Digicert - Utility for Managing SSL Certs

Most of the readers of this blog will have used and possibly setup SSL on a web site. If you really, really know what you are doing and do it all the time, managing digital certs is relatively straigtforward. But for over-worked admins who DON'T do this daily, dealing with things like intermediate CAs, keys, etc, etc is just a mind-bending experience. It's also easy to make mistakes (for example, adding a root CA cert to your personal vs computer store).

Digicert, who sell digital certificates, have created a new and free certificate management utility. This utility provides a number of useful features including:

• See all the SSL certificates installed on a server.
• View details for all certificates.
• Import and Export certificates either as a backupo or to copy/move certs between servers.
• Test a certificate

You can download this utility from Digicert’s site for free – and you run it on the server you wish to test. Here’s what the UI looks like:

If you are using services that require digital certs, such as Communications Server (aka OCS), then this tool may well be very useful in helping to resolve certificate issues on your OCS/CS systems.

Technorati Tags: OCS,Communications Server,digital certs,digicert

OCS R2 Training Materials

Earlier this year, Microsoft released an OCS R2 learning Portal – you can find this at:  http://www.microsoft.com/learning/ocs2007/r2/default.mspx. It contains some training resources for OCS R2. However, the page is both out of date, and is short on links. I have some more details to add to this page:

• As noted, the OCS R2 Resource Kit is available. This is a must have book!  The book is excellent, but it appears rushed and needed a better technical editing. Hopefully that will happen in the next release of the book!
• The Portal discusses the OCS 2007 R2 exam. The exam number is the same exam number as for the RTM exam, although the contents have been updated to reflect the new features in R2. If you have already passed the earlier RTM exam there’s no need to re-sit it. There is also a voice exam,but it’s not listed in the OCS Learning Portal (yet).
• The portal describes the training available for OCS (on a linked page). This page  lists 5177/8/9 (and clinic 6447A) which was RTM courseware (and fairly poor) and should probably be avoided. An updated version of the official courseware, released as CWL course 50214, was released, but the quality was so poor it has been withdrawn until remediation can be completed and properly tested. When this updated course is available, I’ll post here! I am anxious to see the updated courseware. The updated labs look good.
• The portal also lists the OCS Ignite course (50024A), but this material is both RTM only and not being run very often (although I can certainly offer it if clients really want it). A much better course is the OCS 2007 R2 Ignite content – course 50232A. This focuses on the R2 release, although it can be used to teach new to product folks. I teach this a lot and love it – but beware trying to do it in 3 days. With the right instructor, this course can easily fill 4 days and 5 (if the delegates are new to OCS). The labs are great too.
• Finally, the page does not mention the updated Voice Ignite workshop. Voice Ignite for OCS 2007 R2 has bee been created and is available.
• Note that all the courseware discussed here is Courseware Library content, content authored by a 3rd party with MS just acting as a reseller. Quality of CWL material has been variable, but MSL and the UC team are ensuring that all the courseware is good and fit for purpose. So you can book this training with confidence that the material is good.

OCS 2007 R2 is now in the field and customers should start to evaluate it for your organisation. If you have not yet deployed OCS at all, R2 is a natural next step. A new version of OCS, OCS “wave 14’ will be going into beta some time in the new year and is scheduled for release later in 2010 – dates are not yet firm on either the beta or RTM. Once I get more information, I’ll post it here.

OCS is a rich and complex application – if you are planning on deploying it, you could usefully do with some training. But before booking on the course, make sure you get a good trainer – someone who has been working with the product for a while and can explain the product and it’s values and can dive deep into deployment, configuration and support. Investing in some training would be a good thing!

