Office Communications Server Team Blog

Changes in Office Communications Server Public IM Federation

ocsteam — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 11:56:51 GMT

Federation is an important goal for the Office Communications Server team and we are excited to announce several changes to public IM federation between Office Communications Server and public IM networks, effective July 1, 2009:

· The Live Communications Sever Public IM Connectivity (LCS PIC) license will be renamed Office Communications Server Public IM Connectivity (OCS PIC) license.

· Customers with Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Standard CAL or Office Communications Server 2007/Live Communications Server 2005 SP1 Standard CAL with Software Assurance will no longer require an additional license to federate with Windows Live. (A license will still be required for federation with AOL & Yahoo!.)

· With Windows Live federation, customers are able to add Windows Live contacts to their Office Communicator contact list, view presence and send and receive instant messages.

We will continue to work with our partners to enable more options that allow you to communicate seamlessly with customers, partners, friends and family on different networks. For more information on public IM connectivity with Office Communications Server, please go to http://www.microsoft.com/communicationsserver/en/us/public-im-connectivity.aspx

Unified Communications Group

Updates available for expiration date issue with the evaluation editions of Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 R2 and Office Communicator (OC) 2007 R2

ocsteam — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 22:22:00 GMT

Microsoft has just released the following Knowledge Base articles (KB972041, KB972042) to address the incorrect calculations of license expiration dates for Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 R2 and Office Communicator (OC) 2007 R2 Evaluation Edition. The current expiration dates were calculated based on build time, causing the OCS 2007 R2 and OC 2007 R2 Evaluation Edition to expire after June 13, 2009.

Microsoft has issued the fixes below to correct the issues. By applying this fix, the expiration date will be updated to one hundred eighty (180) days after the initial installation of OCS R2 or OC R2 Evaluation Edition, as stated in the license terms for these applications.

Microsoft encourages its customers to apply necessary updates in their evaluation environment to take full advantage of the evaluation period.

To get the updates packages, please go to:

Office Communications Server 2007 R2
Office Communicator 2007 R2

Or to get your new evaluation edition, please go to:
Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Eval

Office Communicator 2007 R2 Eval

Installing Communicator Mobile (COMO) on Windows Mobile 6.0 /6.1

ocsteam — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 19:10:00 GMT

You Can Download Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile 2007 R2 from the following Link - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=BC08CDB7-98E9-47E5-AA63-EB17C2CE4592&displaylang=en (CommunicatorMobile.PPC.msi) or

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=93062936-F216-4D97-AA13-105A20454322&displaylang=en (CommunicatorMobile.SP.msi Form Link)

As per the Article (Installing Communicator Mobile for Windows Mobile from a Storage Card Link http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd425083(office.13).aspx) you need to have a .CAB file, by default only .MSI is downloadable from the Microsoft Website.

You can install the Communicator Client via ActiveSync Installing Communicator Mobile Using ActiveSync 4.5 Ref Link http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd425350(office.13).aspx. You can use CommunicatorMobile.MSI file to install CommunicatorMobile on the Windows Mobile.

However if you would Try to install ActiveSync on the Vista Machine you will getting following error:

The only option you are left with is to install the CommunicatorMobile via Cab file. Since there is no direct .cab download for CommunicatorMobile following is the workaround.

Workaround

1. Create a Folder name COMO on the C:\ Drive

2. Download .MSI in the COMO Folder.

3. Open Command Prompt, and Change folder to C:\Como.

4. Run the Following Command.

msiexec /a CommunicatorMobile.msi

5. It will Open Following Wizard..

Choose Next Twice and Click Finish.

Go to Path (C:\COMO\COMO\BuiltIn\Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile\Setup), you will find .cab file. Now Browse the Location on you Mobile and install the CommunicatorMobile on Windows Mobile Device.

