|
|
|
|
OCS Forum seeks nominations
for:
-
Leadership
-
Technical Achievement
-
Solution Innovation
For more send request to cross@gocross.com
|
|
Welcome to OCS
Forum
tb,
Get OCS Smart - OCS Forum Expo -
Boulder - June 15-16 at the
St. Julien Hotel with keynotes from
OCS MVPs, Media Gateway/SBC experts, customers, planners and others.
Fees for attendees are $795 until March 1, $995 until May 1 and $1195.00
until the event.
TO REGISTER for OCS Expo Only CLICK HERE
TO REGISTER for OCS
Expo & Special SIP Class CLICK HERE
(Details on
the SIP class is way down below.)
WIN an Apple iPad
16 at OCS Forum Expo.
 
In case you want a
good laugh about the other iPad.
There is an educational, nonprofit
and government, SIP Forum member,
SMB Nation,
MS Gold discount
to $795, if paid before May 1.
For speaker/exhibitor/attendee call Tom
Cross cross@gocross.com
or
303-594-1694.
Topics presented will
likely explore OCS planning, QoS, Security, Firewalls, Media
Gateways, PBX Integration, Mobile OCS, Communicator, WAN-Bandwidth
Planning, Customer Applications, Troubleshooting, Session Border
Controllers and others.
___________________________________________
|
|
____________________________________________
Here's
some of the great OCS solutions presenting at OCS Forum Expo:
NOVUS
presents OCS Solutions at OCS Expo
Since
1983, Novus, LLC has been supporting manufacturers' reseller channels
worldwide, serving over 15 countries on 4-continents. Engaged at the
inception of VoIP, our thorough understanding of VAR's needs and
end-user expectations has positioned Novus as the leading distributor
of snom IP telephones deployed on Microsofts'
OCS platform at www.novusllc.com
Gold Systems presents
OCS Solutions at OCS Expo
Gold Systems is a unified communications specialist
and a Microsoft Gold Certified Managed Partner, developing
voice-driven solutions using IVR and speech recognition. Offerings
include phone self-service and contact center solutions built on
Office Communications Server 2007 R2, and unified messaging
deployment and telephony interfaces to Exchange Server 2010. www.goldsys.com Phone
303-447-2774 - email
websales@goldsys.com
SNOM presents OCS Solutions at OCS
Expo
snom
technology is a global manufacturer of SIP-based IP telephones for
business, carrier and high-end consumer markets. Based on open
standards, feature-rich and affordable, snom's
products are engineered to fulfil their
vision of ubiquitous, standards-based VoIP/SIP/OCS. Based in Berlin, snom's sales/distribution network extends to over
40 countries at www.snom.com
NET presents OCS
Solutions at OCS Expo NET's
VX Series Intelligent Voice Gateways and Switches are specifically
designed to provide the enterprise-class integration,
interoperability, and security with scalability required for
successful adoption of VoIP and Unified Communications into new and
existing voice and PBX environments. Founded in 1983, NET (Network
Equipment Technologies Inc.) is headquartered in Fremont California
at www.net.com.
NET named Finalist in VoiceCon(R) Orlando 2010 Announces Best of VoiceCon http://bit.ly/bovrelease.
Aastra presents
OCS Solutions at OCS Expo
Aastra USA is
the North American business unit of Aastra Technologies Limited,
(TSX:"AAH"), a leading company at the forefront of the
enterprise communications market. With more than 50 million installed
lines around the world, offers one of the most complete portfolios of
unified communications solutions available today. www.aastrausa.com.
FaxCore presents
OCS Solutions at OCS Expo
FaxCore is the 21st century fax solution
that combines the Microsoft .NET platform, a web interface and innovative
fax over IP deployment opportunities into a single solution. A strategic partner of Dialogic, means all the advantages of the Dialogic
platform are leveraged by FaxCore for leading edge deployments and
unparalleled reliability. Click her for www.faxcore.com
for more information.
