Microsoft

Although this came out late last year, I just bumped into it recently, and it provides a neat way to manage contact lists for OCS 2007.

Description of the free tool from their website, slightly updated for grammar:

OCSCM Beta enables the IT administrator to manage operations related to OCS users:

1. Ability to create OCS users (Active Directory user with live communication server option Enable).
2. Assign & re-assign contacts list for an OCS user.
3. Delete any contact from all OCS users' contact list.
4. Send notification mail to all contacts about a new OCS user.

You can download it from here.

I've gathered up a collection of archived Microsoft Vista Springboard recordings for easy download and off-line viewing.

Windows Springboard Series - Virtual Roundtable: Vista Performance
I helped with this one at Microsoft Studios.

View Keith Comb's Silverlight streaming version here.

Download the non-streaming version (~400MB .WMV download for 60 minutes of A/V!) - Right click and Save As the link here. (courtesy of Keith Combs and Silverlight)

If you want to stay updated on the Virtual Roundtable series, go here.

Windows Springboard Series: Microsoft User State Virtualization
Jason Leznek, Senior Product Manager in the Windows Client division, discusses User Roaming Profiles and Folder Redirection in Windows, highlighting the differences between Windows Vista and Windows XP.

Windows Springboard Series: Windows Vista Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
Fei Lu describes the Microsoft Virtual Desktop Infrastructure technology in Windows Vista, and scenarios where organizations can take advantage of the flexibility this technology offers.

Windows Springboard Series: AppV™ Application Virtualization
Karri Alexion-Tiernan, Director in the Windows Client division, unveils the latest version of this technology for virtualizing applications to reduce application-to-application conflicts and improve manageability.

Not related to the Virtual Roundtable earlier this week, but the actual Microsoft RoundTable device for panoramic conferencing:

End-user guides:
RoundTable Manuals
RoundTable Users Guide
RoundTable Quick Reference Card

System Administrator/Setup Tools:
RoundTable Deployment Guide
RoundTable Management Tool
RoundTable Firmware - 1.0.4006.0 (replaces KB 942334 and KB 945549)

Windows Speech Recognition Macros extends the speech recognition capabilities in Windows Vista. Users can create powerful macros that are triggered by voice command to interact with applications.

The Windows Speech Recognition Macros tool – or WSR Macros for short – extends the usefulness of the speech recognition capabilities in Windows Vista. Users can create powerful macros that are triggered by spoken commands which can perform a series of tasks from as simple as inserting your mailing address to as complex as providing a completely different speech interaction with applications.

While we have tried to make it easy to use, this release of WSR Macros is a technical preview of technology we are planning to release in the future. Not all the features we have planned are included, and some are incomplete. Users are cautioned to treat this release as “pre-beta.” While creating simple macros is very straightforward, the creation and editing of more complex macro files is best suited for advanced users. We welcome your feedback on how we can improve WSR Macros to best suit your needs.

Download here.

This is a pretty neat case study, and I have to admit it is a pretty slick Sharepoint site that I like talking about when people wonder about Sharepoint and what it can do for productivity.

Disclaimer/disclosure: If you've checked my LinkedIn profile, it is pretty obvious that I work for CDW/Berbee so this post is slightly biased.

You can check out the case study here.

I'll have to add this to my list of OCS goodies for future reference.

The management pack (MP) for OCS 2007 R1 has been updated for System Center Operations Manager 2007 (SCOM).

Official description below:

The Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Management Pack for SCOM 2007 monitors the health of computers running Office Communications Server 2007 on Windows Server 2003 and alerts IT administrators about critical health conditions that indicate degraded performance.

The management pack monitors and provides alerts for: Automatic notification of events indicating service outages, performance degradation, health monitoring and centralized management.

Download it from here.

This wasn't obvious to me originally and I have heard many people complain about the amount of screen real estate taken up by the "What's New?" banner on the bottom of WLM 2009 (Wave 3).

If you go under Tools->Options->Layout, you will see an option to "Show the what's new list" which you can uncheck.

An extension called ".NET Framework Assistant" is installed for Firefox 3.x when you install .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. If you comb through some of the .NET 3.5 SP1 release notes, it is very briefly mentioned as adding ClickOnce support into your browser.

On the downside, the .NET 3.5 SP1 installer doesn't really come out and ask for permission to do so, and also seems to gray out the Uninstall button.


