The Sixth Sense Tech of the Future ( Must Watch )

Communcator Web Access R2 (error 0-1-492)

Apparently there is a bug with CWA and Windows 2008 where the Service Principal Name (SPN) isn’t created for the FQDN of your CWA site. The result is the following error when you attempt to sign in with integrated Windows authentication

Cannot sign in because your computer clock is not set correctly or your
account is invalid (error code: 0-1-492)

The Windows authentication site will fail with the error if your site is running on Windows 2008 Server

HOW TO FIX IT:

·         You need to add an SPN matching the FQDN of your internal site (cwa.contoso.com) to the user account you assigned in AD for CWA.

·         Open ADSIEDIT and navigate to the OU where your CWA service account is stored.

·         Locate the CWA service account (mine is called ‘CWAService’) and right-click then choose Properties.

·         Turn on the checkbox to ‘Show only attributes that have values’ and scroll down to an entry called ’servicePrincipalName’.

·         Click the Edit button.

·         Type in the SPN using the following format (http/). For example, if your site is called “cwa.contoso.com” then type in “http/cwa.contoso.com”.

NOTE: Do NOT type http://.

·         Click OK and you’re done!

Thanks to the following blogs :

http://jasonshave.blogspot.com/2009/01/communcator-web-access-error-0-1-492.html

http://www.confusedamused.com/notebook/cwa-2007-r2-login-fails/

How to Integrate Exchange UM Voicemail into Cisco IP Phones

I am working with a client who is using Cisco CUCM with Cisco Phones, along with Microsoft Exchange 2007 voice mail on the UM , but when you divert the phone to voicemail you are not prompted with the users voicemail prompt – you are prompted with the Subscriber access greeting of “ Welcome , you are connected to Microsoft exchange ,…etc )

Usually when you call someone and there is no answer then you are transferred to the Pilot number, the extension of the person you are calling is sent also in the request so that you would be directly transferred to the users voice mail not to the Welcome greeting.

This Problem Happens when Diverted Calls are not accepted because both sides cannot agree on DTMF handling , the MTP is important, because it deals with differences in how DTMF is signaled between the phones and gateways and the sip trunk

Just make sure the following on the Cisco SIP trunk:

1. Accept Out-of-Dialog REFER
2. Accept unsolicited Notification
3. Accept Replaces Header
4. Have the SIP trunk configured to use MTP, once I’d configured MTP and MRG/MGRL

The changes detailed below are based on a new installation of Call Manager 5. As this environment been created for the purpose of testing the integration between platforms, it contains only minimum configuration. The required Changes are with:

·         Media Termination Point (MTP)

·         Changes to security profile

Media Termination Point: The Cisco Call Manager installation builds the default media termination point.

Media Resource Group: Create a media resource group “MRG_CCM5” and add the media resource (MTP) to the group. Multicast is not required.

Media Resource Group List: Create a media resource group list “MRGL_CCM5” and add the media resource group “MRG_CCM5” to the list.

Device Pools: By default Cisco Call Manager creates the “default” device pool. Open the device pool “default” and select the new media resource group list “MRGL_CCM5”.

SIP Trunk Security Profiles: Copy the “Non Secure SIP Trunk Profile” to “E2K7 Non Secure SIP Trunk Profile” and enable “Accept Unsolicited Notifications”.

Partition Configuration: Create a Class of Control Partition “Local”.

Calling Search Space: Create a Class of Control Calling Search Space “CCS_Local” and add the Partition “Local” to the calling search space.

Trunk Configuration:

Trunk Configuration General	Setting
Device Name	E2K7
Description	Exchange UM
Device Pool	Default
Call Classification	Use System Default
Media Resource Group List	<None>
Location	Hub_None
AAR Group	<None>
Packet Capture Mode	None
Packet Capture Duration	0
Media Termination Point Required	Enabled
Retry Video Calls as Audio	Disabled
Transmit UTF-8 for Calling Party Name	Disabled
Unattended Port	Disabled
MLPP Domain Information	<None>

Trunk Configuration Call Routing Information	Setting
Inbound Calls
Significant Digits	All
Connected Line ID Presentation	Default
Connected Name Presentation	Default
Calling Search Space	CCS_Local
ARR Calling Search Space	<None>
Prefix DN	<Blank>
Redirecting Diversion Header Delivery	Disabled
Outbound Calls
Calling Party Selection	First Redirect Number
Connected Line ID Presentation	Default
Connected Name Presentation	Default
Caller ID DN	<Blank>
Caller Name	<Blank>
Redirecting Diversion Header Delivery	Enabled

