MUCUG London January 2012 Review

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Last Thursday night we ran our third Microsoft UC user group meetup in London. This time we headed back to Bow Bells House in the city to talk about the new Mobility functionality in Lync and to have AudioCodes along to talk about their SmartTAP call recording solution.

Just as we were about to kick off at 6pm, a fire alarm went off and we all had to evacuate the building. Some half an hour later we were allowed back upstairs and kicked off proceedings with Adam talking about Lync Mobility Architecture first.

Next up, I presented on Lync Mobility Deployment with Tom including a step by step guide and how the sign-in process works. You can check out our slides below.

Lync Mobility Deployment

View more presentations from MUCUGL

The other slides from the night including Adam’s and Steve Hopkins from AudioCodes’ slides are on our SlideShare account and you can check out some photos from the night on the MUCUG London blog post.

When’s our next one?

We’re pleased to announce that our next MUCUG London event will be on April 19th at Eight Club in London so make sure you save the date now.

Many thanks to all that came, we really enjoyed having you along and for a few pints at the pub after. Your feedback was great and always we’ll take it on board to make future events even better.

Why you should deploy a media gateway in a Lync voice deployment

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Everyone’s moving to Lync 2010 for voice. It’s growing super fast and taking loads of market share from the incumbent vendors, and your organisation is keen to see what all the fuss is about. But how do you interoperate with your existing PBX? How about you want to add a SIP trunk to evaluate the cost savings/flexibility whilst still maintaining your ISDN E1/T1 services? An enterprise class media gateway is the meat in the sandwich to get the job done.

I’m not going to harp on about a particular vendor’s product, but I want to wax lyrical a bit here on why a gateway is a valuable and sometimes critical, part of your Lync voice deployment. It can mean the difference between a smooth migration and coexistence period, and a nightmare scenario where you have islands of voice kit that can’t talk to each other.

I’ll focus on an upstream deployment of a gateway in this post, meaning that the PSTN (ISDN and/or SIP trunk) is terminated at the gateway. Lync, the PBX and any other telephony infrastructure then sit behind the gateway, like in this diagram:


Any to Any Routing

Deploying a gateway capable of taking one signalling protocol (e.g. ISDN, SIP, H.323) and translating it into another is invaluable in an interoperability scenario. An example is when you find yourself needing to route calls from Lync (signalling in SIP/TLS and SRTP media in G.711 aLaw) to your 10 year old Ericsson PBX (over an ISDN E1 trunk), a gateway is the only device that can do this transcoding and feed the PBX the signal it needs.
Or maybe your old Cisco Call Manager only accepts SIP over UDP? No problems, the gateway can translate the signalling for you.

Calling/called number translation is a gateway’s bread and butter also. Taking full E.164 numbers from Lync and manipulating them into 4 digit extensions a PBX can use or a format the PSTN can understand is where a gateway makes life easy.

Migrating Users

If you’re not doing a “big bang” migration from your PBX, chances are you want to maintain a period of coexistence so you can slowly migrate your users to Lync. Gateways that can cache AD user information enable you to route calls based on whether a user is enabled for Lync or not. This means that the only thing you as an administrator needs to is enable the user for Lync and the gateway takes care of the rest.

Supporting SIP Phones and Fax Services

Say you have a big bunch of SIP phones (Cisco, Polycom, snom, etc) left over from your old PBX that you still want to use. A gateway with built-in SIP registrar functionality can keep them alive by registering your old SIP phones straight on the gateway and assigning phone numbers to them. They’re not Lync enabled, but at least you provide a dial-tone to them for basic voice functionality.

Faxing is ubiquitous in the enterprise and still plays a role today, so both analogue and server-based fax functionality needs to be maintained in a UC environment. Fax machines talking to an ATA device can talk SIP straight into a media gateway, or a fax server (Facsys, Goldfax, Rightfax, GFI etc) will easily talk straight SIP into the gateway as well and onto the PSTN.

Terminating PSTN Connectivity

SIP trunks from UCOIP qualified vendors are great and can plug straight into your Lync Server, but sometimes you may want to try out another vendor’s SIP trunk that can’t talk to a Mediation Server directly. A gateway can take this SIP trunk and turn it into the flavour of SIP that Lync requires, giving you a lot more choice in services.

Voice resiliency is a key requirement in most deployments, so multiple SIP trunks from different vendors or a backup ISDN line will typically be scoped. A gateway makes it easy to deploy all of these and manage the primary and secondary routing in and out in the event of failover.

