Office Communications Server Team Blog

Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) Program for Office Communications Server 2007

2008-12-29T18:15:00Z

With the recent release of the Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) Program for Office Communications Server 2007 and as the Program Manager responsible for its launch this year I wanted to provide a little more information about the program, its focus and what you can expect should you attend one of the forthcoming deliveries or ‘rotations’ as they are termed.

If you follow the activities on the Exchange team blog you may have seen a recent post by Greg Taylor talking about the launch of the MCM Program for Exchange 2007. In this post Greg also gives some good background on the Ranger program in which Master has its roots so I shan’t cover that ground again except to say that with the launch of the MCM Program for OCS 2007 we are creating a training and certification offering for OCS 2007 and OCS 2007 R2 that is fortunate to share the same heritage, goals and high bar that made Ranger the huge success it was.

Who is the program targeted at?

Common to all the Masters series (Exchange, SharePoint, Windows Directory and SQL) the OCS program is not aimed at newcomers to the product. We are targeting those that already have considerable hands on experience with LCS and OCS. This doesn’t mean to say that they have spent time setting environments up in a lab but rather that they have designed and built real world deployments either for their own enterprise or as a consultant for their customers. To help illustrate the sort of experience we are looking for a number of sample applications can be reviewed here. We are targeting the top 1% of the OCS experienced IT Pros so this program really isn’t for everyone.

We appreciate that given the relatively small numbers of deployments of LCS (when compared to products like Exchange) and the short time that OCS has been available the pre-requisites outlined will be challenging to achieve for many but there is method in the madness. By defining some pretty exacting entry requirements I’m trying to ensure your best possible chance of success – so if these requirements put you off applying then the program probably isn’t for you at this time. If however, you feel that you genuinely have what it takes then we’d love to have you sign up.

What do I get for my money?

The first thing that I should announce here is that the first public rotation in March is half price (the January rotation shown on the website is a dry run for the development team, very much an alpha and as such isn’t available externally). That’s right folks – for one time only you get the chance to attend the OCS Master program for half the normal program fee! The rotation in March is a public beta so you can expect that we will still be ironing out some kinks in the program but on the flip side we will still very much be in the program development and review phases and so keen to gather feedback and ideas on how to make the final shape of the program even better.

The next piece of good news is that we are offering the June rotation at a 30% discount off the normal program fee if you apply before February 14^th 2009. This amounts to a discount of $5550. See here for more information on the conditions of this offer.

The program is a huge cross group effort within Microsoft and the instruction team that we’re assembling represents some of the very best field, support and product group based knowledge of OCS available today and between them we have developed a comprehensive and technically challenging curriculum that explores the product to an incredible level of detail. There is information here that you just won’t find elsewhere and what is more the individuals delivering the sessions are amongst Microsofts and our Partners most experienced and battle scarred consultants who bring unique, real world perspectives to round out the technical side of the materials. Many of the instructors will be well know to you from their blogging and community efforts.

You’ll get long days of detailed instruction (most days are 8am to 7pm in class), individual and group activities, over 20 hands on activities and a substantial lab environment to enable to you to really drill into scenarios and components that you would either never have the time, infrastructure or teaching support to do otherwise.

Will I learn how to make phones ring?

Up to a point. One of the most important things to understand about the program is that it isn’t all about voice. Voice is of course a core component to the product and as such also to the program and we build on the work that other readiness programs such as Voice Ignite are doing and provide another level of detail to the technology whilst then presenting you with some of the most complex voice designs that the Microsoft field have encountered giving you the opportunity to develop and practice your capabilities on real world designs and in a complex lab environment that includes a complex telephony infrastructure. Yet our goal remains to cover the breadth of the product recognising that customers deploy OCS in different ways for different reasons. Some want instant messaging and presence whilst others are looking to reduce travel costs by deploying conferencing solutions. To reflect this diversity of requirements we cover all the components and modalities in detail.

So what will I learn?

Here is a quick overview of how the three weeks of training are made up.

In week one we first drill into the dependencies of OCS. As a graduate of the Exchange Ranger program I am a strong believer in fundamentals and dependencies. If you don’t understand the protocols, services and infrastructures upon which your solution depends then you can have little hope of being a credible consultant when deployments run into technical difficulties and require a depth of understanding that enables a root cause to be quickly established and rectified or how to understand how infrastructure dependencies impact design decisions. We move onto IM and presence looking in detail at how the heart of OCS works from both a server and a client perspective. Building on this we then drill into conferencing from both detailed technical and architectural perspectives.

