Public Address (Paging) Options for Microsoft Teams – I

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It’s been over 6 years years since I published two how-to guides on ways to interface your (then) on-premises Lync deployment to a public address / paging system:

Given the Cloud-based architecture of Office 365 and Microsoft Teams I thought I should revisit the subject, see if they’re still relevant, and if there are any superior ways of doing same.

I’m pleased to say that both remain relevant in a cloud-based deployment, although they require a CCE or Microsoft Teams Direct Routing (DR) SBC in order to add the required FXO port or SIP connectivity.

OK, so that’s not everyone these days. What alternatives do we have? Continue reading ‘Public Address (Paging) Options for Microsoft Teams – I’ »

Non-US dates make for Unhealthy OOS Farms

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You’d think by now Microsoft would have stopped hard-coding its products to expect the US date format “MMDDYY”, but apparently the team behind Office Online Server 2016 are still holding out – and as a result you might find your OOS farm remains steadfastly “Unhealthy”, despite your best efforts.

OOS-Unhealthy

If you’re not in the US (i.e. are running a different time and date format) and none of Wictor Wilén’s many fixes have borne fruit, try this one.

The telltale sign this time is the presence of one or both of these events in the Applications and Services Logs / Microsoft Office Web Apps event log, spewing forth roughly every 4 minutes:

41268:

OOS-Event41268

<HealthMessage>UlsControllerWatchdog reported status for UlsController in category 'Verify Trace Logging'.
Reported status: Likely caused by shipping osipartner outputs from somewhere other than a devmain checkpoint.
Trace string is found but the format is not correct in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\OfficeWebApps\Data\Logs\ULS.
The following fields has the wrong format or content: [ Timestamp ].</HealthMessage>

Continue reading ‘Non-US dates make for Unhealthy OOS Farms’ »

Lync 2013 Server Update – January 2019

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Six months after our last update we have a January update to take your Lync Server 2013 up from 5.0.8308.1001 to 5.0.8308.1068. It updates 4 components on my Standard Edition Front-End.

What’s Fixed?

This cumulative update fixes the following issue:

  • Kb4475819 Update for the Intercluster routing component is available for Lync Server 2013

What’s New?

Nothing noted. No new commandlets are introduced in this update.

What’s Changed?

Nothing noted.

Continue reading ‘Lync 2013 Server Update – January 2019’ »

SfB 2015 Server Update – January 2019

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This week saw the release of an update for SfB Server 2015, taking the server up from 6.0.9319.534 to 6.0.9319.537 and updating 8 components on my Standard Edition Front-End.

My fellow MVP Luca has commented on the size of this one, which is indeed a lot larger than its predecessors:

What’s Fixed?

Continue reading ‘SfB 2015 Server Update – January 2019’ »

Lync 2013 / SfB 2015 Client Update – January 2019

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Happy new year! I wonder what 2019 has in store for us?

It’s been 6 or so weeks since our last update to the client, and this update brings just the one fix. Kb 4461557 takes the Office 2013-based client from 15.0.5085.1000 to 15.0.5101.1000 (although it’s reported in the kb as 15.0.5101.1002).

What’s Fixed

This update fixes the following issue:

What’s New / Changed

Nothing documented.

Known Issues

Nothing documented.

Continue reading ‘Lync 2013 / SfB 2015 Client Update – January 2019’ »

Tip: Microsoft Teams “WhoAmI”?

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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:

Teams-HereIAm

Teams-HereIAmAgain

It even works when you’re a guest:

Teams-HereIAm-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

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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 & 50001
  • 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

(Yes I’m figuring if 50001 is open, so will 50002 and 50003.)

Test-EdgeConnectivity

Test-EdgeConnectivity-v1.1Example

Download

Download the script from the Technet Gallery site.

Revision History

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

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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

What’s New / Changed

Nothing documented.

Known Issues

Nothing documented.

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