GreenAppx presents
OCS Solutions at OCS Expo
GreenAppX
has assembled the industry-leading applications for corporate 1)
email, 2) network security, 3) data back-up and 4) office processes.
These four categories contain critical applications that are crucial
to the day-to-day management of any business. The start-up and
recurring expense associated with traditional software deployments
addressing these four categories are beyond the budgets of most small
to mid-size enterprises. Click here for www.greenappx.com
for more information.
Uncommon Solutions
presents OCS Solutions at OCS Expo
Uncommon Solutions' OCS-certified engineers design, deploy and
integrate OCS solutions. We are a Microsoft Gold Partner with the 1st
Microsoft-approved OCS appliance designed to facilitate real-time
communication services and improve business processes. Uncommon
Solutions is uncommon in our ability to address business goals with
IT solutions that measure cost against value.
Click here www.uncommonsolutions.com
for more information.
911 Enable Presents OCS
Solutions at OCS Expo
911 Enable provides simple to deploy, easy to manage
E911 solutions for IP telephony, including a solution designed to
meet the unique requirements of Microsoft OCS. Its solutions include
a national E911 call routing service, automated phone tracking
appliance, and security desk notification system, which help
organizations reduce liability concerns and meet E911
regulations. Click here www.911enable.com for
more information.
Click here for NEW
911 newsletter.
AudioCodes Presents
OCS Solutions at OCS Expo
AudioCodes is a leading manufacturer of Media Gateways
for Microsoft Unified Messaging & Unified Communications,
including Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2.
Utilizing AudioCodes Media Gateways, businesses are able to interface
Microsoft communications applications to a wide range of TDM PBXs,
IP-PBX, SIP Trunking and legacy PSTN trunking facilities. With unsurpassed voice
quality, reliability, flexibility and scalability, AudioCodes Media
Gateways have earned many accolades and should be your first choice
when deploying Microsoft Unified Communications. Visit www.audiocodes.com/microsoft
for more information.
|
|
Follow OCS on
Twitter - click here
|
|
NEW
- June 7-11 Dates in Boulder Announced
Click here to
register.
OCS Forum
Presents - OCS R2-2010-Ultimate Course
5-Day Training
- "Hands-on" Labs with 700+ page manual with Special SIP
Essentials section - click for more on SIP section.
Critical
Course for Planning OCS Design & Certification Study for Exam
70-638, Exam 70-262 and other tests
OCS Forum (http://www.ocsforum.com)
announced its new OCSR2-2010 Ultimate course. "R2 and Wave
14 coming in 2010 confirms Microsoft place in the new
telecommunications networking business," noted Tom Cross OCS
Forum CEO. "R2 is having a significant impact on corporate
voice telecommunications strategies indicating the end of the TDM-time
division multiplexed PBX-Private Branch eXchange systems is now
insight. Microsoft is also driving companies like Cisco,
Nortel, Avaya, NEC, Mitel, ShoreTel to rethink their featuresets
and capabilities because while R2 is a new game when Wave 14 is
released in 2010, their days are numbered," Cross commented.
This five -day (5-day) "hands-on" lab course
with 700+ page manual focuses on the core components of OCS 2007 R2,
including:
- Instant Messaging (IM) between everyone in the organization
in the office or remote
- Application and Desktop sharing for true collaboration
- Audio/Video Conferencing including internally hosted
audio conference calls and Live Meetings
- Integration with Exchange Server 2007 Unified
Messaging
- Securing the environment to protect communications
The course provides many hands-on labs to practice and
reinforce learning of many new concepts. After completing this
course, students should be able to design, install, configure,
maintain, monitor, and troubleshoot the core components of OCS 2007
R2.
Click here for
a complete outline.