Week two is mainly about voice and all that entails. Some of the most exciting sessions here let you explore real world complex voice designs and really get into what it takes to get design and deploy these. We also look at video and video interoperability with other vendors and then what it takes to design and deploy edge infrastructures.

Bringing it all together in week three we look at broader architecture and operational issues such as high availability, disaster recovery, monitoring and capacity planning.

One final area that I felt strongly about including in the curriculum was application integration. One of the strengths of the Microsoft UC platform are the integration possibilities for existing line of business or newly developed custom applications. Where carefully scoped and executed such integrations can drive considerable returns for our customers and it was with this in mind we have ensured you will learn how to identify and, at a high level, architect solutions based on our range of APIs and development environments. Will we turn you into coders? No – that isn’t the aim but we will make sure you understand the ‘art of the possible’ with the tools at your disposal.

Throw all that together with lots of class discussion, white boarding and hands on time and you’ve got a feel for what you’ll be getting.

One other comment – we cover both OCS 2007 and R2 in the instruction although the focus is primarily on R2.

Despite the structure of the curriculum around you there is only one person that is in charge of your learning ‘experience’ – you. We will provide you with the tools, information, environments and training to become the most highly skilled and qualified OCS consultants on the planet but it is entirely down to you as to how much value you derive from these elements at your disposal. You will get as much from the program as you put in in terms of time, effort, attention and sheer determination. Given that you will also be bringing experience of your own you will also be expected to contribute for the benefit of the group. The rotations typically will include people from around the globe who have each faced different challenges and have different experiences that are valuable to share and so working with each other and as a team will ensure your own best possible chances of success.

How do I get the experience necessary?

You need to have the exams listed on the website on your transcript for starters and you really need to be in a delivery role. By this I mean that you are actively engaged in the design and deployment of OCS infrastructures rather than simply supporting an existing deployment. So if this isn’t you today you will probably not be accepted onto the program as we will ask for a resume that illustrates your real world experience and if you don’t have the experience we won’t accept your application. Again, I’m doing my best here to ensure your best possible chance for success rather than being difficult for the sake of it. Getting into programs such as Voice and OCS ignite will certainly help but real hands on experience is key. Also, don’t send me a fictitious resume – if you make it into the program and fail you’ve wasted a lot of your time and money. I really don’t want anyone to be in that position.

What about that Voice Specialisation Exam?

This exam (88-924) is due to be re-released in January 2009. You will need to take and pass this exam as a pre-requisite of attendance for the June 2009 (RTM) rotation. Due to the timing of this exam only being available in January we will not be enforcing it as a pre-requisite for attendance in the March (public beta) rotation.

How will I benefit?

Here I’m going to call out some of the same things that Greg mentioned in his Exchange blog

Training

You are going to get three weeks of the best training on OCS available. Period. That does count for a hell of a lot and will help you build your credibility as a true subject matter expert.

Recognition

You will have a recognised certification which demonstrates that you’ve been trained, tested and found to meet or exceed a bar that ensures you are the best out there. Others can say they’re the best, and who knows they might be, but you’ve got a cert to prove it.

Community

Despite the OCS MCM program being new to the Masters series we already have an awesome and growing community that spans our instructors, the MS field, the UC Product Group and the support side of the organisation. For me this is probably the most critical component of Ranger that we are bringing to Master. The strength of the community of certified individuals and handpicked MS and Partner experts has a unique value all of its own. I’ve seen the Ranger community have a hugely positive impact on Exchange as a product over the years. It is my goal that the OCS Master should do the same for OCS.

Continued Education

In line with the other Masters programs we will have a number of annual training events to enable you to keep up with the latest and greatest. We will also feature sessions with the PMs and others that can bring specific knowledge to bear on different subjects.

What are the tests?

There are four. Three are written and one is lab based. You have to pass all of them to certify.

What if I fail?

Good question – given the depth and breadth of skills required to pass it is entirely possible you will fail the program at the first attempt. If that happens we will work with you to help you understand your weaknesses so that you can work on those and provide mechanisms for retakes of the exams and lab.

