MS UC @ TechEd North America 2013 – #Lync #Office365 #Exchange

To start with, the keynote was great this year, but not a single mention of Lync or Exchange in it, and not so many of Office365 neither. But still a great keynote to get an understanding on what’s coming in the underlying products to what we run our UC platform on.

 

Lync sessions

Planning and Deploying Your Enterprise Voice

 

 

Voice Interoperability Fundamentals

 

 

Microsoft Lync Server 2013 Dial Plan and Voice Routing Deep Dive

 

 

The Deep Dark Secrets of Unified Messaging

 

 

Enterprise Network Requirements for Microsoft Lync Server 2013

 

 

Network Design and Deployment Strategies to Ensure Success for Microsoft Lync Server 2013 Enterprise…

 

 

Designing for High Availability and Disaster Recovery in Microsoft Lync Server 2013

 

 

Planning and Deployment for Edge Server with Microsoft Lync Server 2013

 

 

Planning and Deploying Conferencing in Microsoft Lync Server 2013

 

 

Mobile Devices Deep Dive with Microsoft Lync Server 2013

 

 

Migration and Coexistence with Microsoft Lync Server 2013

 

 

Scripting and Automation for Microsoft Lync

 

 

Monitoring Microsoft Lync Server 2013: Getting the Most out of Monitoring Service Data

 

 

Microsoft System Center Advisor and System Center 2012 – Operations Manager: Better Together

 

 

All about Archiving with Microsoft Lync Server 2013

 

 

Understanding Compliance in Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, and Office

 

 

Microsoft Lync Hybrid Scenarios

 

 

Lap Around the Microsoft Lync 2013 Developer Platform

 

 

Deep Dive into New Unified Communications Web API of Lync 2013

 

 

Introducing Lync Room System

 

 

Exchange Sessions

Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Managed Availability

 

 

Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Client Access Server Role

 

 

Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 High Availability and Site Resilience

 

 

Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Sizing

 

 

Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Transport Architecture

 

 

Exchange Online Protection

 

 

Virtualization in Microsoft Exchange Server 2013

 

 

Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 On-Premises Upgrade and Coexistence

 

 

Team Collaboration with Site Mailboxes

 

 

Microsoft Exchange Archiving Policy: Move, Delete, or Hold

 

 

The Deep Dark Secrets of Unified Messaging

 

 

Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Tips & Tricks

 

 

Microsoft System Center Advisor and System Center 2012 – Operations Manager: Better Together

 

 

Data Loss Prevention in Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Outlook 2013

 

 

The New Outlook Web App: Designed for Touch and Offline Too!

 

 

 

Office 365 Sessions

A Look Inside Microsoft Office 365

 

 

Choosing the Right Cloud Service

 

 

Security in Microsoft Office 365

 

 

Microsoft Office 365 Deployment

 

 

Microsoft Lync Hybrid Scenarios

 

 

Exchange Online Protection

 

 

Overview of Microsoft Office 365 Identity Management

 

 

Microsoft Office 365 Pro Plus Adoption and Change Management

 

 

Microsoft Office 365 for Education: Overview and Upgrades

 

 

Microsoft Exchange Hybrid Deployment and Migration on Your Terms

 

 

Using Windows PowerShell Magic to Manage Microsoft Office 365

 

 

Help Small Businesses Seize the Day with Microsoft Office 365

 

 

Deploying and Updating Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus with Click-to-Run

 

 

Microsoft Exchange in the Cloud: Scared of Losing Your Job?

 

 

Internals of Deploying the In-Place Archive: Online, On-Premises, or Hybrid

 

 

Microsoft Office 365 Service Communications

 

 

Modern Public Folders Overview, Migration and Microsoft Office 365

 

 

Microsoft Office 365 Directory and Access Management with Windows Azure Active Directory

 

 

 

 

And just some cool other sessions

Understanding Immersive Productivity and Collaboration Experiences with Perceptive Pixel Devices

Feature differences in Office 365 vNext #Office365 #Exchange #Lync #SharePoint

I have prepared a list of all the feature differences in all of the coming Office 365 plans where you also see what differs between Office 365 and its on-prem versions.
(click the ikon in the bottom right corner of the embeded excel file for fullscreen)

 

 

Read this: UC survey results: Cisco and Microsoft Lync duke it out & How Microsoft Lync disrupts the unified communications market

If you have nothing better to do there is a new report out that has circulated the social media:

Part 1
http://searchunifiedcommunications.techtarget.com/feature/UC-survey-results-Cisco-and-Microsoft-Lync-duke-it-out

Part 2
http://searchunifiedcommunications.techtarget.com/feature/How-Microsoft-Lync-disrupts-the-unified-communications-market

Lync Support Session Web Page

I have an early Christmas present for all my readers this year.

