Unified Comm

Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile is a unified communications client for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. Communicator Mobile runs on Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 or 6.0 software for Pocket PC and SmartPhone devices.

Download the OCS client for Smartphones and PocketPCs here.

Read the release notes, FAQ, planning and deployment guide, user guide and troubleshooting guide.

There are also handy quick reference cards available for IM and presence, and Installation and Configuration.

Office Mobile 6.1 is an upgrade to Office Mobile applications on Windows Mobile. The new upgrade supports the new Office 2007 file formats.

This upgrade to the Office Mobile applications allows viewing and editing of Word documents and Excel workbooks and viewing of PowerPoint slideshows created by using Microsoft Office 2007.

Other improvements include:

• Enhanced viewing experience for charts in Excel Mobile.
• Ability to view SmartArt in PowerPoint Mobile.
• Ability to view and extract files from compressed (.zip) folders.

If your Windows Mobile device does not have a version of Microsoft Office Mobile prior to 6.1, you can purchase the full version of Microsoft Office Mobile.

You can read about and download the update here.

The Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Best Practices Analyzer Tool is a diagnostic tool that gathers configuration information from a Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 environment and determines whether the configuration is set according to Microsoft best practices.

With the proper network access, the tool can examine your Active Directory and Office Communications Server 2007 servers to do the following:

Proactively perform health checks, verifying that the configuration is set according to recommended best practices
Generate a list of issues, such as suboptimal configuration settings or unsupported or not recommended options
Judge the general health of a system
Help troubleshoot specific problems
Prompt you to download updates if they are available
Provide online and local documentation about reported issues, including troubleshooting tips
Generate configuration information that can be captured for later review


You can read more about it and download it from here.

Check this registry setting:

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Real-Time Communications\{92AC8981-AAD9-4391-8563-92E558EEF4C6}\Server
SE - Standard Edition
EE - Enterprise Edition

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Real-Time Communications\{92AC8981-AAD9-4391-8563-92E558EEF4C6}\Type
Volume - volume license edition
Eval - evaluation edition and/or beta
MSDN - MSDN edition

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Real-Time Communications\{92AC8981-AAD9-4391-8563-92E558EEF4C6}\Version
1.0.4949.0 - Live Communications Server 2003 RTM
2.0.5369.0 - Live Communications Server 2005 RTM
2.0.5470.0 - Live Communications Server 2005 SP1
3.0.6090.0 - Office Communications Server 2007 Beta 3
3.0.6362.0 - Office Communications Server 2007 RTM

Originally spotted here.

Unified communication devices, such as Microsoft Office Communicator Phone Experience and Microsoft RoundTable, enable rich communication within an organization. Deploying these devices requires regular maintenance by the IT department, which includes providing available software updates to these unified communications devices. All UC devices rely on an automatic mechanism to obtain software updates required on a regular basis.

Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Software Update Service provides an automated way to update all unified communications devices deployed in an organization.

Download here and grab the deployment guide here.

It looks like a typical group chat session, but what makes it interesting is everything you can't see from a simple screenshot.

This OCS 2007 session started as a two person "Hey, is this working?" voice chat that blossomed into a full blown eight person ad-hoc video conference call.

If you happened to be online while we were testing out the external audio/video functionality, you were most likely targeted by us with a 'drive-by' chat invite.

More people were added in by simply dragging and dropping their name into the chat window. They had to accept the "call", of course, but once they did, they were added to the conversation.

People were talking at various points into their microphones on their laptops and the audio was as if you were on a landline telephone, but with better quality and low bandwidth use due to advanced codecs.

One of us fired up their webcam, so it morphed into a video conference.

A PowerPoint document was dragged and dropped into the chat window and it displayed like it would inside PowerPoint. The same thing happened with a movie file. People started sharing applications from their desktop.

Most people were at home or in a hotel on varying types of network connections (Cable, DSL) behind firewalls of various makes and models.

A few people were in coffee shops using their cell phone for internet connectivity.

Most importantly, VPNs were not needed or used. It all just worked without any end user configuration, outside of adjusting microphone volume.

It was quite a 'geek' moment. I love technology like this!

Update: Very strange timing on this, but it looks like some people inside Microsoft were doing the same type of experiment recently, as noted here.

It looks like there are another batch of DST updates coming out of Redmond for some upcoming DST changes.
Go here to get the latest information on the updates.

Thankfully, it looks like this round of changes will not affect as much people as the original DST changes earlier this year.
Unfortunately, DST 2007 as an event in general showed the world just how complex a "simple" change can have a ripple effect across many platforms and services.

I always dread "Spring Forward, Fall back" because it throws my (human) system clock out of whack for a good week or so.

If you need guidance on whether or not you absolutely need to install these updates ASAP, go here.

Alun Jones of WFTPD fame pointed out a very curious problem with Windows Mobile Device Center (WcesComm):

If you run WMDC under Vista, you will no longer be able to run a FTPS server on the default FTPS port, which is properly registered as a reserved port for FTP SSL since October 1998.

For some reason, Windows Mobile 2003 uses this port with ActiveSync/WMDC.

If you have a Windows Mobile 5.0 or Windows Mobile 6.0, you could probably just disable the 'Windows Mobile-2003-based device connectivity' service under Vista and the port 990 reservation goes away. I haven't tested it personally because I typically don't run FTPS on my Vista laptop.

Topics covered
Enterprise Instant Messaging
On-Premise Conferencing and Telephony
Incorporating Office Communications Server Functionality within custom applications

Go here to sign up for any of the online courses.

Each course listed individually (2 hours per course - 8 hours overall)
Clinic 5126: Introducing Enterprise Instant Messaging Using Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007
Clinic 5127: Introducing On-Premise Conferencing Using Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007
Clinic 5128: Introducing Enterprise Telephony Using Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007
Clinic 5129: Customizing Real-Time Communication with Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007

Originally spotted here, and the courses seem to be available internationally.

Spotted this over at Elan's blog, the Office Communicator team has a dedicated website here and the Office Communications Server team has a dedicated website here now.