Scott Oseychik

Summary:

Yahoo will be performing scheduled maintenance on their OCS Gateway Servers during the following maintenance window:

Confirmed Maintenance Start Date: Tuesday, November 17, 2009, 5:00pm Pacific Time

Projected Maintenance End Date: Tuesday, November 17, 2009, 5:30pm Pacific Time

Users may encounter sporadic access service availability, service disruption, and incorrect presence during this maintenance window.

User Action:

No action needs to be taken by your Office Communications Server administrator(s).  Additionally, there will not be any further notification regarding this maintenance activity unless there is a broad disruption of service.  In such cases, we will relay outage communication accordingly.

Summary:

Microsoft's RTC Sustained Engineering Team just released their latest Cumulative Update (“CU3”) for Office Communicator 2007 R2 (as well as Office Communicator Phone Edition), and Office Communications Server 2007 R2.

Notes:

1.      As of 10/29/09, KB 968802 is in the process of being updated (should be completed within 24-48 hours), and will contain additional guidance regarding installation method options available.

2.      The RTC Sustained Engineering Team will deliver the Office Communicator 2007 R2 patch via Microsoft Update.  Office Communications Server 2007 R2 updates will also be posted to Microsoft Update, but due to the dependency on the backend database update in KB 969834, it will only be visible if KB 969834 has already been installed (see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/969834).

Updates:

KB 968802, “List of available updates for Communications Server 2007 R2”

·        http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968802

·        http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=b3b02475-150c-41fa-844a-c10a517040f4

KB 975611, “Cumulative Update for Office Communications Server 2007 R2: October 2009”

·        http://support.microsoft.com/kb/975611

·        http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=b3b02475-150c-41fa-844a-c10a517040f4(server.msp)

KB 972884, “Cumulative Update for Communicator 2007 R2: Oct 2009”

·        http://support.microsoft.com/kb/972884

·        http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=515d6dba-4c6a-48bb-a06a-d99c5742676d&displaylang=en

KB 977065, “Office Communicator 2007 R2, Phone Edition update: October 2009”

·        http://support.microsoft.com/kb/977065

·        http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=565595BE-6CF3-4A61-A1E4-12555749CA64&displaylang=en

Credit:

Again, big ups to the entire RTC Sustained Engineering Team!  If you’re on campus, truck on down to Building 30, 2nd floor, and thank them for their hard work (plus, Ken Ewert always welcomes a good Canadian joke)!

Summary:

America Online will be performing scheduled maintenance on their SIP Access Gateways during the following maintenance window:

Confirmed Maintenance Start Date: 10/08/2009 04:00 ET (24 Hour Time)

Projected Maintenance End Date: 10/08/2009 06:00 ET (24 Hour Time)

There may be sporadic access service availability and users may experience service disruption.

User Action:

No action needs to be taken by your Office Communications Server administrator(s).  Additionally, there will not be any further notification regarding this maintenance activity unless there is a broad disruption of service.  In such cases, we will relay outage communication accordingly.

Summary:

When using Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2, double-clicking a Contact fails to launch a new conversation window.  However, you are still able to right-click a Contact, and start an IM session by selecting “Send an Instant Message.”

Cause:

When double-clicking a Contact, OC 2007 R2 uses XML to initialize a new conversation window, and we’re finding several customers who have incompatible and/or legacy builds of MSXML.DLL that are encountering these failures.

Example Callstack:

ChildEBP RetAddr 

0006f98c 00475448 communicator!CDUIBase<DirectUI::Button>::InitializeFromXML

0006f9c4 00475309 communicator!CRosterContactView::CreateInstance+0x8b

0006f9e4 004dd544 communicator!CContactManager::CreateElement+0xeb

0006f9fc 004dd563 communicator!VirtualListView::CreateElement+0x30

0006fa14 004dc3af communicator!VirtualListView::FillVisibleLink+0x122

0006fa48 004d57db communicator!VirtualListView::FillViewWithoutRefresh+0xbd

0006fa80 004f347b communicator!VirtualListView::FillView+0xa9

0006fa90 004f3489 communicator!VirtualListView::OnThaw+0x30

0006fa98 00482d69 communicator!Freezable::Thaw+0xf

0006facc 0046cd9c communicator!CContactGroupItemBase::AddItemAtIndex+0xba

0006fadc 0046d13e communicator!CContactGroupItemBase::AddItemLast+0x10

0006fb08 0046d0e3 communicator!CContactManager::AddContact+0x57

0006fb20 004b0d40 communicator!CRosterListView::OnParticipantAdded+0x3f

0006fb60 0046d2b1 communicator!CRosterListView::SetContext+0x10a

0006fb94 0046cf79 communicator!CDUIConversationFrame::InitializeChildren+0xd0

0006fbe0 00479f8b communicator!CDUIConversationFrame::Initialize+0x234

0006fc34 0045cba0 communicator!CDUIConversationFrame::EnsureConversationWindow+0xe3

