Author Archives: Justin Morris

Microsoft Lync Server 2013 Preview Available Today – What’s New

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Here it is, the next version of Lync. I’m beyond excited. 😀

Download the ISO of the server install files here. Infrastructure Requirements are up on TechNet Library and you can learn more in general on the Lync 2013 Preview page.

A Quick Look at What’s New

I’m going to be pumping out posts on what’s new in the next week or so, but here’s a quick taste based on what I’ve found on TechNet:

  • Multi-party HD Video with H.264 SVC support. In Lync Server 2010, 720p HD video was peer to peer only. In Lync Server 2013, it includes conferences as well.
  • Gallery View for conferencing e.g. brady bunch video view.
  • Skype Federation – includes presence, IM and peer to peer voice.
  • VDI Plugin so Lync voice and video will now work in Remote Desktop sessions.
  • New High Availability scenarios supported (SQL Mirroring!)
  • Group Chat is now called Persistent Chat. It’s a first class citizen in Lync Server 2013 and is delivered in the one, unified client. That’s right, no more separate chat room client!
  • Voice and video in Lync Web App. That means from any endpoint you’re on, join the meeting and be completely involved.

For more info, check out New Clients Features and New Servers Features on TechNet. Stay tuned for more posts about the brand new shiny version of Lync. 🙂

Understanding Conference Security in Lync Server 2010

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By default, Lync provides a pretty open conferencing experience for users. It allows a fair degree of flexibility in terms of functionality after you’ve first deployed it; and I suppose this is to provide the most complete experience to users when they first try it out. In this post, I’m going to talk about why we would want to modify this default behaviour and how we can make Lync conferences more secure. The two main default behaviours that would make you want to increase conference security are:

  1. The same meeting URL and conference ID is assigned for the user for every meeting by default.
  2. PSTN callers will bypass the lobby when they join a meeting and do not need to be admitted to the meeting by a presenter. This contradicts the behaviour of a lot of audio conferencing providers today, where everybody must wait for the leader to arrive until the conference begins.

Together, these behaviours may represent a security risk to some organisations. Let’s go through how we can mitigate them. Continue reading →

Awarded Microsoft MVP for Lync in 2012!

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Yesterday afternoon I received an email informing me that I’ve been awarded Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for Lync in 2012!

To give you a bit of information about what the MVP Award is, here is Microsoft’s description:

The Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award is our way of saying thank you to exceptional, independent community leaders who share their passion, technical expertise, and real-world knowledge of Microsoft products with others.

I’m massively honoured to be recognised for my community contributions over the last year and I thank you for reading my blog and sending in your questions/comments. I’m excited to continue to write and speak more about Lync and help more and more IT Pros learn about the product.

I’m also looking forward to collaborating more with the almost 50 other Lync MVPs worldwide both online and at MVP Summit in February next year. You can check out my MVP Profile here.

Interview with a UC Pro Series on NextHop – Tommy Clarke

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In my monthly feature on Microsoft’s TechNet NextHop blog, I interview one of the Lync community’s Nordic superstars, MVP Tommy Clarke.

His blog Ultimate Communications delivers great industry news and tips to the community worldwide, and I found that he’s a bit of an old school raver in addition to knowing the ins and outs of Lync. He’s the second Scandinavian MVP I’ve interviewed, the first being Norway’s Ståle Hansen and it’s great to increase the diversity of the interviewees.

Check out the interview here on NextHop. If you’ve got a suggestion of who I should interview next, drop me a line in the comments.

Lync Mobile Updated – PowerPoint viewing comes to iPad

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The Lync client for iPad was updated on Friday to version 1.5 to coincide with the recent CU6 patch release. This update provides a long awaited collaboration feature to take advantage of the screen on the iPad, allowing users to view PowerPoint presentations during online meetings.

Image: Microsoft

Note that iPad users can only view a PowerPoint presentation uploaded by another user (i.e. one that is using the full desktop Lync 2010 client) and the iPad user cannot control slides or upload their own slides. As described by Microsoft here, the user must join the audio portion of the meeting for the slides to be shared in the iPad client.

Chris Norman (of VoIPNorm) also pointed out that for this to work, the June CU6 updates must be installed on your Lync Server 2010 environment.

For more information and screenshots, check out Microsoft’s announcement post here.

Cumulative Update 6 (CU6) for Lync Server 2010 Released

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CU6 for Lync Server 2010 has arrived! This update is mostly bugfixes, but the big feature this CU provides is that Lync Phone Edition now supports wildcard certificates.

Non-Federated Meeting Issue Fixed

Fellow Modality consultant Tom Arbuthnot brought this issue to my attention a few months back. The scenario was that if you invited someone to a Lync meeting that also had Lync, but they’re weren’t federated with your organisation, they wouldn’t be able to join your meeting. This issue has been fixed in this cumulative update, check out the KB article on this for more info.

Download links are below. Make sure you patch all your Lync servers and clients ASAP.

Server Update:

  • Updates for Lync Server. You just need the LyncServerUpdateInstaller.exe to update each server. Download here and view the corresponding KB article explaining what’s fixed.
    Remember to do the backend database update!

Client Updates:

  • Update for Lync 2010 Client (64-bit) download here.
  • Update for Lync 2010 Client (32-bit) download here.
  • Update for Lync 2010 Group Chat Client download here.

Lync Phone Edition Updates:

  • Update for Lync 2010 Phone Edition (Polycom CX500, CX600 & CX3000) download here.
  • Update for Lync 2010 Phone Edition (Aastra 6721ip and Aastra 6725ip) download here.
  • Update for Lync 2010 Phone Edition (HP 4110 and HP 4120) download here.
  • Update for Lync 2010 Phone Edition (Polycom CX700 & LG Nortel 8540) download here.

