Unified Communications

Comparing SIP Trunk Providers that work with OCS 2007 R2

There are many SIP Trunk providers that 'work' with OCS 207 R2 - some that are on the Microsoft OIP and some that are not. The goal of this blog will be to objectively compare the various providers from basic functionality to customer service to actual costs involved. The SIP Trunk providers chosen are capable of connecting directly to an OCS 2007 R2 Mediation Server requiring no additional voice gateways. I have taken the task of identifying different market SIP trunk providers an where applicable, I have written TechNet 'How-To' instructions regarding their configuration (links below).

Some of the providers I was not able to test for one reason or another. The tables below include information I found relevant and hopefully will be of use to others. Any provider who would be interested in being included in this blog may contact me at support@bricomp.com. Check back often as I intend to keep this information live.

Links

Configuring a Broadvox SIP Trunk in Communications Server 2007 R2
Configuring an IntelePeer SIP Trunk in Communications Server 2007 R2

OCS and SIP Trunks..

Originally I had planned on writing a few 'How-To' articles on OCS and SIP Trunks here on my blog, but then the opportunity to do the writing for Microsoft on the same subject came along. I am happy to announce that my first TechNet posting can be found at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/ff427414.aspx titled Configuring a Broadvox SIP Trunk in Communications Server 2007 R2.

OCS/LCS suddenly appears unlicensed when KB974571 is applied

A current issue with a Microsoft patch has been discovered (and currently blogged about in numerous locations). In short, if security update KB974571 is installed on your OCS/LCS servers to believe they are expired evals. Removing the hotfix resolves the problem but then, of course, leaves the security vulnerability open. As can be expected, Microsoft is working to correct the issue ASAP.

Issue

OCS/LCS reports it is running as an evaluation and has expired when in fact it has not (volume or retail media was used).

Cause

Installation of Security Hotfix KB974571 released 10/13/2009.

Resolution

Uninstall Security Hotfix KB974571 from the OCS/LCS servers.

Additional References

http://communicationsserverteam.com/archive/2009/10/14/632.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/dodeitte/archive/2009/10/13/do-not-apply-kb974571-to-lcs-ocs-servers.aspx

http://jasonshave.blogspot.com/2009/10/warning-about-kb974571-and-event-id.html

http://projectdream.org/wordpress/2009/10/13/kb974571-crypto-api-update-may-break-office-communications-server-2007-r2-installations/

Mobile Outlook Update for Windows Mobile 6.1

With the recent release of Windows Mobile 6.5 and the newly improved Mobile Outlook most of us WM6.1 users are saying - what about us? Well the story is not as bleak as many might imagine. While the OS in the Windows Mobile devices is carrier 'owned' the applications are not. Luckily, Microsoft has decided to release the Outlook portion of WM6.5 as free upgrade for WM6.1 users. This is great news for me - I don't know about everyone else, but I am not interested in most of the WM6.5 features I simply want the new Outlook.

My current back-end environment is Microsoft Exchange 2010, Outlook 2010 and using the latest Mobile Outlook enhances my experience keeping the look and feel similar across clients. The upgrade was easy although it did force a re-sync of my Exchange data to my phone which took a bit of time even over the EvDO Rev A network.

More information about the upgrade and the features can be found here and it is a CAB file so you can use your WM device to navigate directly to it (my preference).

New Inbox View in Outlook Mobile

Single conversation thread Previous OCS RFC. There are four emails that make up the thread and all can be seen in a single view (reducing clutter and speeding up your day)!

The folders you select to sync are shown in your folder list. You can still expand your entire folder list by selecting All Folders.

New Single-click Voice Mail Integration or Exchange 2010 UM users. The play button eliminates the need to launch Windows Mobile player leaving you in your Inbox where you should be. The green phone button allows a single-click call back to the sender.

With Exchange 2010 and Mobile Outlook 6.5 text messages to your phone have the option of being integrated. This mean a text message received to your phone is synced with Outlook where you have the option of replying to the text directly (assuming you have the optional TXT provider in Outlook 2007 or you are using Outlook 2010 / Outlook Web Access 2010).

