Lync and How It Integrates with other MS Apps

One of the big changes with Lync has been Microsoft’s approach of investing in a particular product for a particular function/feature and then have other products leverage that investment. This really makes sense on two levels. First, product groups are not each re-inventing the same wheel. Second, it really makes the ‘better together’ argument more real and less hype.

For example, with Lync 2013, all contact information is in a single Unified Contact Store which is maintained by Exchange 2013. The architecture for that looks like this:

Microsoft has just published an awesome set of posters that illustrate all the current sets of feature integration along with loads of links and more information. I find this a fantastic Lync resource (if only the Microsoft Learning courses were as well described!

You can download these posters (it’s a 9 page PDF) from http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=311975

del.icio.us Tags: Lync,Lync 2013,Lync integration

Weekly round up of Lync and UC news - Lync Server 2013 Weekly

I have setup a Paper.Li weekly newsletter of news on UC and in particular Lync. You can see it: here. You can also subscribe (free) and get an abbreviated version in your mail box every Monday Morning. The mail can be clicked to get to the full content. The language is set to English, with coverage from around the globe.

del.icio.us Tags: Lync

Lync PreCall Diagnostics Tool

In Lync, and indeed with almost any VOIP product, call quality can vary. This variation can be caused by a number of factors, including network delay, jitter, packet loss, and under powered PCs. Diagnosing the causes is difficult if you don’t have all the facts.

Microsoft has issues a pair of new tools< PreCall Diagnostics Tool, that run on Win 7 (desktop) and Win 8 (as a metro/modern app). You can get the Desktop application here, and the modern app here.

To understand more about the tool(s) and what the out means, take a look at an excellent blog article by Byron Spurlock.

del.icio.us Tags: Lync

A Conference Call in Real Life

Thanks to Jamie Stark, there’s a very funny video looking at how Conference Calls work. It’s amusing but reminds me all too much of the conference calls I am on of late!

See the video on YouTube at:

  

A conference call in real life

del.icio.us Tags: Humour

IPv6 Essentials Webinar–Tue Feb 4 and Web Feb 5 2014

Tomorrow (Feb 5th 2014), GoGo6, an IPv6 company, is running a fee webinar with Alvaro Vives: IP v6 Essentials. You can go to their web site and sign up for the webinar which begins at 19:00 CET/18:00 GMT and 13:00 EST. It’s also being repeated later in the day on Feb 5 (you can sign up for both at the same place!

Why bother, you may be asking yourself? Great question and hopefully Arlindo will nail that answer as he looks at why IPv6 is a must, and how to address the issues that arise if you want to deploy IPv6.

While IPv4 is how most users deploy tools such as Lync Server, you can use IPv6. And at some time, I believe, IT pros will look back and wonder why anyone would want to use IPv4.

See you there!

Testing out Emergency Calling with Lync

Microsoft’s Lync server has a great feature called E911 – Emergency calling mainly for the UK and Canada. I teach Lync and find this topic to be of only minor interest in the UK and Europe mainly because we do not have E911 service over here (yet, anyway!).

Gary Williams has just published a great blog article entitled Is it OK to Place a Test Call to Emergency Services. His answer is Yes and he goes about telling how to do it. I have to say, I’ve always been quite nervous about testing out calls to 999 – and have only twice every had to call it for real.

But Gary’s article makes it clear that yes you can do this and also makes the good point that not testing it can be life threatening if it doesn’t work. He sets out how to do it in the article and it’s pretty simple. Gary also notes another potential gotcha – Lync will add a leading “+” to the number (e.g. if you dial 999, Lync ‘dials’ +999). Thus it’s vital that you have your routes are set up expecting this.

Technorati Tags: Lync,E911

Another Lync Add-on–SuperToast

I just love how the market is creating little useful add-ins to increases the functionality and value of Lync. The most recent one I’ve found is a product called SuperToast. It’s made by Modality Systems and you can read about it over on Modality’s web site.

SuperToast is a Lync application that notifies a Lync user of any missed instant messages and telephone or video calls. If an instant message is not acknowledged within a certain timeframe, or a call goes unanswered, SuperToast pops up a window in the centre of your screen, notifying you of any missed items. It stays there until you click it away and add any subsequent missed IM’s or calls to the list.

The value here should be obvious. For all too many IT Pros, and Information Workers, it is all too easy to miss an incoming instant message or call from a colleague, partner or even a customer. Combine that with the difficulty of being able to see when or what IM’s and calls you have missed. SuperToast avoids important queries going unnoticed.

Technorati Tags: SuperToast,Modality Systems,Lync

Access to PowerShellCookBook.Com

That very nice man Lee Holmes has done something really nice – in support of the current PowerShell games, he’s made access to his Cookbook web site unlimited for all. See http://www.powershellcookbook.com/ and have at it.

Thanks Lee!

Technorati Tags: PowerShellCookbook.com,Lee Holmes

Updated Lync Server Networking Guide

The Lync team at Microsoft publish a comprehensive guide to network planning, monitoring and troubleshooting of Lync.

This guide consists of a large (146 page document) ,  2 spreadsheets, 2 PowerShell scripts and a collection of SQL T-SQL scripts – not to mention a README file:

• The document looks at the aspects of planning, monitoring and troubleshooting Lync 2013 and describes these processes in some detail.
• The spreadsheets enable you to look at various aspect of your Lync architecture and compare your environment with best practices – for example looking at the CPU utilisation on all your servers and ensuring that they are all less than 80%. These were updated in the latest drop of the guide
• The PowerShell scripts enable you to obtain the key health indicators in your infrastructure that can then be used within the spreadsheets.
• The SQL scripts are queries that help you leverage the data contained on your QOA/CDR databases.These were updated in the latest drop of the guide

If you are implementing Lync, this material can be invaluable. especially if you are planning using Enterprise voice. If you used earlier version of the guide, then you would be well advised to download the latest version for the updated spread sheets and the T-SQL scripts. If you have not yet used the guide, or are early on in the planning stages of your deployment, make sure you read and work through document as you deploy.

Technorati Tags: Lync,Lync Server Networking Guide

Updated Lync 2013 Client for Windows Phone

I was somewhat (pleasantly) surprised to see on my Windows Phone that there was an updated Lync 2013 client. The client does not change much, but there are two nice new features added. One nice new feature is the ability to view a PowerPoint presentation during a Lync meeting. The update also enables you to use your voice to control Lync 2012 client.

For me, the ability to see a PowerPoint presentation on my phone is of pretty minimal value. That’s mainly for two reasons: first my phone (I have a Nokia 820) is just too small to do much more than listen to the audio. I’d rather be somewhere that I can watch the presentation on a decent screen (i.e. my laptop or desktop). But having said that, it would make great sense on a larger form factor device (phablet’s here we come). So while I won’t be using this feature much, I am sure glad I can!