Call Tom Cross at
303-594-1694 or cross@gocross.com
for details.
|
|
Click
here for OCS books from Amazon
OCS "Better than Book Smart"
Best Practices Series
There are quite a few books on OCS available. I
have read a number of them and here's one I like. One of
the great aspects of this book, Microsoft
Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Resource Kit (ISBN-13-978-0-7356-2635-5)
by Maximo and others is great detailed information including extra
material on the CD. Of course,
my favorite sections, among others include; Understanding SIP-Session
Initiation Protocol and Troubleshooting OCS-PBX integration. For example, here's one that was
written by another author and developer Mr. John Lamb of Modality
Systems, known for their OCS-iPhone App iDialog (http://www.modalitysystems.com).
Here's
an example from the book:
Troubleshooting
RCC-Remote Call Control Scenarios
Setting up remote call control integration
between office communications server 2007 R2 and a PBX is usually a
straightforward process it involves configuring your office can
vacation server environment to exchange RCC messages with your
PBX. Many new PBXs support
native integration with office dedication server and for those that
do not, a third-party RCC gateway can be used to facilitate the
integration. However, one of
the more problematic RCC scenarios is the (reverse number lookup) or
RNL aspect of matching an incoming call number to the name in the
directory. When RCC-enabled
user receives a call on her desk, the RCC message exchange causes OCS
to alert the user that the phone is ringing. This notification message displays
information about the caller's phone number. If the RNL is working properly the
notification will also display the caller's name. The challenge of our RNL lies with
getting the caller's phone number as sent by the PBX or media Gateway
to be in the same format as the phone numbers stored in the OCS
address book. Because the
phone numbers in address book are stored in E.164 format, for example
011-303-321-1234 this is what the PBX must send in the RCC message. The quickest way to
determine what the PBX and sending to enable logging in Office
Communicator.
(Note: there is additional descriptive information in
the book, not contained here).
This
is enabled on the General Tab within the Options user interface. When
logging is enabled a text file is created in the %USERPROFILE\Tracing
directory tree scene that contains the debugging information
including the SIP messages that are exchanged. This log file will have
an .uccapilog or .uccplog extension.
Once logging is enabled reproduce the incoming call and then
open the text file look for the SIP INFO message containing the CSTA
XML body containing an incoming call notification. (Note: there is additional descriptive
information in the book, not contained here). Because this is not in need at
e.164 format Office Communicator will not be able to match this
number with anything in its address book. The simplest solution is to
configure the PBX or RCC gateway to perform a digit manipulation so
that number will be in the correct format.
Also, consult the PBX or media gateways vendor
documentation to see if the number this type of number manipulation
is supported. The RCC is a
lightweight telephone integration application that provides Office
Communicator 2007 users the ability to integrate their PBX phone with
the ease of use of their other business applications such as
Outlook. It is not necessary
to migrate the existing PBXs and a
VoIP-based IP telephony solution to enable these applications.
There is an animated tutorial on RCC on the home page
- click here.
Got OCS news, customer
case studies, tips and vendor-neutral white papers, send them to
cross@ocsforum.com.
|
|
Review of Microsoft
Office Communications Server 2007
Best Practices
Analyzer
By BoJames Molai
Director of Unified Communications
Gold
Systems
- click here for website
At Gold Systems, we have found that the OCS Best
Practices Analyzer (BPA) tool is extremely helpful both pre-deploy
for assessment and troubleshooting, as well as post-deploy for
ongoing maintenance and environmental monitoring. When working
on a new OCS deployment the tool has proven to be very useful in
generating a list of potentially troublesome configuration settings,
as well as areas where a configuration may fall outside of what is
supported and recommended by Microsoft. This feedback allows deployers and administrators to make
configuration changes very early in
the roll-out and minimize subsequent problems - which is significant
because even subtle configuration changes can have a large
impact. If issues do arise
within the environment, the BPA tool also provides easy access and
direction to relevant troubleshooting documentation -- a great time
saver.
