The Goldfish Bowl : LCS 2005

Communicator Mobile client released

grahamtyler — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 15:39:00 GMT

An entirely new version of the Communicator client application for Live Communications Server has just been released, this time specifically for mobile devices. Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile is for Windows Mobile-based devices, and extends the reach of LCS 2005 so that you can stay connected and in touch with your contacts even while out of the office. What's more you can download the client for free (assuming you've already purchased LCS 2005 Client Access Licenses of course ;-)

Communicator Web Access has also been available for some time.

Via Mark Deakin. (Mark writes about Unified Communications and Mobility technologies, so be sure to check out his blog if you're interested in this area!)

Group Alerts and Role-based Messaging samples for LCS 2005

grahamtyler — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 14:27:00 GMT

Some great new LCS 2005 sample code has been released recently to cover some commonly-requested messaging scenarios:

Role Agent for Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005
Role Agent is a sample Microsoft Windows service application that implements a role-based messaging agent for managing sessions and for brokering and dispatching instant messages between users and members of a defined group.

Group Alerts Sample for Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005
The group alerts sample application provides a simple user interface for sending instant messages to the online members of an Active Directory group or distribution list and its subgroups.

Presence Controls for Office Communicator released

grahamtyler — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 19:48:00 GMT

Recently I enthused about the planned RTC Presence Toolkit, which would provide an easy way for developers to add integrated communications and presence to their own applications. The toolkit has now been published as the "Presence Controls for Office Communicator 2005".

If you're already using Office Communicator as your client interface you'll be familiar with the new 'Gumdrop' icons which indicate presence - these can now be used in your custom applications, complete with action menus. "Suck them and see" :-)

Behold the Gumdrop! (RTC Presence Toolkit announced)

grahamtyler — Tue, 12 Jul 2005 13:51:00 GMT

Microsoft has now formally announced the "RTC Presence Toolkit" at the Worldwide Partner Conference 2005. If you were at my presentation at the Office Developer Conference UK last month, you saw a demo of the beta version - which is variously referred to as the "Persona" control and the 'Gumdrop' control due to the new icons used by Office Communicator :-)

The toolkit will make it way easier for developers to add presence, communications and contextual collaboration to their own applications. Gumdrops everywhere! The toolkit should hopefully be released in July - keep watching for the release to msdn!

Office Developer Conference UK - were you there?

grahamtyler — Mon, 04 Jul 2005 13:31:00 GMT

If you attended the Office Developer Conference in the UK last week, in the beautiful surroundings of Heathrow airport :-), you may have seen me presenting on the second day. I gave two presentations on the Server Track about developing applications using the Live Communications Server platform:

Live Communications Server - Architecture and Client Automation
Real Time Communications Client Applications

I took the opportunity to use one of my own earlier blog code examples on Windows Messenger tabs as a demo during the 'Client Customisation' section of my talk - except I updated the tabs for the new Office Communicator client. Happily tabs are still supported in Communicator, although there are a couple of changes to be aware of - I'll add a new blog post detailing this shortly - or you can find full details in the Office Communicator Planning and Deployment Guide (which is a great resource by the way).

There was a lot of interest in the telephony integration features of the new Office Communicator 2005 client - looks like an area that is really going to take off in the near future as more companies start taking full advantage of their existing telephone systems. In particular my presentations were focused on three key messages: Ubiquitous presence, instant communications, and contextual collaboration. Adding these to your own applications is about to become a lot easier with the release of a new control from the product team... more soon! Hopefully if you attended those were the messages you took away. Personally I learned that talking for two and a half hours gives you a very sore throat :)

I'll hopefully be finding time to blog a lot more often over the next few months to cover these exciting new areas! As you may have noticed "more often" would probably mean more than once a month judging by recent frequency, but let's see how it goes [:p]. If you were at the conference and would like to follow up with further questions, or have a suggestion for a future blog post you'd like to see, please send me feedback using the site options.

If you're at TechEd Europe 2005 this week in Amsterdam, you will be able to find me in the Ask The Experts room - I'm on the SharePoint stand, although I'll happily talk about LCS and Communicator too if you'd prefer [:D]. I'll be there during these time slots:

Tuesday 5th July 15:00-17:30
Thursday 7th July 15:00-18:00
Friday 8th July 12:00-14:15

See you there!

Office Communicator 2005 - next generation of communications!

grahamtyler — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 20:31:00 GMT

You may have seen Bill Gates announce the new Office Communicator 2005 product recently (if not, you can watch a recording). This is the future of comms - and you could try it now by signing up for the beta programme! (instructions here)

Mayur has written a great overview of the new software here. I'm sure there will be plenty of reasons for further posts about Communicator over the next few months - watch this space!

