Posts Tagged ‘Office Communications Server’

LCSKid brings good tidings: the management pack for OCS 2007 is now out. Hurray! This was a missing link in the case for Microsoft UC. I like that OCS gives you the ability to manage and provision users w/ several different feature (voice, video, conferencing, IM, presence, LiveMeeting) from a single place and a single […]

I’m really happy that Microsoft now supports "Direct SIP" connectivity with CallManager v. 4.2, 5.1 & 6.1. What this means is that you do not need a 3rd party voice gateway to connect to CallManager. Whohoo! Although I’ve been running CCM 5.1 and OCS with Direct SIP for almost a year now, it’s nice that […]

OK- this has been building up in my mind for a while now and I think it’s time to just start saying it: OCS shouldn’t be considered as a "PBX Replacement" now – or ever. <gasp!> Do I not believe that OCS is a reliable voice platform? No way – quite to the contrary. My […]

I noticed this a while ago, but for some reason didn’t look into it until it really drove me bananas; which is now. When you use the OCS client "search" bar, you can search for people by name in your Outlook client, GAL, or any Public IM (PIC) contacts you’ve added. Like this: From the […]

Microsoft has just released a really neat tool that threatens to make obsolete all of my OCS Edge-related blog material 🙂 Seriously, as complicated as it can be to design and configure an Edge deployment when reading through the deployment guides, the Perimeter Network white paper, blog articles, and any other resources this tool can […]

I finally had a chance to test drive the beta version of the upcoming Forefront Security release specifically for Office Communications Server 2007 (FSOCS). I deployed this in my lab, co-locating it on an existing Standard Edition server in an internal network segment. To download the public beta release: Forefront Security for Office Communications Server […]

In the past I’ve heard at least a few discussions regarding administrators looking for a way to disable instant message functionality in Office Communications Server 2007. Some may want to block IM from certain workstations, while others may be looking to deploy OCS as a Presence-only application. Or possibly even as a contact management solution […]

A question that comes up almost weekly in the TechNet discussion forums is: "Can I use only one network card in my Edge server?" Background A definitive answer has always been difficult to nail down as my testing, other user’s experiences, different Microsoft documents, and some other sources all seem to slightly contradict each other. […]

I’ve posted quite a few times about Office Communications Server 2007, Cisco CUPS, Cisco CallManager and remote call control. I’ve had some bumps and bruises along the way, but now I am happy to report that… it works! CUPS and OCS are now playing nicely. The magic ingredient? Upgrade to CUPS 6.0.4. One of my […]

Up until now, RIM/BlackBerry has not released a client that works with OCS 2007 (although they’ve had an LCS 2005 client for some time). But quite recently, RIM have posted a BlackBerry client for OCS and it’s available on the RIM site. Out at a customer, we downloaded the client, installed on their BB devices […]

If you’ve made the mistake of goofing up the webfarm FQDN question during the OCS setup, you know it can be a pain. The trick, as I’ve complained about before, is that when the OCS installer asks people to put in the "External Web Farm FQDN" lots and lots of people get confused and think […]

For those that haven’t tried it, I’m happy to report that deploying OCS 2007 in a resource forest works very well. I had one little problem that I’ll address at the end, but first a few words about why you might go this route at all. There are a few reasons why people want to […]