Catapult Systems Blogs

OCS 2007 R2 Web Scheduler Reviewed

Joe Stocker — 2009-11-10 23:35:00

The OCS Web Scheduler allows users to schedule conference calls and live meetings without the Outlook Add-in for Live Meeting. This is particularly helpful for users testing Office 2010, because there is no Live Meeting add-in for Outlook 2010 yet.

Basically, setup.exe creates two virtual directories on the server hosting the web components role (usually the front-end server) and is a very simple installation wizard.

After installation, you have to activate it from the command-line, following the readme file gets installed by setup as a guide:

LcsCmd.exe /web /action:Activate /role:Meeting /poolname:poolname /User:serviceaccount /Password:password
Pay close attention to the account used - the readme file specifies that it must be the RTC service account used during installation.

Then, you need to configure a default SMTP server:
cscript WebSchedulerConfig.vbs /Action:SetSmtpServer /SMTPServer:fqdn of email server

The URLs that it creates are /conf/int and /conf/ext (for reverse proxy)

I was not impressed with the out-of-box experience for these reasons:

1) The web scheduler generates a plain text meeting invite instead of html
2) The meeting invite does not list the call-in number! The meeting recipients must click on a link to view the dial-in number.
3) By default, when you schedule a meeting, it defaults to a closed meeting instead of anonymous (not good if you want outside people to join) and it defaults to *not* sending the invite. You have to remember to check that box at the bottom of the form, otherwise no meeting invites are sent.
4) It forces the use of a passcode for participants above and beyond the conference ID. Then, if you're the leader, you have to enter your phone number and your passcode (four separate strings)
5) It does not use your default conference ID.

Before installing it on a production front-end server, make sure you do it after-hours because this installation will stop the front-end services.

Download link is here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=6D6848EC-E7D6-41F4-82D9-5BED3526FCBD&displaylang=en

Applying the October 2009 OCS Patches

Joe Stocker — 2009-11-10 23:25:00

There are so many roles within OCS that it can be overwhelming if you don't know where to start.
I recommend starting with the Front-End server, then proceeding to the Edge, followed by CWA, Mediation, Monitoring, and then Archiving.

Microsoft has made the process easier with a new Update Resource Center http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/ocs/ee695846.aspx, and a Cumulative Server Update Installer KB 968802 (released 11/9/09) that detects the role and then applies only the appropriate hotfixes to the role.
The only thing this tool is missing is it does not install the Database hotfix KB 969834. The database hotfix must be applied after the Update Installer finishes, otherwise the Conferencing Attendant service will not accept attempts to start conference calls from remote attendees (the userpin service fails to connect to the database, because the schema is not what the binary expects).
One of the gotcha's with this tool is it does not prompt to restart the Mediation server services, whereas the other roles prompt you to restart the server. This causes a problem because
you're left to assume that a restart is not necessary. The services continue to run fine. However, before mediation can hand off calls to the front end, you need to at least restart the mediation service (or simply reboot).

As always, before applying patches, verify that you have backups, and that you have recently tested a restore to an alternate DR environment.
It should go without saying, but testing all components of OCS is also important. Here is a sample test plan to use after applying updates:

1) Call the Conference Attendant
2) Call Outlook Voice Access
3) Call a number tied to each location profile/mediation server
4) Schedule a live meeting and test audio/video externally and internally
5) Test federation
6) Test Communicator Web Access

There are a few suprises after this latest round of OCS patching.
1. After users sign into https://cwa.catapultsystems.com/dialin, they are given an error message:
"Your phone extension is not configured. Please use your complete phone number and PIN to join conferences."

But it doesn't let you change it. According the comments at the bottom of Adam Gent's blog post, the field becomes populated if you use the ext structure in your tel URI. So, for example, if your number was +12045551212;ext=1212 the 1212 extension would be listed on the CWA page. His follow up post goes into even greater detail on how the userpin service works.

Q&A from Tulsa Windows 7 Presentation

Cameron Fuller — 2009-11-10 19:50:00

In Tulsa last week there were some good questions asked which I could not answer related to Windows 7. Specifically:

Question: Can boot to VHD be used to boot to Linux or Windows XP?

Answer: At this point in time the answer is no. Boot to VHD will ONLY work for Windows 7 or Server 2008 R2. Nothing else. (http://thelazyadmin.com/blogs/thelazyadmin/archive/2009/01/12/windows-7-boot-from-vhd.aspx) and (http://superuser.com/questions/4203/is-it-possible-how-to-boot-an-xp-vhd-in-windows-7)

Question: Will RDP work on Windows 7 Home editions?