0006fc60 0045bf6a communicator!CDUIConversationFrame::CreateNewWindow+0x76

0006fcac 0045cb89 communicator!CDUIConversationFrame::FindOrCreateTwoPartyConversationWindow+0xde

0006fcd0 00427ba3 communicator!ConvUI_FindOrCreateTwoPartyConversationWindow+0x1e

0006fd68 0055d909 communicator!CSelectedContacts::StartActionWithSelectedContacts+0x1a3

0006fd88 7e418734 communicator!CSelectedContacts::WndProc+0x4e

0006fdb4 7e418816 user32!InternalCallWinProc+0x28

0006fe1c 7e4189cd user32!UserCallWinProcCheckWow+0x150

0006fe7c 7e418a10 user32!DispatchMessageWorker+0x306

0006fe8c 00505efb user32!DispatchMessageW+0xf

0006fed8 005079ac communicator!COcApp::RunMessageLoop+0xa1

0006fee8 00507b85 communicator!ATL::CAtlExeModuleT<COcApp>::Run+0x1e

0006ff18 00507a9c communicator!COcApp::RunApp+0xed

0006ff30 00507a05 communicator!WinMain+0x7e

0006ffc0 7c817067 communicator!__tmainCRTStartup+0x140

0006fff0 00000000 kernel32!BaseProcessStart+0x23

Example incompatible/legacy version of MSXML.DLL:

0:008> lmvm msxml

start    end        module name

71130000 711b3000   msxml      (export symbols)       msxml.dll

    Loaded symbol image file: msxml.dll

    Image path: c:\windows\system\msxml.dll

    Image name: msxml.dll

    Timestamp:        Fri Nov 05 13:10:21 1999 (38230F7D)

    CheckSum:         000850E5

    ImageSize:        00083000

    File version:     5.0.2919.6303

    Product version:  5.0.2919.6303

    File flags:       0 (Mask 3F)

    File OS:          40004 NT Win32

    File type:        2.0 Dll

    File date:        00000000.00000000

    Translations:     0409.04b0

    CompanyName:      Microsoft Corporation

    ProductName:      Microsoft(R) Windows (R) 2000 Operating System

    InternalName:     MsXML.dll

    OriginalFilename: MsXML.dll

    ProductVersion:   5.00.2919.6303

    FileVersion:      5.00.2919.6303

    FileDescription:  XML OM for Win32

    LegalCopyright:   Copyright (C) Microsoft Corp. 1981-1999

Resolution:

To resolve this issue, please install XML Version 6.0 and XML Version 3.0 SP7.

Microsoft Core XML Services (MSXML) 6.0

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=993C0BCF-3BCF-4009-BE21-27E85E1857B1&displaylang=en

Microsoft XML Parser (MSXML) 3.0 Service Pack 7 (SP7)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=28494391-052b-42ff-9674-f752bdca9582&displaylang=en

Huge credit goes to Dieter Eckstein for this solution!

Summary:

Yahoo! will be performing maintenance that will affect their OCS gateways.  The outage is scheduled to be brief, but as a precautionary measure, the following maintenance window has been declared:

Maintenance Start Date/Time:  9/24/2009, 10:00pm Pacific Time

Maintenance End Date/Time:  9/25/2009, 1:00am Pacific Time

Impact:

Office Communicator users may notice incorrect presence of their Yahoo! Contacts, or may not be able to communicate via PIC with their their Yahoo! contacts.

User Action:

No action needs to be taken by your Office Communications Server administrator(s).  Additionally, there will not be any further notification regarding this maintenance activity unless there is a broad disruption of service.  In such cases, we will relay additional outage communication accordingly.

Summary:

Installation of the OCS 2007 R2 “Backend” hotfix package (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/969834) may fail, and unfortunately, the error message presented to the Administrator isn’t entirely clear as to what the root cause is.

More Information:

If you find that installation of OCS2009-DBUpgrade.msi is failing against your backend SQL RTC databases, locate and open the resulting QFE_DBSetup.log file.  The following output is generated in the QFE_DBSetup.log, and note the highlighted entry below:

/PoolName: specified FQDN. Assuming /PoolName:R2POOLNAME.contoso.com

Attempting to discover BackEnd SQL instance from AD.