The “Lync Support Session Web Page” is now freely available on TechNet Gallery.

We have all joined remote support sessions where the agent asks us to go to one page and then type in an ID number and click connect, right? And the “Lync Support Session Web Page” is that page.

This particular functionality is not directly built in to Lync Server out of the box but the similar way we used to do it is by opening Outlook, book a meeting and getting the meeting information by clicking the Lync Meeting button, and then sending the email and waiting until it gets received and its at least a minute or three before the meeting/sessions are started.

One of my customers did not like that it took this long before a support session could be started and wanted this functionality in Lync, so we created the Lync Support Session Web Page

image

Its basically a simple web page from where you can select an agent, then type in a meeting ID, check the box to run the web client or leave the box if the full Lync client is installed and then press the go button which will redirect the user to the good old meeting URL.
And from there start the session by typing the name (and install the plugin) or launch Lync.

The support agent also have to join the session for it to start.
But that can of course be done from this page as well.

As I said, its basic, its FREE to use, but I do have one wish: if you do any enhancements to the code, please share it with me so I can share it with everyone!

Download:

http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Lync-Support-Session-Web-3e1c8889

Simulate a WAN with characteristics like delay, packet loss, jitter, etc. for #Lync

A cool tool that I got recommended by a colleague when testing out Lync and to simulate a broken WAN network. I can recommend it and will also start using it in my LyncLab course

WANem is a Wide Area Network Emulator, meant to provide a real experience of a Wide Area Network/Internet, during application development / testing over a LAN environment.

WANem allows you to setup a transparent application gateway which can be used to simulate WAN characteristics like Network delay, Packet loss, Packet corruption, Disconnections, Packet re-ordering, Jitter, etc. WANem can be used to simulate Wide Area Network conditions for Data/Voice traffic and is released under the widely acceptable GPL v2 license.

http://wanem.sourceforge.net/

Microsoft’s Unified Communications strategy gets clear

Well, its been abit foggy for a while. But with last weeks rumor that Live messenger will be retired and transitioned into Skype I think its also a pretty good idea to put the Lync team under Skype’s management (also rumored on twitter last week) (Source)

This gives us a pretty clear picture on how MS will target its UC products with Exchange as, well this on is clear right? but also now with Skype as the consumer product and Lync as the product to use in your business, and that’s it!

Lets also hope that this merge will benefit Lync and enable us to use some of the great stuff that Skype has built up.

(Now hurry up with that video federation between Lync & Skype, as this can be done today with Live Messenger)

(please let us use Skype as a siptrunk provider ASAP)

(will this mean that we will be transitioned to Skype MVP´s next year?)

What else would you like to see come out of this?
Comments are open!

I’m a Lync MVP for one more year

Yesterday I got that long awaited email that said that I am a MVP for one more year.

Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2012 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in Lync technical communities during the past year.

I’m honored to to receive this and I appreciate the community so much so its totally worth all the extra hours spent in forums, writing blogs, managing the user groups etc. 

From the MVP blog:

While there are more than 100 million social and technical community members, only a small portion are selected to be recognized as MVPs. Each year, around 4,000 MVPs are honored. They are nominated by Microsoft, other community individuals, or in some cases themselves. Candidates are rigorously evaluated for their technical expertise, community leadership, and voluntary community contributions for the previous year. They come from more than 90 countries, speak over 40 different languages, and are awarded in more than 90 Microsoft technologies. Together, they answer more than 10 million questions a year!

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mvpawardprogram/archive/2012/10/01/congratulations-new-and-renewed-mvps.aspx

See you all at the Lync Conference

Create a out of office board to show what people are on vaccation or called in sick #Exchange #Lync #Office365

This will be kind of hard to grasp for the rest of the world, but in July every year the entire country of Sweden is CLOSED!! I mean some shops are open but there is no real work being done in the offices, everyone is on holiday in Spain or something. I even had to walk like 30 minutes today to find a lunch restaurant that was open. I personally think this is insane, since its crazy cold and dark in December and like to go away on my holidays then and work in July when it’s warm and the sun is at least a bit alive.

Anyway, just a short tip from one of my customers on their setup on how they handle employees that call in sick and are on holiday.

Well it’s really simple, just call in to the Exchange 2010 Outlook Voice Access and set your out of facility message (or just set it via OWA or Outlook)

 

Then create an Out of Office Board by following this great post