A lot of SIP trunk providers deliver their services over a VPN, which a gateway can typically terminate also. Or if the trunk is provided encrypted over the internet, you’ll usually need to NAT it into your internal network. Media gateways are typically NAT capable, which means you can make the gateway aware of your public IP and ensure outgoing SIP packets are marked with it so traffic can route back in successfully.

The core of your Voice Infrastructure

When you have a dependency on other voice components, a gateway really becomes the heart of your environment. Sure they can be costly, but you’re investing in making your migration as smooth as possible and providing a considerable degree of flexibility into your environment.

Interview with a UC Pro Series – Published on NextHop

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Just a quick one to let you know that yesterday I had one of my Interview with a UC Pro series posts published on Microsoft TechNet’s NextHop blog yesterday. This one was about Lync MVP Randy Wintle and now makes seven UC Pros interviewed since I started it mid last year. Check out the post here.

I’m really excited about being published on a TechNet blog, expect to see more contributions from me there in 2012.

What you should know about photos on Lync Mobile

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Last week we were testing various scenarios regarding the displaying of photos in Lync Mobile as there are some inconsistencies with other clients (both Mac and PC). Seems I’m making a bit of a theme of talking about photos in Lync, having clarified a few things on how they work in the desktop PC client last year.

I identified some behaviour on the mobile client that could impact how you provision photos in Lync in your environment, here’s what I discovered.

How do photos display on mobile?

As I mentioned in my previous post about photos, the full blown PC client can display photos from AD/SharePoint, a URL you specify, or no photo at all. You can control this using a client policy to ensure your users all get the same experience.

On mobile, you have no control over how photos are displayed. Lync Mobile can only display photos retrieved from Active Directory or SharePoint, it cannot display a photo from a URL.

If a user is displaying a photo from a URL and there is a photo in AD, it will display the photo from AD. If there is no photo in AD, it will display no photo at all. Let me show you what I mean:

Tom’s photo when I use the desktop client. Tom has a photo from a URL defined.

Tom’s photo on Lync Mobile on iPhone. Because Lync Mobile cannot display photos from URLs, it displays no photo at all.

Implications

This has implications to your deployment because you may encounter scenarios where users are accustomed on the desktop client to seeing a photo of a user from a URL the user has specified. Once they start using the mobile client, they will either see no photo of the user/s at all (if no photo is in AD/SharePoint) or they will see the photo that is stored in AD (typically from Exchange) or SharePoint. This leads to an inconsistency in experience, which may generate calls to your helpdesk.

Not a huge one, but worth looking out for if photos are a big value point for your Lync deployment (and they should be).

A look at Lync Mobile on Android Tablet

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With the release of Lync Mobile and following up on my preview of the iPhone client, I thought I’d show you what the client looks like on a tablet running Google’s Android OS also. I tested this on my ASUS Eee Pad Slider (that I reviewed on 48 Hour Adventure) running Android Honeycomb (no Ice Cream Sandwich for the Eee Pads yet) and I downloaded it right from the Android Market and installed it fine.

I am going to call this out here first and foremost, directed at people giving the apps a 1 star rating on the marketplaces – If Lync Mobile doesn’t sign in for you, check with your IT helpdesk that your Lync environment has been updated to support mobile clients.

Launch and Sign In

When you open up the app, you’re first greeted with a splash screen followed by the login screen where you can put in your login details.

After you’ve entered your credentials, and hit Sign In, you’re greeted with the Signing In screen.

The first thing I need to do is specify a phone number for Lync to simultaneously ring me on:

My Info

Once I’m signed in, I’m greeted with the My Info page where I can see my photo, status and call forwarding settings.

When I tap my status, I can change it to Available, Busy, DND etc.

Going into Options gives me a few things I can change – the number I’m simring’d on, whether to show photos or not, turning on/off logging and showing the version info of Lync.

Contacts and Chats

When I tap on the Contacts tab, I’m greeted with my full Lync contact list and can expand out each group I have.

Tapping a contact brings up their contact card and displays all their phone numbers and options to IM, call and send them an email.

Tapping on the Chats tab shows me all the IMs I have in progress in the session:

Takeaways

Basically this is just the Android mobile client stretched to fit the tablet, it doesn’t know it’s running on a tablet like the iPad client does. This is evident when you setup the number to simring on because it says “Enter your Android phone number”.

Good to see that the option is there if you have Android tablets floating around your organisation (ASUS, Samsung, etc..)

