The phone in my ‘mugshot’ this year is an old red buttinski, or ‘butt’ for short. In other countries you might call it a lineman’s handset. (If you refer to these by any other name in your country, please post it to the comments).
Tip: Microsoft Teams “WhoAmI”?
I’m not too proud to admit that I’m frequently plagued by identity crises. As a consultant I spend my days signing into and out of many different deployments of SfB and Microsoft Teams, and I *regularly* lose track of which system I’m in.
With Windows it’s easy: you just ask a CMD or PowerShell prompt “whoami” and it tells you.
With Skype for Business it’s pretty simple too: just click on your picture (a shortcut to the setup/Options menu) and then on the General tab all is revealed.
It’s there in Teams, but not where you think:
- It’s not in the settings under your picture.
- There’s no point asking “/whoami” in the command bar. At best you’ll get the details of everyone called “ami” in your Active Directory.
The trick is to hover or click on your own icon/photo in any post you’ve made to a channel. Your contact card will show, revealing (at the very least) the address you used to sign in:
It even works when you’re a guest:
This works in the stand-alone Windows client, the browser and even the mobile client.
Thanks to fellow MVP @Loryan for pointing this one out.
– G.
Test-EdgeConnectivity.ps1
The larger and more complex your on-prem SfB installation is, the greater the likelihood of encountering firewall problems.
If you run this script on your Front-End server(s) it will:
- query the topology to find all of the Edge servers. (Add the “-site” switch to only retrieve those in a given topology site)
- initiate a TCP probe to all of them on all the ports that should be open: 443, 4443, 5061, 5062, 8057 & the CLS Logging ports 50001/2/3
- executes a TURN test to UDP 3478. (Thank you Frank Carius @msxfaq for this code)
- output the results to screen
- output the results to the pipeline as an object
- save the results in the log file in csv format
Download
You’ll find a code-signed version of the script on GitHub. You’re welcome to pinch, adapt or improve upon the code with my blessing. If you encounter any problems with it please create an issue on the repo.
Revision History
6th June 2020. Updated the Download link to point to GitHub.
v1.2 7th August 2019.
- Added ‘TCP’ and ‘UDP’ headers to the output object
- Added previously excluded CLS ports 50002 & 50003
- Added new ‘-ports’ switch to let you specify one or more ports, overriding the defaults
(All port numbers except 3478 will be treated as TCP) - Moved “$udpClient.Send” line inside the Try so invalid FQDNs don’t spray red on screen
v1.1 7th April 2019.
- Added Frank Carius’ UDP3478 test. Thank you Frank!
- Added ‘-TargetFqdn’ switch to force a test to a single machine – or a list. (Thanks Naimesh!)
- Added write-progress to the port tests so you can see when it’s stuck on a bad port
v1.0 10th December 2018. This is the initial release.
– G.
Lync 2013 / SfB 2015 Client Security Update – November 2018
It’s been a month since our last update to the client and quite some time since we’ve seen a security update. This update brings one fix. Kb 4461487 takes the Office 2013-based client from 15.0.5071.1000 to 15.0.5085.1000.
What’s Fixed
- This security update resolves vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office that could allow remote code execution if a user opens a specially crafted Office file. To learn more about these vulnerabilities, see Microsoft Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures CVE-2018-8546.
What’s New / Changed
Nothing documented.
Known Issues
Nothing documented.
Continue reading ‘Lync 2013 / SfB 2015 Client Security Update – November 2018’ »
Lync 2013 / SfB 2015 Client Update – October 2018
It’s been a month since our last update to the client and our October update brings one fix. Kb 4461446 takes the Office 2013-based client from 15.0.5065|5067.1000 to 15.0.5071.1000.
What’s Fixed
- Kb 4464953 Skype for Business 2015 (Lync 2013) freezes when you receive many emoticons
What’s New / Changed
Nothing documented.
Known Issues
Nothing documented.
Continue reading ‘Lync 2013 / SfB 2015 Client Update – October 2018’ »
A battery-powered VVX
Having worked out in my previous post how to get a VVX working with a Wi-Fi network connection, the next obvious challenge was to go fully cordless, and that meant ditching the PoE.
A Wi-Fi Polycom VVX
Whilst browsing the UCS 5.8 release notes I couldn’t help but notice the addition of support for Wi-Fi connectivity, added to all phones in the range that possess a USB port (except the VVX1500 apparently). This is delivered via an Obihai USB dongle, the “OBiWiFi5G” – which I was able to pick up for $AUD45 at the Bays Du e. So now we have the makings of a wireless VVX…
Well, it’s only kinda wireless – it’s still tethered to power, and that hardly makes it wireless. I wondered what we could do about that… but I’ll address that in my next post.
Lync 2013 / SfB 2015 Client Update – September 2018
It’s been a month since our last update to the client and our fresh Spring update [here in the southern hemisphere] brings one fix. Kb4092457 takes the Office 2013-based client from 15.0.5059.1000 to “15.0.5067.1000” (according to the KB).
The client – and get-csconnections – report it as 15.0.5065.1000.
What’s Fixed
- Kb 4346575 Can’t transfer a team call to a team member by clicking the Transfer button in Skype for Business.
What’s New / Changed
Nothing documented.
Known Issues
Nothing documented.
Continue reading ‘Lync 2013 / SfB 2015 Client Update – September 2018’ »
A VVX Courtesy Phone
It’s not an uncommon requirement to provide a “courtesy” phone in a public area. In a hotel it might be a “house phone”. In many deployments all the visitor does is lift the handset from its cradle and the phone autodials or “hotlines” to the required destination.
Optimising Polycom VVX background images
If you go looking for the details of the wallpaper or background image sizes for the VVX family of phones you might fall into the same trap I did.
You might have seen this table in the documentation:
| Phone model | Optimal background image size (in pixels) |
| VVX 300 and 310 | 208 x 104 pixels |
| VVX 400 and 410 | 320 x 240 pixels |
| VVX 500 | 320 x 240 pixels |
| VVX 600 | 480 x 272 pixels |
| VVX 1500 | 800 x 480 pixels |
What isn’t immediately apparent is that this is the FULL screen size, not the USEABLE size. Place a logo too close to the top or bottom and it will be cut off by the “title bar” with the time display and line details at the top, or the softkeys at the bottom.
It also became clear in the process of testing this that despite the 400- and 500-series having the same absolute size, their useable size differ slightly, potentially requiring a different background image for each.
Continue reading ‘Optimising Polycom VVX background images’ »