Technorati Tags: OCS R2

Office Communications Server 2007 Virtualisation Support

Earlier this year, Microsoft confirmed that it would now support OCS 2007 in a virtualised environment. This has been a big ask by clients pretty much ever since OCS was launched. Just about every time I’ve taught OCS in the past couple of years, as well as in the OCS newsgroups, the question of why it’s not supported comes up over and over again. Along with anecdotal evidence that it worked in at least a VMware ESX environment. And in the classroom, we see OCS working (well as least the server components) just fine.
The support Microsoft is providing caters for OCS server roles running in VMs hosted on both a single server (a typical classroom scenario) or hosted on a number of servers (a scenario more likely in corporate deployment). Support is limited to a subset of OCS Server roles, i.e. Front-End Servers, Back-End SQL Server 2008 (64-bit), Group Chat Channel Servers, Group Chat Channel and Compliance Servers, and Access Edge Servers. This means no support of other server roles - Microsoft say these roles are not supported due to “possible quality issues” with real time media.
It took MS a while after R2 was released to support this - I understand that part of the delay in announcing full support was testing. MS always wants (needs!) to test anything it offers to support, and OCS is no different. In announcing VM support, MS has tested a fully distributed topology with 40,000 users and 10,000 group chat users. This means, says Microsoft that: “audio/video/web conferencing servers, audio/video/web edge conferencing servers, dial-in conferencing, Communicator Web Access, enterprise voice, or Remote Call Control may not be deployed as part of the virtualized pool.” The impact of this means that you can not (at least in a supported fashion) virtualise a Standard Edition pool (or for that matter an EE consolidated pool), a consolidated edge server or a CWA server.
Microsoft also published an interesting whitepaper detailing the tested architecture. The white paper also looks at OCS performance and how you can use the Capacity Planning Tool.
This is a great move forward but it comes with some strings. Namely, the roles that are supported only work in an administratively complex environment. Or to put it another way, all the easy installations of OCS (SE, consolidated EE pool, consolidated edge) can not be virtualised in a supported way. And since, with R2, Microsoft has de-emphasised the distributed architecture, to deploy OCS in a virtualised environment, you would need to use the command line tools which makes the deployment potentially more work. I am hoping we’ll see a better story with the next wave of product.

Technorati Tags: OCS 2007 R2,OCS,Office Communications Server,virtualisation

Updates for Communications Server 2007 R2 (almost SP1!)

Microsoft has released a set of 13 patches for OCS 2007 R2. You might think of this as SP1 for OCS 2007 R2 (but that’s not the say MS is marketing it). Irrespective of what they call it, this set of patches is probably worth adding if you are deploying R2. As ever with patches, check the details to see if your systems are affected by each of these patches and which ones.

Due to the complex nature of OCS Deployments, patching is hard as there’s not just a single patch you can apply to all systems – you have to apply some patches on some systems and other patches on other systems. For example, an OCS 2007 R2 SE system needs 9 patches, while the Edge Server needs three. So plan this carefully as, at the least, you’ll need some service outages to apply the fixes.

The KB article: List of available updates for Communications Server 2007 R2: April 2, 2009, lists all 13 patches and describes which patch needs to be installed on which server role. You can drill down into each of the 13 individual patches – each has its own KB article. Most of these KB articles explain the issues resolved by the patch. KB 967675 that describes the fix to the Mediation server does not contain details of the fixes, but that’s probably just a doc error that will get fixed soon. For each individual issue, there’s a link to (another!) KB article describing the specific issue in more detail which include the symptoms of the (resolved) issue.

All in all, this is a useful update and well packaged. Next time though, couldn’t we have a mondo-patch (R2PatchAug09.exe for example) that you must apply to every related OCS system. That would help with the deployment and could reduce support calls especially from organisations deploying distributed Enterprise pools.

Technorati Tags: OCS 2007 R2,OCS,patch

Microsoft Office Protocol Documents – Geek Heaven

I’m just back to the UK after a month on the road, topped off by a week in Redmond attending an OCS Voice Ignite Train-The-Trainer session. Last week was a week in geek heaven. We spent a lot of time exploring the inner workings of OCS. In particular, how OCS operates on the wire – both between servers and between client and server. Fascinating stuff – sheer geek bliss.

Both last week and in my Voice Ignite classes, I see huge interest around how MS has implemented SIP on the Wire within OCS.  When looking at OCS wire captures, or SIP logs, you can see a huge number of Microsoft extensions to older style SIP traffic, in addition to the updates to both SDP and RTP. In preparing for my upcoming TechEd talk (SIP – Naked in all it’s Glory), understanding these better has taken on a new importance.

Whilst in Redmond, superstar VI Trainer Dennie Klama pointed me towards updates to the Microsoft Office Protocol Documents.  I first came across these last summer, as noted in a blog entitled: Open Geek Goodness From Microsoft.  It was cool to get access to this level of detail – although I was disappointed that the documents themselves were not open to Community Content on the MSDN site. Thus there was no way for the community to clarify or perhaps better document the details of the protocol. I’d love to see more real-world examples to illustrate the text better.