Once I’m a Master what’s next?

Wow – you’re keen. Becoming a Master in OCS is a pre-requisite to the forthcoming Microsoft Certified Architect in Office Communications Server 2007 certification. I don’t have a date for you right now on when we’ll be bringing this program on stream but it will most likely be the first half of 2009. I’ll post more information once it’s available.

How will the program evolve?

As we head towards Wave 14 we will be building an upgrade path for Masters that certify on OCS 2007/R2 to enable them keep their certification up to date. I will also be working with the growing Masters community to drive value back into the product and the wider IT Pro community by authoring blog posts based on the lab work and personal assignments they complete during the rotations.

Where do I sign up?

We have seats available in the March and June rotations so if you think ‘It’s time to be a Master’ then sign up here. If you have questions about the program please mail me directly – admac at you-know-where and I’ll do my best to answer them.

by Adrian Maclean

Update for Office Communicator 2005 (KB949280)

2008-12-29T17:40:00Z

Update for Office Communicator 2005 (KB949280)

Issues that the hotfix rollup package fixes:

960244 After you install Live Meeting 2007 console or Live Meeting 2007 add-in, two new menu options that do not work are added to Office Communicator 2005 Action menu.

960255 After you upgrade Live Meeting Service Conference center to Live Meeting 2007, you can no longer use the Meet Now button in Office Communicator 2005.

960252 Office Communicator 2005 crashes when you try to accept an inbound phone call.

Prerequisites:

You must apply hotfix 950614 on the Live Communications Server 2005 before you apply this hotfix.

Update for Office Communicator 2007 (KB957465)

2008-12-26T20:48:00Z

This Office Communicator 2007 (KB957465) update is the minimum requirement for interoperability with OCS 2007 R2.

List of issues fixed in this release:

960423 Office Communicator 2007 cannot display Chinese characters in URLs when the EnableURL registry value is enabled display Chinese character in the URL.when EnableURL =1.

960424 You cannot prevent Office Communicator 2007 from controlling the call forwarding settings.

Troubleshooting QoE Installation for OCS 2007 RTM

2008-12-10T20:18:00Z

Once the QoE Service is installed and associated with a pool and Mediation Server it should start getting statistics. You’ll also need to exit Office Communicator or the Live Meeting clients and sign in again to ensure the changes take place. If you don’t see any data being written to the database there are several things you can check to make sure all is working as expected:

Whenever a device or client logs in, they get information sent down via inband provisioning (in SIP traffic) which makes them aware of a QoE Server:

<qosUri>sip:QOE.domain.com@domain.com;gruu;opaque=srvr:QoS:h6pN5zNPUUeVKT66Y_obawAA </qosUri>

To find this information you can enable logging in Office Communicator by selecting the “Turn on logging in Communicator” checkbox under Tools -> Options and then selecting the General tab.

Once you’ve enabled logging, sign into Office Communicator and then search for the string qosUri in the Communicator-uccp log file. The log is located in %userprofile%\tracing\ on the client machine. You can open it in Notepad or download the Snooper tool (part of the OCS 2007 Resource Kit).

Once you see the <qosUri> you can be sure that the pool you’re logging into is associated with the QoE server listed. If you don’t see that, check your QoE Server and ensure that it’s associated with the pool you expect it to be by either checking the Monitoring Status information for Pool Associations and Mediation Server Associations or running the QoE Monitoring Server Configure Associations Wizard in the QoE MMC.

Once you’ve checked that and all appears well you can check to see if your clients are sending QoE Reports after finishing calls. Whenever a client who is enabled for QoE hangs up a call it sends a QoE Report to the OCS Front End Server via a Service request that looks like this:

10/03/2008|09:41:53.558 E2C:1038 INFO :: Sending Packet – 192.168.2.1:5061 (From Local Address: 192.168.2.2:55478) 4747 bytes:

10/03/2008|09:41:53.558 E2C:1038 INFO :: SERVICE sip:OCSPool.domain.com@domain.com;gruu;opaque=srvr:QoS:clfJSBfVcUKdlDLYM5Ej9QAA SIP/2.0

Via: SIP/2.0/TLS 192.168.2.2:55478

Max-Forwards: 70

From: <sip:joe@domain.com>;tag=03d35603d9;epid=c34fae5c3d

To: <sip:OCSPool.domain.com@domain.com;gruu;opaque=srvr:QoS:clfJSBfVcUKdlDLYM5Ej9QAA>