Happy patching!

How do I configure entry and exit announcements for Lync audio conferences?

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One of the great new conferencing features introduced in Lync Server 2010 was the ability to play entry and exit announcements in audio conferences. Along with having participants record their name upon joining, this functionality brings Lync even closer to replacing traditional dial-in conferencing bridges.

However out of the box, Lync conferences don’t play entry and exit announcements by default. The option is available in the Lync conference but the presenter must turn this on when they begin the meeting as shown below.

This provides a lot of flexibility to the individual conference organiser, but a lot of organisations want this behaviour to be on by default for all conferences. In this post, I’ll cover how to configure this in Lync Server 2010. Continue reading →

Adding an A/V Conferencing Pool to an existing Lync Server 2010 Front End Pool

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Imagine you’ve deployed your Lync Front End pool already, but now you’ve decided you want to add some extra dedicated MCU capacity by adding an A/V Conferencing Pool. Given that the A/V Conferencing Server role runs on each Front End server, how do we ensure this gets removed and that the pool starts using the new A/V Conferencing pool when users schedule new audio or video conferences?

This is a pretty straightforward process involving defining the pool in Topology Builder and then running Deployment Wizard on your new A/V Conferencing servers and existing Front End servers.

Defining the A/V Conferencing Pool in Topology Builder

Firstly, you need to define the new A/V Conferencing Pool in your Lync topology. Instructions are available here on TechNet on how to do this. Once you’ve defined the pool, you’ll need to republish the topology using the instructions here.

Installing the A/V Conferencing Servers

Next, you need to log onto each A/V Conferencing Server and go through the usual Lync Server deployment process of installing a replica of the CMS, adding the Lync Server components and assigning certificates. On completion, make sure you start all the Lync services so each server becomes active in the topology.

Updating your Front End servers

Now comes the part that isn’t clearly documented – making sure the MCU components get moved to the A/V Conferencing servers properly.

Firstly, log onto each Front End server and run the Deployment Wizard. Click on Install or Update Lync Server System.

Next, run Step 2: Setup or Remove Lync Server Components (commonly known as bootstrapper).

When the Setup Lync Server components dialog appears, click Next.

Once Bootstrapper starts running through its commands, you’ll see it run the step Removing OcsMcu.msi (AVMCU) which is it removing the A/V Conferencing Server role from the Front End server. This is because the new A/V Conferencing pool is defined in the Lync topology.

Once Setup is completed, click Finish.

We can see now that Step 2 is marked as complete and we can open the Services snap-in from the bottom to see evidence that AV MCU has been successfully removed.

Et voila! No more Lync Server Audio/Video Conferencing Server on your Front End server!

Conclusion

Hope this helps you understand this process a bit more and how to add this topology component to your Lync Server 2010 environment. I wouldn’t recommend doing this during business hours as it could take down active audio/video conferences on your Front End servers.

Why Lync voice and video on mobile is such a challenge today

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Today, the sensationally awesome tech news site The Verge published a piece titled “Is video the future of voice?” that discusses HD voice on mobile and Voice over LTE (VoLTE). It touches on how voice quality is not improving on the mobile today because customers aren’t prepared to pay for it when the current standard is perfectly fine.

However with the arrival of LTE and better bandwidth, it highlights that consumers might be prepared to pay for real, good quality (not circa 2000 5×5 pixels wide “3G” quality) video calls on their phone. The challenge being in the consistent, reliable delivery over the network.

One of the key takeaway quotes by Terry McCabe (CTO of LTE services specialist Mavenir Systems) in this article is:

(Skype) lacks quality of service — it can’t guarantee that packets of data will reach their intended destination the way a carrier can when it prioritizes its own video calling service on the network

So basically what he’s saying here is that the carrier is essentially the only entity that can provide QoS (Quality of Service) of the audio/video packets over the mobile network. This gives them a tremendous advantage as the demand for video increases.

How does this impact Lync?

The quote above is basically your number one reason why you can’t get Lync voice and video on your mobile today. Skype can do it, we all know this. But Skype is free, and Lync is an enterprise grade product. It has to work well every time. Your company paid good money in licensing, hardware and implementation costs for Lync, so there should be no compromise.

It’s all about perception

Let’s imagine that the CEO attempts a Lync video call from his iPhone to the VP of Sales. It might start out fine and look fantastic. But if either person moves around a bit, or bandwidth contention hits that particular mobile tower, the video quality could suffer greatly. The blame isn’t put on O2, T-Mobile, Telstra, Telefonica or whatever other carrier, the blame is on Lync because that’s what they’re looking at at that second. Bad news for the latest flagship productivity solution you’ve deployed to the entire company.

As Randy Wintle highlighted in his post on why it makes sense, Call-via-Work is the best reliable voice solution for Lync on the mobile today. It ensures the call is initiated from your device regardless of what kind of mobile data connection you have, all the while providing Single Number Reach (presenting your work number to the person you called rather than your mobile number).

It’s not using VoIP, but users aren’t fussed about this. They were able to call who they needed to call on their Lync contact list, the call connected (reliably) and their presence was set to “In a Call“. It satisfactorily delivers a pretty consistent user experience to the mobile that users are already familiar with when they use Lync on their desktop PC.

Anyway, I thought the piece of The Verge was significant to mobile voice/video and that I’d wax lyrical about mobility for a bit there. 🙂