OCS 2007 R2

Designing a Resilient Microsoft Unified Communications Environment

As organizations move to unified communications it becomes imperative that disaster recovery and business continuity be incorporated into the design and implementation. In the event that a natural disaster or other catastrophe strike the primary data center, there needs to be a fall-back plan in place to ensure that the business can continue to communicate and work productively.

The ability to provide some sort of failover redundancy or site resiliency has been seen as an Achilles heel of Microsoft Office Communications Server. Microsoft has made some enhancements though in R2 and produced a white paper describing how to accomplish site resiliency with Microsoft OCS 2007 R2.

Here is the description Microsoft provides for the white paper:

This white paper describes a site resiliency solution for Office Communications Server 2007 R2. The solution includes an Enterprise pool that spans two geographically separate sites. The solution provides a failover mechanism between the two sites to ensure that Office Communications Server functionality such as instant messaging, presence, and conferencing remains available even if one of the sites becomes unavailable.

This white paper is divided into three main sections:

Forefront Security for OCS Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007

For organizations that rely on Microsoft unified communications, Forefront Security seems like a natural fit. With components to protect and secure Exchange, SharePoint, and Office Communications Server, as well as client endpoints, Forefront Security provides comprehensive protection for a Microsoft unified communications environment.

To make things even easier to monitor and manage, Microsoft has developed a Forefront Security for Office Communications Server Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007. Microsoft provides the following overview of the capabilities of this tool:

The Microsoft Forefront Security for Office Communications Server Management Pack for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 provides real-time insight into the health and performance of key Forefront Security for Office Communications Server (Version 10) components and services. The Microsoft Forefront Security for Office Communications Server Management Pack alerts the administrator to critical events affecting the security of their OCS environment. Proactive management of the Microsoft Forefront Security for Office Communications Server environment is facilitated through management pack activity reports on IM scan performance.

Feature Bullet Summary

• Monitoring of current license state
• Monitoring of Antimalware Engine health and update activity
• Monitoring of IM Scan Job availability
• Monitoring health of required Forefront Security for OCS services
• Reports on key Forefront for OCS performance counters

Sprint Rolls Out General Availability of SIP Trunking

Sprint was one of the first SIP trunk providers certified with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 (OCS 2007 R2). Now it is expanding availability of SIP trunking to all business customers.

Sprint SIP trunking customers will be able to leverage Sprint’s Global MPLS network and utilize a single IP network connection to facilitate voice, date, and video conferencing connections.

SIP trunking and VoIP enable customers to save significantly over traditional local and long distance expenses, and it is also a key component of unified communications.

Using Presence Effectively

Presence is arguably the glue that makes unified communications work. It is Presence, the ability to determine the current status and availability of contacts, that enables users to communicate more efficiently. Presence can let you see who is available, what they are currently engaged in, and allow you to choose the most effective method for communicating with that contact.

Maybe. I should say that Presence can do all of that…when used properly. However, users who simply set their status as Away when they are really sitting at their desk working because they don’t want to be bothered undermine the value of Presence. Similarly, users who have high idle times and show as Available when, in fact, they haven’t been sitting at their computer for the past hour also reduce the utility of the Presence information and in effect render it useless.

To be fair, as the concept of Presence and status have evolved from consumer instant messaging clients, the level of granularity for assigning status as well as the ability to control who sees what haven’t been there. In the early days of instant messaging services like ICQ status basically amounted to Available, Away, and Offline and pretty much anybody could see that.

Unified communications solutions like Office Communications Server 2007 R2 (OCS 2007 R2) have greatly expanded the concept of Presence though. Presence can tell if you are in a meeting or on a phone call. Presence can provide details about your status instead of just black and white information like online or offline. OCS 2007 R2 also allows users to determine how much information to share with contacts. One contact may only be able to see if you are available or not, while your manager or project team can also see details about what you are doing and when you’ll be available.

With access to the inner-workings of OCS, it is possible to determine whether a user is *really* Away, or if they are actively using their computer and just hiding behind the Away status. As this blog entry points out though, it is not an elegant solution. Uncovering the real Presence state is not something you want to provide every user, but for an Administrator this information may be valuable in determining how users are employing Presence and developing policies and user awareness programs to try and address any issues.  

Advances in Presence like the granular availability information found in OCS 2007 R2 make it much more useful…when used properly. It is important that users are educated about the proper use of Presence and that they are encourage not to abuse the Presence states. Without accurate Presence information many of the benefits and efficiencies of unified communications will not be realized.