Thanks to the pointer from Dennis, I was very exited to see not only more documents than I recall seeing last July, but much more importantly, there have been updates to these documents. The most recent set of updates to the OCS related documents I’ve read so far occurred in March 2009.

You can browse the index to the OPDs on the TechNet site at: http://tfl09.blogspot.com/search?q=protocols. You can also download a zip file of all 61 documents from: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=112500.

If you want to understand what OCS is doing on the wire, these documents are a must read.

Technorati Tags: OCS,Office Protocol Documents

OCS, WMI and PowerShell

This past week, I was teaching OCS Voice Ignite in Munich and a colleague (superstar Robin Edwards). During the week, we chatted about how to configure OCS’s Address Book service. This is a topic that comes up a lot in our OCS training, especially as the Address Book seems to be one of the key troubleshooting issues our delegates encounter.

As it turns out, you cannot do much with the GUI. There’s nothing there to enable you to do much more than view SOME of the settings. For example, by default, OCS ABS keeps 30 days worth of delta address books. If you login to Office Communicator, OC will download only the deltas since the last time you logged in, up to a certainly value – by default 30 days. This is a great feature for very large address books that don’t change a lot week to week.

The problem is, you can’t see this value in the GUI, nor can you set it. To view or change this, you need to use WMI in a direct way. Which leaves you three options: WBEMTest, VBS, or PowerShell. For most admins, WBEMTest is way too ugly and unfriendly and that probably is true for VBS. But PowerShell makes it very, very easy (assuming you know PowerShell of course).

The key settings for the Address Book Server are found in the WMI Class MSFT_SIPAddressBookSettings. This class is defined in MSDN at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb632067.aspx.

This class has some useful properties, including:

DaysToKeep – specifies the number of days to keep the delta data files. The default is 30.

ExternalURL - An HTTPS URL that specifies the external location for address book file downloads

InternalURL - An HTTPS URL that specifies the internal location for address book file downloads.

MaxDeltaFileSizePercentage - The maximum percent of change for which a delta file is created. A delta file is not created if the percent of change is greater than this number. Multiply the value by 0.01 to derive the percentage. The minimum value for this property is 0 and the maximum value is 9999 (99.99%). The default value is 1250 (12.5%).

OutputLocation - Specifies the directory in which the files are stored.

PartitionOutputByOU - Controls whether data is partitioned by organization unit (OU).

RunTime - Specifies the service start time. The minimum value for this property is 0 and the maximum value is 2359. The default value is 130.

SynchronizeNow - When true, triggers the Address Book Server to perform a synchronization pass.

SynchronizePollingIntervalSecs - Specifies the number of seconds between checks for synchronization. The minimum value for this property is 5 and the maximum value is 9999.

UseNormalizationRules - Controls whether normalization is performed.

So much for what it does, now to how to do it with OCS R2. To get this class, using Standard Edition, you just use:

Get-WMIObject –Class MSFT_SipAddressbookSetting

However, using EE, it’s a bit more complex and you have to use a slightly different variation on the Get-WMIObject sytax, as follows:

PS C:\foo> gwmi -query "select * from MSFT_SipAddressBookSetting where backend='dc1'" -computer ocs-ee

Backend : dc1
DaysToKeep : 30
ExternalURL :
IgnoreGenericRules : False
InstanceID : {D265A402-BD08-4BCB-BEB3-CC7AFBD47C08}
InternalURL :
https://Cookham.gktrain.net/Abs/Int/Handler
MaxDeltaFileSizePercentage : 1250
OutputLocation : \\ocs-ee\absfiles
PartitionOutputByOU : False
RunTime : 130
SynchronizeNow : False
SynchronizePollingIntervalSecs : 300
UseNormalizationRules : True
WebServiceEnabled : True

So to make some changes, you could do something like this:

PS C:\foo> $abs = gwmi -query "select * from MSFT_SipAddressBookSetting where backend='dc1'" -computer ocs-ee
PS C:\foo> $abs.daystokeep = 45
PS C:\foo> $abs.runtime = 0230
PS C:\foo> $result = $abs.put()

PS C:\foo> gwmi -query "select * from MSFT_SipAddressBookSetting where backend='dc1'" -computer ocs-ee

Backend : dc1
DaysToKeep : 45
ExternalURL :
IgnoreGenericRules : False
InstanceID : {D265A402-BD08-4BCB-BEB3-CC7AFBD47C08}
InternalURL : https://Cookham.gktrain.net/Abs/Int/Handler
MaxDeltaFileSizePercentage : 1250
OutputLocation : \\ocs-ee\absfiles
PartitionOutputByOU : False
RunTime : 230
SynchronizeNow : False
SynchronizePollingIntervalSecs : 300
UseNormalizationRules : True
WebServiceEnabled : True

And finally – a bit tip of the hat to superstar Robin Edwards who showed me this class last week. Thanks Rob – you rock!