Quick auto-dialer for Office Communicator

From time-to-time there are really quick/easy programs that are available on the Internet and sometimes even for free. In this case, the product Phone Tools for Communicator by ESTOS is all of the above.

Phone Tools for Communicator is a small applet that runs on your local PC that enables you to quickly call any phone number using Office Communicator. Communicator and the back-end Office Communications Server must be capable of making outbound calls - this tool does nothing for that - but assuming you have a functioning telephony solution this product assists you in making those calls.

How? Communicator already has the ability to understand the tel: hyperlink so that if a phone number is linked correctly, it is click-able and the number is dialed. However, it is all too often that numbers are entered into documents, websites, or other electronic communication without the hyperlink. To call the number without Phone Tools for Communicator you have two options: 1) Stop being lazy and simply push the numbers on your Windows Phone Device or 2) highlight the number, copy it, open Office Communicator, paste the number, and press enter.

For all of us lazy folks, option two is generally the route we take. Phone Tools for Communicator is essentially performing option two but with fewer clicks. To use the product, simply highlight the desired number and click F8 (the default hot-key which can be changed) and viola, the number is dialed - simple, yet satisfying.

As I mentioned, the product is free, it takes 2088k of memory to run, and I have successfully used it on Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7. Save yourself a few extra clicks and go out and try Phone Tools for Communicator - you won't be disappointed.

Exchange 2010 Public Beta

Microsoft Corporation has released a public beta build of Exchange Server 2010 - the latest version of the email messaging server.

As is true with every major release of Microsoft Exchange, many new features are released, updated, and made all-around better compared to the previous version. How often do we catch ourselves saying - "Wow, can Outlook Web Access get any better?" - and yet it always does. With Exchange 2010, the same story holds true; OWA is an amazing improvement.

Server availability, better Unified Messaging integration, and a host of additional features are introduced/upgraded in Exchange Server 2010. Thus far in the beta I have been extremely please with only a few gotchas along the way.

Setup Requirements

There are some prerequisites for the installation of Exchange 2010 can be exhaustive. Here is a reference table provided by David Espinoza:

Outlook Web Access

Starting with a discussion on OWA - wow! The user interface, multiple mailboxes open in the main interface, closing the Outlook vs OWA gap - it is all becoming more of a reality. Some of my favorite options include:

• Junk email rules
• Call answering rules (person auto-attendant)
• Text messaging
• Group membership management (self-service)
• Mail retention policies.
• Multiple policies similar to ActiveSync polices (see below)

ActiveSync

ActiveSync (mobile email) is a tool that has become the norm for most businesses. In Exchange 2007 Microsoft supported the ability to publish device policies allowing the systems administrator to lock down devices, control sync times, etc. to all devices connecting to the organization (with an enterprise CAL). This became an issue if there were managers that needed to be excepted from the rule or have increased  protection. In Exchange 2010, multiple ActiveSync policies has been introduced allowing the systems administrator to have more options other than on apply or not apply. Perhaps cameras are disabled for the masses but allowed for sales and marketing. Or password policies for engineers are more relaxed than password polices for Executives. Options are endless and without care management of policies will become a nightmare.

Speech-to-Text

Probably one of my favorite features is the Speech-to-Text feature - when a voice mail is received via Unified Messaging, the server attempts to convert it to text and saves that text within the email (with the voice attachment). Now the accuracy is never perfect (and it can be very funny) but 9 out of 10 times I can make out who is calling, what the gist of the message is, and then decide if it is worth my effort to listen to the VM. It does very well with grabbing phone numbers when spoken so nearly all of my VMs have a click-to-dial link in them based off of the callers' VM. This is a feature you need to see to be impressed with!

Broken Office Communicator Integration to Web Services

One of the not-so-great 'features' of Exchange 2010 is the apparent break in Office Communicator 2007 R2 (and the Tanjay) and Exchange Web Services (EWS). Office Communicator uses EWS to grab free/busy (calendar) and Out of Office from Exchange and the Tanjay handsets use it for contacts, call logs, and Voice Mail logs. With the current builds of both the Exchange 2010 and Office Communication Server 2007 R2 this integration is broken. I understand a fix is in the works but expect that you will loose this integration with Exchange 2010 (so don't pull your hair out trying to get it to work).