Trunk Configuration SIP Information	Setting
Destination Address	<IP Address of E2K7 Server>
Destination Address is an SRV	Disabled
Destination Port	5060
MTP Preferred Originating Codec	711alaw
Presence Group	Standard Presence Group
SIP Trunk Security Profile	E2K7 Non Secure SIP Trunk Profile
Rerouting Calling Search Space	<None>
Out-of-Dialog Refer Calling Search Space	<None>
SUBSCRIBE Calling Search Space	Default
SIP Profile	Standard SIP Profile
DTMF Signalling Method	No Preference

Customizing Exchange UM Auto Attendant

 When you normally configure your Exchange UM auto attendant, here is the normal greeting that you will hear:

“Welcome to the Exchange Auto Attendant. Use the key pad to spell the name of the person you are calling, last name first, or to spell their e-mail alias, press the # key twice. If you know the extension, press the # key.”

One of our clients requested to change the Auto Attendant to give him in the end the below experience:

“Welcome to Company ABC, please dial the extension of person you are calling”

Which means that we need to remove the following parts from the Greeting:

·         Name lookup

·         The # key

In the end this was done by the below command from the exchange shell and of course we used a custom greeting for the first custom welcome part.

Set-UMAutoAttendant -Identity “test” –NameLookupEnabled $false

Replace “test” with the name of your Auto Attendant

Also the client asked if that greeting can be interrupted , we tested that and it appeared that it can only be interrupted after the first wav file ends which is “ welcome to the exchange auto attendant “  .

If you tried to interrupt before this greeting ends then you will hear a sorry message , however you can enter any digits and interrupt the greeting right after that 3 seconds part. 

A SIP request made by Communicator failed in an unexpected manner (status code 80ef01f4)

Rami Calache, One of my very good team members faced this problem and I thought to share it with you

After installing Office Communications Server 2007 R2, one user using Office Communicator R2 was unable to receive IM messages or communicator calls although he was logged in successfully,

However If he initiates an IM conversation then he can receive IM’s through the same session with no problem, he can also call anyone successfully in the list but no one can call him .

When turning on logging on any other client trying to call him the following warning is logged in the event viewer.

 

Communicator ID 11

A SIP request made by Communicator failed in an unexpected manner (status code 80ef01f4). More information is contained in the following technical data:

RequestUri: _sip:imohamed@mydomain.com

From: _sip:hamdim@mydomain.com;tag=4fec8f509b

To: _sip:imohamed@mydomain.com;tag=808EDC4E808A77850A6B03B82AC60800

Call-ID: 70a7871eed87478f8b2e3fbb770d3dc5

Content-type: application/sdp;call-type=im

v=0

o=- 0 0 IN IP4 172.20.31.3

s=session

c=IN IP4 172.20.31.3

t=0 0

m=message 5060 sip null

a=accept-types:text/plain multipart/alternative image/gif text/rtf text/html application/x-ms-ink application/ms-imdn+xml text/x-msmsgsinvite

Response Data:

500 The server encountered an unexpected internal error

ms-diagnostics: 1;reason=”Service Unavailable”;source=”HO-OCS-FE.mydomain.com”;AppUri=”_http://www.microsoft.com/LCS/ApiModule”;reason=”The application specified an invalid static forwarding url”

Resolution:

If this error continues to occur, please contact your network administrator. The network administrator can use a tool like winerror.exe from the Windows Resource Kit or lcserror.exe from the Office Communications Server Resource Kit in order to interpret any error codes listed above.

Resolution:

This is a strange error only with R2 communicator and the reason was because that this user had a record inside the active directory under the below:

 AD user……Telephones tab…….IP Phone……..Other—–> an additional entry was added.

Once this entry inside others was removed, the client worked fine.

 

OCS 2007 and Outlook 2007 Smart Tags

I have been asked about the do ability to have the Presence of a person from inside the body of an e-mail or to to be able to call a phone number from inside the e-mail body also.

to do this you need to go the below settings from inside the outlook 2007

Tools – Options –Spelling–Spelling and Auto Correction–Auto Correct Options –Smart Tags

Make sure to click on both Person Name (English ) & ( Outlook email ) , and Telephone Number . 

 

Jabra Dial 520

Any Post starting with this disclaimer means that this post was not written by me however I have liked it and added to my blog. I will also include the link to the original or Similar post to provide credit to the original author.

http://blogs.technet.com/jkruse/archive/2009/02/25/jabra-dial-520.aspx 

I’ve received a Demo unit of the JABRA Dial 520 under the UC Voice program and I have been showing it to our client to get their feedback.