Technorati Tags: OCS R2,PowerShell,WMI

I’m Going to TechEd US!

Every year, like many of you, I submit proposals for TechEd. In recent years, they’ve been less than successful – the competition is very fierce and there is so much great content to choose from. I almost have to feel sorry for the Microsoft folks having to wade through hundreds of proposals.

This year, I submitted three talks, two around PowerShell and one around OCS. To my great surprise and delight, one has thus far been accepted! YEAH

The accepted break out sessions, part of the Unified Communications track, is entitled “SIP - Naked In All Its Glory”. The abstract for the talk is:

This session will look at the key protocols behind Microsoft's OCS product, in particular Session Initiaion Protocol as well as Real Time Transfer Protocol (RTP) and Session Description Protocol. A short discussion on TCP, TLS, and PSOM will also be given. The talk will focus on looking at the SIP and related protocols "on the wire". We'll dive in to using NetMon as well as OCS's Snooper tool. Troubleshooting SIP will be the final part of this talk.

I’m still waiting on the other two talk proposals. The other proposed talks are PowerShell related and are titled: “PowerShell and WMI”, and “Writing Production Quality Power Shell Scripts with PowerShell V2 and Windows Serer 2008 R2”. I await the verdict on those two talks, but would like to think that at least one will get accepted

Irrespective of the PowerShell talks, I’m really excited that I’ll be a speaker again. LA, here I come!

Technorati Tags: TechEd US,TechEd,OCS,PowerShell,SIP

More on PowerShell Best Practice

I read an very interesting post over on James O'Neill's blog. It was interesting  both because it talked PowerShell, but also because it talked about OCS and the neat PowerShell code James had written to support OCS 2007. 

As part of the Server 2008 Resource Kit, there’s a large script that contains a number of function definitions. If you dot source this script file, you can then use the functions sort of like cmdlets and administer OCS using PowerShell. I demo this script in my OCS Voice Ignite classes and the reaction is good!

When I first saw these cmdlets, my eyes lit up since it meant I could use these functions. However, I quickly noticed that some important best practices had not entirely been adhered to. Nothing major and certainly nothing that would break the functions – but it did not leverage PowerShell’s discoverability model.

In the latest post, James describes the re-write and the lessons he learned. The lessons are great ones that all PowerShell users should employ as they implement PowerShell into their environment. These are:

• PowerShell nouns are written in the singular. So a cmdlet/function to get all users would be GET-USER not GET-USERS (even though the latter is more likely to be the result of the get).
• Be consistent with Nouns, Avoid using “usage” in one function and “PhoneUsage” in another one.
• Avoid creating new verbs. While adding verbs like LIST is tempting, using Get- is more discoverable.
• Make use of the pipeline  when writing cmdlets. This enable a the user to pipe things into commands, pass an object or a name to fetch the object.
• Assume users want to use wildcards and allow wherever possible.

These are great lessons we all should  learn. Personally, I have some trouble with the third one when writing scripts for my PowerShell Scripts Blog (http://pshscripts.blogspot.com).

For those of you who will be buying the OCS 2007 R2 Resource Kit book (something I’ll sure be doing!), the function library is a real opportunity to do some repackaging using PowerShell V2 CTP. James’ .PS1 script contains none of the V2 stuff (Cmdlet binding and parameter attributes, auto-help contents, using manifests to do the updating of type data, etc).

Technorati tags: PowerShell V2, OCS, OCS Resource Kit, best practice

OCS Voice Ignite - Phase 2

I'm in Copenhagen this week, running the first of the Phase 2 Voice Ignite sessions. The initial phase of VI involved re-deliveries in 6 cites (Orlando, Barcelona, Sydney, Kuala Lumpur, Paris and Scottsdale). These were big events at big venues mainly taught by MCS consultants and a few GK folks. Phase 2 is smaller regional re-deliveries. We've here in Copenhagen for the first of these (Reading UK, Paris and Austin Texas are the other three of these that are booked thus far).

