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

PowerShell Remoting through Group Policy

Special Operations software has just announced SpecOps Command: PowerShell Remoting through Group Policy. I was lucky enough to see a neat demo last week while in Stockholm - this is a neat tool. As I understand it, it'll be formally released at TechEd in Barcelona.

 Basically, SpecOps uses group policy to send out scripts, cmdlets and (I assume providers) to client systems. These scripts are then run on the target machine (one, daily, weekly, etc) and the results returned back to a central server. A very very neat solution to the lack of remoting in PowerShell V1. And even when we get V2 (a preview edition of V2 will be available in Barcelona), GP may be a better option due to permissions on the local systems.

I can't wait to get my hands on this code! Yet another aspect of the power of the PowerShell community - when there are gaps, someone or some organisation will just fill them. PowerShell rocks - and so does SpecOps Command.

Technorati tags: PowerShell, Special Operations Software, Specops Command

Communicator 2007 Hotfix Package

 Microsoft has released a hot fix for Office Communicator 2007.

As noted in the KB article (Description of the Communicator 2007 hotfix package: October 5, 2007), this hot fix package includes at least 15 separate bug fixes.

This is probably a must-add hot fix for OCS 2007 users.

Technorati tags: OCS, Office Communicaor 2007

PowerShell Training In Europe

As noted in over in my work blog, I'm starting to teach PowerShell in Europe. My first classes are this week in Stockholm and in Copenhagen. I'm delivering the two day PowerShell Fundamentals class in both cities. To say the least, I'm really excited to finally being able to run real PowerShell training for our customers.

In the background, Microsoft has engaged a vendor to create a formal MOC class on PowerShell, but we'll not see this till next June. In the mean time, if you want PowerShell training in Europe, feel free to contact me and I'll put you in touch with the local office. And wherever possible, I'm happy to come to teach these classes.

Technorati tags: PowerShell, PowerShell training, Global Knowledge

Office Communications Server 2007 Document: Technical Reference

 Microsoft has at last published the detailed technical reference to OCS 2007. This is a must read for all OCS fans!

Download details: Office Communications Server 2007 Document: Technical Reference

Technorati tags: OCS 2007, OCS Technical Reference

Vista Adoption Numbers

 One of the big questions many commentators are posing is just how much deployment is happening with Vista. Forget the MS statements around adoption - what is really happening. From where I sit, adoption is not as rosy as MS would want us to belive - and like many I'm no longer using Vista on front line systems as I've gone back to XP.  Over on the Hackers blog, Alex reports Random: Some Vista adoption numbers. These show that Vista is in use by only 10% of their web site users, and less than1% of the users of CounterSpy. These numbers feel a little bit lower than the MS VIsta Hype Machine would lead us to believe.

What is your take on adoption - what are you seeing??

Technorati tags: Vista, Vista Adoption, Microsoft

Updated Live Writer

Microsoft's Windows Live Writer blogging tool has now reached Beta 3 stage. As a free blogging too, I find it excellent - and now even better. The latest release, which you can download from Microsoft's webs site.

There are many improvements in Beta 3. These include:

• Publish XHTML-style markup

• Use Writer in 28 additional languages

• Print your posts

• Justify-align a post's text

• Better image handling (in particular fewer blurry images)

• Resolved installation issues from the last release

• Plus Many other bug fixes and enhancements

 

Get it now!

[LATER]

Unfortunately, as one reader has pointed out in a comment to this blog entry, it appears that the latest beta of Live Writer does not work on x64 systems which is a pretty significant omission. Thanks to Chris Randall for pointing this out - I missed it since I am still mainly using i386 systems.

 

Technorati tags: Live Writer, Not supported on x64

First-Gen Zune Getting All The New Features: This is How You Treat Your Customers

Gizmodo is reporting that First-Gen Zunes Are To Get All The New Zune 2 features (for free!!). The post goes on to suggest that "This is How You Treat Your Customers". I agree completely!! Having ordered the Zune two days before the announcement, it was a shock to find that whilst in transit, my purchase was not outdated. It was a delight to find the extra features will be available for free download. In effect, I've got a somewhat smaller and marginally thicker box, but for what I use it for (short-ish commutes up to town and flights inside EMEA) my 30gb model is fine.

