Due to Microsoft’s announcement this morning I have added one final update to this blog. Microsoft has released product information and Release Candidate software for Lync Server 2010. More details can be found here: Presence Goes Green on Microsoft Lync 2010

In a follow-up to some of the features I briefly mentioned in a previous article here is a more in-depth look at some additional new features currently in the CS ‘14’ beta software which have been covered in various presentations throughout TechEd 2010 this week. I’ve just scratched the surface with most of these topics, […]

The purpose of this article is to serve as a lessons-learned addendum to the current primary resource for configuring OCS and GMail federation: the Communication Server team’s official blog post on the subject. Following the detailed steps in that article should get you to a working end-state, but if a specific deployment differs from the […]

There are a few scenarios where you may want to use Outlook to access an Exchange Online mailbox but cannot use the Microsoft Online Services Sign-In client. This could be due to installation or operating requirements of the client (some OS versions are unsupported) or maybe users don’t have the required permissions to install software […]

When planning a migration up to Exchange Online, or even when working with a current customer that has already noticed this, there is one important distinction to be aware of regarding how Contact Objects are handled in the BPOS-Shared realm. Whether or not Directory Synchronization is (or will be) used with an on-premise Active Directory […]

So, I just ran into this issue and thought it would be worth documenting. During countless pilot migrations of users from various mail platforms to the Exchange Online portion of BPOS I’m surprised I’m just seeing this for the first time. The Scenario Where this appears is with a standard end-user scenario of a single […]

During the deployment of an OCS Communicator Web Access Server there is a setting that is not covered in much detail in the documentation: the Communication Server Listening Port. No default or suggested value is given, as shown by this screenshot of the virtual server creation wizard: This port is used by the Communicator Web […]

The typical OCS deployment these days is using Windows Server 2008 instead of Server 2003 for the host OS now since R2 and Server 2008 have been out for some time, so a certain issue has begun to pop up in some deployments. Basically, if an R2 Edge server is deployed on Server 2008 and […]

Just a quick note regarding an error I recently ran across. A client was experiencing problems with Dial-In Conferencing after a recent deployment and during troubleshooting the issues I ran across this pair of errors in the Front-End server’s OCS event log: OCS Audio-Video Conferencing ServerEvent ID 32018“The Audio-Video Conferencing Server encountered an error when […]

The newly formed Unified Communications Virtual User Group (UCVUG) will be hosting it’s first meeting next month and we’ve already gotten over 100 participants registered. Hence the name, it will be a virtual Live Meeting This open online community is neither affiliated with Microsoft or PointBridge and was started by Office Communications Server MVP Dustin […]

I’ve been slacking on the OCS-related blog material recently, and that’s mainly due to the projects I’ve been working on, one of which is currently wrapping up. My main focus since October has been a couple of migration projects from customer’s previously running Lotus Notes into the shared BPOS cloud. For a little background information […]

Live Meeting 2007 has the ability to record meetings, capturing audio, video, and other shared content for archival and later viewing. When in a meeting the presenter can behind recording content and select where they want to save the output to. The main disadvantage with the recorded content has been the portability (or lack thereof) […]