Technorati Tags: Lync Phone client,Lync 2013,Windows Phone

SIP Trunking with Lync

I’m not alone in talking about SIP Trunking and SIP Trunking providers, as it turns out. SIP Trunks, as I discussed in this blog post, can provide a lot of benefits, not the least of which is cost reduction. The more you look at Sip Trunk Providers, though, the more you realise that not all providers are equal.

Microsoft has done a good job in qualifying Sip Trunk Providers and publishes a list of such providers at: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/lync/fp179863.aspx. This page lists the various qualified carriers and their service name. By ‘qualified’, each of the listed providers has been independently reviewed and their product is seen to support all the necessary Unified Communications Open Interoperability Program  (UCOIP) requirements. You can read more about these requirements here.

In his blog, Jonathan Steeman looks at some of the differences between SIP providers in terms of the functions and features they provide. The more I read this post, the more it is clear that there really is a great deal of difference between the qualified trunk providers. If you are considering a SIP trunk, then you should take a close look at this blog entry and work out which of the mentioned features are important to you.

I’d love to hear of any experiences, good or bad, you are having with any of these named providers.

Technorati Tags: SIP Trunk Provider

Creating A Message Box Using PowerShell

The other day, a student asked me how he could display a message box as part of a script. There is no, out of the box, cmdlet that does this, she pointed out. What she wanted to do was to display a window, with a window title and some contents, like this:

Now if you are a .NET programmer, this is pretty much a no brainer – just call the Windows.Forms.Messagebox’s Show method, and provide the text and the heading. Easy – but what if you are using PowerShell? As a Lync Admin – you might have a script that, say, provisioned users and you want to display a nice friendly message box to tell the user some bit of information such as how many users were provisioned. So how do you do that?

PowerShell, as you all know (or probably should know) is based on .NET – many cmdlets are just a PowerShell wrapper around an existing .NET Class/method. For example, Get-Process just invokes the System.Diagnostic.Process class’s GetProcesses() method. Now the cmdlet does a little more than just a GetProcess call, such as processing wild cards, enabling the cmdlet to run against a different machine, etc. But essentially, the base cmdlets just enable IT Pros simple access into .NET functions and Features. Application specific cmdlets, such as those supported by Lync, provide access into application specific functions, which are implemented as .NET Classes too. You can think of the application specific classes as just an extension to .NET.

The .NET Framework, and the Application specific ‘extensions’, are vast. There are a very large number of classes in total, and many of them have no relevance at all to the tasks that Lync admins carry out. To load all the relevant classes at runtime each time you open PowerShell would be very wasteful – both in terms of how long it would take to load them all, plus the runtime overhead (i.e. memory) wasted on classes never used. Thus, PowerShell only loads a core set of classes by default. But there is nothing stopping you from first loading the using any other .NET class.

Each .NET class is delivered via a DLL. If you look at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.diagnostics.process(v=vs.110).aspx, you can see the Systems.Diagnostics.Process class is implemented in the System.DLL (See ‘Assembly:’). System.DLL holds the core .NET functions and is always loaded by PowerShell. If you go to the http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.diagnostics.process(v=vs.110).aspx page, which documents the MessageBox class, you’ll see this class is contained in System.Windows.Forms DLL, which is NOT loaded by default.
So to use the class in the first place, we need to first load the DLLs. This is pretty easy and looks like this:

[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("System.Windows.Forms")

This load the DLL from .NET’s global assembly cache and it remains loaded in the current PowerShell  window and memory space till you close that instance of PowerShell. If you have other assemblies either part of the .NET Framework (e.g. System.Numerics) or a privately developed assembly, you can load them in a similar fashion.

Developers and PowerShell Gurus will probably point out that the LoadWithPartialName method has been deprecated. This is true but the recommended approach is more complex. Whatever,  it remains the case that the LoadWithPartialName method works, and is likely to continue to work for some time! You can read a good explanation of this in Lee Home’s blog (http://www.leeholmes.com/blog/2006/01/17/how-do-i-easily-load-assemblies-when-loadwithpartialname-has-been-deprecated/) although you should note that that article was written in the Monad days, and is just slightly out of date (e.g. it uses .MSH as an extension). But for now, using this deprecated method does work and as I say, is likely to continue to work for a while!

So once you have the DLL loaded, you can just use the normal .NET calling feature to invoke a method in a .NET class directly. The core PowerShell line of code to do this is:

[Windows.Forms.MessageBox]::Show($Message, $BoxTitle, 
    [Windows.Forms.MessageBoxButtons]::OK , 
    [Windows.Forms.MessageBoxIcon]::Information)

Ok, so it’s three lines long but it is quite simple. But rather than have to load an assembly and call that nasty looking method, you can wrap all of this inside a simple Advanced Function, and load that in your Profile or as part of a script or suite of scripts. I’ve written a simple script that implements a Show-Message function that displays a message box as you see above – see my PowerShell scripts blog for the script.
The bottom line is that you can easily display a message box from your script if and where you need. Just leverage my script as part of your profile, a personal module or directly inside a longer script and go for it.

Technorati Tags: PowerShell,.NET,System.Windows.Forms

Sizing Your Lync Installation

Microsoft publishes lots of information about sizing and even has a neat free capacity calculator you can download (Did I mention it was free!). But knowing where to start and what to look out for is harder especially for those who don’t do a lot of sizing work.

In browsing around, I found an interesting post that looks at a proposed sizing for 1500 users, consisting if three Front End servers, plus more. The author was asking for advice and the rest of the post is just that advice.

If you are planning on deploying Lync, this might make good reading and is certainly good food for thought.

Technorati Tags: Lync,sizing

LogMeIn Eliminating Free Option

I’ve been a LotMeIn user for some time. I find it very useful when I’m on the road and discover I’ve left an important file at home, or I want to use my home systems to demo something. The Free version of LogMeIn Suited me perfectly.

Then, thanks to reports over on Spiceworks, I discover today that this wonderful free version is being removed and users are being asked to start paying. Worse, existing fees have been dramatically increased all with no notice – some users say they only discovered the price hike when they got their CC bill. Others make the point that with no notice, getting budget approval in these tight times, is going to be next to impossible.

GIgaOm has an article about this move: here.

The message here to LogMeIn (and others considering the same thing) is simple: by all means raise your prices, but do so in a more transparent way and giving notice to loyal users (in our case formerly loyal soon to be ex-users). Other wise you are going to lose customers – and what’s worse lose good will.

Given this move, I’m moving off of LogMeIn – I hope to remove it all in the next day or two and replace it with a competitor. I suspect LogMeIn is going to see it’s competitors benefit from this move.

Technorati Tags: LogMeIn

SIP Trunking–Do You Need and SBC?

On Monday, I posted an article regarding an upcoming SIP Trunking webcast. In that article, I suggested that you can implement a Sip Trunk without a PSTN gateway. For the most part this is the case, but as one reader, Andy McAllister, pointed out, you probably are going to want a Session Boarder Controller to terminate the VPN between you and the SIP Provider. So the rosy picture painted in the earlier article is not altogether correct. Having said that, SIP Trunks typically offer lower cost telephony as well as increased flexibility in provisioning and de-provisioning.