While Installing you may encounter following Error. Ref Screen Shot (Installation of Communicator.Sp.cab was unsuccessful. The installation file is not intended for the device)

Reason:

From the Microsoft Web Site we can download two .MSI file for Communicator Mobile

1. CommunicatorMobile.SP.msi

2. CommunicatorMobile.PPC.msi

CommunicatorMobile.SP.msi: To install Communicator Mobile on Smart Phone

CommunicatorMobile.PPC.msi: To install Communicator Mobile on Pocket PC

We are getting this error because we are using .MSI file intended for Smart Phone on Pocket PC or vice versa.

Manjeet Garg

Reverse Number Lookup and Dealing with Legacy PBX

ocsteam — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 12:19:00 GMT

One of our consultants in the UK, Paul Brombley did a write up on a deployment and how they dealt with Reverse Number Lookup for a legacy PBX. He also presented to the team of consultants assisting with customer and partner deployments of R2. http://blogs.technet.com/msukucc/archive/2009/05/21/reverse-number-lookup-and-dealing-with-legacy-pbx.aspx

OCS Team

Vista SP1 (or SP2) DSCP settings for QoS OC 2007 R2

ocsteam — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 13:45:00 GMT

In order to mark Audio and Video packets for DSCP in OC 2007 R2 â the following steps has to be performed on Vista SP1 and SP2 PCs:

1) Create and update the following key : (32 bit DWORD set to)

a. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\RTC\Transport\QoSEnabled

b. Set 32 bit Dword to 1 to enable

c. Reboot PC â (this will not take effect until rebooted)

After the reboot, RTP Media will be marked with the following default values: (which can be changed)

1) Audio calls will be marked with DSCP 40

2) Video will be marked with DSCP 24

These default values can be changed by going to Group Policy and changing the default value show below:

Setting SIP TLS packets for specific DSCP markings

For customers who also want signaling (SIP TLS) to be marked with unique DSCP values - a group policy will have to be created. (see following steps)

1) Under Group Management Editor â Create New Policy

2) Set Policy Name DSCP value for SIP signaling. We will use DSCP 40 for SIP signaling per RFC 4504.

3) Next add exact program path and name:

(c:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Communicator\communicator.exe)

4)    Next all (i.e any) IPs will be used as the filter

5)    Next select TCP 5061 as the destination port. (SIP TLS uses TCP 5061)

6)    Click finish and you are done!

This insight into Office Communications Server 2007 R2 was created as part of Martin Isaksenâs participation in the Microsoft Certified Master program.

The Microsoft Certified Master Program: The Microsoft Certified Master: Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 program provides the most in-depth and comprehensive training available today for Office Communications Server 2007. This three-week training program is delivered by recognized experts from Microsoft and Microsoft partner organizations.

Silverlight Videos of Partner Applications

ocsteam — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:45:00 GMT

Learn about new partner applications built on Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. The Silverlight player features 3 partner applications:

· Schlumberger’s extension of Petrel, a software program for exploration geophysics, with rich collaboration features including presence, IM, audio/video conferencing and application sharing

· POST cti’s Live-PA , a virtual personal-assistant that records calls and takes audio notes, without the need for client machine software and hardware recording equipment. The software operates as a hosted service in the “cloud” or on-premise within the enterprise.

· Aspect’s integration of Active Directory, Exchange and OCS 2007 its call center application to improve companies’ customer service and sales and collections results while reducing costs.

UC Partner Marketing

Help Us Understand Unified Communications Custom Development

ocsteam — Thu, 28 May 2009 14:30:00 GMT

There are tens of thousands of people out there developing applications on the Microsoft unified communications developer platform, yet there is little that Microsoft knows about this developer community.

For example, what applications have been developed, what other communications tools besides Microsoft’s Unified Communications, like Microsoft Office Communications Server, Microsoft Office Communicator and Microsoft Exchange have been using, and most importantly, what Microsoft could do to better help the community?

In order to get a better insights Microsoft engaged with Frost and Sullivan, an independent third party, to conduct a Unified Communications Developer survey.

