TechContrarian » Brandon

Looking for Troubleshooting Help? Easy as 1-2-3

Brandon — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:35:34 +0000

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) [...]

Update Headaches? Help is here!

Brandon — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:21:00 +0000

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 Resource – User Forest Topology

Brandon — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:22:00 +0000

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 [...]

Check out the improved Downloads pages on the TechCenter

Brandon — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:41:00 +0000

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 [...]

Urgent: Known issue under investigation with KB974571 and LCS/OCS

Brandon — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 09:26:00 +0000

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.

Configuring XMPP Gateway with Jabber XCP 5.4

Brandon — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 15:39:00 +0000

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 [...]

Configuring XMPP Connectivity to Gmail

Brandon — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:59:00 +0000

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 [...]

New PIC Licensing and released XMPP Gateway

Brandon — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 12:24:56 +0000

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 [...]

Updated – PowerShell Script for Retrieving IM from Archiving Database

Brandon — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 08:42:09 +0000

Following the release of Office Communications Server 2007 Sasa Juratovic posted a PowerShell script to retrieve user IM conversations form the archiving database. (http://communicationsserverteam.com/archive/2008/01/14/69.aspx)
With the release of Office Communications Server 2007 R2 there were changes in the archiving database schema allowing the text/html content type for storage of user instant messages. This schema change caused the previous script to only report the first message in a conversation when reporting against an OCS R2 archiving database. An updated script that will account for this additional content type that works for retrieving instant messages from both the OCS 2007 and OCS 2007 R2 archiving database schemas has been posted.
The updated script can be found at: http://communicationsserverteam.com/files/555/download.aspx
–Nick Smith
MCS Senior Consultant

Office Communicator 2007 Phone Edition (OCPE) call logs: 401 http errors

Brandon — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 10:37:00 +0000

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 [...]