Answer: “Although the Home editions include the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) client, they do not include the RDP host service.” referenced from: http://www.enduserblog.com/2009/08/the-remote-desktop-experience-on-windows-7.html

Best of SharePoint 2010

Matthew McDermott — 2009-11-10 07:17:44

Well, we’re half way through our 5 city tour with Catapult Systems “Best of SharePoint 2010”. My colleagues and I have delivered this great day long SharePoint 2010 overview in Austin, TX and Tampa, FL. Today is Dallas then Houston on Thursday and Denver next Thursday. There is still time to register if you are in Houston and Denver. Just hit our Events page and get all of the details.

For those of you who did attend, thank you for all of the valuable feedback. The event is getting better as we go and we’re adding more demos at each event. (20 demos at last count.)

Here are the decks:

I am looking forward to Denver on the 19th!

Customize HTML Editor Predefined Table Formats

Travis Lingenfelder — 2009-11-05 16:52:00

The publishing features of MOSS allow you to create tables on publishing pages. Out-of-the box, MOSS comes with a set of predefined table formats that control the style of the header row, first column, alternating line-styles, etc. Most likely though, none of these styles are what you are looking for. Customizing these styles is quite easy once you create some CSS classes that conform to the specific naming convention.

Inserting a Table with a Predefined Table Format

To insert a new table using a predefined table format click the new table button on the Rich Text Editor toolbar.

This will open the Insert Table webpage dialog. The highlighted section below is used to format your table according to the predefined table format that you choose.

Notice that there are several options in this section that determine how the table will be formatted. The first option is Use Predefined Table Format. When you select this check box you will have to choose from one of the table formats in the drop down list. I will discuss how to have new predefined table formats appear in this list later in this post.

After you select the type of table format that you want to use, there are four additional options that you can specify in the Apply special formats to: section. These options control the application of additional CSS classes to <tr> and <td> elements that are used to apply additional formatting to the heading row, first column, last row, and last column when these items are checked.

Developing a Predefined Table Format

The the Rich Text Editor adds the table to the publishing region, it will append the appropriate CSS class references to the <table>, <tr>, and <td> elements as specified by the options chosen in the webpage dialog in order to render the table as desired. This will require you to create several CSS classes that will be used to format the table.

	First Column Style	Odd Column Style	Even Column Style	Last Column Style
HeaderRow	HeaderFirstCol	HeaderOddCol	HeaderEvenCol	HeaderLastCol
OddRow	FirstCol	OddCol	EvenCol	LastCol
EvenRow	FirstCol	OddCol	EvenCol	LastCol
FooterRow	FooterFirstCol	FooterOddCol	FooterEvenCol	FooterLastCol

The out-of-the-box table styles reside in a file in the LAYOUTS folder, called .../12/TEMPLATE/LAYOUT/1033/STYLES/HtmlEditorTableFormats.css. Since, this item lives directly on the file system it is not available to content authors or style designers from SharePoint Designer. However, once you create a CSS file that contains CSS classes with using the appropriate class naming convention and reference it on your page, the rich text editor will no longer reference the predefined table formats in the HtmlEditorTableFormats.css and will now display your custom table formats, enabling easy editing from users with SharePoint Designer.

CSS Class Naming Convention

All predefined table formats must adhere to a strict naming convention so that the styles will be applied appropriately. All of the CSS classes *MUST* have a prefix of ms-rteTable in the class name.

There are 17 styles that you can define to control the formatting for a predefined table (this includes one for the table itself). The following CSS class definitions are needed for a complete predefined table format, for your own custom table format you should replace name in the definitions below with the name of your table format.

.ms-rteTable-name

.ms-rteTable-name tr.ms-rteTableHeaderRow-name

.ms-rteTable-name td.ms-rteTableHeaderFirstCol-name

.ms-rteTable-name td.ms-rteTableHeaderOddCol-name

.ms-rteTable-name td.ms-rteTableHeaderEvenCol-name

.ms-rteTable-name td.ms-rteTableHeaderLastCol-name

.ms-rteTable-name tr.ms-rteTableOddRow-name

.ms-rteTable-name td.ms-rteTableFirstCol-name

.ms-rteTable-name td.ms-rteTableOddCol-name

.ms-rteTable-name td.ms-rteTableEvenCol-name

.ms-rteTable-name td.ms-rteTableLastCol-name

.ms-rteTable-name tr.ms-rteTableEvenRow-name

.ms-rteTable-name tr.ms-rteTableFooterRow-name

.ms-rteTable-name td.ms-rteTableFooterFirstCol-name

.ms-rteTable-name td.ms-rteTableFooterOddCol-name

.ms-rteTable-name td.ms-rteTableFooterEvenCol-name

.ms-rteTable-name td.ms-rteTableFooterLastCol-name

For example: To create a predefined table format called CustomerData, the table CSS definition would be named .ms-rteTable-CustomerData and the CSS class name definition for the header first column would be .ms-rteTable-CustomerData td.ms-rteTableHeaderFirstCol-CustomerData.

