Lock your SfB meeting to prevent unwanted newcomers

Posted by on

Hosting back-to-back meetings is at times unavoidable, and if you’re not careful you run the risk of people joining your second meeting before the first has concluded. This potentially awkward scenario arises when you’ve used the same conference ID for both, and your newcomers blissfully join not realising the virtual meeting room is already (still) in use.

If you find yourself in this situation, I have a quick fix for you: lock the door! You can do this in the virtual sense by changing the meeting so that the only person who will be automatically admitted is the organiser – yourself.

While you have the Skype meeting open, simply click the ellipsis, select “Skype Meeting Options”, then change “These people don’t have to wait in the lobby” to be “The meeting organizer” and OK. Here it is visually:

LockTheMeeting

Continue reading ‘Lock your SfB meeting to prevent unwanted newcomers’ »

Lync 2013 / SfB 2015 Client Update – February 2018

Posted by on

The January update took us to 15.0.4997.1000 and this week Kb 4011678 pushed us through the FIVE THOUSAND BUILD mark to hit 15.0.5007.1000. Phew!

What’s Fixed

This update fixes the following issues:

  • Kb 4076534 Skype for Business client crashes when working with external contacts in Outlook
  • Kb 4076533 Can’t input messages until clicking participants list after full-screen sharing in Skype for Business 2016 and Skype for Business 2015 (Lync 2013)
  • Kb 4076532 Set the default value of the EnableRestoreOAuthUsedKeyWhenUsingCachedWebTicket key to true
  • Kb 4076531 You’re prompted for Exchange credentials when you switch to internal network for Skype for Business

What’s New / Changed

Nothing documented.

Known Issues

Nothing documented.

Continue reading ‘Lync 2013 / SfB 2015 Client Update – February 2018’ »

SfB user can’t add Delegates or Team Call members

Posted by on

In the process of deploying an SfB installation or maybe in the early days of go-live it’s not uncommon for users to report a problem where they’re unable to add people to their Delegates or Team-Call Group list. It’s less common to see this in established installations, but there are genuine reasons why this might happen.

When this problem occurs you’ll typically be able to see the user when you search, but the OK button won’t light up:

ChooseADelegate-NoOK

Continue reading ‘SfB user can’t add Delegates or Team Call members’ »

Upgrading to AudioCodes IPP Manager Express 7.4

Posted by on

AudioCodes has refreshed IP Phone Manager Express with the 7.4 release, aligning it more – at least visually – with the current SBC look and feel.

Under the hood it’s had a significant revamp: out with SQL Express, in with mySQL.

It’s presumably due to the significance of the revamp that if you try to upgrade an existing deployment to 7.4, you’ll be told “the computer says no”:

YouCanNotUpgradeIPPExpress

Continue reading ‘Upgrading to AudioCodes IPP Manager Express 7.4’ »

Microsoft updates WAC/OOS pre-req’s

Posted by on

Getting a new Office Web Apps or Office Online Server to report “Healthy” is no mean feat, and you’ll find no shortage of blog posts with advice in that direction.

WACServerUnhealthy

Hence it was with great interest that I noticed Microsoft has recently updated the pre-req’s. (OK, it was either back in May or only last month, it’s hard to tell).

Two things jumped out at me:

  • NET-WCF-HTTP-Activation45 & several others have been added to the server pre-req’s. The former has been in the unofficial extras list for a while now, but the others are all new:

Server 2012 R2:

Add-WindowsFeature Web-Server,Web-Mgmt-Tools,Web-Mgmt-Console,Web-WebServer,Web-Common-Http,Web-Default-Doc,Web-Static-Content,Web-Performance,Web-Stat-Compression,Web-Dyn-Compression,Web-Security,Web-Filtering,Web-Windows-Auth,Web-App-Dev,Web-Net-Ext45,Web-Asp-Net45,Web-ISAPI-Ext,Web-ISAPI-Filter,Web-Includes,InkandHandwritingServices,NET-Framework-Features,NET-Framework-Core,NET-HTTP-Activation,NET-Non-HTTP-Activ,NET-WCF-HTTP-Activation45,Windows-Identity-Foundation,Server-Media-Foundation

Server 2016:

Add-WindowsFeature Web-Server,Web-Mgmt-Tools,Web-Mgmt-Console,Web-WebServer,Web-Common-Http,Web-Default-Doc,Web-Static-Content,Web-Performance,Web-Stat-Compression,Web-Dyn-Compression,Web-Security,Web-Filtering,Web-Windows-Auth,Web-App-Dev,Web-Net-Ext45,Web-Asp-Net45,Web-ISAPI-Ext,Web-ISAPI-Filter,Web-Includes,NET-Framework-Features,NET-Framework-45-Features,NET-Framework-Core,NET-Framework-45-Core,NET-HTTP-Activation,NET-Non-HTTP-Activ,NET-WCF-HTTP-Activation45,Windows-Identity-Foundation,Server-Media-Foundation
  • A new component is required:

Microsoft.IdentityModel.Extention.dll – https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=620072

Still reporting Unhealthy?