LDAP Query (ConfigurationNamingContext): LDAP://CN=Configuration,DC=contoso,DC=com;((&(objectClass=msRTCSIP-Pool)(msRTCSIP-PoolType:1.2.840.113556.1.4.803:=2)(msRTCSIP-PoolDisplayName=R2POOLNAME.contoso.com)));distinguishedName,msRTCSIP-BackendServer;subTree

Backend Server Instance List: R2BESQL

Backend Server Instance for Pool 'R2POOLNAME.contoso.com' is 'R2BESQL'

Discovered SqlServer R2BESQL

Updating EE server database stored procedures. This will take a while ...

cscript dbsetup.wsf /Verbose /Role:ee /SqlServer:R2BESQL

Microsoft (R) Windows Script Host Version 5.6

Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation 1996-2001. All rights reserved.

Installed SQL Server 2005 Backward Compatibility version is 8.05.2004

Connecting to SQL Server on R2BESQL

Error attempting to validate the SQL server: reconfigure statement failed. This SQL instance has pending configuration changes that need to be resolved before installation can continue.

[Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][SQL Server]Ad hoc update to system catalogs is not supported.

Workaround:

1.       In SQL Server Management Studio, run the following SQL statement:

sp_configure 'allow updates', '0'

RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE

2.       Re-run OCS2009-DBUpgrade.msi

Credit:

Many thanks to Santhosh K for finding this needle in the haystack while I was busy waking up half of the RTC Dev Team.  :-)

Summary:

As a single point of reference, here are all of the latest updates/releases for our Unified Communications suite of products ...

Office Communicator R2, Office Communications Server R2, Conferencing Attendant R2, and Communicator Mobile R2

KB 968802, "Updates for Communications Server 2007 R2"

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968802

KB 969695, "Update for Communicator 2007 R2: July 2009"

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/969695

KB 970275, "Office Communicators Server 2007 R2 Attendant hotfix rollup package: July 2009"

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/970275

KB 972398, "Office Communicator 2007 R2 Phone Edition update: July 2009"

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/972398

Live Meeting Console & Conferencing Add-ins for Outlook

KB 969696, "Update for Live Meeting Conferencing Add-in for Outlook: July 2009"

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/969696

KB 969697, "Windows-based Live Meeting 2007 client update package: July 2009"

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/969697

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Group Chat

KB 969819, "Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Group Chat Hotfix"

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/969819

The RTC Sustained Engineering Team has signed off and published the July update packages for R2!

Updates for Communications Server 2007 R2

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968802

Update for Communicator 2007 R2: July 2009

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/969695

Office Communicators Server 2007 R2 Attendant hotfix rollup package: July 2009

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/970275

Office Communicator 2007 R2 Phone Edition update: July 2009

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/972398

Notes:

1.  The Knowledge Base articles are being published and all should be available within 24 hours.

2.  All of these patches are now available via Microsoft Customer Support Services (specifically, the Unified Communications Support Team), except for the Communicator Phone Edition R2 release, which is available via web download.

3.  We will also have the OC 2007 R2 on Microsoft Update today.  The OCS 2007 R2 (server update) will not be on Microsoft Update due a dependency on the back-end fix that cannot be delivered via Microsoft Update.

4.  KB 968802 is a rollup of all OCS 2007 R2 released patches.  This KB article will be continuously updated as newer patches are released.

Summary: 

Following on the heels of success of the Exchange Remote Connectivity Analyzer (created by Shawn McGrath and Brad Hughes), Premal Gandhi (UC Support Escalation Engineer), Matthew Fresoli (Supportability Program Manager) and Jason Stine (Senior Lead Program Manager) have been busy designing and writing a complimentary tool: The Office Communications Server Remote Connectivity Analyzer.

The tool is available at https://www.TestOcsConnectivity.com

Overview:

The Office Communications Server Remote Connectivity Analyzer is a web site for IT Administrators to validate and diagnose end-to-end Office Communications Server scenarios.  The site simulates multiple Office Communications Server client access scenarios from outside the customer’s infrastructure and reports whether the test was successful.  If the test fails, we inform the IT Admin exactly where in the process it failed as well as provide troubleshooting tips on resolving the issue.

