Lync 2013

Microsoft have stated that they would retire Exchange Online UM on 28th February 2020 and it would be replaced by Cloud Voicemail. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/skypeforbusiness/plan/exchange-unified-messaging-online-migration-support This morning at 2:51am (29th Feb) we received the following email from Office 365 Message Centre. Ensure you have configured the Cloud Voicemail prereqs. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/skypeforbusiness/hybrid/plan-cloud-voicemail. One of the main requirements is a SfB Hybrid which was not required for Exchange Online UM integration. It’s still not clear what has happened to customers who have not done this. Does CVM work without a Hybrid? ...

Are you using Citrix or any other 3rd party application that handles media (e.g. Call Recording / Contact Centre) with Skype for Business? You may find you’re not marking this traffic with the correct DSCP markings. You should configure QoS in the usual method using a Windows GPO. Mark Vale documents this process really well: https://blog.valeconsulting.co.uk/2015/09/07/skype-for-business-configuring-quality-of-service-qos/ Pat Richard has a really useful QoS Calculator here: https://www.ucunleashed.com/2821 “Why does it matter if I’m using Citrix or a call recording application like Verba?” Answer - They have their own executables and don’t use the standard SfB exe’s to send/receive media! ...

Every Lync/Skype admin has the same nightmare with Response Group Holiday sets, something that has to manually be programmed each year for Public Holidays in your country. What if you could script populating Holiday Sets automatically using PowerShell and an API? I live in England and most of my customers are UK based so I needed a service that would give me Public Holidays for the UK. Our government website lists all Public Holidays here: https://www.gov.uk/bank-holidays. They are also conveniently provided in JSON format here: https://www.gov.uk/bank-holidays.json ...

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. ...

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: ...

I recently came across an issue where the SCOM (System Center Operations Manager) Agent was installed on all servers in a customers Skype for Business (SfB) Edge pool but they were not appearing in the SfB Management Pack (Skype for Business 2015 Server Health). All Edge servers were showing as “Agent Managed” in SCOM and appeared in “Discovered Inventory” as Critical. Using Health Explorer on each Edge server showed the following: ...

Ok here is a little tip when trying to add trusted root certificate authorities to Skype for Business 2015 and Lync 2010/2013 Edge servers. Microsoft have a list of Unified Communications Certificate Providers detailed here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/929395 Windows now automatically downloads Trusted Root certificates when you access a web page on HTTPS. We can exploit this to get all Trusted Root certificates on our Edge servers which is required for Federation to work correctly. An example of this is where you only get one way IM or a federated partner may see your presence as unknown. ...

I have recently encountered a strange issue where all 3 Front End servers in the same pool ran out of disk space at the same time. When investigating both sqlservr.exe processes (RTCLOCAL and LYNCLOCAL) were consuming the whole page file (or all of the available space on C: as the pagefile was system managed). In Resource Monitor I could see the commit for both sqlservr.exe processes was extremely high. Apologies for the poor images, I was using iMessage to send the images to a colleague and didn’t screenshot: ...

Microsoft detail how to move users from Lync On-Prem to Lync Online and how to bulk move users in an OU or with a particular AD attribute: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj204969%28v=ocs.15%29.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396. If you want to bulk move users to Lync Online from a CSV you can use the PowerShell below: $creds=Get-Credential Import-Csv movelyncusers.csv -Header Identity | Foreach-Object {Move-CsUser -Identity $_.identity -Target sipfed.online.lync.com -Credential $creds -HostedMigrationOverrideUrl https://admin1e.online.lync.com/HostedMigration/hostedmigrationService.svc} movelyncusers.csv should contain a list of the UPNs of the users you wish to move. No headings are required.