Wictor Wilén seems to have the definitive post on getting your WAC/OOS server healthy, but if you still draw a blank my only suggestion is to try adding the x64 and x86 versions of the VC_Redist 2013 and then “Restart-Service WACSM”.

Best of luck with it! Oh, and make sure W3SVC is running!

 

– G.

WAC/OOS error: Could not read settings

Posted by on

I was struggling with an Office Online Server recently that didn’t want to talk to me. I was able to create the OfficeWebAppsFarm OK, but then couldn’t query it (as I wanted to check its health):

CouldNotReadSettings

PS C:\> Get-OfficeWebAppsFarm

Get-OfficeWebAppsFarm : Could not read settings from WEBAPPS. The destination is unreachable.

The fix was a simple one: the WWW service was stopped. As soon as I restarted it, I was able to execute the ‘get-farm’ commandlet OK.

PS C:\> get-service W3SVC
Status   Name               DisplayName
------   ----               -----------
Stopped  3SVC               World Wide Web Publishing Service

PS C:\> start-service W3SVC

 

– G.

LS Audio/Video Authentication service could not be started

Posted by on

I returned from holidays recently to find my Skype for Business client reporting the familiar “Limited External Calling” error.

A quick RDP to my Lab’s Edge server revealed stopped services and this error in the Event Log:

Event19005

Event Properties - Event 19005, LS Audio/Video Authentication Server

LS Audio/Video Authentication service could not be started.

Exception: System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.Rtc.Collaboration, Version=6.0.0.0, Culture= neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.

Filtering the Event Log by this error I saw it pops up from time to time in brief spurts, then vanishes as quickly as it arrived. The date-stamp of its first recent occurrence looked interesting – that turned out to be the date I applied CU6 to the server. I’m guessing I was distracted or maybe rebooted it “into service” (ha!) and moved on to something else without checking it properly.

The fix was to run bootstrapper and it came good straight away.

PS C:\Program Files\Skype for Business Server 2015\Deployment> .\Bootstrapper.exe
PS C:\Program Files\Skype for Business Server 2015\Deployment> Start-CsWindowsService

 

– G.

Error updating CCE public Edge certificate

Posted by on

Digicert mailed me this week to advise that the public Edge certificate on my Lab’s Cloud Connector Edition was about to expire. Duly forewarned I set about updating it, but I hit an unexpected error when I tried to activate it in the CCE:

CCEError-Set-CcExternalCertificateFilePath

SetCcExternalCertificateFilePathlnternal : The property 'Commond' cannot be found on this object. Verify that the property exists.

“Commond”? Surely that’s a typo!

I eventually managed to fix* it – and I’ll get to that shortly. (* It’s a bit kludgey).

Continue reading ‘Error updating CCE public Edge certificate’ »

2018 mugshot: the Trimphone

Posted by on

My ‘mugshot’ for this year is the British Trimphone.

IMG_7836-1200x1200

The Trimphone was designed by Martyn Rowlands for STC as a luxury telephone that the GPO could rent to its customers at a premium.

IMG_7874-Trimphone

It had an innovative electronic ringer (at a time when phones still housed mechanical bells), and a dial that glowed at night thanks to a small glass tube of radioactive tritium gas exciting phosphors in the dial. It was a light phone – especially when compared to its bakelite forebears – and could be easily carried around by its loop-around hookswitch lever when the handset was out of its cradle.

The Trimphone won a design award in 1966.

Continue reading ‘2018 mugshot: the Trimphone’ »

Lync 2013 / SfB 2015 Client Update – January 2018

Posted by on

Happy new year! It’s barely January and we have a fresh update to the client – albeit a relatively small one, but with what looks like a doozie of a fix. Our December update took us to 15.0.4989.1000 and today Kb 4011638 nudges us up a few builds to 15.0.4997.1000.

What’s Fixed

This update fixes the following issues:

  • Kb 4057706 FIX: Skype meetings not found when joining meetings

Continue reading ‘Lync 2013 / SfB 2015 Client Update – January 2018’ »