Disaster Recovery

Introduced into Exchange 2010 are DAGs or Database Availability Groups - the ability to have multiple copies of a database on multiple servers at a mailbox database level. The easiest way for me to relate the DAGs is to think of them like SQL Log Shipping. Having DAGs is another option for recovery as they can be delayed allowing you to roll-back a day, 2 days, a week (what you set the lag to be) in the case of corruption. This is the entire mailbox database that is being rolled back but it may be the option you are looking for. There can be up to five DAGs per database and each server can hold multiple DAGs for other server...a mesh of redundancy.

The beta can be downloaded from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/dd185495.aspx but remember - this is a beta and not for production. The installation requires its own AD site in the event Exchange 2007 is in the organization and yes, the schema is modified.

Disabling IPv6 in Windows Server 2008

Recently I have run into multiple issues with IPv6 enabled on Windows Server 2008 and simply de-selecting the protocol on the network interface card in Windows does not fully remove the functionality. Previously the need to use regedit was required to fully disable the protocol and while this is still the case, Microsoft has released a tool that automatically does this for you. The best part - a reboot is not required and typos are eliminated!

A Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) article describes the process or a direct link to the download is listed here http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9646967. Failing to fully disable the protocol will cause communication issues specifically in Microsoft Exchange 2007 and beyond (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/952842).

BriComp Computers is back!

After years and years of simply maintaining BriComp (read as "little to no effort in growing") I have decided to leave the comfort of the employee relationship and move on to self-employed. BriComp has also grown-up from BriComp (sole proprietorship) to BriComp Computers, LLC. Exciting times are ahead and I hope to grow with as few hiccups as possible. I want to publicly thank my wife and kids for their support in these times - I know it is scary but I also know I can do it. I also want to thank my parents for their support and my previous employer (NIC http://www.nicweb.com) for the last two years of experience. If anyone has some UC or Microsoft infrastructure work, feel free to contact me at sales@bricomp.com. Here's to the future!

Brian R Ricks, MVP
BriComp Computers, LLC

AOL PIC Users Fail / Presence Unknown

As all are aware Office Communication Server 2007 R2 was recently released and with it the ability to run the various code on Windows Server 2008 64bit. Everything appears to run/work correctly with the exception of AOL users via the PIC.

Symptoms:

• AOL Users' Presence is Inaccurate; it may show on-line, unavailable, or presence unknown
• A message invite may be received from an AOL user but no information is ever received
• Attempting to respond to an AOL user or start a conversation with an AOL user will fail

The fix was discovered by Microsoft Senior Escalation Engineer Scott Oseychik among others and is documented at:

http://blogs.msdn.com/scottos/archive/2009/04/03/resolved-ocs-2007-r2-pic-fails-against-aol.aspx

The fix: in short you must modify the local security policy on the 2008 Edge server rearranging the TLS authentication methods. It is important to note that this fix and the issue do not apply if you have the OCS 2007 R2 bits installed on a Windows Server 2003 64-bit.

Yahoo! Service Outage for PIC Users

Originally published and re-distributed upon request at: http://blogs.msdn.com/scottos/archive/2008/12/05/office-communicator-clients-cannot-communicate-with-contacts-homed-on-yahoo-messenger-network.aspx

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.

AOL Root Certificate Update causing Presence Unknown in PIC

For those that subscribe to the Public Internet Connector (PIC) feature in Office Communication Server, a recent change at AOL may impact you. As with all communication to and from OCS, certificates are used to encrypt and authenticate traffic. The PKI infrastructure AOL utilized in the past has changed and they have moved to their new AOL root certificates. Because of this, the OCS Edge/Access Proxy servers will not be able to validate any AOL traffic without a root certificate update.

