While the most ideal scenario is to only run UCMA 3.0 applications with Lync Server 2010, for many of you this is simply not possible. You may own an application that was written for UCMA 2.0 and you want to upgrade to Lync Server 2010, but the application...

One of the many new features in Lync Server 2010 is a change to how meeting Urls are formatted. The name of this feature is "Simple Url", but in truth this this elicits a smirk from anyone on our team who has dealt with them, as simple Urls are anything...

Recently while performing a web search, I came across a blog that recommended that users read the topology Xml returned from Get-CsTopology in order to provision a UCMA application. This is really not a good practice and we actually seriously considered...

Over the last number of years, I have learned the following practices that I believe are worth sharing. While there exists the perception that the best devs are those who can describe a product or feature in gory details and implement very complicated...

Today we will finally start delving into the topology document - well sort of. In the previous two days I covered the Content Management Server and how documents are defined. I also mentioned that the topology document itself is stored in the Content...

In yesterday's post, I glossed over the small fact that pretty much every single line of manageability code has been rewritten in Lync Server 2010. In today's post, I thought it would be a good idea to explain this further. Almost every single line...

With the release of the Lync Server 2010 RC yesterday, I am finally free to begin discussing all sorts of things in my head. Today I will discuss one of the most crucial parts of Lync Server 2010 - the topology. There is a huge amount of information here...

For those of you who haven't seen a blog from me in over a year, you may be happy to hear the following information. I am alive and well, with this post serving as evidence of the former. We have a new name for our product - Microsoft Lync Server...

You probably know that I am into photography and I am a member of the Microsoft Photography Club. This year Photography Club Members from around the world spent five months assembling and publishing a world-class, fine art photo book. The time and talent...

We are almost at the point where our Powershell commandlet will be useful, but first we need to learn about establishing the session protocol. You see, SIP stands for “Session Initiation Protocol”. The key here is the word “Initiation”. Yup, SIP just...

In our next iteration, we will add to our commandlet to create a signaling session. In essence we will send an INVITE to the other party so that we can send a message later. There are a number of steps involved in setting up a session but for now we will...

It’s about time that we began writing some code and getting into the details of the API. To start out, I will cover the signaling part of UCMA. Those of you who read my previous blog series on UCMA will find the next several posts very familiar. For...

Today, we will get started with coding UCMA applications. First though, I would like to cover again the Signaling namespace exposed by UCMA. While much of this is not necessary when using the new Collaboration namespace, I feel that it is still important...

Before you really start coding in UCMA 2.0, or even UCMA 1.0, it is extremely important that you understand the asynchronous pattern. UCMA is designed for server applications, meaning it supports many operations occurring at the same time. In order to...

Let’s be honest, UCMA 1.0, while very useful, was a bit lame. The frustrating thing about it was it opened up many new possibilities, but didn’t give you the chance to take advantage of them. You could send messages to another party, but could not determine...

In truth, this is now a new blog. I'm not sure what we will be covering in the next several months, short of the already stated UCMA 2.0 APIs. However, there are some sharp differences between this blog and my old one. First, it already has a new look...

At long last this blog is back up and running. Very soon (current goal is Wednesday), I will start a new series of UCMA blogs covering the new 2.0 API. My goal is to eventually cover all parts of this now huge set of APIs, but unlike my previous set of...

Over the past several months I have come to realize that I needed to change the way I blog. The primary issue is that everything that comes from this blog is often interpreted as coming from Microsoft itself. This has created a number of challenges and...

It is pretty much impossible right now to not see the news and get a little depressed. While Microsoft is a healthy company and work life has been good here, all is not rosy in the economy in general. I now feel like a pauper when I travel to Europe as...

OK, this may be old news to many of you out there, but the Office Communications Server 2007 Resource Kit just shipped. I haven't had a chance to look at it yet but you can be sure I will. I hope to receive a free copy of it at an internal event next...

There are several golden rules that I have learned over the last week while spending some time PInvoking Win32 functions from C#. 1) The content at PInvoke.net can often not be trusted. 2) The overwhelming precentage of articles on the net explaining...

I have noticed through working both at Microsoft and in other places a tendency for the two following practices to occur. At first, it would seem they contradict each other but in truth I very often see them together. 1) The product is made to fit...

Today I will venture outside the safe confines of Office Communications Server and discuss some quirks I have noticed with Windows services. ( Disclaimer: I am not in the Windows org so these are just my observations after some experimentation) Some of...

There are some product architectures created here at Microsoft that I am marvelled at with their simplicity, ease of use, and power. Unfortunately, I do not find WMI to be one of those architectures. With hope, some day we will have a sane replacement...

Working at Microsoft is really interesting in that I often see my work being used throughout the world. It was nice seeing the press about the Unified Communications launch, knowing that I helped participate. Executives here like to mention that we are...