Here's the blurb from the product site:

Microsoft Office Communicator 2005 is an enterprise messenger that integrates communications capabilities (including instant messaging, rich presence, PC-based voice and video, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), and enterprise telephony) with productivity and other communications applications.

Microsoft Office Communicator 2005 will be the recommended client for Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005, which provides a standards-based, enterprise-grade, instant messaging (IM) solution and an extensible, real-time collaboration platform to connect people, information, and business processes seamlessly in real time.

Windows Messenger - File Transfer Security

grahamtyler — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 02:01:00 GMT

The File Transfer feature of Windows Messenger allows users to transfer files between desktops. Wait, bear with me, there's more...

To help ensure that the file being transferred is safe for use, Windows Messenger 5.1 performs a check each time a file is transferred from one client to another. This check is conducted even before the recipient accepts the file transfer, thereby helping to eliminate any chance of downloading a potentially unsafe file. If the file is determined to be of an unsafe file type, the file transfer is not performed.

What happens during the check actually depends on the version of the Windows operating system being used:

For Windows XP Service Pack 2:

The “Attachment Execution Services”, part of the operating system, are called to verify the safety of the file. You'll find developer info on this subject here and here.

The security policy Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in (Secpol.msc) is used to control which extensions are considered executable file types.

To view or modify the extensions that are considered executable file types
• Run Secpol.msc.
• Expand Software Restriction Policies, and then double-click Designated File Types.

Note: To view the Designated File Types property page, the Software Restriction Policies node may need to be created. To create the Software Restriction Policies node, follow the instructions that appear when ‘Software Restriction Policies’ is expanded.

For Windows XP Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2003:

The AssocIsDangerous function is called to verify the safety of the file.

For Windows XP RTM and Windows 2000 Server Service Pack 4:

The file extension is checked against a static list of known unsafe file extensions:

"ade", "adp", "app", "asp", "bas", "bat", "cer", "chm",
"cmd", "com", "cpl", "crt", "csh", "exe", "fxp", "hlp",
“hta", "inf", "ins", "isp", "its", "js", "jse", "ksh",
"lnk", "mad", "maf", "mag", "mam", "maq", "mar", "mas",
"mat", "mau", "mav", "maw", "mda", "mdb", "mde", "mdt",
“mdw", "mdz", "msc", "msi", "msp", "mst", "ops", "pcd",
"pif", "prf", "prg", "pst", "reg", "scf", "scr", "sct",
“shb", "shs", "tmp", "url", "vb", "vbe", "vbs", "vsd",
"vsmacros", "vss", "vst", "vsw", "ws", "wsc", "wsf", "wsh"

In all cases, if the file is not determined to be of an unsafe file type, the file is transferred directly to the recipient (peer-to-peer) using a TCP connection over a fixed range of ports. The file does not pass through the Live Communications Server. The file is transferred across the network in plaintext (without encryption) and with only minimal authentication.

Recommendations for deploying a secure system:

• Use Windows Messenger 5.1 and Live Communications Server 2005
• Use Windows XP Service Pack 2
• Use TLS for client-server connections
• Enable the 'Require SIP high security mode' Group Policy setting for the user’s GPO
• An Anti-Virus software solution should be deployed to client desktops to add further protection against unsafe files. 3rd party server-based Anti-Virus solutions which integrate with Live Communications Server 2005 are also available to perform anti-virus scans of the files during file transfer between users. For more information about partner solutions, see the Microsoft Partner site.

Note also that the file transfer feature can be disabled on a per-user basis via the "Prevent file transfer" option in Group Policy.

- Thanks to Chris Araman for assistance with these details

LCS 2005 - migrating from existing IM systems

grahamtyler — Tue, 11 Jan 2005 19:00:00 GMT

If you're considering deploying Live Communications Server 2005, you may need to migrate users from an existing Instant Messaging system. A migration will ensure that users do not lose their existing lists of contacts when moving to the new system. Here's where to find the documentation that will help you through the migration process:

Migration from Exchange 2000 Instant Messaging: full documentation is provided with the Live Communications Server 2005 Resource Kit, available for free download from the Microsoft Download Centre. The ResKit comes with a long list of useful tools and documentation - after installation of the reskit, the migration details you need are in the "EIM_Migration" sub-folder.

Migrating from Live Communications Server 2003: full documentation is provided in the white paper Live Communications Server 2003 Upgrading and Coexistence, available for free download from the Microsoft Download Centre.

Check out the Live Communications Server 2005 Deployment Resources page for more exciting documentation :-)

Live Communications Server 2005 Resource Kit now available

grahamtyler — Tue, 11 Jan 2005 18:02:00 GMT

Download the LCS 2005 Resource Kit here. It contains a useful set of deployment and troubleshooting tools, as well as technical reference documentation.

You may also be interested in the LCS 2005 Capacity Planning Toolkit.