Technorati Tags: Lync,Sip Trunk,SBC

Everything you need to know about snom phones and Lync

Lync Server’s Enterprise Voice feature aims to enable you to replace your PBX. Enterprise voice helps you to get your users to use either a soft phone, the Lync client, or replace their existing desk phone with a Lync Phone.

Lync Phones are full IP phones – they contain some sort of computer and OS that either runs the Lync Phone Edition client or runs a compatible client. Both modes enable the phone to participate fully in your Lync environment.

One of the bigger players in the VOIP and Lync market is snom, and they’ve just produced a simple free eBook entitled: Using Microsoft Lync with Voice and snom Lync Qualified Phones. This is a 4 chapter book that covers an overview of Lync Phones, how to provision and customise Lync phones and how to integrate PC/Phone and Lync.

The eBook is free, but to get it you must first register with snom, which you can do on their website. The book itself is here.

The book is a good introduction to the Lync Phone even if you choose not to use snom phones.

Technorati Tags: Lync,Lync Phone,snom

Ed Wilson – PowerShell Best Practices Book

I just noticed that Ed Wilson, aka The Scripting Guy (at Microsoft), has another book out. Entitled Windows PowerShell Best Practices, it's a book that provides great examples on how to get the most out of PowerShell.

The book shows you how you can:

• Use Windows PowerShell to automate Active Directory tasks
• Explore available WMI classes and methods with CIM cmdlets
• Identify and track scripting opportunities to avoid duplication
• Use functions to encapsulate business logic and reuse code
• Design your script’s best input method and output destination
• Test scripts by checking their syntax and performance
• Choose the most suitable method for running remote commands
• Manage software services with Desired State Configuration

Lots of goodness from a good author.

Technorati Tags: PowerShell,Book,Ed Wilson

SIP Trunking Webcast

A SIP Trunk is a connection from your telephony solution to the PSTN via a SIP Provider. For Lync, this means the route to the PSTN is via the SIP provider, with all the signaling traffic being SIP and the audio being sent via RTP. This avoids having to have a local gateway to convert the signaling and audio into what the PSTN interface requires. SIP providers can be a cheaper PSTN Interconnection alternative to going direct to your local PSTN (e.g. British Telecom).

This means the PSTN connection is at level 3 in the ISO stack, not level 2 (which the normal PSTN connection uses). Someday, in the not overly far future I suggest that all PSTN connections will be via direct SIP, although it may take a few decades to get there.

Sip Trunks can provide many advantages. They can often be a cheaper PSTN Interconnection alternative to going direct to your local PSTN (e.g. British Telecom). They are also are a lot easier and faster to provision than traditional Level 2 connections. And, in many cases, you can create a short term trunk (e.g. for some event) more cost effectively than a traditional PSTN line.

With Lync 2013, SIP Trunks are very easy to integrate into your environment and can provide great cost savings – if nothing else, you don’t need separate PSTN gateways! If you are planning on deploying Lync Enterprise Voice, SIP trunks are something worth looking at.

Enterprise Connect Webinars are holding a 1-hour webcast on Jan 29th at 19:00 GMT – sadly late in the day for the UK, but mid afternoon EST and late morning on USA’s west coast. This web cast will describe the opportunities and challenges of SIP Trunking and will feature a detailed case study. You can signup for the webinar on line: Here.

Technorati Tags: SIP,SIP Trunk,Lync

Windows Server 2012/R2 Documentation-in PDF

Thanks to a post over on SpiceWorks, I’ve discovered that Microsoft has just published a full PDF of all the Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2 documentation. This represents the entire contents of the TechNet library on these two subjects. You can download from here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=41182

Before you go rushing off to download – this is a big download. The pdf file itself is 110.9 MB. And definitely think hard before rushing off to print it out – it runs to 7970 pages. That’s around 8 reams of paper (or around 2 boxes). Not to mention the cost in toner!

Despite the size, this is a great document to have. I’ve loaded it onto my laptop and my Surface devices.

Technorati Tags: Windows,Documentation

More Desired State Configuration Resources

On Boxing Day, the PowerShell team at Microsoft released some additional DSC (Desired State Configuration) resources, which they call the DSC Resource Kit Wave 1. These are as et of PowerShell moduels that contain both DSC Resource and sample configuration examples.

Microsoft initially shipped a number of built in resources for DSC (described on TechNet: here) as well as the ability to create your own custom resources (this is documented here).

The DSC Resource kit contains 8 new resources as follows:

 

Resource	Description
xComputer	Name a computer and add it to a domain/workgroup
xVHD	Create and managed VHDs
xVMHyperV	Create and manage a Hyper-V Virtual Machine
xVMSwitch	Create and manage a Hyper-V Virtual Switch
xDNSServerAddress	Bind a DNS Server address to one or more NIC
xIPAddress	Configure IPAddress (v4 and v6)
xDSCWebService	Configure DSC Service (aka Pull Server)
xWebsite	Deploy and configure a website on IIS

 

If you want to use the DSC Resource Kit you need to be running Windows 8.1 or Windows Server 2012 R2 with update KB2883200 (aka the GA Update Rollup).

DSC is an amazing feature of PowerShell 4, which just got even better!

Technorati Tags: PowerShell,DSC

The Lync and UC Market in 2013

While most of us use January to look forward to what’s coming in the next year and getting up to speed with the challenges, I find it often useful to take a look back at what happened last year. To that end, Irwin Lazar of Nemertes Research as set out an interesting look at 2013, in an article entitled ‘The UC Market Year in Review’ which was carried by the NoJitter site.

Lazar focused on four primary technologies that stood out on 2013: Cloud, Lync, UC Mobility and Video. The cloud continues to receive a huge amount of attention from a variety of vendors not least Microsoft. Lazar believes that the Cloud will only grow more important over the coming year.

As for Lync, Lazar notes that Microsoft is making inroads into the IP Telephony market, with 13% market share, which Avaya is tied at 13%, but Cisco continues to lead with 32% market share.  Lazar predicts that Microsoft will continue to make waves and will aggressively target it’s competition, although at present Lazar claims Lync is significantly more expensive to operate than some of the competition – something no doubt that Microsoft will address in the next version of Lync.

Mobility is also a feature that was being adopted widely during 2013, a trend that Lazar predicts will grow significantly in 2014. Lazar expects that percentage of employees using tablets as their primary work device to climb to over 20% in 2014. Video too is likely to go ballistic as it becomes ever easier to record video which translates to a demand for Enterprise style YouTube capabilities.

An interesting paper, and certainly it ties in with the kinds of questions and issues I’m seeing in the forums and in my courses. And if you take the time to read his article, make sure you look at the comments – some interesting observations there!