SharePoint Ports and Firewall Configuration for a Secure Environment

Travis Lingenfelder — 2009-11-05 16:35:00

While trying to configure MOSS in a secure environment that will be used for a DOTCOM site where the WFEs are in a different subnet than that of the SQL Server, CA, and Indexer we ran into some trouble administering services running on the WFEs. It turns out there are some ports that need to opened to allow communication through the firewall that sits between the subnet where the WFEs sit and the subnet where the CA box resides.

I found a great document and Visio diagram on TechNET that will help to configure firewall traffic.

Plan security hardening for extranet environments - TechNET article

Extranet hardening planning tool: back-to-back perimeter - Awesome Visio diagram that has it all!

del.icio.us Tags: SharePoint,Firewall,Seurity

Windows Systems Do Not Require Unique SIDs

Jason Sandys — 2009-11-03 09:06:04

Holy cow batman!

The title says it all and is the conclusion of one Mark Russinovich – Windows Guru Guru Extraordinaire.

Check out his blog post: The Machine SID Duplication Myth.

Q&A from Windows 7 Discussion

Cameron Fuller — 2009-11-02 09:00:00

During a recent discussion on Windows 7 there were some solid questions asked about DirectAccess and BranchCache which I did not have the answer to. So after some research here they are!

Question: What ports are used from the client to the DirectAccess Infrastructure?

Answer: (Reference from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectAccess)

“DirectAccess uses IPv6 to reach intranet resources. A DirectAccess client and server can use IPV6 native, 6to4, Teredo tunneling, or IP-HTTPS to send IPv6 traffic across the IPv4 Internet.

The IP-HTTPS protocol is an SSL tunnel on TCP port 443 that connects a DirectAccess client to a DirectAccess server on the edge of a target network. IPv6 subnets provisioned by the server network are tunneled over IPv4 or IPv6 to the client: IPv4 access is not provisioned with this connection.”

For additional information on protocol and port requirements see http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd637780(WS.10).aspx.

Question: What happens when a file which has been downloaded to a branch office is in BranchCache and the content of the file is changed? Is the full file replicated across the network link or only the deltas which occurred to the file?

Answer: (This topic was discussed on: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/windowsserver2008r2branchoffice/thread/7da4c4bf-d6df-4410-b640-74f1188b7f58)

“BranchCache performs differential transfer of file that was changed *as long as the tail of the file is what got modified*. Changes in the 'middle' or 'beginning' of a file will lead to the file being copied in its entirety. In addition, files that are smaller than a single segment (i.e. 32 MB), any change (even at the tail of the file) will result into a different segment hash and hence BranchCache will not discover that segment in the branch, thereby triggering a complete transfer.”

Additional recommended readings:

http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/Introduction-BranchCache-Part1.html

http://blog.augustoalvarez.com.ar/2009/07/26/windows-server-2008-r2-and-windows-7-branchcache/

http://go2.wordpress.com/?id=725X1342&site=augustoalvarez.wordpress.com&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.microsoft.com%2Fdownloads%2Fdetails.aspx%3Fdisplaylang%3Den%26FamilyID%3Da9a1ed8a-71ab-468e-a7e0-470fd46e46b3)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=ee07308f-7c53-4c76-9ed9-670bc25a4c9d

11/17 PMI Houston Presentation: PMIS and Project 2010

Andrew Lavinsky — 2009-11-02 08:16:00

I’ll be delivering my spiel on Leveraging Technology to Build a PMIS (with a Special Preview of Project 2010) at the University of Houston chapter on 11/17. Hope to see some of you there.

To my knowledge, this may be the first public demo of the Project 2010 features in Houston.

The event is free. For additional information, please click on the link below:

http://www.pmihouston.org/index.php?mo=cm&op=ld&fid=29&eid=370

Austin SharePoint User Group: SharePoint 2010 Preview

Matthew McDermott — 2009-10-29 08:08:30

Matthew McDermott, Microsoft MVP, and Brad Freels, Microsoft Senior Technology Specialist, will provide a 2 hour overview of the great new features of SharePoint 2010.

Including:

Sites: UI Changes, Mobility Support, Office Client Support
Communities: Social Improvements, My Sites, Activity Feeds
Content: Enterprise Content Types, Metadata, Video Content Types
Search: Phonetic Search, Navigation, Relevance
Insights: Visio Services, Web Analytics, PerformancePoint Services
Composites: BCS, External Lists, SharePoint Designer

We won't be able to cover EVERYTHING in two hours- there is just too much! We will do our best to cover the highlights and take questions from the audience to drive the conversation into the areas that impact you the most.

Come early, stay late! We'll answer your questions if we can.

Date/Time:

Wednesday, Nov. 11th:
Welcome Time: 5:45-6:00 Intro & Logistics: 6:00 - 6:05 Presentation: 6:05-8:00

Click here to RSVP.

Event Location:

Microsoft Office
9606 N. Mopac Expressway Suite 200
Austin, TX 78759