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