I wanted to follow up on my previous post for Common Tip and post something that covers how Upgrades work, how to achieve maximum availability and scale along with deployment and monitoring recommendations. With Windows Azure there are a lot of options...

Common Windows Azure Tips

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I can't believe I've neglected this blog for 2 years, I'm blowing the dust off the keyboard and getting back to it. There’s been a lot of changes in my professional life - I've changed roles at Microsoft, again. I'm now with Premier Mission Critical...

Last week I learned something, well I learned many things but one that was particularly interesting. Lets say you wanted to do server side speech recognition but you don't want the transport to be SIP. This obviously eliminates using UCMA 2.0 as by default...

A lot of businesses want to add disclaimers to external communications. Using MSPL on the Edge servers we can create something to simply add this disclaimer to an IM Conversation. Since MSPL hasn't really changed from LCS to OCS, we can use the sample...

As promised I've released some code that shows you how to create a reusable application host that will run your UCMA 2.0 Workflow Applications. You can find the code, binaries and an initial "How To": http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/ucmahost The...

UCMA v2.0 includes a great abstraction layer, Communication Workflows, based on the Windows Workflow Foundation (WF). These workflows are great for those needing to great simple yet powerful UC enabled applications. The workflow activities themselves...

Sign up for the OCS 2007 R2 Virtual Launch on Feburary 3rd. http://www.microsoft.com/communicationsserver/virtualevent/languageselect.aspx And just to keep entertain until Feburary 3rd, here are some R2 launch teaser videos: http://www.youtube.com...

I blogged about these earlier and they have finally shipped. You can download them here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=fad62198-220c-4717-b044-829ae4f7c125&displaylang=en

I've been MIA for a couple months mainly for Office Communications Server 2007 R2 to RTM, but I've also been busy at work. I promise I will get the the UCMA 2.0 Workflow post I promised, but those of you wanting to get a taste of UCMA now, check out...

I am planning a series of blog post s that will show you how to create UCMA WF applications that can answer the telephone with speech recognition and speech synthesis abilities. However before I do that I HAVE to explain the differences between UCMA and...

News Article here: http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/081014/aqtu055.html?.v=76 This announcement allows me to start blogging about R2 development features. Expect many UCMA v2.0 blog posts soon!

Side Note: I know I haven’t blogged much recently, but I’ve changed roles within Microsoft, been on parental leave and busy working with customers. However I am planning a series of post about creating UC solutions .. I get this question a lot, "Does...

A few new code samples have been released on various UC APIs. I haven't checked them all our yet, but I can speak a little to the "Integrating Web Chat Functionality" as I know the guy who wrote it... The Web Chat Functionality sample shows you how...

If you are using PIC (Public IM Connectivity) in OCS, you can send SMS messages to any capable phone in North America, via AOL's SMS Gateway simply by sending a message to an E.164 normalized phone number. IE: +16128591899 and appending the AOL domain...

I was checking out the UC Developer Portal recently and It seems it is not up to date on the available Virtual Labs for UC Developers, as it only list 5. For a more up to date list, you can visit this URL: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/AdvancedSearch...

Michiel van Oudheusden from e-office, has taken the challenge to actually hook up the the WPF Presence bubble screensaver to Communicator to show presence of your contacts! http://unified-communications-development.blogspot.com/ The blog belongs...

A very interesting article on using WPF to display presence by Erik Klimczak from Clarity Consulting. It goes more into the WPF side, than the actual presence, but you need to know how to make your presence bubbles look good too! I love the example of...

While Speech Server is apart of Office Communications Server, the two do not rely on each and actually do not integrate with each other out of the box. However that doesn't mean it can not be done. There are two main scenarios which I am always asked...

Bill Gates will be doing the Keynote and probably one of his last before he retires. I'll be doing a couple of sessions at TechEd on Speech Server with Albert Kooiman. You can check out sessions, events, register, etc.. at www.msteched.com If you...

May & June Upcoming Unified Communications Developer Events & Training! Online: May 21 - MSDN Webcast: geekSpeak: Contextual Collaboration Using Unified Communications with George Durzi (Level 200) Classroom: May 15-16 - Sydney...

I will be presenting at VSLive! Orlando on May 15th. My session is "Embedding Presence in Your Applications". I'll cover why .NET developers should even bother with presence, the difference between the UC APIs, and your options for embedding presence...

The update for the "Red X" issue you may see in your workflow after loading VS 2008 on the same box is now available. This made my day! http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=4D8B068B-3C45-4EEA-BBC8-C4A4C4201F60&displaylang=en

Attention Macintosh users put down your one button mouse for a minute, for now you can enjoy some the UC experience your Windows counterparts already do. Microsoft Messenger for Mac 7 is now available, besides just being able to connect to Windows...

A Technical Preview of Windows Speech Recognition Macros, WSRMacros, has just been released! Like the name suggest it allows you to create Macros for Vista's Speech Recogntion. You don't need to know anything about SAPI to work create a simple application...