2011 – Year in Review

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Since kicking things off on this blog in April I’ve written a fair bit about Lync Server 2010 and have really enjoyed sharing the issues and resolutions I’ve encountered along the way as well as announcing our UC User Group events.
2011 has been a really successful year for us at Modality and me personally, with loads of great diverse projects across England. As it’s that time of year, I thought I’d take a moment to reflect on what I’ve written about during the year and share the highlights:

Mac Musings

As a Mac user, there was a heavy focus on the Communicator/Lync experience on OS X in a lot of my posts. One of my first posts was comparing Communicator for Mac 2011 to Lync 2010 on the PC.
When Lync for Mac 2011 came out in September, I was one of the first blogs to publish a review of the new client.

Miscellaneous Thoughts

There’s sometimes I sit and think “it would be worthwhile if someone just created a really clear document around how this works” when I’m looking at a particular component of Lync for a customer for based on a question someone has asked on the TechNet forums. As a result, I wrote some stuff about Demystifying Photos in Lync, how Lync uses Exchange Calendar information and How to exclude local intranet URLs when setting up URL filtering.

I also pushed the boundaries a bit in October by looking at CUCI-Lync and why you should think twice.

Interview with a UC Pro

The Interview with a UC Pro series has gone from strength to strength, and over the course of the year I interviewed folks from around the world that lead the way in the community. In 2011, I interviewed these guys:
Alex Lewis, Tom Pacyk, Chris Norman, Adam Jacobs, Jeff Schertz and Tom Laciano.

Exciting news about this concept coming up in 2012, stay tuned for an announcement.

Lync and SQL Mirroring

A started a series dedicated to finding out if SQL Mirroring works with Lync Server 2010, since the only official statement was that it was “not supported”. I set out to determine why this was the case and what happens when you deploy your databases onto a pair of SQL mirror nodes. Check out Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. I still haven’t written the part about Group Chat yet, so stay tuned for that in 2012.

Everyone goes nuts over mobile clients

When the new mobile clients became available last week, every man and his dog started doing backflips over getting it up and running. Much discussion occurred on twitter about when the clients became available in the App Store/Marketplaces and then loads of people complained about the lack of features.

To throw my hat in the ring, I got my hands on the iPhone client and published one of the first looks at the client for iPhone.

Bring on 2012

Thanks for subscribing to my blog, I hope I’ve been able to bring you valuable content on Lync Server 2010 this year. I recently received my 3 year UK work permit, so I’m looking forward to another productive year in London and can’t wait to bring you even more Lync related content in 2012.

Lync 2010 for iPhone – A First Look

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This morning (UK time) the Lync 2010 for iPhone client (finally) appeared in the App Store. I’ve installed it and run through all of the functionality, and am stoked to bring you a run down of what everything looks like on this long awaited mobile client.

Signing In

When I first fire up the client, I’m greeted with the initial sign in screen to provide my SIP address and password. I can also drop down the More Details option to provide additional authentication/server details:

 

Once I’ve ready to go I hit Sign In and am presented with a screen telling me I’m being signed in, followed by a one-time run splash screen.

 

After I’ve been signed in, I’m asked to provide my mobile number so Lync can join me to meetings and so I can use the Call via Work feature.

 

My Info

When I first sign in, I’m greeted with my own information, showing my note, status and whether simultaneous ringing is on:

From here I can set my status, change some basic options and set my simultaneous ring options:

  

Contact List

When I touch the Contacts tab, I’m presented with my full Lync contact list in all it’s photo-adorned glory:

When I touch on a user I’m presented with their contact card and all their information. I can choose to IM them, call them or email them:

Chats

From the user’s contact card, I can initiate an IM session with them and go ahead and start sending IMs like normal:

From here, I can then bring up some more options by touching the icon in the right top corner where I can opt to call the contact, send my location or delete the conversation:

Sending My Location

This is a pretty cool new feature – I can send my address and a link to a map in an IM. Handy for telling people where you are on the go.
When I hit Send Location, Lync uses the iPhone’s GPS to locate me on Bing Maps:

Once it’s pinpointed where I am, it shows the approximate address and point on the map (in this case, our office in St Albans :)) before I press Send:

Once I’ve clicked Send, Lync sends an IM to the other user informing them of my address and gives them a link to a Bing Map of where I am. Smart.

Finally, if I press the back button (in the top left of the screen), I’m taken to my active chats:

Joining Meetings

From the Meetings tab, I can see the meetings I have on during that day:

Note, this information is pulled directly from Exchange and not from the local iPhone calendar. I verified this by creating an Online Meeting in Outlook and then saw it refresh in Lync Mobile first and not the iPhone Calendar.

