TechContrarian

Cisco and Microsoft are competitors in the unified communications space, with very different visions and product approaches – I don’t think that’s going to come as a surprise to anyone.   Nor should it be a surprise that many customers have Cisco networking and telephony gear along with desktop, messaging and collaboration software from Microsoft and want our products to interoperate together well in the customer’s environment. 
To Microsoft, that means we want to offer customers software that runs great on Cisco networks.  With Office Communications Server’s support for the Cisco ISR platform, great support for DSCP packet marking to deliver QoS, VLAN tagging, and many more technologies, we are delivering a lot of capabilities so customers can get the most out of their Cisco network investments. 
We also look to interoperate broadly using open standards with Cisco products in unified communications.   As part of both companies’ commitments to our customers [...]

1) Search; 2) Ask; 3) Contact Microsoft from the revised Office Communications Server and Client Troubleshooting and Support page.

You know it; we know it: Stuff happens. There are times when an unforeseen confluence of circumstances causes problems in your deployment (which only an hour ago was running perfectly): Interaction with some piece of new hardware or software, the need for some atypical set of system configurations, some update in settings that seems likes it should just work, or some set of recent network or other events–not to mention, some very "creative" end user behaviors.
When stuff happens, you want answers. We want to help. The revised Office Communications Server and Client Troubleshooting and Support page design is streamlined to make the process of finding an answer faster and easier:
1) Search to find out quickly whether your issue, event, or error message has been addressed in a KB article or other documentation.
2) [...]

We’ve just published a new Updates Resource Center for Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and Clients on the OCS TechCenter.
 
And we’ve gone one step further: Our Sustained Engineering and support teams* have created a Cumulative Server Update Installer tool to help simplify the application of the updates. The Cumulative Server Update Installer applies all updates for the appropriate server role in one click!
 
     *Kudos to our Sustained Engineering and support team members.
 
Each link text on the Updates Resource Center page contains the release date for the update so that you can easily recognize whether you have the most recent updates. Each link leads to a Knowledge Base article that lists the contents of the updater, describes the issues fixed, and provides other important installation information–in addition to pointing to the actual downloadable file.
 
Adam Dudsic
Site Manager

Office Communications Server 2007 and Office Communications Server R2 have two multi forest topologies that have been tested by and are supported by Microsoft. One of these topologies is the Office Communications Server Resource forest \ User forest topology and the other is the Office Communications Server Central forest and User forest topology. The focus of this document will be to discuss the implementations of the Office Communications Server Resource forest \ User forest topology.
The Office Communications Server Resource forest \ User forest topology allows resources like Exchange 2007, Exchange 2003, Sharepoint services and Office Communications Server which will reside in the Resource forest to be accessed by the users that reside in the User forest. The configuration of the Resource forest \ User forest topology requires that the following prerequisites be completed prior to the configuration of the domain user account information that will be hosted in the local [...]

We’ve been working on the Downloads page on the Communications Server TechCenter! Check out the improvements:
·         Separate pages devoted to 2007 R2 Downloads and 2007 Downloads;
·         Clearer categorization of available 2007 R2 downloads;
·         And most importantly…more of the good stuff: More listings!
 
Find even more links than before to all the tools and resources that our team produces, including new links to Office Communications Server 2007 R2:
·         Best Practices Analyzer (for both 2007 and 2007 R2 versions)
·         Capacity Planning Tool
·         Edge Planning Tool
·         Planning Tool
·         Resource Kit Tools (64-bit)
·         Web Scheduler
 
…as well as links to:
·         Agent Communications Panel for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
·         Language packs for CWA, Response Group Service, and Speech
·         Communicator Multilingual User Interface
·         Management packs
·         Communicator Mobile (for Pocket PC, Smartphone, and Java)
 
The new 2007 R2 page now also includes links to all downloadable, technical product documentation for 2007 R2, including:
·         Collections of the full IT Pro library
·         Pointers to the [...]

