(10/07/2009 – I’ve updated this issue in a newer post)
I noticed something odd a while back when we deployed OCS 2007 R2 for audio conferencing: that the webpage where users go to reset their PINs always says that PIN length must be a minimum of 5 digits.
Even if you have set your PIN policy in OCS to be less than 5 (in my case, 4) that text in the message never updates.
I’m no web development genius, but I figured changing a "5" to a "4" in HTML was well within my capabilities.
So I went to edit the page (which lives on the CWA server): %ProgramFiles%Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2Communicator Web AccessServercwaConference.aspx. And I found what I thought was the right place:
But you’ll notice that the text doesn’t really match up… this HTML is for "Create New PIN" not "Set Your PIN". But it was the only reference to PIN digits in the whole page. I soon realized that, for whatever reason, the text must be in a different file – somewhere else on the CWA server.
I looked through all the ASP files and HTML but nothing had the right text. But it looked like it was somehow being stored as a variable of some sort.
And after some digging, I found "C:Program FilesMicrosoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2Communicator Web AccessServercwaClientApp_LocalResourcesDialin_Resource.aspx.en.resources".
Hmmm… it looked like a resources file stuffed with all sorts of messages and places for variables. Further – it appeared to be "compiled" (odd characters / spacing etc) in some way where just changing the text didn’t seem like it was going to be a good idea. This was definitely the place – but I was too chicken to touch anything.
After checking around with a few people here at PointBridge and within MS – we decided that opening a case with PSS was the best route. One of the guys from MS confirmed that playing with the resources files caused CWA troubles.
I expect that they will have a bug ID created & this should be fixed in a hotfix.
But my advice is – don’t try to fix it yourself. CWA will do bad things if you monkey with the resource files. I’ll post more info once it’s resolved.