Technorati Tags: Unified Communications,Lync,2014

Poshlinks.Com–PowerShell Links Galore

I just stumbled upon poshlinks.com, a PowerShell link list – a page full of links to more information about PowerShell and other stuff. At present there are over 1100 separate links to a variety of PowerShell related content. You can find links on fundamentals such as objects and modules, links related to using PowerShell with applications such as Lync, and a whole lot more.

So far, I’m not clear on how to add more to this list, but if/when I find out, I’ll blog it. I the meantime, this is a great resource and I’m going to be busy checking out all the links!

Technorati Tags: PowerShell

Media Bypass with Lync Server 2013

In the original voice design for OCS, all traffic bound for the PSTN had to transit a mediation server. The mediation server provided three key features: it removed the encryption of SIP packets that go to the gateway (and added it for signaling traffic received form the Media gateway), it similarly managed the encryption of the RTP packets sent to and from the PSTN and finally transcoded the media traffic between Microsoft’s Real Time Audio codec and G.711 (used on the PSTN).

In the early days of OCS, this made sense as the then-available gateways could not really handle the encryption and de-encryption and the early clients did not natively send/receive using G711. The downside to this design was the need for extra servers (and associated OS/Software licenses) and the processing delay encountered particularly when transcoding RTP traffic (i.e. the actual audio). And since transcoding was never going to be perfect, there was also a bit of a reduction in call quality.

Lync introduced an excellent new feature, Media bypass, which enables the client to send all media traffic directly to the media gateway thus removing most of the traffic through the mediation server. This was possible only with new gateways that supported Media Bypass. With Media Bypass, the call setup (signaled by SIP traffic sent from the client) was done as in OCS, but all the media traffic could a) be initially encoded using G.711 and b) sent directly to the Media gateway. This approach delivers several benefits: first, it reduces significantly the traffic traversing the Mediation Server allowing that role to co-exist on a front end server. Since the RTP traffic never transits the mediation server, RTT times and other factors are improved. And finally, since the client natively encodes audio into G.711, fidelity is at least as good and probably better than with OCS. Assuming your gateways were up to the job, media bypass represents a big reduction in the number of servers needed to support PSTN interconnection.

While Media Bypass is designed mainly for use in PSTN-interconnection scenarios, it can also be used if you are routing calls to an internal IP-PBX (assuming of course that that IP-PBX supports media bypass) and can be used with connecting to some SIP Providers.

In a great article on Windows IT Pro’s site, Lync super-star Byron Spurlock explains how media bypass works and shows how relatively simple it is to turn on. Byron makes the point that while Media Bypass is not quite out of the box, it’s fairly simple to configure assuming your infrastructure is capable of handling it.

Technorati Tags: Lync 2013,Media Bypass,Lync Mediation Server

Lync Error Reporting

One nice feature of Lync (and OCS before that) is the Server’s ability to provide clients with details of errors that occurred whilst the server was attempting to process a SIP command sent from the client. This is done by extending SIP to enable both client and server to report errors to each other. A new SIP header, Diagnostics, is used to report errors The idea is that if the server has an error, the client can get more information and possibly provide better information both to the end user and to any help desk support engineer.

This extension, snappily known as MS-OCER, an hot it is used is defined in the Client Error Reporting Protocol document you can download from Microsoft at: http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/6/F/16F4E321-AA6B-4FA3-8AD3-E94C895A3C97/%5bMS-OCER%5d.pdf

The PDF file, which runs to just under 200 pages, describes The details of the protocol plus full details of every Error ID including the reason for the error, are included in this document. This is a document that is likely to be of great value when you are troubleshooting!

Interestingly, although the document was last updated last November, there appear to be no Lync 2013 specific messages – only those for Lync 2010 and earlier. I assume that the Lync 2013 errors are the same as for Lync 2010, but there’s nothing I can see in the document to confirm that.

Technorati Tags: Lync,Error reporting

Testing Your Internet Facing Infrastructure

If you are an organisation with any Internet facing resources, it’s important for you to ensure that all the supporting infrastructure is alive, well, and functioning as it should be.  For large institutions, you probably already have all sorts of monitoring in place that can tell you of any problems in near-real time. You do, don’t you?
If you don’t (or you want to augment your existing services) there are number of sites on the Internet that will do that for you and provide you with the results. One site, Pingdom.com provides both a free and a pay service.
The pay service is aimed at monitoring the uptime and performance of you servers, including not only your corporate web server, but others too such as your Lync Edge server.  The Pingdom  service provides real-time monitoring service that can alert you is something interesting happens. You can get alerts ins SMS, Twitter and E-mail. The service also keeps records of the tests performed and the results which enable you to keep track of the performance of your key web sites. You can even get alerts on your mobile phone (Android and IOS it looks like – no Windows phone). 
And there’s even a REST-based API for you to use! The API produces JSON encoded output. Invoking the API and interpreting the JDON responses were features added to PowerShell V3 – thus with the pay-service APIs, you could write PowerShell scripts to manage your Pingdom service!
If you are a Lync Admin, and are providing either remote access (i.e. to your users who are coming in via the Internet) or are providing federation to customers and clients, you have a significant challenge to setup your external infrastructure and ensuring it continues to function. The pay service can provide you with a useful set of eyes/ears on the internet, ensuring that all the infrastructure aspects of your Lync Internet features are working as they should – and will inform you when that stops.
Pingdom also offers three sets of free tests for you to use:

• Ping/Traceroute – provides basic ping and traceroute to your site from Pingdom’s site. This provides a useful point of view in terms of your infrastructure’s availability/reachability across the Internet. The ping comes from one of the many probe servers used by Pingdom - there are over 60!
• DNS Health – this page checks to see if external Internet DNS is setup correctly. DNS setup is critical to ensure your site is reachable but is also easy to misconfigure. This page tests your infrastructure, and provides details as to what it finds: good or bad. There’s also a troubleshooting guide to help you to understand the errors that the checker might find and how to resolve them. See here to see what precisely the DNS test is doing for you.
• Full Page Test – this page tests the performance of a web page on your site and returns a wealth information.  The waterfall view shows all the files that downloaded and how long each download takes.  The Performance Grade view shows you how your page performs against a benchmark set of metrics. The Page Analysis view analyses the download, providing details of the server response code, how the page loaded, what sorts of documents are being downloaded, etc.

Here’s an example of using the Full Page Test against my Office 365 site, Reskit.Net:

This site is a fairly simple SharePoint site – and you can see each of the individual files downloaded to make up the page and what’s happening during the downloading of each file. You can use this waterfall graph to possibly optimise the page for faster downloads (and less bandwidth used).
And speaking of Free, Pingdom also provides a free check of a single site. This is the same check you could perform using their paid service, but free. The pay service allows you to check more than one site/page, and other services (see https://my.pingdom.com/account/subscription for details of the pay version).
All in all these free tools are pretty good – and I discovered a small DNS configuration issue I need to resolve! Nice catch Pingdom. And the pay tools look like being useful as well.

