Configuring Location Information in Lync Without E911

One of the most underutilized features in Lync is the Location Information Server (LIS) database.  This is due usually to the following:

• LIS is marketed in the same discussion as E911, which only North America (really US and Canada) can use
• The configuration is completely performed in powershell

The LIS can also be very helpful for an organization (no matter what country you are in) for publishing…well, location information.  If a company is very spread-out, either regionally with many campuses or globally with many offices, wouldn’t it be great to auto-populate a user’s location information based on where they are actually sitting that day?  I mean Lync unleashes us from our cubicle and now it is hard to know if someone is actually in the office or working from another company location.

LIS can be configured to do just that, publish location information for your users based on where their Lync client is connecting from.  This post will step you through the minimum requirements to make that happen.

Location information is based off of network components, such as subnets, switches, etc.  When looking at Lync configuration options for network components, it might be a little confusing.  Lync will use network information (subnets) for four different uses and understanding what the authoritative source is crucial.

Lync Functionality	Subnet Definition Location
Determining Location	LIS Subnets (powershell)
Determining Location Policy (used in E911 config)	Lync Subnets defined in Lync Control Panel
Call Admissions Control (CAC)	Lync Subnets defined in Lync Control Panel
Media Bypass	Lync Subnets defined in Lync Control Panel

If we are just interested in determining our location and publishing the information, only the LIS subnets need to be defined.  Subnets (including location information) will be configured using the Set-CsLisSubnet cmdlet.

In our example, we will be creating two different locations.  If you are only interested in publishing location information into the Lync client and do not care about E911 configuration, only the “Location” and “City” field are used to populate the client.  You can use both or either for your configuration.  The following commands are used in my environment:

Set-CsLisSubnet –Subnet 192.168.1.0 –Location “Building 40” –City “Redmond”

Set-CsLisSubnet –Subnet 10.0.2.0 –Location “Home Office” –City “Texas”

Once we have our subnets defined, we need to publish the information to the LIS database.  The can be achieved by running: Publish-CsLisConfiguration cmdlet:

Once everything has been replicated, we can log-off of our client and back in.  The location information is now published into the client depending on what subnet the user sign’s in from.

You will also notice that others users will see this information about other user’s presence within their client:

Note that we did not have to configure anything in the Lync Control Panel for Network Sites and Subnets:

This post showed how to configure location information and publish that information in the Lync client.

Becoming a Master

I just spent one of the longest three weeks of my life getting certified for Lync Masters.  It was long by two fold: the day to day grind of 12+ hour days (this isn’t a 5 day work week…) focusing on nothing but Lync and then the three weeks away from my family.  It was a great feeling that I came back on top!

I want to give a special shout out to my study group and fellow Masters (yes we were 100% in our group): Jeroen Reijling and Luke Kannel.  These guys are at the top of their game.  Also great on going conversations/contributions with the rest of Rotation 15.  It was definitely a team effort.

If you are thinking about Lync Masters, I will give you one piece of advice: do not come to class without being at least familiar with all the features of Lync.  This includes Enterprise Voice, Response Groups, CAC, Exchange UM, and even Group Chat.  Do not expect to learn them on the spot.  Also some bonus advice…do not come to Masters without first tying up loose ends with your company, projects, and family.  Distractions will be your downfall.

Here are a couple of good blog posts that I referred to during the process: Blog1 and Blog2.

Again, a big thanks to my family, study group, and my company Azaleos (as well as my colleague Chris Cook who held down the fort while I was gone) for allowing me the opportunity.

Lync June 2012 Server and Client Updates Released (CU6)

The Lync team has released server and client updates for June 2012. Here are all the details:

Server Updates (7577.199) – Download – KB 2493736

• Core Components (KB 2701663)
• Conferencing Attendant (KB 2701659)
• Web Components Server (KB 2710559)
• Standard/Enterprise Edition Server (KB 2701585)
• Web Conferencing Server (KB 2708616)
• Mobility Service (KB 2708617)

Note: Use the cumulative LyncServerUpdateInstaller.exe to install the updates to make sure all needed updates are applied.

Clients (7577.4103)

• Lync 2010 (32-bit) – Download – KB 2701664
• Lync 2010 (64-bit) – Download – KB 2701664
• Attendant Console (7577.4098) – Download – KB 2496326

Phone Edition (7577.4100)

• Polycom CX500, CX600, CX3000 – Download – KB 2701671
• Polycom CX700, LG-Nortel 8540 – Download – KB 2724545
• Aastra 6721ip, 6725ip – Download – KB 2701667
• HP 4110, 4120 – Download – KB 2701670

Group Chat (7577.4102)

• Client – Download – KB 2701665
• Admin Tool (7577.4071) – Download – KB 2707265

Slow Month…For Blogging

It is going to be a slow month for me blogging.  On the other hand, it will be one of my busiest and most challenging months in my professional career.  I am headed off to Redmond for Lync Masters training.  If you are not familiar with Masters training, it is a 3-week “immersive” training program held on the Redmond campus and taught by the product group and SME’s in the field.  More info about the Lync Masters program can be found here: Lync Masters.