Call-ID: f590839c3b7042fb89a0a3803e0ead7b

CSeq: 1 SERVICE

Contact: <sip:joe@domain.com;opaque=user:epid:-WjXg6bFul6b39g5ZrJ10gAA;gruu>

User-Agent: UCCAPI/2.0.6789.0 OC/2.0.6789.0 (Microsoft Office Communicator)

Proxy-Authorization: NTLM qop="auth", realm="SIP Communications Service", opaque="942056C3", targetname="OCSserver.microsoft.com", crand="15dd1df5", cnum="375", response="01000000a00000009ce2b5c67d6b9a06"

Content-Type: application/vq-rtcpxr+xml

Content-Length: 3881

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<VQReportEvent xmlns="ms-rtcp-metrics"><VQSessionReport SessionId="e482f6b3e3ca44b4adb7db50383749f9;from-tag=001ef1887e;to-tag=9dbb7915c"><Endpoint Name="computer.domain.com"/><DialogInfo CallId="e482f6b3e3ca44b4adb7db50383749f9" FromTag="001ef1887e" ToTag="9dbb7915c" Start="2008-10-03T14:41:46.0654Z" End="2008-10-03T14:41:53.0428Z"><FromURI>sip:joe@microsoft.com</FromURI><ToURI>sip:+14692351836@microsoft.com;user=phone</ToURI><Caller>true</Caller><LocalContactURI>sip:joe@domain.com;opaque=user:epid:-WjXg6bFul6b39g5ZrJ10gAA;gruu</LocalContactURI><RemoteContactURI>sip:mediationserver.domain.com@domain.com;gruu;opaque=srvr:MediationServer:NbvuggL1N0i2cpeLZHbjHAAA;grid=ab2be358af684f39a59b534d599bb00c</RemoteContactURI><LocalUserAgent>UCCAPI/2.0.6789.0 OC/2.0.6789.0 (Microsoft Office Communicator)</LocalUserAgent><RemoteUserAgent>RTCC/2.0.0.0 MediationServer</RemoteUserAgent></DialogInfo><MediaLine Label="main-audio"><Description><Connectivity><Ice>DIRECT</Ice><IceWarningFlags>327680</IceWarningFlags></Connectivity><Security>SRTP</Security><Offerer>true</Offerer><Transport>UDP</Transport><NetworkConnectivityInfo><NetworkConnection>wired</NetworkConnection><LinkSpeed>1000000000.000000</LinkSpeed></NetworkConnectivityInfo><LocalAddr><IPAddr>192.168.2.1</IPAddr><Port>50028</Port><Inside>true</Inside><SubnetMask>255.255.255.0</SubnetMask></LocalAddr><RemoteAddr><IPAddr>192.168.2.3</IPAddr><Port>63344</Port></RemoteAddr><CaptureDev><Name>Microphone (High Definition Audio Device)</Name></CaptureDev><RenderDev><Name>Speakers (High Definition Audio Device)</Name></RenderDev></Description><InboundStream Id="1295251570"><Network><Jitter><InterArrival>5</InterArrival><InterArrivalMax>6</InterArrivalMax></Jitter><PacketLoss><LossRate>0.004762</LossRate><LossRateMax>0.009524</LossRateMax></PacketLoss><BurstGapLoss><BurstDensity>0</BurstDensity><BurstDuration>0</BurstDuration><GapDensity>0</GapDensity><GapDuration>3360</GapDuration></BurstGapLoss><Utilization><Packets>234</Packets></Utilization></Network><Payload><Audio><Signal><SignalLevelLoudSpeaker>-19</SignalLevelLoudSpeaker><SpeakerGlitchRate>0</SpeakerGlitchRate><SpeakerClipRate>0</SpeakerClipRate><RxAGCSignalLevel>0</RxAGCSignalLevel><RxAGCNoiseLevel>0</RxAGCNoiseLevel></Signal></Audio></Payload><QualityEstimates><Audio><NetworkMOS><OverallAvg>2.950000</OverallAvg><OverallMin>2.950000</OverallMin><DegradationAvg>0.000000</DegradationAvg><DegradationMax>0.000000</DegradationMax><DegradationJitterAvg>0.000000</DegradationJitterAvg><DegradationPacketLossAvg>0.000000</DegradationPacketLossAvg></NetworkMOS></Audio></QualityEstimates></InboundStream><OutboundStream Id="2363501468"><Network><Jitter><InterArrival>1</InterArrival><InterArrivalMax>2</InterArrivalMax></Jitter><PacketLoss><LossRate>0.000000</LossRate><LossRateMax>0.000000</LossRateMax></PacketLoss><Delay><RoundTrip>92</RoundTrip><RoundTripMax>166</RoundTripMax></Delay><Utilization><Packets>419</Packets></Utilization></Network><Payload><Audio><PayloadDescription>x-msrta</PayloadDescription><SampleRate>8000</SampleRate><Signal><SignalLevel>1286</SignalLevel><SpeakerFeedbackMicIn>-66</SpeakerFeedbackMicIn><SpeechLevelMicIn>-26</SpeechLevelMicIn><SpeechLevelPostProcess>-26</SpeechLevelPostProcess><BackGroundNoiseMicIn>-72</BackGroundNoiseMicIn><BackGroundNoiseSent>-64</BackGroundNoiseSent><LocalSpeechToEcho>40</LocalSpeechToEcho><MicGlitchRate>0</MicGlitchRate><MicClipRate>0</MicClipRate><RxAGCSignalLevel>0</RxAGCSignalLevel><RxAGCNoiseLevel>0</RxAGCNoiseLevel></Signal></Audio></Payload><QualityEstimates><Audio><SendListenMOS>2.840000</SendListenMOS><SendListenMOSMin>2.840000</SendListenMOSMin></Audio></QualityEstimates></OutboundStream><LocalConversationalMOS>-21474836.000000</LocalConversationalMOS></MediaLine></VQSessionReport></VQReportEvent>