Technorati Tags: Lync,Monitoring,PowerShell

The Value of Persistent Chat With Lync

I just found an interesting white paper, produced by Mindlink Software. It’s entailed The value of Persistent Chat in Incident Management, Support and Business Continuity. The paper, which is short, starts form the premises that a) the workplace is changing and b) email is not a panacea in this new world. In areas such as incident management, business continuity and support – the ability to share knowledge quickly and communicate efficiently is vital. With geographically dispersed teams, increasing mobility and the constant challenge to do more with less. The paper concludes with some great use cases for PC and a more in-depth case study. Sadly, there is no economic justifications presented – these would have been very useful in helping readers to gauge likely ROI.

If you are planning on deploying Lync, or considering upgrading to the latest version, you should consider adding in Persistent Chat into the mix. With Lync 2013, you no longer need loads of extra servers to support PC – you can co-locate the PC servers on your front ends and utilise existing SQL Server for the databases needed by PC.

Technorati Tags: Lync,Persistent Chat

Lync Client Configuration via the Registry

With Lync (as with OCS), your client is partly configured, in band, from the server and partly based on locally set registry keys.  Things such as your contact list are obtained from the server once you are fully registered. Other things, such as whether to check spelling as you type, are set via registry settings. In a number of cases, these registry settings can be overridden by client policy settings. For example, you could set the registry to show emoticons, but disable it via client policy.

Richard Brynsteon has written two excellent blog posts that map every client setting to the registry entry that controls that setting. As well, Richard shows where the registry setting can be overridden by a suitable client policy.

Part one, which sets out information on the General and Personal tabs can be found: Here. Part 2 sets out information on the Contacts List and Status tab can be found: Here.

Technorati Tags: Lync,Lync Client,Registry settings

Top Support Solutions for Lync Server

As much as we’d all like utterly reliable software – history suggests it’s not likely to happen at least in my lifetime. Read Fred Brookes book Mythical Man Month: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month – while it describes things Brookes saw during his time at IBM working on OS/360 (in the 1960s), the book continues to be highly relevant. Brookes observes that in any complex system there are a certain irreducible number of errors – as true today as in the era Brookes writes about. Worse, all attempts to fix the observed errors tends to result in the introduction of other, new, errors. So we live with the reality that all complex software will have bugs and that at some point we may be impacted.

For Windows IT Pros, one great source of information on bugs and solutions is Microsoft’s Top Support Solutions pages (see: http://blogs.technet.com/b/topsupportsolutions/) over on the TechNet site. For Lync administrators, the URL is: http://blogs.technet.com/b/topsupportsolutions/archive/tags/lync/ which sets out top solutions for Lync which was last updated late November 2013, so is relatively up to date.

If you are having problems with Lync, consult these references to see if your problem is one of the well known variety with an equally well known solution.

Technorati Tags: Lync,Troubleshooting

Persistent Chat and High Availability with Lync 2013

Some 5 years ago, Microsoft bought a third party company (Parlano) and acquired their highly regarded group chat product, which was a feature missing from OCS. Group Chat was eventually “added” into OCS and Lync 2010 although as more of a bolt on than a full citizen in the Lync product. Group chat in those days was essentially a separate stand-alone application that required separate servers for both the GC feature and for its databases. The actual installation was also challenging and highly error prone.

With Lync 2013, Microsoft did a lot of simplification work integrating it into the overall Lync topology. Microsoft also changed the name of this feature to Persistent Chat. With PC in Lync 2013, you can co-locate the GC service on the Front End servers, and you can co-locate the PC databases on SQL servers used for other UC databases.

Like all of the Lync 2012 components, PC is supported by the underlying Lync Architecture, including the high availability features. Like all Lync features, availability requirements tend to be pretty high, as companies begin to depend on things like PC.

In a complex blog post over on TechNet, Richard Schwendiman (an MS Exchange/Lync PFE) presents a deep dive into PC’s High Availability and Disaster Recovery features. Richard starts off by looking at how you can engineer HA in a single data centre. This architecture enables a single PC server to fail and for the client to be re-connected to another PC server. The blog post then goes on to look at disaster recovery – or engineering against the failure of an entire Lync Site, in particular using stretched sites for PC.

This blog post is worth reading if you are going to be implementing Persistent Chat either as part of an initial Lync deployment or as a later phase. TechNet has a good article that provides more information on how Persistent Chat works. You can find more details on HA and DR in Lync Server 2013 here (a blog article by Thomas Binder). And for more information on capacity planning for PC, see the TechNet article at Http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg615006.aspx.

Technorati Tags: Lync,Persistent Chat,High Availability

Software Defined Networking and Lync 2013

In mid-December, Microsoft  issued a Lync Software Defined Network API and related documentation to enable you and your applications to interface with Lync. This API can enable 3rd party applications to monitor, isolate and correct issues in a network that impact on Lync’s overall quality of experience.

There are three files included (you can download some or all of them!) :

• LyncSDNAPI.msi – this is a 1.6 MB MSI that installs the necessary APIs onto your machine.
• LyncSdnApiData.zip – this is a 287 KB zip file that contains a compiled HTML help file documenting and describing the API elements
• Microsoft Lync SDN API Documentation.pdf – this 1.2 MB PDF document describes the Lync SDN 1013 API interface.

The idea behind the API set is fairly straightforward. Lync deployments can end up with user experience impacted by overall network performance. This can in turn lead to both calls being dropped (or not even connected), as well as jittery audio. This API is designed to enable network management applications to all the relevant Lync network diagnostic data, including Lync Quality Of Experience information.

So while this API can’t be used directly to improve performance, what it does do is to provide network management vendors and other third parties with the ability to develop rich diagnostic tools to assist you in deploying Lync.

I can’t wait to see vendors taking advantage of this API!

Technorati Tags: SDN,Software Defined Networking,Microsoft,Lync,Lync 2013

Naming Network Adapters in Windows 8 and PowerShell For Lync Admins

The use of automation to deploy and manage complex TCP/IP networks is of prime importance to just about any IT Pro these days. It’s hard to think of how some businesses would function without a working network, including Internet and IP phone access.  Even mid-size companies can find their networks are becoming more complex with each passing year as requirements grow for network services – and Lync can certainly provide the need for those services!

In terms of managing your TCP/IP network, PowerShell and the PowerShell modules released with the latest versions of Windows are slowly slowly replacing tools that have been in use since Windows NT launched over 20 years ago and before then on Unix (e.g. IPConfig, Ping) and well as somewhat more modern ones such as NetSH. 

For the Lync Admin, these tools and the PowerShell cmdlets replacing those older tools both enable you to perform the same operations (e.g. check that the SRV record for your pool is correctly registered). You’re just using different tools (and with some judicious cmdlet aliasing, can be more efficient that the older tools!). This is the first of a number of articles I’m going to write this year focusing on managing networks using PowerShell V3 and Windows 8.