Web Scheduler for Office Communications Server 2007 R2

Microsoft recently released Web Scheduler for Office Communications Server 2007 R2. The Web Scheduler provides a web-based interface for conference management functions giving users the ability to:

• Schedule a new Live Meeting conference or conference call
• View and modify details of an existing conference.
• List schedules of all existing user of a Microsoft Office conference.
• Delete an existing conference.
• Send an e-mail invitation to conference participants using a configured SMTP mail server.
• Join an existing conference.

The Web Scheduler is an ASP.Net application and must be installed on the same Internet Information Services (IIS) server that the OCS 2007 R2 Web Components are running on.

Web Scheduler requires OCS 2007 R2. The ability to send email meeting invites requires an SMTP server- ostensibly Microsoft Exchange Server, but others will due.

SIP Trunks Gain Appeal in a Down Economy

SIP trunking has been a very hot technology in 2009- thanks in no small part to Office Communications Server 2007 R2. In fact, Microsoft shook the SIP trunking world up again recently with its announcement to partner with JaJah which will enable customers to place calls from almost any device to almost any device using VoIP, and let OCS 2007 R2 customers begin making calls almost immediately when deploying the server.

SIP trunking offers savings by eliminating some hardware components and more importantly by cutting costs and increasing efficiency. Adam Boone, vice president of marketing at Sipera Systems said “The economic crisis has underscored for us that any technology that enables greater enterprise process efficiencies actually is relatively recession proof” in a recent interview.

The rest of the interview with Boone is interesting and worth a read. SIP trunking is a step in the evolution from traditional voice to a completely software-based, IP-voice implementation. Be sure to keep security on your to-do list though. Part of the reason that Sipera Systems is gung ho on SIP trunking is that they offer appliances and services that let customers deploy it securely and extend it to remote and branch workers. Take a look at what they have to offer and how it can enhance your SiP trunking VoIP infrastructure.

OCS 2007 R2 Adds Ability to Display Caller Name

On our home phones and mobile phones we more or less take it for granted that the Caller ID will display the name of the person or organization calling in addition to the originating phone number. In fact, many people simply refuse to answer calls from “Unknown Caller” and let them go to voicemail by default. With Microsoft Unified Communications and Office Communications Server 2007 this has not been the case.

Thankfully, amid a slew of other recent updates, Microsoft also corrected this glaring error in call management. Mike Stacy, a Director with Evangelyze Communications, illustrates the difference with before and after screen shots in his blog entry on this subject. Stacy also points out some additional steps necessary to ensure the updates work with Office Communicator, and to configure Office Communications Server 2007 to also display caller information on outbound calls.

Windows Mobile 6.5 a Tad Underwhelming To Some

I have used some form of Windows Mobile phone for almost 4 years. During that time, I did flirt briefly with the iPhone- trading my AT&T Tilt with my wife for her iPhone for a few months. The iPhone had a coolness factor and some ‘gee-whiz’ bells and whistles, but I really missed having my mobile phone be an extension of my laptop environment.

I wanted Office Communicator Mobile and the ability to view Presence status of my contacts. I wanted native Office application compatibility (ability to view and work with Word and Excel files). I wanted my email to look and feel like the Outlook I am used to on my computer. So, I eventually reclaimed my AT&T Tilt and returned the iPhone to my wife.

That is not to say that there is not room for improvement. Significant improvement. So, it is with great anticipation that I have been looking forward to the next release- Windows Mobile 6.5. As you can imagine then, I was disappointed to read Joe Schurman’s thoughts on what he saw in Windows Mobile 6.5 while attending the 2009 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans.

Oh well. It may fall short of what it could be, but it will still be better than what it is now. I guess baby steps are better than no steps at all.

Evangelyze Communications Revolutionizes UC with SmartSIP

SmartSIP is officially here! In the official press release Simon Booth, Director of Research & Development for Evangelyze Communications, says “SmartSIP is designed for extending the Microsoft UC platform to industry standard SIP connectivity (UDP) while minimizing the maintenance and administration overhead by leveraging Microsoft’s Active Directory and OCS configuration.”

Check out this video overview of SmartSIP to learn why this product is so revolutionary, then visit the Evangelyze Communications site to get more details and figure out how to use SmartSIP to change communications in your organization.

Fixing Response Group Tabs in Communicator

One of the innovative features of Office Communications Server 2007 R2 (OCS 2007 R2) was the introduction of Response Groups. The OCS 2007 R2 Response Group Service provides essentially the same functionality is ACD (Automatic Call Distribution) groups have in call centers for decades. Individuals can be assigned to groups by department or skill set so that questions and issues can be efficiently routed to the appropriate people to address them.

In trying to create and implement custom tabs in Office Commmunicator Rui Silva ran into some problems. Although he appeared to follow the steps implicitly, the custom tabs were not showing up. Check out his blog post The Case of the Disappearing Tabs to find out more about the issue, the steps he took to troubleshoot it, and what the resolution is.