10/03/2008|09:41:53.558 E2C:1038 INFO :: End of Sending Packet – 192.168.2.1:5061 (From Local Address: 192.168.2.2:55478) 4747 bytes

It’s quite a bit of information. It looks much prettier in the QoE reports on the SQL Server. If you want to know more about the statistics collected, review the Office Communications Server 2007 Quality of Experience (QoE) Monitoring Server Audio and Video Metrics Processing Guide. We’re trying to make sure the data is making it to the QoE Server. If the client is sending this data (which again will be in the communicator uccp log) using Notepad or Snooper then the next place to check will be on the SIPStack log on the OCS Server. In there you should see the server make a SIP MTLS connection to the QoE Server using TCP Port 5061 and forward the request over to the QoE Server. If that’s successful then you’re home free. If it’s not there are a few other things to look at:

· In the QoE Management console select the relevant QoE Server. Click on the Performance Tab in the right pane. Once selected there are a set of default counters that will help you quickly determine if reports are making it to the server. If you’re unsure, try looking at LC:QMS – 00 QoEMonitoringServer and selecting “Total number of metrics reports received”, “Total number of metrics reports accepted” and “Number of rejected metrics reports”. This will tell you if the server is getting any QoE Metrics reports and if the reports are valid.

· If you don’t see any metrics reports making it to the QoE Server you can run a network trace on both the OCS Server and the QoE Server to ensure you’re seeing successful TCP Sessions from the OCS Front End Server to the QoE Server on TCP Port 5061. Beware of firewalls between the machines or on them.

· Ensure the OCS Front End Server and QoE Server both have valid certificates and that they both trust each other’s Certificate Authorities, as the connections between them are using MTLS.

· Check DNS name resolution between the servers.

· Check if the QMS Service is started.

· Check Event viewer to see if there are any errors/warnings raised by QMS.

· If you see the value of performance counter “Total number of metrics reports received”/” Total number of metrics reports accepted” is correct, but there is still no data in database you can check if there is something wrong with the MSMQ or database. Check the following:

· Performance counter “Total number of MSMQ messages sent”. This indicates the number of reports that are written to MSMQ. If this is zero, usually it means there is something wrong with MSMQ. Check the Event Viewer for errors.

· These performance counters: “Total number of message transactions completed”, “Total number of message transactions that failed”, “Total number of reports that were dropped due to database insertion failure”, and “Number of MSMQ messages received with an incorrect type or version”. These counters show if the reports are written to the QoEMetrics database or if the reports are dropped due to errors.