If you are a developer of unified communications applications such as OCS and Communicator, please spare us 15 minutes and fill out this survey:

http://www.globaltestmarket.com/survey/s.phtml?sn=134581&lang=E&secid=9f8cbb

When you click the link you will be directed to a secured site hosted by Frost and Sullivan that will allow you to fill out the survey. Please be sure to enable cookies.

Based on the data collected in the survey, we hope to develop a set of activities to provide better assistance to you in building great enterprise solutions on the Microsoft Unified Communications platform. We will keep you posted on such activities via this blog.

NOTE: Frost and Sullivan will keep your individual responses confidential and anonymous.

Thanks for your time!

Albert Kooiman

Q&A:Virtualization Support for Office Communications Server 2007 R2

ocsteam — Wed, 13 May 2009 12:31:00 GMT

Please forgive the posting of the Q&A information. While there was nothing confidential it was prepared for discussions with customers. For additional information regarding virtualization support for Office Communications Server 2007 R2, please contact your local account team.

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Virtualization

ocsteam — Wed, 13 May 2009 12:30:00 GMT

We are pleased to announce official support for server virtualization for Office Communications Server 2007 R2.

We are introducing support for both a fully distributed virtualized topology across several hypervisors and for a single server virtualized topology. These topologies are supported on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and any Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP) certified partner solution (http://www.windowsservercatalog.com/svvp.aspx?svvppage=svvp.htm).

Presence, Instant Messaging (including remote access, federation, and Public IM Connectivity) and Group Chat workloads are supported. The following server roles can be deployed:

· Front-End Servers

· Back-End SQL Server 2008 64 bits

· Group Chat Channel Servers

· Group Chat Compliance Servers

· Edge Access Servers

The virtual machines must be running on Windows Server 2008 64 bits. Archiving Server and Monitoring Server (CDR Only) can be connected to a virtualized Enterprise pool, but they must run on a physical server.

The fully virtualized distributed topology has been tested to handle up to 40,000 users, including 10,000 group chat users.

Virtualization of the other workloads is not supported because of possible quality issues with real-time media. Specifically, voice, video, live meeting and desktop sharing workloads cannot be part of the virtualized deployment. Therefore audio/video/web conferencing servers, audio/video/web edge conferencing servers, dial-in conferencing, Communicator Web Access, enterprise voice, or Remote Call Control may not be deployed as part of the virtualized pool. If any one of these workloads is required, a new pool with physical servers must be deployed for those users. For more information about support for client virtualization technologies, please refer to the official support statement at: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951152.

In order to plan both their physical and virtualized topologies, customers can use Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Capacity Planning Tool, which can simulate user load for the available workloads. This will help customers validating the hypervisor load and scalability before going to production.

Along with this announcement, a whitepaper detailing the tested architecture, performance, use of the Capacity Planning Tool, and a methodology to select a successful architecture can be found at: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0a45d921-3b48-44e4-b42b-19704a2b81b0

Jerome Berniere

May 15 edit: We forgot to recognize a key partner in bringing this solution to you. This testing was completed at the Microsoft Enterprise Engineering Center (EEC). For more information about the EEC visit http://www.microsoft.com/eec or http://blogs.technet.com/eec

High vs. Low Fidelity Subscription

ocsteam — Mon, 11 May 2009 17:22:00 GMT

Problem Description

Microsoft Communicator Mobile Edition 2007 R2 has introduced number of performance improvements over its predecessor related to battery power consumption and over the air bandwidth savings. In the following blog post, we’ll look at the concept of low vs. high fidelity subscription and how it helps in saving battery power in mobile devices and saving over the air traffic.

Let’s first look at the problem with traditional event subscription model. Typically, clients subscribe to an ad hoc list of contacts (buddy list) presence information at the server with non-zero expiration value. The message body of a SIP SUBSCRIBE message lists all the contacts user is subscribing to for their presence information. It conveys to the server that client is interesting in keeping up to date with the real time presence state updates of buddies. Whenever a contact’s presence state change is detected as a result of any part of user’s presence state (user devices’ machine state, calendar state, phone state, or user’s manual state) change publication, all the subscribing users get notified of the updated presence state. Essentially, it generates a notification stream from the server to the client, where every SIP NOTIFY message has to be processed by the client and acknowledged by a SIP 200 OK response.