In writing scripts to configure any aspect of a Lync network (IP address, DNS settings, routing information, etc., etc.) you need to be able to enumerate and then select specific network objects (NIC, Route Table Entry, DNS Cache objects).  To simplify the management of these objects, you need a simple and consistent object naming convention and the ability to name specific objects based on this naming convention. This involves writing some simple configuration scripts.

One challenge to doing this has been the default naming convention used before Windows 8. But with Windows 8 and beyond it’s much simpler. If you just one NIC, it is named either Ethernet or WiFi. If you have a second, or third NIC, it would just have an integer appended to the name, e.g. Ethernet 2, Ethernet 3 etc. A nice special case is the pseudo NIC added to the Hyper-V host representing a Hyper-V Switch. These are named vEthernet (<switch name>).

My Hyper-V host looks like this (and apologies for the rendering here in the blog):

[cookham12]: PS C:\Users\tfl\Documents> get-netadapter

Name                      InterfaceDescription                    ifIndex Status       MacAddress             LinkSpeed
----                      --------------------                    ------- ------       ----------             ---------
vEthernet (External)      Hyper-V Virtual Ethernet Adapter #3          27 Up           00-1E-4F-CC-26-21        10 Gbps
vEthernet (Internal)      Hyper-V Virtual Ethernet Adapter #2          16 Up           00-15-5D-01-77-00        10 Gbps
Ethernet                  Broadcom NetXtreme 57xx Gigabit Cont...      12 Up           00-1E-4F-CC-26-21         1 Gbps

This naming convention is provided for you when you install Windows and add NICs (virtual or otherwise) and gives you a great starting point. Most IT Pros will want to name individual NICs with a more task oriented name (e.g. VPN1, SIP-PROV-GC-<city>-<linkid>, etc). Your PowerShell script to name these NICs might look like this:

Get-NetAdapter | Where name -like *vEther*External* |
      Rename-NetAdapter -NewName "SIP-PROV-GC-LON-1"

Get-NetAdapter | Where name -like *vEther*Internal* |
      Rename-NetAdapter -NewName "VM"

In some future articles, I’ll look at how to take this consistent naming system and perform common configuration and troubleshooting on them.

Technorati Tags: Lync,PowerShell,Networking,TCP/IP

Tracking Santa–with the help of Norad

For those of you in the holiday spirits, here’s a fun web site to visit: http://www.noradsanta.org/. If y9ou look around, you can find a cool set of videos, all with a great deal of humour and some pretty interesting views of the real Norad.

This post has nothing to do with PowerShell or Lync – but the site’s still fun.

Happy Christmas!

Microsoft Lync Improvement Suggestions

In the LinkedIn Microsoft Lync Server 2010 group, MVP Pat Richard posted a link to the Lync Improvement Suggestions site. From this site, the community can make suggestions for new features in Lync, and can vote on the usefulness. The theory is that great ideas bubble up to the top. The site also shows those ideas that have been completed.

I think this is a super idea. The only downside is the disclaimer at the top of the web site page: “NOT SUPPORTED BY MICROSOFT”.  Nevertheless,knowing how good Microsoft is at following sites like this, it would be amazing if they didn’t at least take a look at the popular suggestions.  Of course, if you know the current product, many of the popular ideas are not really a surprise: Better response groups, Requests for take control of the client (for the help desk) and many more. Many of these seem ‘obvious’ – we’ll see how many get implemented.

Technorati Tags: Lync,Lync Improvement Suggestions

Installing Lync 2013 without Domain Admin Permissions

In many organisations, permissions are guarded carefully and are not given out lightly. Domain Administrator and Enterprise Administrator privileges are rarely given out to anyone. On the one hand, this is a good thing as it reduces the number of people who have all powerful user accounts and therefore reduces the risk of those with such powerful accounts doing damage (either accidentally or intentionally). ON the other hand, lack of privileges can make installing enterprise software packag4es, such as Lync Server 2013 more difficult.

In a recent blog article, Andrew Price, sets out how you can install Lync Server 2013 without Domain Admin permissions. As the first paragraph sets out, you DO need Admin rights on the Front end servers in order to carry out the installation, but that permission is local to the FE Server (and other key Lync Role servers including Mediation and Edge).

This article makes good reading for anyone planning on installing Lync Server 2013 and you work in a permission scarce environment.

Technorati Tags: Lync Server,Installation

EU Approves Skype Takeover by Microsoft

Last week, it was widely reported that the EU had finally approved the take over by Microsoft of Skype. Like all too many big company mergers or take overs, the actual deal is often done far after the initial announcements. I have to say when I read the announcement (http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/12/11/63651.htm) I had thought this was all done and dusted a long time ago. The original take over was announced in 2011 and was objected to by at least some of the usual suspects, including Cisco. The General Courts of the European Union rejected the argument that Microsoft’s dominant position would destroy their (Cisco and others) ability to compete for enterprise customers.

I have long felt that Skype could be Microsoft’s method of delivering Enterprise Voice in the cloud. As I saw it, Skype (rebranded to avoid confusion) could easily become the component of Lync Online that enabled users to make and receive PSTN calls via the cloud. That so far has not happened.

2014 is looking like being a very interesting year!

Technorati Tags: Lync,Skype,Microsoft

User Extensible Lync Control Panel

I just found a really cool post by Lync MVP Superstar Matt Landis (http://windowspbx.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/extensible-powershell-driven-lync.html) which describes an extensible Lync control Panel. This tool is based on using Dell (Quest) PowerGUI and PowerShell. It looks relatively trivial to add stuff to this control panel (or adapt what’s already there.

PowerGui always had this ability-you can add new nodes to the PowerGui control and add scripts that do things at each node. Ad Matt’s post shows, you can more or less create your own control panel that both looks very similar to the Control Panel inside Lync but you can also add things that are missing.

See the URL above for more details, and also look at a short demo of this tool. With a bit of PowerGui skills and some PowerShell knowledge, you can extend this to do anything you want – for example, you could build in reports and controls for DNS, AD, etc. (all things that support your Lync environment).

Unfortunately, I can’t find anywhere to download it from – but have asked Matt for this. I’ll post more when I get it.

Technorati Tags: Lync,DIY Control Panel,PowerGui

Lync 2013 Client Cumulative Update

Microsoft has recently updated both the Lync Server 2013 and the Lync 2013 client. While most Lync folks tend to concentrate on the former, the latter often includes much wanted and much needed functionality (as well of course as bug fixes). The most recent client update contains a number of features that have been long requested. These include:

• Spell checker  - as you type IM’s, Lync can now check the spelling which is useful particularly in IM sessions with clients where having fewer typos is a good thing.
• Photos of sender and receiver – this enables you to see photos in an IM chat or conference of all the participants. This may be overkill in some cases, but in others (e.g. in an IM conference with a large number of participants) it can be really very useful.
• External photos – pictures from external locations was a feature of Lync 2012, but in the RTM version of Lync 2013, this feature was dropped. But now it’s back – although it need some administrator input in order to enable users to point to external photos.
• Persistent Chat conferencing – this feature enables you to start a conference with the folks currently in a persistent chat chat room.
• Recording options – you have the option to record sessions (something available in the RTM version) but now you can record in different resolutions. It looks like you can only record on one resolution.
• Sign-in Logs option – troubleshooting client logins has always been possible, but with the CU, there is a Sign-in Logs option in the Lync client which enables users to both view and copy logon information and send it to the help desk for more assistance.

