more]

The cycle of product release has impacted my posting again as I am working with the next client/server for OCS which means I don’t get to post content about the release. I always point people to the public site on microsoft.com to avoid ever saying anything too soon. I also have been working with the Next Hop team which has diverted some of my blog posts from here and the Communication Server Team blog there because it is part of our OCS TechNet pages for the product which helps to position th... [read more]

We had a customer report an issue to their local Microsoft Consultant when running Communicator Mobile on a Samsung Omnia II device. The display has a black background which causes a problem trying to view the content typed, also in Black. The workaround provided was to change the Windows Mobile theme to “Rock and Republic” or “Classic Blue”. Happy New Year, TomL LCSKid

The updated list of Microsoft Certified Masters and Architects has been posted. If you are looking for the upper echelon of knowledge, skills and talent then this is the crew for you. http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/master.aspx#meet

A few weeks ago we released the Capacity Planning for Group Chat document and very quickly our MVP community began to question the validity of such a doc with no ability to actually gauge the requirements for the size of the database. Today we have released the spreadsheet to help with this effort. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e9f86f96-aa09-4dca-9088-f64b4f01c703&displaylang=en   TomL LCSKid

It seems like a lifetime,  but its only been two months since I joined Vodafone and a lot has happened.  First of all,  the important pieces are all in place ….. that is to say they know where to pay my wages into and I have a mobile phone and broadband ;-).  Seriously though,  I have started to get my head round all of the different parts of Vodafone that enable communications to happen and I am surprised (and pleased) to see that almost everything is catered for,... [read more]

This is quite easily the most active topic of discussion we have going right now, internally, customers, MVP’s, Master’s, Moms and Dads, it seems everyone wants to know. The problem is that the answer is simple despite each group trying to tweak the discussion to the nuance of their deployment need or desire. Want to know the answer? It isn’t hidden, but publicly stated here - http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/supported-applications.aspx  You are more than welcome to conta... [read more]

A customer question was raised about wanting to delete the Recent Contacts entry list for users due to some alias changes and migrations. Nobody knew the answer right away and I was pretty sure it would be in the backend database somewhere. Turns out it is kept client side. If you want to know WHERE the recent contacts are, they are under this path HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Communicator\<sip-uri of user>\GroupStateCacheU\~~ Deleting the ~~ or GroupStateCacheU folders is not s... [read more]