The official notice may be found here: http://blogs.msdn.com/scottos/archive/2008/12/02/office-communicator-clients-cannot-communicate-with-contacts-homed-on-aol.aspx

A link to the AOL certificates may be found directly here: https://pki-info.aol.com/AOL/

Remember. only the edge servers (those authenticating traffic) require the updates - not your clients - and a restart/reboot is not required.

Changing the External OCS ABS/Web Conferencing URL

It is not uncommon that I am asked "How do I change the external URL for conferencing within OCS?" There are multiple reasons for a user needing/wanting to change the URL, most often it being either they skipped the entry during setup (it does say <optional>) or the have decided to change the name. Whatever the reason is, the actual update is simple.

The update it self is updating the SQL or MSDE database with the new information. While it is possible to manually 'hack' the database and edit the tables directly, the UC team has made the process much easier using LCSCMD. LCSCMD is a command line application that may be found on the OCS server CD under setup or on your C drive of an OCS server located at C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007.

To execute the command, simply type:

Lcscmd /web /action:updatepoolurls /externalwebfqdn:externalserver.dnsname.com /poolname:poolname

The externalserver.dnsname.com is the DNS name that is resolvable from the outside and is your 'reverse proxy' role as defined in the documentation. the poolname is only the short name of the pool. For SE this would be your server name (server.contoso.com would be server) and for EE it is the common pool name (pool01.contoso.com would be pool01).

Exchange 2007 Roll-up 5 Released

Exchange 2007 RU5 was released yesterday approximately 6 weeks after RU4 was released. The current release corrects numerous bugs with the complete list found at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/941421. The roll-up does not require a reboot but may take a considerable amount of time to install so be prepared. In testing I have not encountered any issues installing the roll-up and unlike RU4 all services did start as expected. Expect to see the RU released via Microsoft Update the first half of December. Until then, you can download the update directly from Microsoft Download at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=652ed33a-11a1-459c-8ffe-90b9cbfe7903&displaylang=en&tm.

Eliminating the Outlook 2007 Security Warning w/o Using a UCC Certificate

This tip was sent to me from a good friend and business associate, John Lockett.

This procedure gets rid of the security warning in Outlook 2007, in cases where you apply a standard SSL certificate to the default web site, and the FQDN is different from the AD FQDN of the exchange server.  First run the following commands in the Exchange Management Shell on

your Exchange 2007 CAS so that we would have a backup listing of the current settings:

Get-Clientaccessserver <Exchange CAS Netbios name> | fl > backupCAS.txt

Get-WebServicesVirtualDirectory | fl > backupWeb.txt

Now change the settings to remove the warning.

Set-Clientaccessserver <Exchange CAS Netbios name> -AutoDiscoverServiceInternalUri https://public FQDN, as appears in the certificate>/Autodiscover/Autodiscover.xml

set-WebServicesVirtualDirectory "<Exchange CAS Netbios name>\EWS (Default Web Site)" -InternalUrl https://public FQDN, as appears in the certificate>/EWS/Exchange.asmx

Wait a few minutes for implementation to complete.

Office Communication Server 2007 R2 Announced

Office Communication Server (OCS) 2007 R2 has finally been announced. There are many great and new features that have been announced and the full link can be found here:

http://www.microsoft.com/communicationsserver/en/us/default.aspx

The big ticket items include:

• 64-Bit Operating System Required (Windows 2003 sp2 or Windows 2008)
  • The migration process is just that - a migration - so you will have to install a 64-bit operating system, install OCS 2007 R2, and then import or migrate your users into the new OCS environment
• Dial-in Audio Conferencing
  • Allows an external number to be called - a bridge number - so parties with only phone access can join a Live Meeting or a Conferencing Bridge
• Group Chat
  • A persistent chat window, much like a newsgroup or forum, where individuals can ask questions, see past messaging, etc.
• Secretary/Admin Console
  • Now one person can see and field calls using OC using the new Attendant Console. The admin will also be able to modify their delegate's status
• Response Groups
  • Think of a call center or help desk - this feature will be a hunt group using variables defined by the admin per group
• Single-number Reach
  • Allows a single number to automatically call on OC person based off of location and availability

As I see and hear more, you can find out about it here!