Lync / Skype4B

I recently had a customer that required 90 Common Area Phones creating in Skype for Business. This is quite a tedious task so the easiest way is to populate a CSV and use a PowerShell script to do the import. When creating a Common Area Phone in Lync/SfB it can take a few seconds before you’re able to assign Policies and Pin numbers to the objects. This slows the script down significantly if waiting 20 seconds between creating the object, then assigning Policies. So, I’ve actually made three ForEach loops, the first one creates the Common Area Phone objects, then it waits 20 seconds before assigning policies to every object, then it waits another 20 seconds before assigning the pins (I found that assigning Pins would fail if I didn’t wait longer). ...

The short answer is no, you require Exchange Unified Messaging, whether that is provided by Exchange 2010 SP3, 2013 2016 or Exchange Online. But, what about if you deploy an Exchange server just to service Voicemail and forward the Voicemail on as an attachment to Lotus Notes, or any other email platform for that matter? *NOTE - You will need to license any users that have an Exchange Mailbox & UM.* ...

We recently came across an issue where a customer could not sign-in to a Microsoft Surface Hub. There’s a great article here: https://ucsorted.com/2015/08/31/understanding-user-mapping-in-a-skype-for-business-resource-forest/ explaining how a Resource Forest model works. When you enable a SfB user, the proxyAddresses attribute is populated with the users SIP address in the format SIP:name@domain.com. In a Resource Forest model this is populated on the disabled user object in the Resource Forest. Usually the attribute flow is one way from the User Forest to the Resource Forest so the SIP: value never populates the proxyAddresses attribute in the User Forest. ...

I was recently installing the latest Skype4B CU and came across a strange issue where one of the updates would not install. The error message I received was: “Skype for Business Server 2015 Update Installer: There were errors during the installation process. For details, see the log file atC:\Users\chris\AppData\Local\Temp\Skype_patchinstallerlog-FE01-[2016-08-01][15-28-31].txt” Checking the log files indicated an error 1603. A bit of googling led me to various blog posts advising to ensure all MMCs were closed, checking there was enough disk space on the Front End and also running the Deployment Wizard again. None of these solutions worked for me, I tried running the installer from an elevated prompt and also tried installing server.msp manually. ...

On your current farm run “Get-OfficeWebAppsFarm”. Make a note of the InternalURL, ExternalURL, CertificateName and Machines (Note you may only have the ExternalURL configured). E.g. InternalURL: https://webapps.mycompany.local ExternalURL: https://webapps.mycompany.com CertificateName: My WAC Certificate Machines: WebApps01, WebApps02 Run “Get-OfficeWebAppsHost”. Make a note of the allowList. E.g. allowList: mycompany.com, mycompany.local On each Office Web Apps 2013 server: Uninstall “Microsoft Office Web Apps Server 2013” Install Windows Identity Foundation 3.5 (Add Roles and Features > Features) Install the Update for Universal C Runtime in Windows KB (https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/kb/2999226) Install Microsoft Office Online Server 2016 Using the information you gathered from Get-OfficeWebAppsFarm, on the first machine in the farm (WebApps01) run New-OfficeWebAppsFarm, E.g. New-OfficeWebAppsFarm -InternalURL https://webapps.mycompany.local -ExternalURL https://webapps.mycompany.com -CertificateName “My WAC Certificate” ...

Microsoft recently released Office Online Server to replace Office Web Apps. OOS allows you to use Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote from your browser. Lync and Skype for Business utilise OOS for enhanced PowerPoint sharing. All Microsoft articles advise to download Office Online Server from the Volume Licensing Service Center, however it’s quite difficult to find. Try searching for “Office”, “Office Online”, “Online” and you won’t find an “Office Online Server” download. That’s because it’s actually part of Office Professional Plus 2016. ...

Back in 2012 I wrote a post on how to hide Response Groups from the Address Book in Lync 2010 using ADSI Edit. The same process also applied to Lync 2013. Original Article: /2012/10/16/hiding-response-groups-from-address-book-lync-server-2010/ The original article involved finding the Response Group AD Object manually using ADSI Edit and changing the msExchHideFromAddressLists (Exchange property) to TRUE. You could then run Update-CSAddressbook and Lync clients would pickup the change within due course. ...

I recently came across an issue with Lync 2013 where SCOM (System Center Operations Manager) was periodically reporting errors with the Conferencing Attendant and IM MCU. The SCOM errors were as follows: Alert: [LYNC] Conferencing Attendant failed to join the conference. Source: LS Conferencing Auto Attendant Component [F05.DOMAIN.LOCAL] Path: FE05.DOMAIN.LOCAL Last modified by: System Last modified time: 4/11/2016 11:01:50 AM Alert description: Conferencing Attendant failed to join the conference. Microsoft.Rtc.Signaling.ConnectionFailureException:Operation failed because the network connection was not available. ---> Microsoft.Rtc.Internal.Sip.TLSException: TLS Negotiation took too long to complete Alert: [LYNC] Lync Server IM MCU failed to connect to the SIP Front End. Source: LS Instant Message Conferencing Component [FE03.DOMAIN.LOCAL] Path: FE03.DOMAIN.LOCAL Last modified by: System Last modified time: 4/11/2016 11:35:24 AM Alert description: Lync Server IM MCU failed to connect to the SIP Front End. Local Machine name: FE03.DOMAIN.LOCAL FE hostname: FE06.DOMAIN.LOCAL IP address: 10.10.10.13:5061 Message: TLS Negotiation took too long to complete Strangely, no users had reported issues and initial thoughts were performance problems with the Lync Front End servers. This is quite a large Pool with 7 Front Ends and each Front End would periodically generate the above errors in SCOM. All servers were running the latest CU and all certificates were valid for 2 years. ...

When configuring QoS (Quality of Service) in Microsoft Lync / Skype for Business you need to modify the media port ranges for various Services and Configuration using PowerShell. Pat Richard has made a brilliant QoS calculator for Lync/Skype for Business here http://www.ehloworld.com/2821. The calculator will provide you with the PowerShell commands required to configure QoS port ranges and the GPO’s. The calculator also gives you the commands to verify the Configuration (which this post is based on). ...

I was recently working for a customer where their security policy prohibited traffic from the internet terminating on servers within the LAN. Skype for Business (Including previous versions Lync and OCS) uses a Reverse Proxy to terminate web requests within the DMZ and re-write the requests to the Front End Pool(s) within the LAN. The request is received on TCP/443 (HTTPS) and sent to the Front End VIP on TCP/4443. In the case of Standard Edition servers the request would be direct rather than to the Hardware Load Balancer. See diagram below: ...