Announcing the New Name of CS "14"!

Microsoft Lync

How did they get the name?

Lync -- a combination of “link” and “sync” -- fits these criteria and adds a creative element to the product that we can work within our branding, messaging, and in-product use (i.e. “make a Lync call”). Lync is about connecting people in new ways, anytime, anywhere.

Other info and news: Lync

Overview

Microsoft Lync Server 2010 provides complete presence, instant messaging, conferencing and enterprise voice capabilities through a single, easy-to-use interface that is consistent across PC, browser, and mobile device. You can Architect your deployment for high availability using data center resiliency and survivable branch appliances. Administrators benefit from a single, consistent management infrastructure, new capabilities to increase availability, and interoperability with existing systems. Administrators also use a new PowerShell-based foundation for administration consistent with Exchange Server, Active Directory, and other Microsoft server products.

This Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Release Candidate includes both editions of the server (Enterprise Edition and Standard Edition), along with the Microsoft Lync 2010 client.

Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Release Candidate Download here

Exchange Server 2010 SP1 is now out!!

The SP1 is now available for download

You can download it here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=50b32685-4356-49cc-8b37-d9c9d4ea3f5b&displaylang=en

Latest Microsoft UC Tracks and Info

Found a great source of Microsoft UC tracks and info that is presented on TechEd North America 2010.

This track covers the Microsoft Unified Communications platform and technologies, including Microsoft® Exchange Server, Microsoft® Office Communications Server, Microsoft Office LiveMeeting and Microsoft® Exchange Online. Here you can learn how you can streamline your organization’s communications, build presence aware applications, roll out an on-premise, hosted (or combination thereof) messaging and collaboration system, and much more!

TechEd Online: here
Source: Tech Ed Online website.

TechNet Session: Introduction to Exchange Server 2010 Slides Download

Here is the link where you can download my slides on last night's TechNet Session.
It's available on PDF or XPS format.

If you do have question please feel free to e-mail me at mikhail@mimanu.com

Facebook Connector is now available for Outlook 2010!

Facebook Connector is now available for Outlook 2010! Monitor your social connection via outlook now!

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/outlook-social-connector-partner-listing-FX101812910.aspx

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 SP1 Beta Download

Overview

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 helps IT Professionals achieve new levels of reliability with greater flexibility, enhanced user experiences, and increased protection for business communications.

• Flexible and reliable - Exchange Server 2010 gives you the flexibility to tailor your deployment based on your company's unique needs and a simplified way to keep e-mail continuously available for your users.
• Anywhere access - Exchange Server 2010 helps your users get more done by giving them the freedom to securely access all their communications - e-mail, voice mail, instant messaging, and more - from virtually any platform, Web browser, or device.
• Protection and compliance - Exchange Server 2010 delivers integrated information loss prevention, and compliance tools aimed at helping you simplify the process of protecting your company's communications and meeting regulatory requirements.

This pre-release software is intended for evaluation purposes only. You must accept the license terms before you are authorized to use the software. There is no product support for this trial software. You are welcome to participate in the forums to share your trial experiences with others and to ask for advice.

Download Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 SP1 Beta

*from Download Center

TechNet Session: Introduction to Exchange Server 2010

Hi!

I will be doing a TechNet Session in Microsoft Philippines thi July 22, 2010. I'm inviting you to attend to session to know more on Exchange Server 2010.

Here is the Synopsis or Session Overview:

Microsoft Exchange 2010 helps you achieve new levels of reliability and performance by delivering features that simplify your administration, help protect your communications, and delight your users by responding to their demands for greater business mobility. In this session we will talk about (and demos) key investments in Exchange Server 2010 and how Exchange provides unprecedented IT cost savings; the richest user experience across the PC, phone, and browser; and better management of risk through built-in protection and compliance features. Also in this session covers key topics including archiving and tiered storage; low cost disk use and the expansion of mailbox size while reducing costs; Unified Messaging and Voicemail Preview, and much more. Learn more about how Exchange Server 2010 delivers powerful productivity tools to your users in a way that best fits your business and technology needs.

You will also need to register, here is the link.

Configuring Custom Presence States in Communicator 2007 R2 [Updated]

After posting "Enabling User to Appear Offline" I will be posting "Configuring Custom Presence States in Communicator 2007 R2"
Again by default, Office Communicator 2007 R2 enable users to set their presence state to one of the following five states and added Appear Offline:To define custom presence states in Office Communicator 2007 R2, you will create an XML custom presence configuration file, and then specify its location with the CustomStateURL registry key.
Caution:Incorrectly editing the registry may severely damage your system. Before making changes to the registry, you should back up any valued data on the computer.