For existing OCS deployments, the BPA tool continues
to prove its usefulness as a
centralized update checking mechanism. While there are tools
that will allow you to check for updates on each server, the OCS BPA
tool will actually check for updates for all roles on all OCS servers
in the environment, thus giving you a quick view of the updates you
need to roll out to your OCS
deployment. Another great feature of the OCS BPA tool is the
ability to export and capture a snapshot of an OCS configuration for
later review or for disaster recovery. The OCS Best Practices
Analyzer is worthy of a spot in any OCS administrator's toolkit.
|
|
Click here for
more:
A focused intensive workshop where leading
industry practioneers and sponsors assist
attendees in capitalizing immediately on the SMB VoIP opportunity.
This is your opportunity to learn how to own the entire SMB stack at
your sites. VoIP SMB workshop, March 1-3, 2010, Las Vegas!
|
|
To register for SIP
class only (not the OCS Expo) click here.
Special 1.5
day SIP Training after the OCS Expo limited to 10 attendees from
Thursday 0900-1600 and Friday 0800-1100 - $495 for OCS Forum
attendees and $895 for all others.
Click here
for outline (please note all topics may not be covered due to
timeframe)
"The
SIP/VoIP courses are more than a superb primer on VoIP/SIP
technology; they are an indepth business
plan for a VoIP/SIP implementation. In addition, the VoIP/SIP
diagnostic and troubleshooting guide is the most thorough approach to
VoIP QoS available. I need information that informs but does not
overwhelm. Information that guides but not drives you away. The
courses provide insights and actionable information that has helped
me get the technology we need sooner but saved me a considerable
amount in understanding what we didn't need. The SIP course
especially is a valuable one which provides much needed information
in a readily understandable format." Paul Daubitz - President - ATI-TeleManagement
|
|
Click here for
early registration
Keynote Speeches
From Teleconferencing to Telepresence
Making Virtual
Meetings Work For You
Hal Josephson is
President of MediaSense
· A brief history -- thirty years of
tele-meetings - what will meetings be like 30 years from now
· Best
practices -- developing valuable tele-skills - enhancing human
communications with tele/presence
· Creative techniques
applied: lessons learned - what has failed and what will it take to
succeed
Understanding
and Troubleshooting Video Conferencing Networks
Presented by Gary Thom, President, Delta
Information Systems &
Thomas Smith, Program
Director, University of Wisconsin
·
The bulk of installed systems are H.323 compliant, how
can H.323 work with SIP
and other standards and protocols
·
How does the ITU H.323 and SIP standards support
advanced audio and video features
·
What are the common problems in videoconferencing
networks
Tele-Presence Forum provides
learning and educational services on audio, video - tele/presence,
web conferencing and other aspects of tele/presence and is the
sponsor of Tele/Presence Forum Expo.
More information can be found at
http://www.tele-presenceforum.com
or http://www.presenceforum.com
|
|
From MS Team OCS - helpful OCS TechTips
Click here for NextHop
Whether you're new to
Office Communications Server and Unified Communications, simply
looking for some helpful hints, or trying to get some serious
information, we'll help you find what you need.
|
|
OCS "Crash Course" Hands-On Half Day
Getting OCS up in 3 hours - Coming fall 2010
|
|
THE GRAPEFRUIT DIET Approach to Tech
Implementation
What Computer Engineer Barbie(r) would do
Part 1 of 7 Steps to
Successful Technical Implementation
Implementing any new technology requires
an enormous amount of time and energy. The following steps are
suggested for the organization that integrates any technical
solution.
1 - Start now-like dieting get started now. Too often
many organizations study the problem to death or "play
around" before making the decision to start. If plans are kept simple and pilot
projects move along, concepts can be explored, progress will be made
and knowledge gained. Like
with diet, the user can take the new technology in "small
bites." Organizations can and should also consider one or more
solutions/systems, apply it, modify it, learn from it, and expand it.
