a Single Point of Contact

Updated to version 1.1 this document explains how to administer Office Communications Server 2007.

Direct Download…

What’s new:

• Added Appendix B, an overview of the primary elements of the UI
• Added Appendix C, describing when OCS services need to be restarted. The info in the body of the doc was also updated to reflect these restart requirements.
• Added Appendix D, describing the settings that require AD replication to complete.
• Added “Changing Service Account Credentials” section (for the name of the service account, password for the LSGroupExpAppPool account, and password for the Enterprise pool guest user account).
• Created a Managing Databases section and put all previous database admin info in it, adding a new section about moving the back-end database.< /SPAN>
• Revised and expanded deactivation info to cover other server roles (now in “Starting and Stopping Services and Deactivating Server Roles” section),
• Added “Removing Servers and Server Roles, Removing Enterprise Pools, and Decommissioning Servers and Pools” section.
• Changed default 801.2p Voice Setting from 5 to 0 (Advanced Voice Options).
• Added CWAPolicy and CWASnapin to Table 19 (Logging Components)

This article describes the known issues that occur when public instant messaging (IM) connectivity is configured with one of the three available public IM service providers after you install Microsoft Office Live Communications Server Service Pack 1 (SP1) or Microsoft Office Communicator 2007. This article also lists the known IP addresses that are used by each public IM service provider.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/897567

For some background on PIC (Public IM Connectivity) please reference the following link.

Issue:

Why can’t I IM with a MSN enabled account? (IE: u...@company.com vs u...@msn.com)
 

Background:

Microsoft allows MSN users to use the domain name of their choice to create an IM address through Windows Live ID.

Let’s examine the following scenario:

1. Joe has a MSN enabled account (j...@company.com) and uses this account to sign into MSN Messenger.
2. Mary has a MSN account (m...@msn.com) and uses this account to sign into MSN Messenger.
3. John has Hotmail account (j...@hotmail.com) and uses this account to sign into MSN Messenger.

A PIC enabled account can add all three contacts to their contact list however, the user is only able to IM with the Mary and John.  Joe shows up as unknown.  The user cannot send nor receive IM conversations with Joe. 
 

Solution:

Add the contact as “Joe(company.com)@msn.com”.  
 

Reference:

Excerpt from Microsoft KB Article 897567

“As of October 11, 2005, all EASI Windows Live ID domains are fully supported for the Public IM Connectivity (PIC) service. This means that Communicator users can communicate with MSN users by using EASI Windows Live IDs through PIC.
EASI ID enables MSN users to use the domain name of their choice to create an IM address through Windows Live ID. For example, a user’s EASI Windows Live ID could have been username@contoso.com.

This was a great service for MSN users. However, the service caused problems when PIC-enabled users tried to communicate with MSN users by using Communicator.
With the change on October 11, 2005, you can use the EASI Windows Live ID with PIC by making a simple change when you add a user to your Communicator contact list. A Communicator user who wants to add the EASI Windows Live ID of user...@contoso.com would add the following address to the search field:

• username(contoso.com)@msn.com

This increases the effectiveness of the PIC service because contacts that have unsupported EASI Windows Live ID domains no longer need to change their domains in order to use the PIC Service.”

I’m never one to reinvent the wheel when Jim Collins of the Microsoft Core Team has done a great job explaining how to get Virtual Server to run on Vista.

“If you’re trying to run Virtual Server on Vista, you need to do two things.

STEP 1: Enable IIS and the correct settings. To do this, go to Control Panel and under the Programs category click on Windows Features to Turn Windows features on and off. Here you will see a long list of features that can be enabled/disabled in Vista. For this discussion were specifically interested in enabling features under Internet Information Services (IIS). I’ve typed out what needs to be enabled below and included a screenshot.

STEP 2: Run IE using elevated privileges. To do this, right click on IE and select Run as Administrator.

You must do both.”

