Author: Ståle Hansen

Communicator 2007 R2 fails to open new window when double-clicking a Contact

Ståle Hansen Leave a comment

When using Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2, double-clicking a Contact fails to launch a new conversation window.  However, you are still able to right-click a Contact, and start an IM session by selecting “Send an Instant Message.”

Cause: When double-clicking a Contact, OC 2007 R2 uses XML to initialize a new conversation window, and we’re finding several customers who have incompatible and/or legacy builds of MSXML.DLL that are encountering these failures.

Resolution: To resolve this issue, please install XML Version 6.0 and XML Version 3.0 SP7.

Thanks to Scott Oseychik for posting the solution here: http://blogs.msdn.com/scottos/archive/2009/09/25/communicator-2007-r2-fails-to-open-new-window-when-double-clicking-a-contact.aspx

Script – to create users in AD and enable them for Office Communications server

Ståle Hansen Leave a comment

Whenever you install OCS 2007 in a lab domain you need to generate users for your environment. Ram Ojha har created a cscript that does the following:

  • It’ll read the csv file you create
  • It will create the user.
  • It’ll read display name from the file and write FirstName, LastName and DisplayName of the user.
  • It’ll set the TelephoneNumber of the user.
  • It’ll enable the user for Office Communications server
  • It’ll set the SIP address (msRTCSIP-PrimaryUserAddress)
  • It’ll assign the user to a pool (msRTCSIP-PrimaryHomeServer)
  • It’ll enable the user for Enterprise Voice (msRTCSIP-OptionFlags)
  • It’ll assign the Line URI (msRTCSIP-Line)

Head over to his post to download the script and see how to modify it to support your needs: http://blogs.technet.com/ramo/archive/2009/08/20/script-to-create-users-in-ad-and-enable-it-for-office-communications-server.aspx

Exchange 2010 Online Mailbox Move

Ståle Hansen Leave a comment

One of many great new features in Exchange 2010 is the Online Mailbox Move. Together with DAG it may be reason enough to migrate Exchange 2010 as fast as possible. The Online Mailbox Move feature allows end-users to be online in their email accounts during a move of their mailbox. On completing the move users just needs to reopen their Outlook clients.

In earlier Exchange versions, administrators had to move mailboxes during a scheduled outage window, perhaps during night time. However this was problematic when a firm is operational 24×7 and end users cannot tolerate mailbox unavailability. The new Exchange 2010 ‘Online Mailbox Moves’ feature relieves administrators, allowing mailbox moves with near zero downtime.

Amit Tank has written a thorough article about the new ‘Online Mailbox Move’ in Exchange 2010 here: http://exchangeinbox.com/article.aspx?i=142&t=7 

Note: Online mailbox moves are only supported in the following scenarios while moving mailboxes within the same forest or across forests.

  1. Between two Exchange 2010 databases
  2. From Exchange 2007 SP2 database to Exchange 2010 database

OCS Communicator Web Access Listening Port

Ståle Hansen Leave a comment

Jeff Schertz has a great discussion about what ports to use when deploying the CWA server role in this post: http://blogs.pointbridge.com/Blogs/schertz_jeff/Pages/Post.aspx?_ID=80

Here’s a summary

During the deployment of an OCS Communicator Web Access Server there is a setting that is not covered in much detail in the documentation: the Communication Server Listening Port.  No default or suggested value is given. This port is used by the Communicator Web Access Server to listen for inbound communications from other OCS servers.  When an additional Virtual Web Server is added to the same host, as is common when both Internal and External types are setup on the same server, the new virtual site’s listening port must be on a different port then what the initial site is configured for. The post goes on to discuss how to alter the ports. Head over to see the full post.

There is no requirement on what port is used, except that it can’t already be in use on the host server. Therefore an idea might be to use 6051 and 6052 as suggested in a comment in the post.

Error message when you try to install a certificate by using IIS 7.0 Manager

Ståle Hansen Leave a comment

When you try to install a certificate from a PKCS#7 file by using Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0 Manager, you may receive one of the following error messages:    

Error message 1
Cannot find the certificate request associated with this certificate file. A certificate request must be completed on the computer where it was created.