The Communicator Mobile Edition 2007 RTM followed Office Communicator 2007 RTM/R2 running on laptop/desktop logic of subscribing to the full contact list at start up (of course not subscribing to unexpanded distribution groups in a contact list). The following scenarios prompted to look at possible improvements.

· Communicator mobile edition runs on devices with small screens where hardly 10 or less contacts of a user’s long buddy list are visible at an instance

· Over the air bandwidth is costly, especially when users are roaming in a GPRS network, thus notification stream wastes a lot of bandwidth

· When back light goes off (Windows Mobile devices going into idle state), receiving every single NOTIFY causes device wake up, processing of notification, and then going back to sleep again, while user is not really paying attention to the update. It drains much needed battery power at a faster rate

Solution

It’s evident that a better subscription model is needed to fully optimize battery power and bandwidth usage. Communicator Mobile edition 2007 R2 introduced the concept of low vs. high fidelity subscriptions as described below.

· Low fidelity subscription refers to performing a fetch/pull subscription, where a contact’s presence state is pulled from the server on an as needed basis. It doesn’t create a long lived subscription on the server, where server keeps on notifying client with an updated state. In a SIP SUBSCRIBE message a pull or fetch subscription carries an Expires value of 0. In this mode, client keep on pulling every 5 minutes, thus potentially a presence state could become stale up to 5 minutes

· High fidelity subscription refers to a persistent subscription on the server, where a contact’s presence state is continuously synchronized at the client by server sending updated notification whenever contact state is updated. Before expiration of subscription, if user is still logged in, these subscriptions are refreshed with new expiration time

The Communicator Mobile Edition 2007 R2 performs usually low fidelity subscription in most of the scenarios. For example, low fidelity subscription happens for only the visible contacts on the buddy list. To account for a scrolling down/up of a rich buddy list viewing experience, it also subscribes to 3 contacts above and below the currently viewed contacts in the buddy list window. Therefore, it avoids subscribing to a complete buddy list of a user for no good reason and end up wasting bandwidth over the air and processing power on the client.

There’re following scenarios where still high fidelity subscriptions are performed to provide a rich user experience in the Communicator Mobile 2007 R2 client.

· When a user tags a contact, it creates a high fidelity subscription. Thus, user gets a notification whenever tagged contact becomes available, hence providing real time presence information for tagged contacts

· When a user opens a contact card of a contact, it again performs high fidelity subscription

· When a user is in an active conversation with other user(s)

Thus, in above scenarios it makes perfect sense to perform high fidelity subscription for real time presence updates.

When the device goes idle (back light goes off) and user is still signed in to Communicator Mobile Edition 2007 R2, it further optimizes by suspending both low and high fidelity subscriptions, where:

· Client stops fetching/pulling presence state every 5 minutes for low fidelity subscriptions

· All high fidelity subscriptions are terminated at the server, therefore server doesn’t keep on sending updated notifications. Only exception is the tagged subscription, which still receives updated notifications to keep user informed of tagged contact’s availability

Therefore, Communicator Mobile Edition 2007 R2 provides rich user experience at the same time consumes much less battery power and over the air bandwidth.

This insight into Office Communications Server 2007 R2 was created as part of Mohammed Vakil’s participation in the Microsoft Certified Master program.

The Microsoft Certified Master Program: The Microsoft Certified Master: Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 program provides the most in-depth and comprehensive training available today for Office Communications Server 2007. This three-week training program is delivered by recognized experts from Microsoft and Microsoft partner organizations.

DrRez on Twitter

ocsteam — Wed, 06 May 2009 13:09:12 GMT

DrRez on Twitter is the micro-blogging voice of the Microsoft Insider team (programmers, writers, and field consultants) that produced Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Resource Kit and Programming for Unified Communications Using Office Communications Server 2007 R2. DrRez aims to build and support the OCS community on Twitter by evangelizing and broadcasting the latest Office Communications Server information and solutions.