As I see it with this CU, the good Lync client just gets a bit better. So far, I’ve not heard any horror stories but like all Lync CUs (client and server side) be sure to do your own testing. I am not aware of any issues with this CU, but the way that these releases are implemented means you should take the time to test before rolling out – just in case.

For more information on the CU, read Byron Spurlock’s article on Windows IT Pro site.

Technorati Tags: Lync Client,November 2013 Cumulative Update

Microsoft Unified Communications User Group London

The UK, in particular London, has a UC focused user group which meets on a regular basis, quarterly. The group is known as the Microsoft Unified Communications User group London or MUCUGL.

The last meeting was in October and I see the slides for that event are now up on SlideShare. You can see the presentations from the MUCUGL web site at: http://mucugl.co.uk/.

I just wish I could make it to the MUCUGL events – I seem to be out of the country every time they meet.

 

Technorati Tags: Lync,Lync User Group,MIcrosoft Unified Communications User Group London,MUCUGL

Another Vulnerability–and another Patch

Yet another security vulnerability in Windows, Office and Lync has been discovered that could enable remote code execution. The vulnerability is triggered if the user views content that contains specially adapted TIFF files. The vulnerability was first noted in security advisory 2896666 published in early November.

The fix is Microsoft Security Bulletin MS13-096. To resolve the fix, there are a number of potential patches that need to be applied – these now appear to have shipped via Automatic Update. So for home systems, if you are using Lync, or office or later versions of Windows, make sure your systems are all patched (Microsoft/Windows update should do the trick). If you are an an oganisation that managed software updates, make sure the updates for this security bulletin are applied.

Technorati Tags: Security patch,windows,office,Lync

Lync Phone Devices

Like most modern VOIP voice products, Microsoft’s Lync communications product supports both soft phones and physical phones (aka Lync Phones). Soft phones are the phone client, running in software on your pc, laptop, or device. I personally have my Lync client on my phone, Surface tablet, laptop and desktop. 

The physical phones are free standing devices that look like your traditional feature phone, with different models having different features. With Lync, these phones are devices with an operating system that runs the Lync client. From a Lync Server point of view, they are just client end-points, with an IP address and a user logged on. that way, should you get an incoming audio call you can answer it just like you did with your old PBX phone. Lync phones.

Under Microsoft's Unified Communication Open Interoperability program, 3rd party solutions are tested and qualified for interoperability. Qualified devices such as phones gateways, load balancers, etc. are an important aspect of any Lync deployment. The vendor process makes interesting reading. There’s a lot to it, but having qualified solutions is important all the way around.

Telecom Reseller magazine features an interview with Nir Pardo from AudioCodes where he discusses some of the aspect of IP phones. Nir notes two categories of Lync phones:

• Optimized for Lync – these are devices that in run the Lync Phone Edition client on some specialised hardware devices produced by a third party. These devices provide full support for all Lync functionality.
• Compatible with Lync – these devices run OEM software and support most, but not all of Lync’s function.

As an example of the difference between these two categories, Lync Optimized devices handle call parking, malicious call tracing and the ability to search Lync’s contact list. Having said that – ‘compatible’ phone devices from Snom do handle both call parking and contact searching.

But does this distinction matter much – are these terms just marketing jive? Well at one level there does seem to be a pricing difference – Optimized for Lync phones seem to be more expensive.

In my view they do matter – to get the most out of a Lync investment you want your users to be able to use all the features of the product. And with some compatible devices may not provide access to Lync’s full features set, you end up with a sub-optimal implementation.  While devices in both categories provide presence and a range of other features, the Optimized devices do offer more.  Having said that, in many cases, your users are probably not going to really need all those features – and some compatible phones do offer most of them. At the end of the day these two categories enable you to find phones that fit some users at a cheaper price point while providing those who really need it with slightly more expensive hardware.

Snom have developed a short white paper on choosing the best phone for Lync. Naturally the paper is a little biased in terms of the products covered, but it does provide some additional background on Optimised vs Compatible devices that is probably worth reading.

This certainly under lines the need to plan devices carefully in terms of what the users need, what they want and what the budget allows. For many users, the Lync client will be their preferred way to interact with Lync and other Lync Users. The Lync Phone device gives you options – but make sure you do the planning and read the fine print! And be prepared to test carefully and thoroughly.

Technorati Tags: Lync Phone

Why VOIP over Wireless May Not Be A Great Idea

Lync, when it first released a mobile client did not support voice over WI-Fi. In an article I stumbled across today, I was reminded of why that was. Adam Ghent, admittedly a couple of years ago, laid out some of the reasons why VOIP Over WiFI was not quite the holy grail that some Lync competitors saw it as being! IN particular, Wireless is not all that good with real time media, combined with the fact that most  wireless deployments were carried out without regard for real time media.

Now since this article was first published a couple of years ago, Microsoft has announced WIFI support for VOIP so you CAN do it, but again the question is whether this is a good thing. If you are deploying Lync, while VOIP over Wifi may appear attractive, consider your wireless infrastructure carefully. Does it support QOS? Can a voice call be transferred fully if the client moves between access points? And if you have roaming support turned on – what happens when the phone moves out of wireless range – hint it uses data over the telephone which for some plans can be considerably more expensive than using GSM et al.

Technorati Tags: Lync wireless

Lync End User Training–For Lync 2010

I just came across a free download at Microsoft.com: Microsoft Lync 2010 training. This training consists of 7 separate PPT decks that cover key features of Lync 2010 clients, including:

• Lync 2010 Attendant
• Lync 2010 Conferencing and Collaboration
• Lync 2010 Delegate
• Lync 2010 IM and Presence
• Lync 1020 RGS
• Lync 2010 Voice an Video
• Lync 2010 Web Application

If you are rolling out Lync 2010, these could be useful training aides. You could consider recording using a tool like Camtasia, and put it on your internal web site as refresher training for staff, particularly new staff.
I’ve not managed to find any such training for Lync 2013 (yet). Pointers welcome!

[Later]
Thanks Simon for picking up the non link. Fixed.