So thanks Microsoft - this is really the way to treat your customers. The folks over in the Vista group (and MSL) could learn a thing or two from this very nice move.

Technorati tags: Zune, Microsoft, MSL

PowerGUI - A updated version is available

Those nice folks at Quest have released a new version of PowerGui - this is a free download you get  here: http://powergui.org/filedownload.jspa?attachmentID=915&filePath=/shares/powergui/sbin/downloads/PowerGUI.1.0.11.207.msi.

NB: if you have an earlier version of PowerGui, this must be removed before installing the new version.

This is a neat tool!!

Technorati tags: PowerShell, PowerGui, Quest

I Got A ZUNE!

As an Microsoft MVP, those nice folks in Redmond provide a small balance at the company store that I can spend on software, books, apparel, etc.  At least they so every year I am re-awarded. This is a very nice benefit.

Last Sunday, I realised that, as MVP renewal was on October 1 (I did get renewed !, my company store balance would be wiped out. So I logged on to see what I could spend my balance on. Frankly nothing jumped out - but on the home page, there was an advert for a Zune. As it happened, I had just enough to buy buy it, so I hit the appropriate keys and yesterday the nice FedEx man delivered it. My wife is furious - but I played with it till 3:00 in the morning. 

First impressions: I like it! Now I've not had an real iPod so maybe there are things I'm missing, but I've found the Zune pretty easy to use. The quality and volume are all well, although the build quality of the headphone jack leaves a bit to be desired (If you push too far, the headphones go mono).

The Zune host software is easy enough to use. I've managed to download several live concerts (Jerry Garcia, The Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd and Keith Jarrett). I'm listening to a great GD 69 show as I write this posting.

One thing that freaked me out was reading about the new Zune - it was announced after I'd ordered, but before I'd even got it! But as it happens, most of the features of the new box are to be made available as a firmware upgrade for existing Zunes (although I have to suffer the 30gb hard disk). But the firmware upgrades are meant to be free - I have one upgrade already that adds wireless etc.

One thing I was surprised at - by default, plugging a Zune into your PC does not automagically show the Zune hard disk on the host. As a 30GB USB hard drive that I will carry around with me, this feature is pretty desirable. Turns out there's a simple fix - a few registry hacks as described on the ZuneMods.Net site. 

However, the instructions for this mod are marginally wrong (and will be wrong for some people). The instructions suggest you modify registry values below HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\ControlSet001\Enum\USB\. Since NT boxes can have several controls ets editing a specific one is incorrect. To ensure it works, use the key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Enum\USB\ instead. Otherwise this mod works great and I've got it working on my system now! More importantly - this does NOTHING to the Zune, so it's not likely to suddenly brick the device. 

All in all, I like my Zune!

Technorati tags: Microsoft, MVP, Zune

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

Prometric: Testing and Assessment Blog

As many of you will know, Microsoft has gone single-vendor for its certification testing. MSL kept this a secret until they announced over the summer that Prometric had won the single vendor contract. Sadly, for most of people I know, VUE lost out big time. Over the years, VUE customer service was consistently better, VUE testing sites consistently better, and the VUE web site better. Overall, almost every person I know preferred VUE to Prometric - at least in my experience of 14 years of MCP testing. But that did not seem to matter. All that seemed to matter was that Prometric made a good proposal (which is also secret so).  And in a pretty cynical bit of communication, the change was announced just as everyone was headed away for a US bank holiday.

Naturally, when this change was announced there was a great outcry - which MSL seemed to be somewhat surprised about, but they promised to listen and to fix the problems.  Chris Pirie, in a recent blog entry, claims MSL really is listening. Sadly, it appears that  nothing is actually being achieved and the promises appear somewhat empty.