The biggest issue with these regional re-deliveries is setup. With phase 1, we had support from Microsoft's TSG team (and 1st class they are too). For the the phase 2 deliveries, we're on our own. Like every first run of deep rich training, we've had issues (power, the wrong cables, etc) - nothing we can't and didn't solve. Just more stress!

But - with these challenges behind us, we're now steaming ahead with the training and folks seem to be pretty happy.

Technorati tags: OCS 2007, Voice Ignite, Office Communications Server 2007, Global Knowedge, Microsoft

Around the World With OCS Voice Ignite - continued

As I noted in a recent post (Around the World With OCS Voice Ignite) I'm taking part in the OCS Voice Ignite tour. Last week was Sydney where were were ensconced in Darling Harbour. The venue was great, and the content was even better. This week we're in the wonderful city of Kuala Lumpur.

My trip to Sydney (LHR-LAX,  LAX-SYD) was greatly improved by upgrades - entering a 747 and turning left is the only way to fly! Thanks to an unknown friend of a friend for those upgrades! The only downside was the unscheduled stop at Honolulu for fuel and the lack of laptop power across the Pacific. Nevertheless, the service was excellent, and the 4000 bonus miles United offered us as compensation helped.

Sydney is a great city - although it rained most of the week (I've seen drier days in the monsoon!). But the audience was great and we all had a lot of fun. I was sorry to leave, but Kuala Lumpur beckoned.  The flights to KL (SYD-BKK-KUL) were OK too. We were a bit late into Bangkok, but that just meant less time waiting. The flight down to KL on Lufthansa was stunning - a band new 747 (it had less than 400 flight hours said the stewardess). Think of the smell of a new car, very comfortable seats and a great crew.

Then the curse of all world travellers - I got to KL, but my luggage did not. When you travel as much as I do, lost luggage is something that is just going to happen sooner or later. And when it does, KL is the place to have it happen. The hotel and Lufthansa were great. The airline was very apologetic and gave me US$200 in local currency to buy some new stuff while they found my bag. And the hotel (The Westin) made it very easy - they called the airport every 4 hours and kept me fully informed. Fortunately the bag turned up last night and I've got a few Ringits spare to help the enjoyment of KL.

I feel very, very lucky on several levels. First I'm getting to work with a very rich content and very knowledgeable speakers. Second, we get real world labs with great hardware (I'm pretty biased though as Global Knowledge built the labs). Finally, we get to meet passionate and committed OCS fans and get them the real answers to the very real issues they and their clients face. Oh - and this week at least, we get the best breakfast buffet I've EVER seen in my entire life.

It's a shame that the content is under NDA - which means I can't share much of it (and the Voice Ignite sessions are now fully booked so I can't suggest you book onto a session). I think and hope that there will be more deliveries on a regional basis - but I've had nothing confirmed. Watch this space - or take a look at Devin's blog as noted in http://cacorner.blogspot.com/2008/02/voice-ignite-sydney.html which provide some insights to this great content.

Thanks to the OCS team for allowing me to have this wonderful experience.

Technorati tags: OCS, Voice Ignite, Microsoft, Global Knowedge

Voice Ignite - Sydney

I'm in Sydney this week, helping out with Voice Ignite. Due to the NDA nature of this training,I'm not able  to blog much of the detail. However, one of the delegates is doing some live blogging about the even. Take a look at (e)Mail Insecurity.

Technorati tags: OCS, OCS Voice Ignite

OCS Voice Ignite - going to Orlando

Just got the final confirmation through today - I'm heading off to Orlando on Saturday to attend the OCS Voice Ignite event that I wrote about recently. I hit Orlando late on Saturday night, with a day to hang out with the Global Knowledge crew (and hopefully some rest) before 5 days of deep, deep technical OCS voice stuff. I've started looking at the labs - I can't wait.

I'm booked to help the team re-deliver this in Barcelona (I suspect I'll be a lab rat or similar). And I may also be Australia bound to help re-deliver parts of this seminar in Sydney. So it looks like some fun travel coming up soon!

Technorati tags: OCS 2007, Voice Ignite

Download details: Office Communications Server 2007 Security Guide

Yet more documentation from the OCS team. In this case, the Office Communications Server 2007 Security Guide which is a 42-page document describing the security aspects and features of OCS 2007. This is a must read for all OCS admins!