Everyone is very happy with its cool look and the plug and play thing as you don’t need to configure anything once you plug it the communicator will automatically chose it as the default device. You will be able to call any number and click dial so it will open communicator client and place the call.

The voice quality is good but when you receive a call on your communicator client the JABRA 520 will just blink white light without telling you the number of the caller, quite disappointing to me :-( 

But as an overall I like it and will really love it if the screen shows me the number or the name of the caller

 

 

Building Software on the Microsoft Unified Communications Platform

Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 provide the infrastructure for enterprise communications including e-mail, voice, video, instant messaging (IM), conferencing, and unified messaging (UM). Building on this infrastructure, the Unified Communications (UC) Platform APIs provide a platform that you can leverage to build communications into your solutions, which adds incredible value for your users.

Server Side Development

Microsoft Unified Communications Managed API 2.0 supports the development of server-side, middle-tier applications targeting Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2 and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2. It includes a SIP stack, a media stack, and powerful speech engines for both automatic speech recognition (ASR) and speech synthesis (TTS).

UCMA 2.0 provides the following capabilities:

• Alerts or notification
• Surveys
• Inbound speech technology enabled interactive voice response applications
• Automated agents, also known as query response bots

Amongst the more advanced developer scenarios that it enables are: Automated Call DistributorsConferencing ServicesCustom client gatewaysInteractive Voice Response platforms, andSpeech servers using the Microsoft ASR and TTS engines.

The UCMA 2.0 Core SDK (32-bit and 64-bit) abstracts away most of the Office Communications Server SIP/SIMPLE-based protocols by offering an API that exposes almost all of the features of the protocol, but is simpler to understand and use.

The UCMA 2.0 Speech API is a server-grade speech API that allows developers to build multi-channel speech recognition and speech synthesis enabled applications using Microsoft state-of-the-art speech technology. The UCMA 2.0 Speech API supports 12 languages, including English (North America, United Kingdom), French (France, Canada), German, American Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese (Simplified and Traditional).

The UCMA 2.0 Workflow API is a higher API abstraction layer of the UCMA Core and Speech APIs. It adds unified communications Windows Workflow Activities to the .NET 3.5 SP1 Workflow Foundation for querying Presence and IM or speech technology enabled dialogs in Workflow-based applications built, for example, on Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007.

 

Client Side Development

Microsoft Unified Communications APIs and SDKs enable developers to write unified communications applications running on desktop, a web browser and even mobile devices.

The following is a list of downloadable samples that illustrate how Enhanced Presence is used to facilitate communication and collaboration.

Office Communicator SDK Wrapper — Illustrates the creation of a single managed code class that encapsulates the functionality of the Office Communicator Automation API. It has a length treatment of memory management of unmanaged resources in a manage application.

Communicator Add In For Outlook 2007 — Demonstrates how developers can integrate the Office Communicator client directly into Microsoft Outlook, using Visual Studio 2008, Visual Studio Tools for Office, and the Office Communicator 2007 Automation API.

WPF Presence Controls for Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 — Illustrates how to implement Presence and Collaboration features into Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) clients using the Office Communicator Automation SDK.

Integrating Web Chat Functionality –Demonstrates the creation of an asynchronous XML-based client capable of managing a contact list and participating in IM conversations.

Browser-based Unified Communications Applications

The following two XML-based samples demonstrate how to implement Presence and Collaboration in a Web browser using the Microsoft Unified Communications AJAX SDK.

Presence in Web Applications

Presence in Rich Clients

Communicate with Context

The following two samples demonstrate how to create Presence and Collaboration user controls in either C# or VB.NET based on the Office Communicator Automation SDK. Note that these sample solutions were created with Visual Studio 2005.

Office Communicator 2007 Automation API Capabilities

Ethical Walls for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007

 

More Information is available on the Unified Communications Developer Portal

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/aa905374.aspx

Also there is a very good webcast on Building Software on the Microsoft Unified Communications Platform (Level 200)

 http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032378382&CountryCode=US

Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Supported Server Role Collocation

This section identifies the Office Communications Server components that can be collocated on the same computer and the components that explicitly cannot be collocated. Any combination that is not identified has not been tested and is not supported.

The following table identifies the Office Communications Server roles that can and cannot be collocated.

