As we all know, in the world of computers we have a binary system. Either something works (1) or it does not (0). And as all of us really know, there is another state, that we all loath, "works sometimes" (1.5).

Recently I ran into a problem with my Office Communicator 2007 Phone Edition (OCPE aka Tanjay) running on Communicator Phone Edition R2, build 3.5.6907.31 with exact such a problem:

While everything else seemed to work without problems, the call logs (missed calls, incoming calls, outgoing calls, waiting voice messages) were only working sometimes. At random points of time - between 20 minutes and not at all - they were updated, however not instantly as they are supposed to (instantly means here, that it can take up to 3 minutes, because this is the poll interval).

We took the usual troubleshooting step, the Office Communicator 2007 Phone Edition (OCPE) logs and the server logs. On the Exchange CAS (Client Access Server), where the Office Communicator 2007 Phone Edition (OCPE) should retrieve the call logs from, we finally found something interesting: we saw there that the Office Communicator 2007 Phone Edition (OCPE) sent requests every 3 minutes and got 401 http errors instead of the call logs.

After some additional hours of troubleshooting and searching for errors, we finally decided to try the newest Office Communicator 2007 Phone Edition (OCPE) build - 3.5.6907.35. Now something wonderful happened: though not described in the knowledge base article for the hotfix (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/972398 ), call logs started to work.

What I have learned from this experience:

· Always use the latest updates (for Office Communicator 2007 Phone Edition (OCPE), the can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=565595be-6cf3-4a61-a1e4-12555749ca64 )

· Sometimes a hotfix might fix problems, even if they are not mentioned in the knowledgebase article.

Thomas Binder