· Finally, ensure the SQL Server is operating correctly and the QoEMetrics database is accessible.

Rob Pitfield

PIC: Emergency Maintenance for Yahoo!

2008-12-06T04:13:50Z

From ScottOs' blog - http://blogs.msdn.com/scottos/archive/2008/12/05/office-communicator-clients-cannot-communicate-with-contacts-homed-on-yahoo-messenger-network.aspx

Summary:

Yahoo! will be undergoing an emergency maintenance from 4:30pm to 4:30am PST. During this period, users will see intermittent presence issues. All other functionality will not be impacted.

More Information:

After the maintenance window expires, if you find you are still having issues, please first log out & then back into your Communicator client.

If the issue still reproduces/occurs for you, please restart Edge Front-End services first. Allow me to apologize for this up front; I understand this will require an “emergency service restart change request” for some of you.

If all this fails to resolve the PIC issue between your LCS/OCS deployment and Yahoo!, please engage Microsoft Customer Support Services. Premier customers: please leverage your Technical Account Manager to initiate the case creation process.

Please be prepared to supply Edge Server logs, remote access via our EasyAssist applications from MSFT, and we will do our best to investigate and resolve this in a timely manner.

Update for Office Communications Server 2007 (KB956389)

2008-12-04T00:33:00Z

956389- Description of the update package for Communications Server 2007: November 2008

Issues that this update package fixes:

This update package fixes the following issues:

958560 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/958560/ ) When a Communicator 2007 user calls a Conference Auto Attendant access number, the call always uses Mediation Server instead of going to the Conference Auto Attendant directly
958561 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/958561/ ) Communications Server 2007 R2 remote users cannot make public switched telephone network (PSTN) calls when Communications Server 2007 servers or proxies are in the call path

NOTE: This is a very important InterOP QFE and needs to be installed for proper functioning between OCS 2007 and OCS 2007 R2.

Update for Office Communicator Mobile 2007

2008-12-04T00:25:00Z

Update for Office Communicator Mobile 2007 has been released to the web (KB954767).

954767- Description of the update for Communicator Mobile 2007: November 2008

Issues that this update fixes:

This update fixes the following issues:

954768 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954768/ ) Communicator Mobile 2007 suppresses HTTPS certificate errors when it fetches the NOO icon for the federated contacts
954769 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954769/ ) You cannot log on to Communicator Mobile 2007 in High security mode

NOTE: This QFE has been released for all the languages.

Office Communicator Clients cannot communicate with contacts homed on AOL

2008-12-03T17:00:00Z

Scott Oseychik blogged about the AOL update for the root authority and where to get the update for your LCS and OCS Edge Servers.

http://blogs.msdn.com/scottos/archive/2008/12/02/office-communicator-clients-cannot-communicate-with-contacts-homed-on-aol.aspx

I would suggest adding Scott's site to your reading list as his role in escalation services means he's always looking at issues that most of the time result in a bug with a fix.

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Launch

2008-11-13T20:21:49Z

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 will launch on February 3^rd 2009. We are trying something new this time and will do the launch through a website that mimics a live event. The website will include: keynote, breakout sessions, customers evidence and partners booths. Access to the website will be FREE, so why wait? Sign up for the event now at www.microsoft.com/ocs

OCS 2007 Sizing guidelines for SQL

2008-11-11T14:07:12Z

So you are not going to get exactly what you want but the question from Aaron, Elan and Mark was the fact that the guidance to give a customer collocating their Archiving database with their SQL backend for OCS was rather vague.

In the OCS Planning Guide on page 85 the discussion of the server details is raised and for Archiving and CDR the amount of memory is 16gb for both CDR and Archiving (IM) but what is the user profile?

Well the user profile is published and well hidden, it is in the OCS Planning Tool but guess what isn't documented in there - the archiving numbers.

So how do you wade through this as there is no OCS Stress tool? You have to start with the understanding that we create a text matrix and user model that will meet the highest numbers we feel we can get with available hardware on the market and according to the statistics we have from our deployment and our customers participating in beta (TAP) programs.

So that means that any number published and not explicitly stated for a Standard Edition deployment or a small deployment will of course be for our large deployments. Today the consolidated Enterprise pool will support 30,000 concurrent users and the expanded Enterprise pool will support 125,000 users.