It also adds .NET user agent strings to your Firefox user agent string.


You can enable and disable ClickOnce support and how many versions of .NET the browser reports to web servers.


If you want to completely kill the extension, with Firefox closed, delete the folder %WINDIR%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5\Windows Presentation Foundation\DotNetAssistantExtension, and delete the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Mozilla\Firefox\extensions\{20a82645-c095-46ed-80e3-08825760534b}\.

I try to keep my Firefox profile as lean as possible, and I am not aware of many ClickOnce applications on the web yet, so I'm not really missing out on much by removing this for now.

Registry location found from a post here.

It doesn't have all the usual goodies, due to anti-tampering mechanisms built into the new Messenger.

The options available for use with this version include:

1. Remove advertisement, nudge delay and shake, featured content
2. Accept more than 3 files transfers at a time
3. Disable Windows Live Spaces Contact Card Integration
4. Polygamy (use multiple instances of WLM)

The only annoying aspect I find with the new Wave 3 beta is the screen real estate taken up by the bottom status updates and the fact that you cannot turn them off. It wastes a lot of screen real estate. The default blue on white text is also annoying but can be easily worked around.

Even though the WLM beta looks like it might be using WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) like the Yahoo Messenger beta, it isn't!

You can download the A-Patch for WLM (various editions) here.

I tend to keep a work-in-progress list of updates and documentation for OCS, and here is my list as of 09/20/08.

OCS 2007 R1 server related:
KB 952783 - Communications Server 2007: August 2008 (replaces KB 953907 - June 2008 update)

Update 952783 introduces functionality for Communications Server 2007 to normalize the "From" header so that a non-RFC 3966 representation of an E.164 number is converted to an RFC 3966 representation and is placed in the P-Asserted-Identity (PAI) header field. If normalization does not result in an E.164 number, Communications Server 2007 includes a phone-context value of "enterprise” in the PAI header. The PAI header enables the user lookup functionality in Communicator 2007. Additionally, Communications Server 2007 bypasses the server normalization logic if the Request URI header contains a phone-context value of "enterprise."

Request KB 952783 online from Microsoft here.

KB 952785 - Information on stripping the "+" from the outbound request from the Mediation server (essential for Cisco CallManager/CUCM integration)

KB 952780- Communications Server 2007 Mediation Server: August 2008 (needed for KB 952785)

Request KB 952780 online from Microsoft here.

OCS 2007 R1 client related:
KB 954439 - Communicator Update: July 2008 (build v2.0.6362.76 - replaces KB 951662 - build v2.0.6362.64)
KB 952579 - Live Meeting 2007 client update package: June 4, 2008
KB 952578 - Live Meeting Conferencing Add-in for Outlook: June 4, 2008
KB 948741 - Live Meeting 2007 client and the Conferencing Add-in for Outlook Group Policy .ADM file

Request KB 948741 online from Microsoft here.

OCS client for Blackberry

OCS client for OSX (Mac Communicator 7.01)

KB 952693 - Update for Communicator 2007 Phone Edition - download here.

Office Communicator 2007 custom presence creation utility - here.

OCS 2007 R1 administrative tools:
OCS Resource kit

OCS PowerShell PowerGUI Management PowerPack

Archival/compliance related:

Powershell script to retrieve IM chats.

FaceTime Enterprise Edition for Microsoft OCS and LCS
FaceTime IM auditor
FaceTime PDFs with more product information

Planning tools, health checks and documentation:

OCS Best Practice Analyzer
OCS Planning Tool
OCS Edge Planning Tool
OCS SCOM/MOM pack

Maintaining health of the system: Part 1 and Part 2

Documentation on designing your perimeter/edge network for OCS (June 2008)

Documentation on backing up your OCS servers

How to disable IM chat in Office Communicator 2007

Office Communicator Custom Tabs information

Support information for Cisco CallManager/CUCM integration and support policy - here

Building ethical walls for Office Communication Server - here

This seems to be a hot topic because of the lack of description provided by the Live installation program.

To quote Len, one of the Windows Live MS employees:
Choice Guard is a piece of code that is responsible for setting the users homepage and search default if they chose those options during setup. Typically, this is a simple task of writing a value into a registry key.

However, several of our competitors install a "service" that is always running on your machine that prevents the registry key from being changed, even if that is