Technorati Tags: Lync Client training,Lync 2010

SPs coming for Office, SharePoint and Exchange 2013-but not Lync

I notice over on Peter Bruzzewse’s InfoWorld column, more information about the upcoming Service Packs For Office, SharePoint and Exchange 2013. A key focus of these upcoming service packs is to bring the on-premise versions of these tools up to par with what’s being delivered in Office 365.  Office 365 has a much more frequent update schedule although the changes at each update are correspondingly smaller although over time these differences mount up.
Peter notes many of the features coming – and yes there are likely to be AD Schema changes too. One key feature of Exchange 2013 SP1 is the re-introduction of the Edge server role. This role was, for some reason, omitted from Exchange 2013 RTM, but is now brought back, although it’s unlikely, the article suggests, to have much in the way of major feature enhancements. Sounds a bit like Public Folders.
One thing missing from all this is SP1 for Lync. I am guessing that there is a good reason for this – there won’t be a SP for Lync 2013. Traditionally, the Lync team have eschewed Service Packs, relying instead on Cumulative Updates on a fairly frequent schedule. So is there going to be a new version of Lync? Well, probably -  but the real question is when.
My guess is that any new version will not be disclosed until the Lync Conference in February 2014 in Las Vegas. If it is announced then, we’d likely see a preview late Spring to early Summer and then see RTM in the autumn. Of course, this is only just a huge guess – if it’s correct you heard it here first, but if not, then it’s just another uninformed rumour.  Having said that, we’re sort of due for a new version in the coming 18 months at least. We’ll see.
But in the mean time, get planning on the updates to Office, SharePoint and Exchange 2013.

Technorati Tags: Lync,Lync 2013,Lync 2013 Next Generation

Lync PreCall Diagnostics–For Win 8.1

I just noticed a new application in the Windows 8 store – Lyn 2013 PreCall Diagnostics. You can view details about this app from clicking on the hyperlink, but to use it, you a) must have Windows 8.1 and must install from the Windows Store.

This application enables you to examine the current state of the network and look at how that might impact the media quality should you place a call. What you get is a D shows a graphical view of your network metrics  including Network MOS, Packet Loss and Interarrival Jitter.

If you are working with Lync, especially Lync Enterprise Voice, this is likely to be a very key troubleshooting tool.

My only reservation is that it requires Windows 8.1 and does not appear to run on Windows 8. I really want this on my laptop, but simply cant afford the day or more it would take to reinstall the OS and all my apps.

Technorati Tags: Lync,Lync Client. diagnostics

A Lync 2013 Case Study–Evidence, Evidence, Evidence!

As I teach Lync, I find the students in the classes eager for proof, evidence, that Lync really does deliver. It’s all fine and well me repeating the words on the slides, or in my Instructor’s Guide – but seeing a real life customer with real life experiences of the REAL good and bad news of any product is like gold dust. Some case studies read like they were written before the product went in and avoid any discussion of real benefits and problems encountered.

The case study for Mattersight over on BizTechmagazine.com makes good reading.Mattersight is a consulting company that The case study notes Lync has saved Mattersight money. The cost of implementing a replacement cost roughly 1/3 what replacing their old gear might have cost.  Most of the savings they have achieve, the article notes, are from reduced licensing costs. Additionally, “Lync can be ‘setup ok [white box] servers that are far less expensive than other UC Systems”, the article notes.

The article also notes that whilst savings are pretty important, what really sold Mattersight on Lync was the way it’s dispersed employee could work more collaboratively. Clearly this was a huge benefit for Mattersight. But I can understand that its’ very hard to put a hard-money amount on what this is work to Mattersight.

A nice success story that shows some of the hard and soft benefits which can accrue through adoption of  Lync. I look forward to more evidence like this.

Technorati Tags: lync,evidence

Sending an Lync IM using PowerShell

I just saw a neat script over at Microsoft’s scripting center – Send Lync IM with PowerShell. It does what it says on the tin. But there’s some good news and some bad news with this script.

First, out of the box it won’t run because the reference assemblies do not exist. No problem – just load the SDK. Ahh – but the SDK requires you to have Visual Studio installed. A bit tedious to enable one to play with it, but I understand.

To send an IM with the client dll loaded is done in several steps involving first getting the client details, then getting a conversation, looking up the contact you want to send the message to and finally sending the IM.

Technorati Tags: Lync,Lync Clent SDK

Lync’s Reverse Proxy–Continuing Availability of TMG technology

As most Lync IT Pros know, in order to connect remote users and get full fidelity requires both an Edge server and a reverse proxy. The Edge Server is a Lync role – to implement, you just add the edge server to the topology builder, then install the software on the edge server. Assuming you have all the ports setup properly on the firewall, installation of the edge is pretty near trivial.

The Edge server does most, but not all, the work required to connect remote users to you Lync infrastructure. In order to get full fidelity for remote users, you also need to implement some other reverse proxy. Features like group expansion and a bunch more require a reverse proxy feature.

Microsoft has always been careful to point out that any reverse proxy will fit the bill – and did not mandate a specific Microsoft solution. Having said that, for years, the standard recommendation was Microsoft’s most excellent Threat Management Gateway (or ISA server as it was previously known).The bad news is that Microsoft has discontinued TMG as a product, and has not really provided an alternative. This decision has understandably brought disappointment to the market. I’ve long believed that the reverse proxy role really should be integrated into Lync’s Edge Server to reduce the number of servers you need to support your remote user population – but thus far that’s not happened.

The good news is that one of Microsoft’s OEM partners, Celestix are able to build the TMG technology into their MSA appliance range until 2023. They will also continue to provide their comprehensive technical support services, ensuring that customers have many more years’ service from TMG. See here for more details.

So if you are considering deploying Lync and have not yet chosen a reverse proxy solution, then this might be one to take a look at. I don’t have any costings so I do not know how much (or little) this solution will cost. Celestix’s product are marketed in the UK by Satisnet, based in Bedford (www.satisnet.co.uk).

Technorati Tags: Lync,reverse proxy,TMG,Celestix,Satisnet

Exchange 2013 Service Pack 1 Coming Soon!

Over on Microsoft’s Office blog, Microsoft announced that a full service pack, SP1, for Exchange 2013 will be coming in the new year. That Service pack is, in effect, a single rollup patch that incorporates all the current cumulative updates.

For me, the most important feature of this upcoming SP is Exchange 2013 Support on Server 2012 R2. This means that I can build out my Lync 2013 farm using the latest version of the OS for both the Lync and the Exchange VMs. Yeah!

Both Exchange and Lync use a CU scheme to roll out updates for on-prem customers. These are regular updates and each one is cumulative. An SP then is sort of an uber-rollup. This is a really nice approach, IMHO. Hopefully, this will allow MSDN and TechNet to offer an SP1 included version of Exchange for building VM test farms.

Lync uses a similar cumulative update model, but thus far has not incorporated them into a formal Service Pack. I can understand it, but at the same time, it would be nice to be able to get ahold of a fully patched version of Lync – downloading all the patches from the Internet just takes time, especially for test labs. Mind you, the Lync team work on a different release rhythm and have been able to do updated versions faster than the Exchange team. We’ll see what happens in the spring!

Technorati Tags: Lync,Exchange,Exchange 2013 SP1