September 2007 Archives

Good news for people who are considering building an OCS 2007 pilot infrastructure. It turns out that there *is* a way to upgrade the evaluation version of OCS 2007 to the full version. However, this approach won't work with the MSDN version (which you probably shouldn't be using anyway!)

Technorati Tags: Collaboration, OCS 2007

Steve Teffenhardt has started a comprehensive new site, www.ottawaflood.com, centering on flood relief efforts for the people affected by this summer's flooding in Hancock and Putnam Counties. Check it out.

One of OCS 2007's most useful new features has a variety of names. You can call it "simultaneous ring" or "call forking"; the idea is that an incoming call can cause all of your defined phones to ring at the same time. For example, your desk phone, logged-in Communicator session, and cell phone can all ring at once, so you can answer the call from wherever you happen to be. However, this leads to a question: doesn't this tie up more phone lines?

The answer (as with so many other telephony issues) is "it depends". (In fact, I should start a new blog category called "It Depends" just for this kind of question!) Consider two scenarios:

• Alice is using Communicator and calls Bob, who's logged in to Communicator and has a Tanjay phone on his desk. In this case, Alice's call can ring Bob's two devices without tying up any lines through the gateway-- because there are no PSTN or PBX components involved, there's no need to take any lines from the gateway.
• Carol is an outside PSTN caller; she calls Dave, who has a TDM PBX phone, Communicator, and a cell phone. In this scenario, Carol's already occupying one line (from her phone to the OCS gateway). When OCS rings his cell phone, that will use a PSTN line. Ringing Dave's PBX phone may or may not require an additional line, depending on the connection between OCS and the PBX.

However, thanks to call path replacement, under many circumstances OCS can provide simultaneous ring without taking up additional lines. However, whether or not this works depends on the PBX (if any) in use, because not all PBX systems support this feature.

Technorati Tags: Exchange 2007, OCS 2007, Unified Messaging

This was great to see: John Cargill sent me a note about his Scout troop's trip down to Ottawa for flood cleanup.

Thank you for your assistance in locating a relief agency that my Scouts and I could work with.

We traveled with 13 scouts and 7 adult volunteers. Scout Camp Berry hosted us at no cost for tent camping - and with thanks for our purpose in traveling to Ohio.

The agency you directed us to was very efficient and registered us quickly. They listened (some don't) to our level of preparation and tried their best to assign us to matching tasks. We responded to one home where the owner had approximately 3 feet of ware in her basement and questioned whether there was mold behind the paneled walls. We carefully removed one sheet - found no mold, but some moisture, and recommended that the base molding be removed for better drying.

She agreed as she really didn't want to strip off all of the walls unless there was a clear need. Her family had already spray bleached the external paneling so we
proceeded to Murphy oil soap the whole basement. Some furniture washing and yard work finished us up on that site.

We returned for additional assignment and responded to the need for re-insulating a shop garage and yard raking and cleanup of wet plaster scraps. While this particular home looked okay from the outside, we were aware that they had had to pull up all of the floors and part of the wet plaster walls - so despite our not being involved in demolition or internal reconstruction we were able to help with some work that they did not have time to get done.

All-in-all a good trip. Several scouts and parents said that they really enjoyed the recovery work and would be interested in future trips of the same kind.

When you use Exchange 2007 Unified Messaging, one of the cool features is that the UM server will attempt to replace the caller's phone number with a name. How does it decide what name to use? Ah, there's the rub! The answer depends on whether or not the caller has a UM-enabled Exchange mailbox. Here are the four possibilities (courtesy of Microsoft's Dave Howe):

• If the caller is UM-enabled, then the UM server will find the user by the Exchange UM proxy address and the mail will contain the Display Name of the caller, as shown in Active Directory.
• If the caller is not UM-enabled, but exists as a contact with extension in the called party’s Exchange mailbox, the mail will contain the Display Name of the caller. Note that this number will be whatever you put in, whether or not it matches what's in AD.
• If the caller is not UM-enabled, but you have added a custom Exchange UM proxyAddress containing his/her extension, the mail will contain the Display Name of the caller.
• Otherwise, the mail will contain the only the extension or phone number of the caller. Whatever the PBX reports as part of the call diversion information is what you'll get.

That raises an excellent question: how can you add a proxy address for users who aren't already UM-enabled? It turns out that this is simpler than you might think, once you know the magic spell. You can do it with ADSIEdit if you know the format (which is simply EUM:extID;phone-context=dialPlanName). So, for example, my EUM proxy address is EUM:7285;phone-context=redmondDP.3sharp.com

However, there's a simpler way: use Exchange Management Shell and just say:

Set-mailbox mailboxName –secondaryaddress extension –secondarydialplan dialPlanName

That's it. One line and you're done!

Technorati Tags: Exchange 2007, PowerShell, Unified Messaging

The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation is dedicated to finding the cause of, and cures for, type-1 diabetes-- the insulin-dependent kind. Using insulin doesn't cure diabetes, it just postpones the inevitable slow degeneration of major organs that eventually leads to death. That's no good.

Our martial arts school is sponsoring a team, the Black Belt Brigade. As part of that team, our family has signed up to raise $500. That's a lot, on one hand, but on the other, it's a very small fraction of the $90 million that JDRF hopes to raise this year.

If you're reading this, please consider donating online. $2, $5, $10, or more will definitely help. You can donate, or just check our family's status, here. (and if not, that's OK too... but Dad's ghost may come haunt you. No, wait, that was just a joke.... maybe!)

Remember all the goodies I mentioned here? They're all here. Expect review-age in the next week or two.

Technorati Tags: Exchange 2007, Unified Messaging

Below is the text of the original eulogy I wrote for Dad's funeral. I ad-libbed a great deal of additional material; rather than edit the text to reflect what I think I might've said, I decided to go with the original. Writing this, and speaking at Dad's funeral, was an extremely difficult experience. It was an honor I might rather not have had. However, I remember once turning down the opportunity to speak at a dear friend's wedding and declining because I didn't think I had anything to say. I still regret that, years later, and was determined not to make the same mistake again.

Arlene and my mom have both done an excellent job of sending out thank-you notes to the many, many people who have expressed their condolences on Dad's death. The whole thing is still overwhelming, but it was made much less so by the love and concern of our friends, loved ones, and community members. However, I haven't really done my part, except for writing letters to the hotel and the hospital. This post is by way of thanking the many people and organizations who have done so much to help us, including the Wood County Sheriff's Office, the folks at the McVeigh and Witzler-Shank funeral homes, the members of TRAC and WCARES, and Dad's co-workers from Dillin and Hoffman-- to say nothing of the dozens of people who sent flowers, food, sympathy notes, and prayers our way. Thank you all so much.