Configuration files have the following properties:

• Custom states can be configured with Available, Busy, and Do Not Disturb.
  
• The availability attribute determines which Presence button is associated with the status text of the custom state. In the example below, the status text, Working from Home, is displayed to the right of the Presence button.
• The maximum length of the status text is 64 characters.
• A maximum of four custom presence states can be added.
  
• Valid address types for the CustomStateURL registry key are FILE:, HTTP:, and HTTPS:

Note:If you implemented a custom presence state URL in previous versions of Communicator by using the CustomStateURL group policy, you might have to modify the URL or change the EnableSIPHighSecurityMode security level so that the custom presence state URL will work in Communicator 2007 R2. If the custom state presence URL no longer works, do one of the following:

• Reformat the custom presence state URL to an encrypted http (https) URL.
  
• Set EnableSIPHighSecurityMode group policy to 0.

Configuring Custom Presence States:

1. Close the Communicator and then Create an XML configuration file, by downloading the sample on my Skydrive
2. Save it to the Office Communicator Folder. Common Office Communicator directory is "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Communicator". For 64-bit: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office Communicator".
   
3. After saving, Launch REGEDIT and look for this directory: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Lync HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\POLICIES\MICROSOFT\COMMUNICATOR
4. Create a STRING called CustomStateURL and set the following value: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office Communicator\Presence.xml
5. Exit regedit and Relaunch Office Communicator.

Update:
February 10,2011: Skydrive Link

For other Information:
Configuring Custom Presence States in Microsoft Lync 2010

Microsoft Communications Server "14" Announced

Communications Server “14” all of its features finally announced and made public today at TechEd. Hopefully soon I will have some blog posts out on the new functionality and new configurations! but I will still also post for 2007 R2.

http://www.microsoft.com/communicationsserver/cs14/en/us/new-features.aspx

Enabling User to Appear Offline on Office Communicator 2007 R2 [Update]

By default, Office Communicator 2007 R2 enable users to set their presence to one of the following five states:

But Administrators can provide users with another option for setting their presence: Appear Offline. When a user selects this option, he or she appears to be offline. In fact, all of the user’s contacts see a presence icon indicating the user is offline.

For the users to have the option of "Appear Offline" you must create a new registry key and registry value on the computer running Office Communicator 2007 R2. For this option that I'm showing is per user or machine setting only, not a Global Setting.

Caution:
Incorrectly editing the registry may severely damage your system. Before making changes to the registry, you should back up any valued data on the computer.

Enable User to Appear Offline:

1. Log on to a computer that is running Office Communicator.
   

2. Click Start, and then click Run.

3. In the Run dialog box, type regedit, and then press ENTER.

4. In Registry Editor, expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, expand Software, expand Policies, expand Microsoft, click Communicator.
   

5. Right-click the Communicator registry key, point to New, and then click DWORD (32-bit) Value.

6. After the new value is created, type EnableAppearOffline to rename the value.

7. Double-click the new EnableAppearOffline registry value.

8. In the Edit DWORD (32-bit) Value dialog box, type 1 in the Value data box, and then click OK.

   Registry Setting Sample
9. After making above change, exit from Office Communicator (from system tray) and relaunch it.

10. After signing back to Office Communicator you should able to see "Appear Offline" on the option of the Office Communicator.

You know have the "Appear Offline" option on Office Communicator.

Update:
Enabling User to Appear Offline on Microsoft Lync 2010

For questions email me: mikhail@mimanu.com

Installing Exchange Server 2010 (Part 1): Preparing Active Directory for Exchange 2010

I. Introduction and Overview

This post will be going to be a four part series titled Preparing Active Directory for Exchange 2010, Installing Exchange 2010 using the User Interface, Reviewing the Mailbox Server Role and Creating New User and Testing Coexistence.The testing environment is on virtualization/Hyper-V. We will learn how to install Exchange 2010 by using the user interface (UI) and understand basic server role configuration.

II. Specifications, Architecture and Prerequisites

Specifications:
In this installation we will be needing 4 virtual machines with different roles. listed below the specifications and name for us to be familiarized.

DC01 -Domain Controller, Domain Name System (DNS), certification authority (CA), with 512 megabytes (MB) memory
EX2007 - Exchange Server 2007 SP2 with 1536 MB of memory
EX2010 - WS2008 with 1536 MB of memory
Client01 - WS2008 - Vista Experience with 1024 of memory.