I am looking forward to this great opportunity that my company (Azaleos) and my family has allowed me to attend.  See everyone on the other side…

Exchange 2010 SP2 Update Rollup 3 Available

An update for Exchange 2010 SP2 has just released and can be downloaded at: Exchange 2010 SP2 Update Rollup 3 Download.

This will take you Exchange version up to 14.2.309.2

For a description of all the included fixes, see KB 2685289

For those of you running DAGs, please see the following article: Applying Updates to Exchange 2010 SP1 and SP2

If you are running third party products (like anti-virus, etc), it is important that you disable them before updating.

More information can be found on the Exchange Team Blog site.

Enabling Federated Group Chat Rooms

Ohhhh….Group Chat.  You get ignored sometimes.  Group Chat can be a powerful add-on to the Lync solution.  I call it an add-on because of the disconnected experience both from a user and server perspective (hopefully this will get better in the future).  But let’s not go into that today.

This post assumes that you have a functioning Group Chat deployment and will describe how to enable specific chat rooms to allow for federated user access.  This will enable specific users and domains outside of your organization the ability to participate in your internal Group Chat solution.  Note: You must have a functioning Edge Server deployment for federation to work with Group Chat.

Step 1 – Create Federated Group

You must manually configure a federated group and specify federated users for this group.  This can be done by clicking the File –> Manage Users… from the Group Chat Admin Tool.

This will open the Manage Users and User Groups tool.  Once the tool is open, click File –> Create a New Federated User Group…

Name the group and select OK:

Once the group is created, click on the group and right-click in the Members tab area and select Add User…  Fill out the federated user information:

Once the user is created, you can right-click on the user and select Manage User… This will enable you to change any user information, disable/enable the user, and change file upload permissions:

Step 2 – Add Federated Group To Chat Room

Now you can go back to the main Group Chat Admin Tool.  You will notice that the newly created group is added automatically to the Root Scope:

This will enable you to add the FederatedUsersGroup to the desired chat rooms.  Navigate to the chat room and click on the Members tab.  Then click the Add button and add the group:

Once the added group shows in the Members tab, click Apply.

Step 3 – Federated Users Adds Chat Room To Client

Once all administration is complete, the federated user can now add the chat room to their client.  If invitations were enabled, then the user should receive a typical Group Chat invite.  If not, the user can search for the room manually.  This can be done by adding the federated domain to the search list in the client.  Click File –> Join a Chat Room…

On the Domain drop-down, click Edit Domains and add the federated domain to the list:

Now you will be able to search for available rooms in the federated domain.  Find the chat room and select Join:

Now you will have the federated chat room in your list of rooms.  You will notice that the room is designated with the federation globe icon much like federated contacts within the Lync client:

Extra Notes

If you want federated users to be able to upload/download files within the chat room, you need to make sure that the URL associated with the Web Service is published via reverse proxy and has a trusted/public certificate associated with the IIS bindings.  You can view the URL by opening the Group Chat configuration tool and selecting the File Repository tab from the System Wide settings:

I hope that this post helps you set up federation for your Group Chat rooms.

Changing DTMF Control Mappings for Audio Conferencing in Lync

Many companies are learning the extreme value of Lync these days.  One of the easiest ways to gain immediate ROI is to replace your hosted audio conferencing service with Lync dial-in conferencing.  If you have been a user of any hosted service, you are most likely familiar with managing the roster meeting participants through DTMF key mappings.  Most likely the Lync DTMF mappings are not going to match exactly what you are used to and you may need to adjust some of the key mappings.

From the Outlook invite, users can view the dial-in conferencing information by clicking the “Find local number” link or by browsing to the Simple URL that was assigned in the Lync topology.

Outlook Invite:

Topology Builder:

By clicking the references above, the Dial-in Conferencing web Page will show the default DTMF mappings:

Administrators can view and configure the current mappings from the Lync Management Shell.  To view the current configuration, run Get-CsDialInConferencingDtmfConfiguration

Note, you can have different DTMF configuration mappings defined on a Global or Site scope level.  To create a site scope for DTMF mappings, use the New-CsDialInConferencingDtmfConfiguration cmdlet.

An administrator can change the mappings by using the Set-CsDialinConferencingDtmfConfiguration cmdlet.  The following are valid configurations:

• Command Character: # or *
• Commands: single digit 0-9

In my example, I am going to change the Mute/Unmute command to “2” and the Admit All command to “0”.  I will also change the Command Character to #.  The following command will make my configuration settings:

Set-DialInConferencingDtmfConfiguration –CommandCharacter “#” –MuteUnmuteCommand 2 –AdmitAll 0

Now the new configuration can be seen in the powershell or Dial-in conferencing web page:

This post shows how to change the default DTMF mappings used for managing audio conferences.