Error message 2
There was an error while performing this operation
Details: CertEnroll::CX509Enrollment::p_InstallResponse: ASN1 bad tag value met. 0x8009310b (ASN:276)
 
This issue occurs because IIS Manager performs a lookup operation to look for a friendly name of the certificate during the installation. However, the code that performs this lookup operation misses this specific case, and it does not know how to retrieve the friendly name of a certificate in a PKCS#7 file. Therefore, the lookup operation fails, and you receive the error message. This issue is scheduled to be resolved in the next Windows Server 2008 service pack.
 
Note:  The certificate is installed correctly despite the error message
 
Thanks to Karsten Palmvig who pointed me in the right direction in this post: http://blogs.technet.com/kpalmvig/archive/2009/09/22/troubleshoot-cannot-complete-certificate-request-in-iis-7.aspx

Exchange Best Practices Analyzer on Server 2008

Ståle Hansen Leave a comment

To be able to install and run the Exchange Best Practices Analyzer v2.8 on a Server 2008, Vista and Windows 7 you need the following requirements

  1. Microsoft .NET Framework Version 1.1
  2. Common HTTP Features
    1. From Command Prompt run Servermanagercmd.exe -i Web-Common-Http
    2. If you later need to remove run the command Servermanagercmd.exe -r Web-Common-Http
  3. When installed, make sure to run as administrator

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Audio/Media Negotiation

Ståle Hansen 1 Comment

MVP Elan Shudnow wrote a thorough post on Audio/Media Negotiation.

There are several ways in which we can utilize Audio/Video streams in Office Communications Server. While this article is based off of R2, the same “should… but not verified” work the same in OCS 2007 R1. There aren’t really any places out there that describe how the media session works in different circumstances. For example, what servers and ports are utilized when doing Audio/Video through the Live Meeting 2007 client when connected to the On-Premise Web Conferencing feature in OCS 2007 R2? How about when you do a peer to peer with both users being internal to the network? How about both users being external to the environment and connecting through the Edge? How about when you do a peer to peer with one user being internal and one user being external?

Want to know? Read his post at: http://www.shudnow.net/2009/08/29/office-communications-server-2007-r2-audiomedia-negotiation/

OCS Monitoring Server Report Pack fail to install

Ståle Hansen 1 Comment

I encountered a problem where I could not install Monitoring Server Report Pack. I was running the install from the Monitoring Server against a back-end SQL 2008 server. The error message I got was like this: 

Could not connect to server:
https://server_name.domain.com/reportserver/reportservice2005.asmx
Failure [0xC3EC7A20] Failed to install the QoE Monitoring Server report pack 

I found that there are three possible resolutions: 

  1. Make sure you are using https:// for the reportserver URL
  2. Check that you are not behind a proxy server
    • Double check that “Automatically detect settings” is not selected under Internet Options->Connections->Lan Settings i IE
  3. Add the account that is being used for Office Communications Server 2007 QoE Monitoring Server installation as a system administrator on the SQL Server report server.
    • To do this, follow these steps:
      1. Start Report Manager.
      2. Open Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 or a later version of Internet Explorer.
      3. In the Internet Explorer address bar, type the Report Manager URL. By default, the URL is https://ComputerName/reportserver
      4. Click Site Settings.
      5. Click Configure site wide security.
      6. Click New Role Assignment.
      7. In Group or user, type the account in the following format: domain\account
        • If you are using forms authentication or custom security, specify the user or group account in the format that is correct for your deployment. Assign the System Administrator role to the account, and then click OK to apply changes.
      8. After the account is added to the report server as a system administrator, restart Office Communications Server 2007 QoE Monitoring Server setup to complete the installation. 

The resolution for me was that I was behind a proxy without knowing it. Therefore it is wise to double check proxy settings. 

I have also encountered this error when the reporting services resides on a server with Server 2003. Apparently the max request bytes allowed was set to low to allow OCS to install the report pack. Here is how you resolve that. 