Network Architecture:
Also before I start with the step by step installation. I want you to be familiar with the Network Architecture and Prerequisites.

Figure 1. Network Architecture

DC01: 10.0.1.10/16
EX2007: 10.0.1.20/16
EX2010: 10.0.1.30/16
Client01: 10.0.1.60/16
IMAIL01: 10.0.1.80/16

The domain is contoso.com. It will be also a coexistence with Exchange 2007. The following prerequisite software has been installed to prepare the Exchange server and organization for Exchange 2010. Before installing Exchange, verify that your Exchange 2010 server and organization meet the current prerequisites.

Prerequisites:
Exchange 2010 prerequisites2007 Office System Converter: Microsoft Filter Pack (FilterPackx64.exe) has been installed on the Exchange server EX2-1-

Server roles and features prerequisites
The following prerequisite command has been performed on the Exchange server EX2010:

Add-WindowsFeature NET-Framework,RSAT-ADDS,Web-Server,Web-Basic-Auth,Web-Windows-Auth,Web-Metabase,Web-Net-Ext,Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console,WAS-Process-Model,RSAT-Web-Server,Web-ISAPI-Ext,Web-Digest-Auth,Web-Dyn-Compression,NET-HTTP-Activation,RPC-Over-HTTP-Proxy,Desktop-Experience -Restart And the .NET TCP Port Sharing service has been set to Automatic startup.

III. Installation

In this first part of installation we will prepare the Active Directory Domain Services with the schema updates needed by Microsoft Exchange Server 2010. We will then configure global Exchange objects in AD DS, create security groups in the root domain, and prepare the current domain for Exchange 2010.

Prepare the Active Directory schema for the Exchange installation:

1. Insert the Exchange 2010 Media/Installer to the drive
2. An AutoPlay window will pop. Close it
3. Click Start, and the click Command Prompt.
4. At the command prompt, type the following and ENTER:
D:\setup /PrepareSchema
5. Read the message about the agreement and license terms. Do not press any keys to allow the set up continue. The process may take 4-6 minutes.
6. Verify that the setup operation completed successfully.

This command connects to the schema master and imports Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) Data Interchange Format (LDIF) files to update the schema with Exchange 2010-specific attributes.

Here is the screen shot of the installation.

Figure 2. Prepare Schema

Prepare the AD DS forest for the Exchange installation:

1. At the command prompt, type the following and then press ENTER:
D:\setup /PrepareAD
2. Read the message about the agreement and license terms. Do not press any keys to allow the set up continue. The process may take 3-5 minutes.
3. Verify the setup operation completed successfully.

The command configures global Exchange objects in AD DS, creates security groups in the root domain, and prepares the current domain for Exchange 2o10.

Figure 3. Prepare AD

Installation notes:
Running Setup /PrepareAD also prepares the local domain for Exchange. To prepare a domain other than the local domain, run Setup /PrepareDomain:. To prepare all domains in your organization run Setup /PrepareAllDomains.

This ends the Installing Exchange Server 2010 (Part 1): Preparing Active Directory for Exchange 2010. The next part is Installing Exchange 2010 using the User Interface.

Note:
This will be my first post of a technical topic it may be lack of formatting and some information. Please do give comment or feedback. You can email me at feedback@mimanu.com

Try and Download Microsoft Exchange Server 2010

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 helps you achieve new levels of reliability and performance by delivering features that simplify your administration, protect your communications, and delight your users by meeting their demands for greater business mobility.

Before you download here is the Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 systems requirements.

And when you download the latest software, you're automatically registered to access valuable product resources assembled in one convenient location.*

The Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 software is available in the following languages: Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian and Spanish

Download Microsoft Exchange Server 2010

*from Microsoft Technet

Welcome!!

Hi Everyone!!

Welcome to mimanu.com! Also titled Unified Communications

It's been 11 months since I graduated from college and 7 months since I joined the industry. Before I used to blog and post all about Microsoft Student Partners activities and events. Now I'm moving up to next level..hehe This will be a Technology Blog that will focus on Microsoft Unified Communications. It will cover Microsoft Office Communications Server and Office Communicator also with Microsoft Exchange Server. I will be posting updates, product details, solutions or posible solutions on troubleshooting that I encounter and from the UC guys and enthusiast. I might also post different Microsoft Technologies.

Feel free to email or contact me for questions and suggestions. I hope you enjoy reading and learning from my new blog!

Cheers!

Mikhail