When I touch on the meeting, I’m then greeted with the event details and an option to join the Online Meeting:

After I click on Join Meeting, I’m presented with a screen informing me that I’m joining the meeting and that Lync is preparing to call me, shortly followed by an incoming call:

 

Making Calls

When I press the Phone tab, I’m greeted with a display of my voicemails. By clicking on these, I can opt for Lync to call me back to play these messages to me:

Note that this is mobile carrier voicemail and NOT Exchange Unified Messaging voicemail.  Upon further investigation I have found that this is in fact Exchange UM Voicemail and not your mobile carrier’s voicemail.

I can also press the keypad icon in the top left corner to get a dial pad where I can make calls. These calls are initiated from the Lync server using the “Call via Work” function over the PSTN (Randy Wintle wrote a great post defending this functionality).

This enables Single Number Reach and ensures whoever I call sees the same single work number regardless of which device I use.

Conclusion

It’s fantastic to finally see the iPhone client in the wild and available to the masses. It’s fast, doesn’t churn battery like CoMo did and the calendar integration is tip-top.

As with all IT assets, make sure you evaluate this client properly and set the correct expectations for your users before supporting it. Be prepared for calls to your helpdesk asking about this client and the others (WP7/Android) as they are freely downloadable from the App Store but won’t work unless your backend Lync infrastructure is up to scratch.

Microsoft UC User Group London – January 2012 Event

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It’s that time again. Time for another Microsoft UC User Group meeting here in London, this time in January back at our original home of Bow Bells House. This time around, it’s all about mobility baby!

With the Lync Mobility pieces all out in the wild and the Android and Windows Phone clients available, everybody’s talking about the new Lync Mobile client. We’ll be covering the architecture, explaining how it works, how you configure your Lync environment, demoing the clients and much more.
Hopefully the iPhone/iPad app will be in the App Store by then also, so we’ll be able to demo those as well.

We’ve also teamed up with Audiocodes to bring you information about their new mobility and call recording solution and as usual Adam, Tom and I will bring you all the latest Lync Server 2010 news to close up the night.
And it wouldn’t be a user group without a few pints afterwards at the pub next door. 🙂

Where: Bow Bells House, 1 Bread Street EC4M 9BE London (Map Link)
When: 6pm, Jan 19th 2012

For more info including the agenda and the registration link, check out the post on the MUCUG London blog here.

Lync Server 2010 Group Chat now supported on SQL Server 2008 R2

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Just a quick one to spread the word that Lync Server 2010 Group Chat is now supported by Microsoft on SQL Server 2008 R2. Official word is on NextHop over here.

This is great news after the original announcement in April that SQL Server 2008 R2 was supported for all what I call “first class” Lync Server database requirements e.g. Front End pool, Archiving, Monitoring databases.

To extrapolate from this, here is what it means for everyone using or planning to use Lync Server 2010 Group Chat:

  • No longer are two different versions of SQL Server required to be deployed (e.g. 2008 and 2008 R2) in your environment to be in a Microsoft supported scenario.
  • Those organisations planning Lync Server deployments today that include Group Chat can design their deployments on a consistent SQL Server 2008 R2 platform and be safe in the fact that they will be supported by Microsoft in production.

Time to go plan your SQL consolidation projects. 🙂

Lync Server 2010 Mobility Round-Up

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Hot on the heels of CU4 coming out, a huge amount of noise was created last Friday as loads more info became publicly available about enabling the Mobility components for Lync. A Partner Network event also took place detailing a lot of high level info.

The Mobility Server install files can now be downloaded here and you’ll want to download the Mobility Guide here also that documents the entire deployment process.
To help you along the way, fellow MUCUG London founder Adam Jacobs has also published a mega comprehensive step by step installation guide over on his blog.

Fellow Modality Systems consultant Ari Protheroe has published a great gotcha post on what not to do to get the Mobility and Autodiscover services installed. Could easily trip anyone up that goes at it like a bull out of a gate.

Also of note, the Mobility content has been added to the Lync Server 2010 TechNet Library:

One worth checking out to understand what works on what mobile handset is the Mobile Client Comparison Tables. This document shows which handsets support push notifications, how they utilise presence, contact organisation, IM, Conferencing and Telephony support.

When will the clients be available?

They’re up on the Windows Phone Marketplace now on the UK store and US store (thanks to Ben Lee for announcing these on twitter and a great overview post of the WP7 client in action).

iPhone and iPad clients should be available this week (wc 12th Dec 2011) and will depend on how long it takes for them to get through the Apple App Store approval process (something all apps are subject to and a process we’re familiar with at Modality).

It’s my understanding that the Android app will appear in the Android Market during this week as well.

What a great way to kick off Monday hey? Awesome to see these clients finally hit the streets and continue the great Lync experience on mobile devices.