In this beta version, the tool provides the following end-to-end tests:

·         Office Communications Server Remote Connectivity

·         Office Communications Server Remote Connectivity w/AutoDiscover

Coming Soon:

We will be expanding the Office Communications Server scenarios in the next few months to include the following:

·         Deeper level of diagnostic information - MSDiagnostics header

·         More detailed troubleshooting information based on MSDiagnostic header

·         Additional tests

Feedback:

If you have feedback on the tool or suggestions for additional tests or improvements, please use the feedback link provided on the site.

Summary:

America Online ("AOL") uses Global Server Load Balancing ("GSLB") to maintain their SIP gateway farm.  Their configuration uses sub VIPs, one for each of their two datacenters.  Whenever AOL performs maintenance (new code, hardware, etc.), they use GSLB to take one datacenter offline while they update it and point all of the SIP traffic to the secondary datacenter.

As with all GSLB systems, DNS caching on the client side can be an issue.  For example, this past week (July 16th), AOL replaced some hardware at one of their sites.  When doing so, they directed all traffic to their other site around 12am EDT.  It takes a maximum of 30 seconds for these changes to be reflected in DNS. 

Several of our Office Communications Server customers were having issues connecting via PIC to AOL (through their SIP gateways) as late as 6:30am that morning, but that the issue resolved itself in about an hour's time.  This sounds very much like DNS caching at work.  That is, the users began using the system at 6:30am and continued to have issues until their DNS was refreshed.

Action Item:

While it is unclear where the caching took place (local host, ISP DNS, local network, or within the OCS topology itself), a good rule of thumb is that whenever an OCS customer is unable to reach AOL's SIP gateways via PIC, the first troubleshooting step should be to initiate a DNS flush (and that it is best to use the sip.oscar.aol.com FQDN instead of a specific IP address when connecting to AOL).

Summary:

America Online will be performing scheduled maintenance on their SIP Access Gateways during the following maintenance window:

Confirmed Maintenance Start Date : 07/15/2009 22:00 ET (24 Hour Time)

Projected Maintenance End Date : 07/16/2009 00:00 ET (24 Hour Time)

There may be sporadic access service availability and users may experience service disruption.

User Action:

No action needs to be taken by your Office Communications Server administrator(s).  Additionally, there will not be any further notification regarding this maintenance activity unless there is a broad disruption of service.  In such cases, we will relay outage communication accordingly.

Summary:

You may find that OCS 2007 / OCS 2007 R2's Federation and/or PIC fails against partners who do not support Entrust root certificates signed using a 2048-bit public key.

For example, the "broken" certificate chain may resemble the following:

Edge server's certificate -> Entrust L1B chain -> Entrust 2048 Root

Workaround:

For Federated partners who do not support the 2048-bit Root, you can introduce an additional chain certificate which points back to the Entrust 1024-bit root. The chain of authority would then be as follows:

Edge server's certificate -> Entrust L1B chain -> Entrust 2048 chain -> Entrust 1024 Root

To accomplish this, you will be replacing the Entrust 2048 Root certificate with the attached Entrust 2048 chain certificate.

Here are the steps to follow:

1. Start up your MMC console and add the Certificates snap-in for your server's Computer Account.

2. Under "Trusted Root Certification Authorities/Certificates," remove the Entrust.net Certification Authorities (2048) certificate.

3. Ensure you have the Entrust.net Secure Server Certification Authority certificate under the same Trusted Roots folder.

4. Under "Intermediate Certification Authorities/Certificates," import the attached Entrust.net Certification Authorities (2048) chain certificate as follows:

i. Save the attached "2048-to-1024-Cross-Cert.txt" 2048 chain certificate as a *.crt file.

ii. In MMC, expand the Intermediate Certification Authorities folder.

iii. Right-click on Certificates and select All Tasks -> Import

iv. Follow the resulting Certificate Import Wizard to import the 2048 chain certificate into the Intermediate Certification Authorities store.

5. Check to make sure you have two Entrust Certificates under Intermediate Certification Authorities/Certificates: The Entrust Certification Authority - L1B and the Entrust.net Certificate Authority (2048).

Credits:

Many thanks to Jimmy Levesque and Mark Giannotti in ECS Technical Support at Entrust Certificate Services for this information!

Summary:

Using Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2, Federation may fail against organizations that are using Lotus Sametime.

Resolution:

IBM has a hotfix which addresses this issue within Lotus Sametime.

More Information:

Please refer the following IBM support document; Ref #1389588

Summary:

Windows Live/MSN Messenger defines both Minimum and Maximum values for Presence subscriptions. If the SUBSCRIBE method uses a value out of this range, it may result in a SIP failure.  The minimum value is 3600 seconds and the MAX value is 13000 seconds.