We are pleased to announce that the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, Speech Server (a.k.a. Speech Server (2007)) runtime is now officially supported on Windows Server 2008, in addition to the originally supported Windows Server 2003 Platforms(listed at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb813400.aspx).
Microsoft will support application deployments, Administrative tools and Data Processing Utilities like the MssLogToDatabase and MssLogToText tools. However Microsoft will not support installation and usage of the Development Tools that include Speech Server (2007) application development, call data analysis and grammar tuning running on Windows Server 2008. For those tools please refer  back to the original list of supported Platforms for development at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb662074.aspx.
To illustrate the above, the following screenshot shows the Speech Server (2007) components that are officially supported to run on Windows Server 2008. Please note that the installation wizard will not block you selecting the “Development Tools” option automatically, when you run the setup on the Windows Server [...]

October 24 Update – The MS09-56: Vulnerabilities in CryptoAPI could allow spoofing article has been updated with a Known Issues section and FIX for the LCS and OCS product. That article is the authorized content as it requires the proper groups to coordinate and confirm the data published. We thank those of you who both reported this issue to us as well as helped blog/tweet to help reduce the number of customers deploying the patch until this issue is resolved.
We also want to note that for future issues with security fixes should be reported through support in order to be properly tracked and escalated and that it will be the official communication vehicle.
 
<Deleting original text of blog message as it duplicates the information in the KB article>

Hooray! Office Communications Server 2007 R2 XMPP Gateway Has Been Released
This article walks you through setting up the XMPP Gateway and configuring it to work with Jabber XCP 5.4. For those who have been anticipating this release, I am happy to say, here it is, and it’s been worth the wait if you require Jabber or GMail connectivity.
You will be required to complete the following steps to successfully configure Office Communications Server 2007 R2 XMPP Gateway with Jabber XCP 5.4.
1.   DNS Configuration
2.   Office Communications Server Edge Configuration
3.   Office Communications Server XMPP Gateway Configuration
4.   Jabber XCP (s2s Configuration)
Environment Requirements

Enable your current environment to work with the new Office Communications Server 2007 R2 XMPP Gateway
Office Communications 2007 R2 Edge Server
Permissions to request a server certificate from a private or public certification authority.
Permissions to create DNS records in your internal Enterprise, as well as public DNS servers
Windows 2003 [...]

Important edit October 7- the original post stated Windows 2008 R2. This is incorrect we do not support that version at this time. The correct version should be Windows 2003 or Windows 2008.
Check out the following figure. That’s no illusion-it’s an Office Communicator user communicating with a Gmail user.

If you can’t wait to try this, you have come to the right place. Before you start, ensure that the following requirements are met:

You organization has a properly configured Office Communications Server 2007 R2 environment.
There is a properly configured Edge Server in your Office Communications Server environment.
You have permissions to request a server certificate from a public or private CA.
You have permissions to create DNS SRV and A records on the Internet.
There is a server that is running Windows Server 2008 on which to install the XMPP Gateway in your network perimeter.
The rest of this article assumes that you [...]

We are excited to announce changes to the Office Communications Server Public IM Connectivity (PIC) license that provides instant messaging and presence federation to the Windows Live, AOL and Yahoo! public IM networks. Starting October 1, 2009, the following licensing changes will be made:

A PIC License will no longer be required for federation with American Online (AOL).  Customers qualify for federation with AOL if they have Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Standard CAL or active Software Assurance on their current LCS/OCS license. 
Customers who want Yahoo! federation will continue to purchase PIC licenses.  The price of PIC will be reduced by 50%, effective October 1, 2009, to reflect this change. 

We are also excited to announce the release of the OCS 2007 R2 XMPP Gateway (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=141529). The Gateway provides Presence and two-party IM interoperability with the XMPP based systems of Jabber and Google Talk.

The Gateway interoperability has been tested [...]