Office 2013 SP1 Lync Changes

Office 2013 SP1 was release over night and there are some fixes and improvements with the Lync 2013 client. The fixes for Lync are

This service package fixes the issues that are described in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) articles:

• 2919506 Can't hear the first few words that a callee speaks when they answer a call in Lync 2013
• 2919507 The "Program Events" sound setting is reset to the default value after you restart Lync 2013
• 2919508 Can't rotate the screen orientation of a video window in a Lync 2013 video conference on a Windows 8.1-based device
• 2919510 A pie chart clock icon appears in the "Conversations" tab as a meeting icon in Lync 2013

You can download SP1 from Microsoft now;

32 bit Office

64 bit Office

I also noticed the emoticons have changed and finally look a bit more modern:

Let me know if you notice any other additional changes.

Edit:
A few additional changes have been announced that were included in the SP1 office upgrade

• Toggle pictures of sender/receiver

• Support of high-resolution monitors (200% scaling mode) this change makes Lync scale properly when you adjust the DPI on your monitor to 200%. 

• Transfer files and pictures in a Persistent Chat room

Installing Exchange 2013 fails with the error: Cannot find information about the local server in Active Directory

Installing Exchange 2013 fails with the error “Cannot find information about the local server stg-jde-e13m02 in Active Directory. This may be related to a change in the server name.".

The error was strange as it was referring to the server by its NetBIOS name, not the FQDN. I noticed that although the computer was joined to the domain, it had the incorrect DNS suffix

Added the DNS suffix to the computer’s name

After the change I needed to reboot the server for the change to take affect

Restarted the installation which now completed successfully.

Exchange 2013: 421 4.3.2 Service not available

Today I had an issue with a new Exchange 2013 deployment, which had the CAS and MBX role collocated. After about 8-12 hours my Exchange 2013 server will respond with;

Trying x.x.x.x...
Connected to x.x.x.x.
Escape character is '^]'.
421 4.3.2 Service not available
Connection closed by foreign host.

And in the SMTP protocol logs i would have the following - 421 4.3.2 Service not available all of a sudden;

When i created my Internet Receive connector - I selected the Hub Transport Role which is incorrect:

When creating a Internet Receive connector, you should assign the receive connector to the Frontend Transport Role;















When i read the Mail Flow explained article on Exchange 2013 it became apparent i made a mistake (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa996349(v=exchg.150).aspx)

• Front End Transport service   This service runs on all Client Access servers and acts as a stateless proxy for all inbound and outbound external SMTP traffic for the Exchange 2013 organization. The Front End Transport service doesn't inspect message content, only communicates with the Transport service on a Mailbox server, and doesn't queue any messages locally.

Hopefully this helps people who made the same mistake as me.

Installing Lync Database Error

Problem:

When installing the Lync Server Databases the following error was thrown;
Installed SQL Server 2005 Backward Compatibility version is 8.05.2312
Connecting to SQL Server on
SqlMajorVersion : 10
SqlMinorVersion : 50
SqlBuildNo : 2500
SQL version is acceptable: 10.50.2500.0
Default database data file path is D:\Data
Default database log file path is E:\Logs
Database doesn't exist.
(Database rgsconfig doesn't exist.)
Creating database rgsconfig
    DbFile : PhysicalName = d:\data\rgsconfig.mdf
    LogFile: PhysicalName = e:\logs\rgsconfig.ldf
Failed to create database rgsconfig
Error (
  name:        Error
  description:
  number:      -2147221504
  message:    
)
---------------
Exit code: ERROR_CREATE_DB (-4)
---------------

Resolution:

Mailbox Permissions - Exchange 2007 / 2010

Today a client requested a method to find out who had access to users mailboxes. I came up with a quick script to resolve this:

get-mailbox –resultsize unlimited | Get-MailboxPermission | select identity, user, @{name="Access Rights";expression={$_.get_accessrights()}},isinherited,deny | ?{@('NT AUTHORITY\SELF','DOMAIN\Domain Admins','DOMAIN\Administrator','DOMAIN\Exchange Servers','DOMAIN\Public Folder Management','NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM','NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE','DOMAIN\Delegated Setup','DOMAIN\Organization Management','DOMAIN\Exchange Trusted Subsystem','DOMAIN\Enterprise Admins'
) -notcontains $_.User}

The main component of the script is which users you wish to exclude from the results, I added all the access entries that were added by default by exchange. For me it was the following Accounts:

NT AUTHORITY\SELF
NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM
NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE
DOMAIN\Public Folder Management
DOMAIN\Organization Management
DOMAIN\Exchange Trusted Subsystem
DOMAIN\Exchange Servers
DOMAIN\Enterprise Admins
DOMAIN\Domain Admins
DOMAIN\Delegated Setup
DOMAIN\Administrator

You could then pipe the results to a CSV file using the Export-Csv Cmdlet

Default Profile–Windows Server 2008R2

Today I had an issue at a clients trying to change the default profile on Windows Server 2008 R2.

I had completed all the steps required, but when i tried to copy the profile the option was greyed out

I found a program called Windows Enabler 1.1 which is available from here: Windows Enabler 1.1

Running this program as an administrator:

And clicking on the tray icon to enable it

I was then able to click the Copy To button (you may need to click a greyed out button twice)

MSP to MSI - Office Communicator

Today I needed to help a client update Office Communicator 2007 R2 in preparation for their Lync migration. They had deployed Office Communicator via Group Policy using an MSI, I wanted to create an MSI that encompassed the latest Office Communicator MSP. These are the steps I performed:

I firstly Downloaded the latest communicator client update from: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/ocs/ee695846 At the time of writing this, the latest update was January 2012: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=21547

I created a working directory with both the MSI and MSP.

I then performed an admin install of my MSI using the command:


msiexec /a "PATH TO COMMUNICATOR.MSI" TARGETDIR="create a new folder called Admin within your working directory"

For me the command was:

msiexec /a "C:\Documents and Settings\username\Desktop\OCS2007r2\communicator.msi" TARGETDIR="C:\Documents and Settings\username\Desktop\OCS2007r2\admin"

This creates an admin install of communicator to my working directory, you can see the files it created.