DrRez

April 2009 Updates for OCS 2007 R2

ocsteam — Mon, 04 May 2009 14:10:00 GMT

April provided a substantial number of updates for the R2 server roles and the first place to start is with this KB - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968802. The plan of record is to have these available on Microsoft Update during the week of May 12.

UC-RTC Sustained Engineering

Audio Conferencing in OCS 2007 R2 CWA

ocsteam — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:55:00 GMT

There is a new capability in R2 CWA to initiate or join an audio conference. Here’s how it works.

Vivian is logged onto CWA as a remote user. Amy and Hao are on her buddy list – they’re both logged onto Communicator either inside or outside the corporation:

Vivian begins with an IM to Amy:

In the resulting IM dialog Vivian has an audio conference option above her presence icon which she now uses to initiate a call. Vivian is using this IM session to add audio, but alternately she could do this via an existing CWA RDP application sharing session:

To join the conference Vivian can choose her published work number or she can type in another phone number. If Vivian enters another phone number, OCS will normalize it according to her location profile and if it maps to a PBX or PSTN user it will dial out to her via the mediation server. If Vivian is also logged on to Tanjay or OC via MPOP she can take the call that way but she must enter a number to initiate the call.

CWA uses the dial out capabilities of the AVMCU to setup this call so it is a little different from a peer-to-peer call. Vivian selects her work number and the AVMCU calls her work phone (‘Conferencing service is calling you …’):

Vivian’s phone rings and OCS sets up a media stream from the AVMCU to Vivian’s work number. If this was a PSTN or PBX number the media would flow through the mediation server. Signaling or control messages for the conference are sent to CWA from Vivian’s front end server where the conference is hosted. CWA converts the SIP signaling into HTTP which is delivered to the browser. Logging on the front end shows shows the conference being setup through the Centralized Conferencing Control Protocol or C3P (‘CONTENT-TYPE: application/cccp+xml’). Specifically we see C3P commands to add a conference and then add Vivian as a user on the AVMCU. The Focus is the conferencing element on the front end server that handles conferencing setup and maintenance – below we see the C3P AddUser command issued to the Focus:

The highlighted items in the trace show in order from the top the conference ID the focus will reference for the duration of this conference – note this will be the same ID for any associated IM (IMMCU) or application sharing (RDPMCU) in this conference. The user-agent tag shows CWA is initiating this dialog, the application/cccp+xml indicates the payload of this SIP INVITE is C3P commands over XML and finally we see the <addUser> command in the XML body.

Next we see the Focus initiating a call to Vivian at +14255032002:

Vivian now has the first leg of her conference call established so next the Focus initiates a dial-out to Amy:

This invite is to Amy’s sip: URI not a tel: URI. If Amy was also logged in via CWA she could choose to divert the incoming audio invite to a phone number. In this case, Amy is signed onto Communicator and takes the call from her PC:

Vivian and Amy are now on the audio conference together and note Vivian as the conference leader has capabilities to eject Amy from the conference or promote her to leader:

On the CWA server you can also see notifications going through from the Front End and out to Vivian for roster updates; this one is adding Amy as a connected attendee on her roster:

Amy and Vivian’s presence now show ‘In a conference’ since we are making this call happen via conferencing rather than peer-to-peer calling.

It’s easy for Vivian to invite someone else into the conference, here she adds Hao simply by picking him from her buddy list via the Invite control:

Now Vivian, Amy and Hao are on a conference call with both audio/video and IM MCUs servicing the conference. If Vivian or Amy wanted to add application sharing they could easily do this via the application sharing control adjacent to the audio conferencing control.

If you want to take a look at how this works in your environment, use OCS Logger to look at the CWA components on your CWA server as well as the MCUInfra, MCUFactory, SIPStack and S4 components on your Front End server.

This insight into Office Communications Server 2007 R2 was created as part of Andrew Sniderman participation in the Microsoft Certified Master program.