Also, make sure there is a leader, leader or coach, to pilot the
project. Without this effort,
any program/project/application is likely to fail. Any technology may be difficult, if
not impossible, in some situations. However, for people who need
technology, it can be used effectively and will provide an economic,
personal and often a social benefit.
Like with dieting, it's always a good thing to start it now.
|
|
The GotUC.net
developer sandbox is open for registration
We are a
group of Microsoft
Office Communications Server developers working
together through a web-community to promote Office Communications
Server development, to increase our skills and assist others. The
founders of this site are firm believers in the potential of OCS and
are committed to doing our part to make this community grow. On this
site you will find many Microsoft MVPs
for OCS who are willing to share their expertise with others.We are big evangelists for OCS and seek
every available opportunity to speak out about it.
|
|
Special Notes
- Read new book
"Facebook Marketing for Dummies - click here
- Cool Microsoft Blog on
OCS for Edu - click here
|
|
New OCS Forum Job Board - click here
--
New Jobs from Gold Systems & Level3
Post your UC, UM, LCS, OCS, PBX, Integration
and related jobs on OCS Forum Job Board at no charge.
Premium
advertising available.
Send
your positions to cross@gocross.com.
|
|
CrossTalk
Named One of the Top-10 Telecommunications Blogs
Click here for
blog
|
|
|
All videos are FREE to OCS Forum
2010 Expo attendees and exhibitors.
Previous
Videos
- OCS Front End Server
-
OCS Planning Tool
- Edge Planning Tool
- Getting To Know Microsoft Office Communicator
- OCS User Creation
-
Mediation Server
-
Edge Server
|
|
Free Technical
"Just Enough Just-in-Time" Knowledge from:
The World's First
and Largest Animated Library on Technology with more than 3,000
animated tutorials.
Go
now to www.techtionary.com
|
|
OCS Training in the
New York-New Jersey Area and Live Online:
If you are
looking to implement Microsoft OCS 2007 solution and need some training
help, Solartech
might be the trainer provider you can check out. They are the
Microsoft 2009 Partner of the Year finalist and provide OCS R2
training for Microsoft clients. They are based in New York City
but you can attend their live training right online
if you prefer not to travel. Interested, you can contact
Christian Fortes at cfortes@solartechnj.com
(201.807.9889,
ext. 106).
Mention you saw this in OCS Forum
newsletter and get a $200 discount on the first student.
|
|
|
|
|
Boulder
Happiest City in U.S.
Click here for story.
Come to OCS Forum Expo and see
why.
The St. Julien Hotel in Boulder is an
extraordinary hotel. For a 30-second Flash tour of
Boulder and Hotel Reservation information click here. Please
make your reservations early.
Info on Rocky Mountain
National Park -
Elk, deer, moose, bighorn sheep, black bears, coyotes, cougars, eagles,
hawks and scores of smaller animals - chipmonks
galore delight wildlife-watchers of all ages. Wildflower-lovers
are never disappointed in June and July when the meadows and hillsides
are splashed with botanical color.
|
|
|
OCS Forum provides classroom and webseminar training as well as a non-production
environment for those IT departments without additional equipment,
budget or time. This allows planners and users
to test ideas, dial in and dial back out, IM file transfers,
remote desktop sharing, video conferencing, run scenarios, review logs,
break linkages and learning about new telephony features and network
access. OCS Forum is also designed for both the system
integrator/consultant who wants to learn about OCSR2 without having to
build their own system as well as the enterprise customer who doesn't
have the time, resources or knowledge to develop one. OCS Forum
Labs are designed to be "hands-on" or
"over-the-shoulder" with experts available for Q&A and
classes for feature-specific review.
About OCS Forum
OCS Forum is a
vendor-independent laboratory environment designed for learning,
technical guides, knowledge resources and online "live"
services. OCS Forum provides planning, project management,
consulting, training, case studies, white papers, speaking engagements,
market/customer research, network planning and other
services.
|
|
|
|
|
