Microsoft Lync Released to Manufacturing (27/10)

Yesterday #Microsoft had the pleasure of blogging about the final engineering milestone for Microsoft #Lync 2010 - the next release of Office Communications Server and Communicator - also known as Release to Manufacturing, or RTM.

“What's next for Lync?  The final milestone is general availability (GA), which means making Lync 2010 available to customers and partners around the world. We're on track for GA and planning a worldwide launch event on Wednesday, November 17, 2010. We hope you'll tune in here: http://www.microsoft.com/lync to watch live demos of the final product, see examples from the more than 100 new Lync certified devices and hear from customers who have deployed early releases of Lync 2010. The launch event, to be broadcast live, will feature a keynote from Chris Capossela, senior vice president of the Microsoft Office Division, who will talk about how Lync fits into Microsoft's broader productivity platform, including SharePoint, Exchange and Office. Chris will be joined by a few special guests, including Gurdeep Singh Pall, corporate vice president of the Office Communications Group and Lync R&D team”by Kirk Gregersen, Senior Director at Microsoft. Source: (link)

E-OFFICE

We at e-office are very excited about this new version of Lync. We are ready to support our customers. On behalf of the team congrats to the Lync product team for this new platform.

Try Lync for free:

Would you like to try Microsoft Lync (RC) without setting up your own lab environment. Join our e-office demo environment to see the entire feature set incl Enterprise Voice provided by Interoute. Join us(here) for free.

OCS Chat Solution Extends Benefits of Unified Communications to Web Site Visitors

Many companies use Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 R2 to enrich internal communications. Now e-office WebChat extends those benefits to users of a company’s Web site. Web visitors use the application to initiate a chat with the first available employee in the appropriate department. Companies can inexpensively extend existing infrastructure by using e-office WebChat to offer group online presence and direct communication.

Business Needs

Source: (link) entire article, Official product page: (link).

e-office, based in Houten, the Netherlands, is a software company that helps people communicate, collaborate, and coordinate in easier ways.

As a Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner and Voice Specialized Partner, e-office offers unified communications solutions using Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2. “Our clients have found significant value in Office Communications Server 2007 R2. “It provides an outstanding infrastructure for extending unified communications capabilities unlike any other competitive platforms.”

For example, potential customers visiting a sales-oriented Web site often want to talk to an expert before deciding to buy. Or existing customers may need to speak to a support person in order to solve their problems immediately. But few Web sites offer a chat option; most potential customers have to send an e-mail message and wait for a response.
Some Web sites do offer chat features, where the Web user asks a question that can be directed to someone in the organization. Such functionality, however, requires that the company invest in a separate chat system, rather than build on Office Communications Server 2007 R2.

Conversely, many organizations enjoy the presence features of Office Communications Server 2007 R2—the indicators that somebody may be traveling, in a meeting, or available to talk—and wish they could extend presence beyond the organization. But a visitor to a Web site, initiating a relationship with the company, usually doesn’t have a particular contact in mind. Instead, most visitors want to connect with anyone who has expertise and is available. Thus, e-office sought a more effective way for a Web user to find someone to chat with. More broadly, it hoped to expand the benefits of Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and offer them beyond the organization.

NEW: OCS webchat can now also be integrated in your own business software! Ask for the possibilities. joachim.farla@e-office.com.

Lync Server 2010 (RC) (Replication Issues)

#lync #XDS Since two weeks now we are running Microsoft Lync Server 2010 (RC) in our demo environment. The entire install went smooth but after installing all the different components we ran into a issue which was hard to tackle. Good time to give you some insights. Our environment: we setup a Windows Server 2008 R2 DC + CA and setup a Microsoft Lync Server 2010 (RC) on a separate box connected in a private network. After installing the Microsoft Lync 2010 (RC) on the DC and installing the Lync 2010 (RC) on the Lync Server itself we were unable to sign in (see the printscreen in the first line). The fist thought came up in my mind was incorrect DNS entries. After checking that, that was ok. After that we went to the LSCP (Lync Server Control Panel) and checked if our users where provisioned correctly. We also checked the service state of our running components. All went up “green”. Also Mina Nagy suggestion did not work to change the domain name in a domain FQDN. 

If you would to know which users are provisioned you can do this by Powershell (LSMS) btw. To do this go start Lync Server Management Shell (LSMS) and type: get-csuser. After that you will see the entire list in your organization of SIP enabled users. After resetting the password multiple times and restarting the Lync 2010 (RC) client multiple times something changed in the logon procedure. We got a login prompt in the Lync 2010 (RC) client!  That really suggest that the user was there.

After setting up logging in the Lync 2010 (RC) client some interesting records showed up:

1. SIP/2.0 404 Not Found ms-diagnostics: 1003;reason="User does not exist";TargetUri="contoso.com";source="DEMO-LS-LS01.contoso.com"

2. SIP/2.0 401 Unauthorized (no specific ms-diagnostic message).

This information gives me the direction that maybe something with the XDS replication went wrong. Lets go back to the LSMS and put in the following commando (Get-CsManagementStoreReplicationStatus) PS C:\Users\administrator.DEMO-LS> Get CsManagementStoreReplicationStatus

UpToDate           : False (well there is it!)
ReplicaFqdn        : DEMO-LS-LS.contoso.com
LastStatusReport   :
LastUpdateCreation : 9/23/2010 2:39:25 PM
ProductVersion     : <empty>

The registrar is looking local for the User and can’t find it since replication has failed and most likely never populated the users from CMS. After setting up a trace with the LSLT (Lync Server Logging Tool) I monitored on XDS and then issue the Invoke-csManagementStoreReplication command in LSMS to find out what is going on. (here some lines from my extraction). On the specific share we got a access denied.

TL_ERROR (TF_COMPONENT) XDS_Master_Replicator (MasterReplicationAgent.QueryChang
esImpl:masterreplicationagent.cs(724))  [0]047C.04C0::09/23/2010-21:02:27.769.00
00006f
    Query changes operation failed. Exception [System.UnauthorizedAccessExceptio
n: Access to the path '\\demo-ls-ls\LyncShare\1-CentralMgmt-1\CMSFileStore\xds
-master\working\replication\tmp\e0285292-b325-4e06-aa74-97b32d2d0373' is denied.

We went back to the LSTB (Lync Server Topology Builder) and changed the specific share and re-populated the folder tree. Still no status change while logging in with Lync 2010 (RC). I was really smacking my head to the wall. After some nice conversations with Microsoft (thanks Geoff Clark) we re-installed the Lync Server System Components again from the Lync Server Deployment Wizard (LSDW). Back to LSMS:PS C:\Users\administrator.DEMO-LS> Get-CsManagementStoreReplicationStatus

UpToDate           : True
ReplicaFqdn        : DEMO-LS-LS.contoso.com
LastStatusReport   : 10/1/2010 11:16:40 AM
LastUpdateCreation : 10/1/2010 11:16:35 AM
ProductVersion     : 4.0.7457.0

This blogpost is possible a little bit scrambled for you but it really helps to understand how Microsoft Lync Server 2010 (RC) works and how you troubleshoot Lync. To be honest I really don’t no why the initial share I created during the install was not created correctly. If you have any questions feel free to contact me. After taking all these steps the environment is working perfectly.