In early July, I had the chance to put some of my concerns to key Prometric management. I was promised big changes and in response to that I was happy to wait and see. Well, 2 months later and from everything I hear, there are still problems. MSL is doing its best to keep these quiet by insisting that any feedback come via mail - they are not addressing the issues in any public forum that I can see.

One important update that I found quite amusing - Prometric has now put up a marketing "blog": Testing and Assessment which trumpets their successes in testing and certification. The amusing bit for me is that the "blog" does not allow user comments. While this may be safer for Prometric, it means the authentic voice of the customer continues to be not heard. I deeply distrust any site that claims to be a blog but provides no way of enabling legitimate reader feedback.

I am not excited. :-(

Technorati tags: Microsoft Certification, Prometric, Vue, VUE Rocked!!

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

Going To Have To Pay For Vista SP1?

A rumour, to be sure, but are Vista users going To Have To Pay For Vista SP1?. Now this may just be a "pay P&P to get the DVD" deal in which case that's perfectly reasonable. But if MS plans to chare more than simple costs involved in shipping then I'd expect a pretty huge backlash. I'm about to buy a new Dell box for my wife, and this would make a difference to my choice of OS (fortunately Dell still provides XP which is perfectly fine for the intended use).

Technorati tags: vista, Vista SP1, Microsoft

Interview with Mike Neil on Microsoft Virtulisation

 VMblog.com has an interesting interview with Mike Neil, Microsoft's general manager for virtulisation. In the interview Neil assesses the competition, licensing and security of virtulisation. There are some interesting questions, but some of Neil's answers sadly descend in to PR-speak. He disagrees with the suggestion that Microsoft is way behind VMware claiming that virtulisation is still a developing market. He also says that the dropping of Live Migration from the Viridian platform not a big deal since it was 'just a sexy feature [that] sounds really exciting" and goes on to suggest that it's not being used much in the VMware product.  

One nice part of the interview, Neil claims that Microsoft are still developing Virtual PC and Virtual Server and that the respective teams have even grown. No indication of when better products will be available is given however. I use VPC in the classroom heavily and would love a better product - there's just too much flakieness involved with VPC. Plus VPC can't make use of multi-core systems the way VMware does. 64-bit support would also be very useful.

The final bit of bad or good news (depending on your point of view), Neil re-confirms that the hypervisor is still a year away. He cites February 2008 as the Longhorn Ship date, with the hypervisor is due to ship 6 months after that. He gives no dates on beta programs. I suspect that by the Longhorn "ship date" he means the launch date (I hope he's not implying a further slip of RTM!!). I'm hoping to see early versions coming in the next few months.

Technorati tags: Viridian, Microsoft, Hypervisor, VMware, Virtual PC, Martin Neil

Office Communications Server 2007 Resource Kit Tools

 Microsoft has posted the updated  Office Communications Server 2007 Resource Kit Tools for free download. One cool tool is Snooper.exe which can help you parse SIP and C3P protocol logs, including those generated by OCSLogger.exe.

These tools are a must have if you are using OCS!!

Technorati tags: Office Communications Server, OCS Resource Kit

404 Error Pages

Smashing  Magazine asked their readers to design 404 pages, the page a web server returns when for whatever reason the page you asked for does not exist.  The results, 404 Error Pages: Reloaded show some fantastic out of the box thinking - and are a lot more interesting than some that I can mention! My favorite is the Blue Screen of Death on the Web.

Technorati tags: 404, Smashing Magazine, fun

Quest's AD cmdlets 1.0.4 are Released

Those very nice people at Quest have released an updated version of the free AD PowerShell Cmdlets. You can read about the updates contained in the  AD cmdlets 1.0.4 release in Dmitry Sotnikov's Blog. If you use Active Directory and PowerShell, these free cmdlets are must-haves! There's also a pretty good bit of documentation (PDF).

To download the updates, go to the Quest web site (you have to register to get access at present). And did I mention that these are free?

These cmdlets really rock - thanks Quest!!

Technorati tags: Quest, AD Cmdlets, PowerShell