This server role/configuration	Can collocate with this server role/component	Cannot collocate with this server role/component
Standard Edition configuration	·         Archiving Server (not recommended) ·         Monitoring Server	·         Director ·         Communicator Web Access ·         Edge Server ·         Mediation Server ·         Group Chat Server or Compliance Server
Enterprise Edition consolidated configuration	None	Never collocated
Back-End Database server	·         Archiving database ·         Monitoring database ·         Group Chat database ·         Compliance database (for Group Chat)	·         Any other Office Communications Server role
Enterprise Edition expanded configuration, Front End Server	None	Never collocated
Enterprise Edition expanded configuration, Web Conferencing Server	None	Never collocated
Enterprise Edition expanded configuration, Application Sharing Server	None	Never collocated
Enterprise Edition expanded configuration, A/V Conferencing Server	None	Never collocated
Web components	·         Archiving Server ·         Monitoring Server	·         Front End Server ·         Web Conferencing Server ·         Application Sharing Server ·         A/V Conferencing Server ·         Director ·         Communicator Web Access ·         Edge Server ·         Mediation Server ·         Group Chat Server or Compliance Server
Director	None	Never collocated
Communicator Web Access	None	Never collocated
Edge Server	None	Never collocated
Mediation Server	None	Never collocated
Archiving Server	·         Web components ·         Monitoring Server	·         Front End Server ·         Web Conferencing Server ·         Application Sharing Server ·         A/V Conferencing Server ·         Director ·         Communicator Web Access ·         Edge Server ·         Mediation Server ·         Group Chat Server or Compliance Server
Monitoring Server	·         Web components ·         Archiving Server	·         Front End Server ·         Web Conferencing Server ·         Application Sharing Server ·         A/V Conferencing Server ·         Director ·         Communicator Web Access ·         Edge Server ·         Mediation Server ·         Group Chat Server or Compliance Server
Group Chat Server	None	Never collocated
Compliance Server (for Group Chat)	None	Never collocated

How to enable inbound fax for OCS 2007 Enterprise Voice and Exchange 2007 UM enabled users?

Any Post starting with this disclaimer means that this post was not written by me however I have liked it and added to my blog. I will also include the link to the original or Similar post to provide credit to the original author.

http://blogs.technet.com/jenstr/archive/2007/11/13/how-to-enable-inbound-fax-for-enterprise-voice-and-exchange-2007-um-enabled-ocs-2007-users.aspx

Exchange 2007 SP1 UM supports both voice mail and incoming fax to a given extension. However, if the user is both UM-enabled and enabled for Enterprise Voice using OCS 2007, incoming fax is not supported using the same extension. The reason being that OCS 2007 Mediation Server does not currently support T.38.

How is it possible to provide incoming fax support for Enterprise Voice enabled users? The answer is to use a separate extension for fax and route fax calls to this extension directly to Exchange 2007 SP1 UM outside of OCS 2007.

Let’s assume we have a company called Contoso with the environment shown below and we will use that company to explain the issue and the solution

The OCS 2007 environment is connected to the PBX via a SIP/PSTN gateway called PSTNOCSGWY. The PBX routes all calls to the DID range +131255xxxxx to OCS 2007. OCS 2007 is integrated with the Exchange 2007 SP1 UM server called UMSRV1. It hosts a UM Dial Plan called OcsUmDialPlan of UriType = SipName (required for OCS 2007 integration). There is a UM Mailbox Policy associated with this UM dial plan called OcsUm. Exchange 2007 SP1 UM is connected to the PBX via OCS 2007.

The Contoso user Test User is enabled for Enterprise Voice with the DID +13125510001 and SIP URI TestUser@contoso.com. His extension is 10001. His Enterprise Voice configuration is shown below.

 

 

To be enabled for Exchange 2007 SP1 UM the administrator would issue the following Exchange Management Shell command:

Enable-UmMailbox -id TestUser -UmMailboxPolicy OcsUmPolicy -Extensions 10001 -SIPResourceIdentifier TestUser@contoso.com -Pin 1234

Test User is now enabled for Exchange 2007 SP UM, but will not be able to receive incoming fax on extension 10001 or DID +13125510001.

As indicated above the solution is to give Test User a separate extension for fax and the extension needs to be routed to Exchange 2007 SP1 UM directly without going through OCS 2007. Contoso will therefore have to create a configuration as shown below. There is a dedicated SIP/PSTN gateway for connectivity to Exchange 2007 SP1 UM. The PBX routes the DID range +131266xxxxx to this SIP/PSTN gateway. There is a new UM Dial Plan called UmDialPlan with UriType=TelExtn. There is a UM Mailbox Policy associated with this UM dial plan called Um. The UM server UMSRV1 hosts both UM Dial Plans.

The administrator now decides that Test User should have the extra extension 11001 and DID +13126611001 as the fax number.

To enable Test User to receive fax the administrator need to issue the following Exchange Management Shell command:

Set-Mailbox -id TestUser -SecondaryAddress 11001 -SecondaryDialPlan UmDialPlan

With the above configuration Test User is now able to receive fax on DID +13126611001.