  1. Add the following registry key with the following value:
    • Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\HTTP\Parameters
    • Value: DWORD “MaxRequestBytes”
    • set it to 1048576 (1MB). (This number can be raised or lowered depending on the situation)
  2. Stop the SRS Windows Service. (SQL Reporting Services Service)
    • From a cmd prompt run “net stop http” then “net start http”
    • You may have to start the www publishing service manually
  3. Try the OCS installation again.

OCS 2007 R2 Training Material

Ståle Hansen Leave a comment

[tweetmeme source=”stalehansen” only_single=false]Found a post by Mark Fugatt about some great material on UC and OCS. “UC How To” is a great tool that I find useful for pilot users in my deployments. Since the tool is in Englishit will not suffice as the training tool in a production deployment for my Norwegian customers, but it is a great resource. The Unified Communications Adoption and Training Kit 2007 R2 is a great resource for deploying an UC solution in production and gives tips about how to go about and inform the users etc.

Heres the original post by Mark Fugatt: http://blogs.technet.com/mfugatt/archive/2009/08/26/some-useful-uc-training-material.aspx

  • UC How To The Microsoft Unified Communications “How-To” training tool is a Microsoft Silverlight™ 2 application that provides step-by-step instructions for common UC tasks. You can customize the How-To application to your company’s needs based on the UC features you’ve installed. For example, if you have installed all UC features except Communicator Mobile and Communicator Group Chat, you can modify the XML file so that those features and topics do not appear in the interface. Web version can be found here: http://stage.xcarab.com/microsoft/rolodex/

 

  • Unified Communications Adoption and Training Kit 2007 R2 The Unified Communications Adoption and Training Kit for 2007 R2 provides guidance and resources for IT Pros, Helpdesk, and Trainers to speed adoption and usage of Unified Communications technologies in the enterprise. The kit includes Planning Checklists, Awareness materials, including Poster, Door Hangers, and E-mail samples, and User Education Materials such as Quick Reference Cards, Flash Cards, and links to Web-based Training.

Best Practices for Active Directory Schema changes

Ståle Hansen 1 Comment

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

http://chrislehr.com/2009/08/best-practices-on-schema-upgrades.htm

First off, a quick review of AD schema, and what it is and the function it performs. The Schema is essentially the “database” that AD resides in, so when we say things like “extending the schema” we mean the same thing any SQL DBA would mean – we are adding additional objects attributes to AD. These new additions allow for features in products that were not previously there to store their settings in Active Directory. Some of the recent Schema extensions you will see:

  • Exchange 2007 SP2 requires schema extension.
  • Exchange 2010 requires schema extension.
  • OCS 2007 R1 or R2 require schema extension.

Additionally, while not an extension, these best practices also apply before raising your forest or domain functional levels.

Step One – Determine your Schema Master FSMO role holder

  1. On any domain controller, click Start, click Run, type Ntdsutil in the Open box, and then click OK.
  2. Type roles, and then press ENTER.
  3. Type connections, and then press ENTER.
  4. Type connect to server <servername>, where servername is the name of the server you want to use, and then press ENTER.
  5. At the server connections prompt, type q, and then press ENTER again
  6. At the FSMO maintenance prompt, type Select operation target, and then press ENTER again.
  7. At the select operation target prompt, type List roles for connected server, and then press ENTER again.
  8. This will display all 5 FSMO roles. The one that has Schema is the one we need to back up.
  9. Type q 3 times to exit the Ntdsutil prompt.

Step Two – Ensure you have your DSRM password

  1. Most of the time, even if this is known, it has not been changed in a long time and is likely due.
  2. Follow instructions to reset DSRM password from KB322672
  3. This allows your backup to be authoritatively restored in the case you need to. Without this password being correct, your backup may not be usable. 

Step Three – Take a system state backup (or two)

  1. Take an ntbackup.exe (Windows 2003) or Windows Server Backup (Windows 2008) if you are more comfortable with Microsoft restore procedures.
  2. Take another backup using whatever third party vendor product you typically use, if you are more comfortable with their restore procedures.
  3. It is recommended taking BOTH of the above for the Schema Master FSMO role holder.

While I have YET to run into any issues or problems with Schema extensions, if I ever did, I know I want a really good backup or two!