Technorati tags: OCS, Office Communications Server 2007, OCS Security Guide, Security

PIC Licensing for OCS

I had an interesting comment on this blog recently based on an older blog article. The question was around the Public Internet Connectivity licenses and whether they were still available. I checked with some great folks in Redmond and got a pretty clear answer: PIC is still alive and is being sold. Rumours of its demise seem premature and/or in error.  Hope the helps.

My Redmond contact also pointed me to the Office Live Communications Server PIC page which should answer all the relevant questions.

Technorati tags: OCS Licensing, PIC, OCS 2007

Learning Plans for OCS 2007

Over in my corporate blog, I jotted down some links to information that helps you learn more about OCS 2007. Take a look at my Learning Plan for OCS 2007 - and please provide comments.

 

Technorati tags: OCS 2007, OCS Training, Global Knowledge

OCS 2007 Inter-Operating with Nortel CS 1000

In researching the OCS Learning Plan I  found a neat web cast you can download from Microsoft web site.  The main starting page for this  webcast is on the MS TechNet site. This page requires you to log in with a MS Passport, which takes you to the live meting site from where you can pick up the webcast. A little long winded process wise, but a good webcast!  In addition to the 8mb WMV file, you can also download just the PowerPoint slides (14.2MB ), or just an mp3 podcast.

This is, for me most useful as it shows how to do this interop and explains many aspects of the Nortel products, including more details on the ICA solution. I am looking forward to working more with the Nortel and the ICA tools in some upcoming work.

Technorati tags: OCS, Nortel, web-cast

Download details: Office Communications Server 2007 Software Update Service

 One neat aspect of the new Microsoft OCS related handset (the Tanjay phone) is that it can get updates via WUS. This download: Office Communications Server 2007 Software Update Service helps to provide the updates.

Technorati tags: Microsoft, OCS, Tanjay

Office Communication Server 2007 Videos

 Microsoft has published two downloadable videos promoting OCS 2007. Known as the Evil Presence videos, the first shows how an organisation can use OCS, while the second looks at the roundtable.

To get the downloads, see:  Unified Communications - Office Communication Server 2007 Videos

Technorati tags: OCS, Evil Presence, Office Communications Server 2007, Microsoft

OCS 2007 TechNet Forums Are Back!

The TechNet web forums are back up. Microsoft changed the URL to address the forums to reflect that the product had achieved RTM (i.e. dropping the "beta" from the URL). It looks like this happened without changing other links to the forum. Anyway, they're back up!

The content on the OCS forums still says "beta", but the RTM is definitely on-topic. I hope that the eye-candy will be updated soon to reflect RTM. It would be nice if this content was also shared with an NNTP feed.

For OCS users wanting NNTP support, there is one newsgroup (microsoft.public.office.communicator) on MS's NNTP Server news:msnews.microsoft.com. Hopefully a richer set of newsgroups will be forthcoming. I'm sure trying!

Technorati tags: OCS 2007, TechNet, OCS TechNet Forum, OCS NNTP Support, TechNet Forum NNTP

OCS TechNet Forum Down

The TechNet OCS 2007 Beta on-line forum at: http://forums.microsoft.com/Ocs2007publicbeta/default.aspx?SiteID=57 is down. It's been down since Friday morning. The outage has been reported, but not yet fixed.

These forums were about the OCS 2007 beta product (and are, or at least were, still missing any links to NNTP). Now that OCS has hit RTM, there is a need for both forums and newsgroups that support the final RTM, product. These are coming, I'm told by folks at Microsoft, hopefully with full gating between on-line forum(s) and NNTP newsgroups.

When I get more information, or if the site suddenly comes back, I'll post more more information.

[Later - 17:45 Saturday Aug 25 - Evening]

I've seen Tata Moraes comment - sadly I have no idea when this forum will be back up. Plus it's a bank holiday weekend at least here, so everyone's away. You could try posting in the microsoft.public.office.communicator newsgroup, although strictly speaking OCS posts are probably off topic there.

[Still Later - 19:00 Monday Aug 7 - 1900]

The outage continues. This appears to be an error in the change over to RTM support and the forums should be back soon. There will be RTM forums, but don't know yet about newsgroup support.

Technorati tags: OCS Forums, OCS, TechNet, Microsoft