Read the rest of Jim’s post here…

.NET Framework 3.5 builds incrementally on the new features added in .NET Framework 3.0. For example, feature sets in Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Windows CardSpace. In addition, .NET Framework 3.5 contains a number of new features in several technology areas which have been added as new assemblies to avoid breaking changes. They include the following:

• Deep integration of Language Integrated Query (LINQ) and data awareness. This new feature will let you write code written in LINQ-enabled languages to filter, enumerate, and create projections of several types of SQL data, collections, XML, and DataSets by using the same syntax.
• ASP.NET AJAX lets you create more efficient, more interactive, and highly-personalized Web experiences that work across all the most popular browsers.
• New Web protocol support for building WCF services including AJAX, JSON, REST, POX, RSS, ATOM, and several new WS-* standards.
• Full tooling support in Visual Studio 2008 for WF, WCF, and WPF, including the new workflow-enabled services technology.
• New classes in .NET Framework 3.5 base class library (BCL) that address many common customer requests.

Get the new .Net here…

Jen Trier Rasmussen has written an excellent article that describes the process that OCS 2007 Phone Edition device’s use to process root certificates.  If you are having problems getting your MOC 2.0 Phone Edition device to work internally you’ll want to read his article, especially if your OCS service is deployed in a resource forest.

“Communication between the Office Communicator 2007 Phone Edition device (LG-Nortel model and Polycom model) and Office Communications Server 2007 is by default encrypted using TLS and SRTP. Therefore the device needs to trust certificates presented by OCS 2007 servers. If the OCS 2007 servers use public certificates they will most like be automatically trusted by the device, since it contains the same list of trusted CA’s as Windows CE. However since most OCS 2007 deployments use internal certificates for the internal OCS 2007 server roles there is a need to install the Root CA certificate from the internal CA to the device. It is not possible to manually install the Root CA certificate on the device, so it needs to come via the network. Office Communicator 2007 Phone Edition is able to download the certificate using two methods.”

Read Jen’s post here to get the solution…

Microsoft recently released SCOM SP1 RC that addressed a wide range of issues.  Those issues are now officially published in a KB article 944443.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/944443

Jen Trier Rasmussen posted a great article on why your OCS 2007 Enterprise Voice users aren’t able to receive inbound fax using Exchange 2007 UM. 

“Exchange 2007 SP1 UM supports both voice mail and incoming fax to a given extension. However, if the user is both UM-enabled and enabled for Enterprise Voice using OCS 2007, incoming fax is not supported using the same extension. The reason being that OCS 2007 Mediation Server does not currently support T.38.”

Read the rest of the post here for the workaround…

Click here for more information on configuring Unified Messaging and OCS 2007…

Originally posted by Aaron Parker these are some very nice white papers on Group Policy.  A good read for any AD administrator.

Advanced Group Policy Management Overview

This white paper is an overview of Microsoft Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPM), and describes its benefits, how it works, and the next steps for evaluating it. AGPM helps you better manage Group Policy objects (GPOs) in your environment by providing change control, offline editing, and role-based delegation. AGPM is a key component of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP).

Group Policy Preferences Overview

This white paper introduces Group Policy preferences, a feature new in Microsoft Windows Server 2008, and describes how you can use Group Policy preferences to better deploy and manage operating system and application settings. Group Policy preferences enable information technology professionals to configure, deploy, and manage operating system and application settings they previously were not able to manage using Group Policy. Examples include mapped drives, scheduled tasks, and Start menu settings. For many types of operating system and application settings, using Group Policy preferences is a better alternative to configuring them in Windows images or using logon scripts.

The MOM Team posted an article outlining the upgrade paths for OpsMgr 2007 SP1.

“As many of you know we released an OpsMgr 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP) Release Candidate (RC) a couple of weeks ago. The product team fully supports inplace upgrades from this release candidate to the RTM version of the Service Pack. Another important upgrade we are supporting which we have encourages more first time users to deploy OpsMgr 2007 is the SP1 RC Eval to SP1 RTM Select inplace upgrade. With the support of inplace upgrades all you will need to do is run the upgrade CD image. You will not need to backup and restore your DB’s or rebuild your environment.”

Read the rest of the post here…