More Information:

MinPresenceSubscriptionExpiry

·         Stored in the Active Directory as "msRTCSIP-MinPresenceSubscriptionTimeout"

·         The default value is 1200 seconds (20 minutes)

·         The minimum value for this property is 300 and the maximum value is 86340

MaxPresenceSubscriptionExpiry

·         Stored in the Active Directory as "msRTCSIP-MaxPresenceSubscriptionTimeout"

·         The default value is 43200 seconds (12 hours)

·         The minimum value for this property is 300 and the maximum value is 86340

Workaround:

If you are encountering SIP interoperability failures via PIC against Windows Live/MSN Messenger, please modify your msRTCSIP-MaxPresenceSubscriptionTimeout and msRTCSIP-MinPresenceSubscriptionTimeout values (either via ADSIEDIT or LDP) in accordance with their guidance (min: 3600, max: 13000)

If you have installed OCS into the System container in the Active Directory, these attributes will be stored at the following location:

CN=Global Settings,CN=RTC Service,CN=Microsoft,CN=System,DC=yourdomain,DC=com

If OCS is installed in the Configuration container, you can locate these values in the Active Directory here:

CN=Global Settings,CN=RTC Service,CN=Services,CN=Configuration,DC=yourdomain,DC=com

Update:

If for any reason the above-mentioned values get reset, they will then fall outside of the default values.  Consequently, you'll need to modify the msRTCSIP-DefPresenceSubscriptionTimeout value, as without correcting this to be within range, the OCS Front-End service will not start.  Additionally, you will find the following error in the Office Communications Server Event Log:

Log Name:      Office Communications Server
Source:        OCS User Services
Date:          8/20/2009 6:30:31 AM
Event ID:      30929
Task Category: (1006)
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      ocs.contoso.com
Description:
Failed to process WMI event to update the User Services Global Settings because the value of Attribute1 cannot be greater than the value of Attribute2.

Attribute1: DefPresenceSubscriptionExpiry Attribute2: MaxPresenceSubscriptionExpiry
Cause: This could happen during upgrades, or in topologies with mixed 1.0 and 2.0 servers or if the Active Directory is modified directly.
Resolution:
Use MMC (or WMI) to update all the values that are out of bounds.  The changes will take place without restarting the server.
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
  <System>
    <Provider Name="OCS User Services" />
    <EventID Qualifiers="50158">30929</EventID>
    <Level>2</Level>
    <Task>1006</Task>
    <Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>
    <TimeCreated SystemTime="2009-08-20T13:30:31.000Z" />
    <EventRecordID>26728</EventRecordID>
    <Channel>Office Communications Server</Channel>
    <Computer>ocs.contoso.com</Computer>
    <Security />
  </System>
  <EventData>
    <Data>DefPresenceSubscriptionExpiry</Data>
    <Data>MaxPresenceSubscriptionExpiry</Data>
  </EventData>
</Event>

Credit to Jason Groves & Greg Anthony for the msRTCSIP-DefPresenceSubscriptionTimeout piece

Summary:

Our Real Time Collaboration (RTC) Sustained Engineering Team has recently released two updates:

Communicator 2007 R2 hotfix rollup package: June 2009

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/972042

Update package for Office Communications Server 2007 R2: June, 2009

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/972041

The Office Communicator R2 hotfix rollup package (972042) will be made available via Microsoft Update, the Microsoft Update Catalog Server, as well as Windows Software Update Services (WSUS).  This release is scheduled to be available today (June 15, 2009) through these distribution channels shorly after 10:00am Pacific time.

The Office Communications Server R2 hotfix rollup package (972041) will be made available via Microsoft Update, the Microsoft Update Catalog Server, but not through Windows Software Update Services (WSUS).  This release is scheduled to be available tomorrow (June 16, 2009) through these distribution channels shorly after 10:00am Pacific time.

Issue:

The update package for Office Communications Server 2007 R2 will only be made available via Microsoft Update and the Microsoft Update Catalog Server, but not through WSUS.  The reason for this absence on WSUS is due to the fact that this package contains a change to a kernel-mode binary, which will cause a prompt (thereby interrupting the automated installation process).  For this reason we are not publishing this particular update to WSUS.  Moving forward, we are exploring various approaches to suppress these prompts on future updates.

In the meantime, for customers who intend on installing the Update package for Office Communications Server 2007 R2 (972041) and are using WSUS, they would need to import this from the Microsoft Update Catalog server if they want to deploy this update through Microsoft Update.

More Information:

For more information on how to import this update into WSUS using Microsoft Update, please refer to:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc708583.aspx