codesalot.com

The OCS 2007 R2 Web scheduler is now available

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=6d6848ec-e7d6-41f4-82d9-5bed3526fcbd&displaylang=en

“Web Scheduler is a 64-bit tool for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2. It provides a Web-based alternative to the add-in for the Microsoft Outlook messaging and collaboration client for the purpose of scheduling a meeting using Office Communications Server 2007 R2. It also provides a browser-based conference management experience that includes operations such as:

• Scheduling a new Live Meeting conference or conference call.
• Viewing and modifying details of an existing conference.
• Listing all existing user schedules of a Microsoft Office conference.
• Deleting an existing conference.
• Sending an e-mail invitation to conference participants by using a configured SMTP mail server.
• Joining an existing conference.”

I need to lab it before I can say anything about it, but it seems like a great addition to the family! Needs to be installed on the same IIS server as the OCS 2007 R2 web components.

The @DrRez Twitter team (http://twitter.com/DrRez) is compiling a list of all OCS/UC blogs on the net, and are publising it on the Communications Server Team blog! Great work guys!

http://communicationsserverteam.com/archive/2009/08/11/550.aspx

To be able to add Movi2 endpoints to phonebooks on systems registered in TMS, TMS should automagically create an external source and a provisioning phonebook when the provisioning key is installed on the system. If this for some reason does not happen, here’s how to add one: (or to verify that the phonebook was installed correctly)

In TMS, go to: Phone Book > Manage External Source

If there is an external source there that is called “Provisioning Source”, chances are that the phone book was installed correctly. If not, add a new external source and select “TANDBERG Provisioning Directory” as source type.

The rest of the fields should be like this:

With this setup, movi users are added to the phone book on the format “<firstname> <lastname> <provisioningprofile>”. I will try some different settings to see if I can filter and change the format in the phonebook. I will add this in a later post.

After this, create a new phonebook and connect it to the new external source.

Source: Tandberg Deployment guide: Provisioning. february 2009

This post was not written by me, but by my excellent colleague Ståle. Kudos! Pay his blog a visit ^^

TI

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Commands to install the necessary prerequisites for OCS 2007 R2 on Windows Server 2008

Front End on Windows Server 2008
Servermanagercmd.exe -install web-windows-auth web-mgmt-compat web-mgmt-console web-http-logging msmq-server msmq-directory powershell was-process-model was-config-apis rsat-addc

Installs the following components:

• [Web-Windows-Auth] – Windows Authentication
• [Web-Mgmt-Compat] – IIS 6 Management Compatibility
• [MSMQ-Server] – Message Queuing Server
• [MSMQ-Directory] – Directory Service Integration
• [RSAT-ADDC] – Active Directory Domain Controller Tools
• [WAS-Process-Model] – Process Model
• [WAS-Config-APIs] – Configuration APIs
• [Web-Mgmt-Console] – IIS Management Console
• [Web-Http-Logging] – HTTP Logging
• [PowerShell] – Windows PowerShell

The last 3 in the list are not required, but they are highly recommended. IIS 7.0 Management Console is IMHO much easier to use than the IIS 6.0 version. The logging tools often come in handy when troubleshooting OCS IIS issues and PowerShell makes working with OCS WMI values a piece of cake.

Monitoring Server on Windows Server 2008
Servermanagercmd.exe -install msmq-server msmq-directory

Installs the following components:

• [MSMQ-Server] – Message Queuing Server
• [MSMQ-Directory] – Directory Service Integration

CWA Server on Windows Server 2008
Servermanagercmd.exe -install web-windows-auth web-mgmt-compat web-mgmt-console web-http-logging

Installs the following components:

• [Web-Windows-Auth] – Windows Authentication
• [Web-Mgmt-Compat] – IIS 6 Management Compatibility
• [Web-Mgmt-Console] – IIS Management Console
• [Web-Http-Logging] – HTTP Logging

Mediation Server on Windows Server 2008
Servermanagercmd.exe -install rsat-addc

Installs the following components:

• [RSAT-ADDC] – Active Directory Domain Controller Tools

Post used as a reference for this post

http://waveformation.com/2009/06/02/installing-ocs-2007-r2-prerequisites-on-windows-server-2008/

I just upgraded the server from 256 MB RAM to 512Mb. Hopefully that will solve the swap issues that has made the site be very slow.

I’ve been off on vacation for the last few weeks, and I haven’t exactly updated during that time

But now I’m back and hopefully we’ll see regular updates with UC goodies in the time coming.

The domain has finally been transferred to the new registrar, and DNS is updated. So once again, welcome to the new and improved codesalot.com

Taking this opportunity to test a new googlemaps plugin I installed

Close

Finally codesalot.com has been transfered to a new registrar! My blog http://unifiedcom.blogspot.com has been moved here, and has gotten a facelift. I will continue to post thoughts around videoconferencing and unified communications on this site from now on.

So welcome to a new and improved codesalot.com/unifiedcom. Enjoy and have fun.

BTW, the server is hosted by slicehost.com. Check them out!

Seems there is a bug in OCS 2007 R2 that makes the edge server behave strangely. You will fail validation, and you might also get a “Limited External calling” message in the OC client.

The solution is posted here:

http://unified-communications.blogspot.com/2009/01/ocs-2007-r2-and-localization.html

I have on a couple of occations now experienced problems with the services on OCS 2007 R2, when running on 2008 server. I seems that the services hang during boot, and this causes all other services to halt startup as well.

The first time i experienced this, the server seemed to hang on “Configuring updates” during boot, though this was not the case.

The solution has been to either set all OCS services to “Automatic (delayed startup)”, or to keep the front end service to “Automatic” and all other OCS services to delayed.

I dont know why this happens, and I haven’t been able to figure it out. If someone has an idea of why, please let me know.