So what does Aaron, Elan and Mark do for their customer - they realize that the 16gb of memory is sufficient to archive at the largest size and they scope this appropriately for their smaller customers. The real key is that collocating will require more physical disk spindles for the logs and databases.

The good news - we are still on track to release planning tools for 2007 R2 after RTM. This will allow customers and consultants to create a customer specific user profile and then test it.

TomL LCSKid

OC 2007 QFE required for interop with OC 2007 R2

2008-11-05T02:38:10Z

The announcement for Office Communications Server 2007 R2 has been made and you should begin to see more information being blogged as well as posted on the Microsoft site.

One thing to have administrators thinking about is interoperability of a mixed topology and this will mean deploying a fix for Communicator 2007.

We posted the the October 2008 Update for Communicator but we didn't mention the need for that fix in deployments that are anticipating a mixed client topology.

http://communicationsserverteam.com/archive/2008/10/27/311.aspx

Tom Laciano - Sr. Program Manager

Unable to download the Address Book

2008-10-30T18:26:00Z

A common issue we see is clients getting an error stating “Cannot Synchronize Address Book”. It looks like this:

There are several reasons clients could get this error. One possible reason is the TLS Certificate hasn’t been selected yet in IIS on your OCS 2007 Front End Server (in a Standard Edition Deployment) or on your Web Components Server (in an Enterprise Edition Deployment).

To see if this is the cause, do the following:

· Open the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager from Administrative Tools.

· Expand the Computer and then Web Sites.

· Right click on Default Website and then click on Properties.

In the Properties box that comes up (shown below), check to see if the SSL port information is blank. If it is, then you likely haven’t installed the certificate required for SSL yet.

This is an action that the OCS installation doesn’t take care of automatically so it happens pretty regularly. To resolve it, select the Directory Security tab and click on the Server Certificate Button:

After you click on the Server Certificate button, follow the Wizard, select Assign an Existing Certificate and assign the certificate used by your OCS Server for client logins. Once you’ve assigned the certificate the SSL port on the Web Site tab should be filled in with port 443.

Sign your clients out of Communicator and then back in and the Address Book should be downloaded successfully.

There are several other reasons this download could fail, and we’re going to try to address them in more posts coming in the future.

Rob Pittfield

October 2008 Communicator Update

2008-10-27T15:27:15Z

Description of the update for Communicator 2007: October 24, 2008

This update fixes the following issues:

958659 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/958659/) When you use telephony mode=4, you can only manually set the URI information in Communicator 2007
957793 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957793/) A Communicator 2007 client is unusually slow at startup
956734 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/956734/) The presence status of Communicator 2007 changes to "Away" for all Terminal Server users when one user locks the desktop on a Windows Server 2008-based computer

UC-RTC Sustained Engineering

OCS Content on TechNet Edge

2008-10-21T18:13:04Z

In light of the OCS R2 public announcement, the OCS Technical Product Management team has recorded a series of videos with the latest additions to the product and the value those bring to the customers. The videos are posted at the TechNet Edge check these out.

Week #1:

“Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and the new Attendant Console ” | Presenter: Jamie Stark
“ What’s New in Conferencing with Office Communications Server 2007 R2” | Presenter: Renee Lo

Week #2:

“What’s New in Office Communicator, Communicator Web Access, and Devices with Office Communications Server 2007 R2” | Presenters : Huat Chye Lim and Ashima Singhal
“Group Chat and Office Communications Server 2007 R2” | Presenters: Ashima Singhal and Bob Serr

Week #3:

“What’s New in Mobility and Anywhere Access with Office Communications Server 2007 R2” | Presenter : Avi Sagiv
“ What’s New in Administration and Management with Office Communications Server 2007 R2” | Presenter: Anand Lakshminarayanan

Adding new link for Harold Wong - Technet Events

2008-10-15T16:26:00Z

We have added Harold's blog link to the list but do note he has two places where he maintains information. We have also called out some specific links of interest.

Sean Smith is a customer who deployed OCS 2007: <link>
Peter Schmatz: <link>
Ken Ewert: <link>

The videos can be downloaded from these links:

Harold Wong

TechNet Events

Microsoft Across America

www.technetevents.com/haroldwong

http://blogs.technet.com/haroldwong