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