Category: Unified Comms

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Exchange 2010 Public Beta Released


Microsoft today (15/04/09) made the beta of Exchange 2010 available to the public-this can be downloaded here:

Get Exchange 2010 Beta

There are numerous new features in the latest incarnation of the world’s most popular email platform (I think that’s a safe statement to make?!) including:

·         OWA (Outlook Web Access) support for Internet Explorer (IE) 7 and 8, Firefox 3, and Safari 3.

 

·         MailTips. Are you about to accidentally send a personal e-mail to the whole company? A a time-sensitive e-mail to someone who is on maternity leave for six months? A 30MB attachment to people who have 20MB attachment size limits on their mailboxes? MailTips tells you before you send the message.

 

·         Conversation view. Have the arrangements for a company party Friday night cluttered up your mailbox to the point where you can’t find the approval e-mail for the urgent customer visit that you need to book today? Switch to conversation view, and collapse those 50 party discussions into one expandable node.

 

·         Calendar sharing extended to OWA

 

·         Automatically transcribed text-based preview of voice mail messages

·         Federation – Trust Exchange servers of partner organizations, share calendars, presence. You can schedule meetings with your business partners as easily as you can schedule meetings within the company.

·         Mailboxes can be moved during normal business hours with user online!

      ·      The Exchange 2010 version of OWA will have full parity with Outlook 2010 by the time they both ship; & the Windows Mobile client will come close.

One thing that might surprise some and will probably cause issues for others is that Exchange 2010 will require Windows Server 2008 minimum-so NO Windows Server 2003 support. I’m sure this won’t sit well with everyone but Windows Server 2008 is such a great product, and a huge leap forward from Server 2003, that I’m sure it will only benefit people to adopt it.

I’ve just seen a tweet from @Pbarone that Exchange 2010 will have a “mute” button which will allow you to remove yourself from email threads…that is seriously cool! At least a couple of times a week I find myself caught up in a “reply all/forward” whirlwind where I’m one of say, 6 people that all receive an email and then each of then “reply all” and then that receives multiple replies and so on. It’s very rare that I actually need to see these responses but once one person hits “reply all”, it seems to be the custom for everyone else involved to follow suit…and it can be really annoying so this mute button is a great new feature!

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OCS Licensing changes coming with next version


It appears that there will be an extra CAL (Client Access Licence) for users to choose from when Microsoft OCS Server 14  is released in 2010.

On top of the current Standard and Enterprise CALs, there will also be a Voice CAL which will offer telephony & VOIP services. These features will be removed from the Enterprise CAL and thus the Enterprise CAL will drop in price by around 23%. Also, MS are allowing current OCS customers with SA (Software Assurance) to “grandfather” in the new Voice CAL-if they agree to buy it before July 2009.

Hat Tip to Mary Jo Foley

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Microsoft OCS 2007 R2 Released


Microsoft OCS 2007 R2 has officially been Released to Manufacturing (RTM’d) as of 19/12/08 so in plenty of time for the Virtual Launch on 13/02/09.

It’s still on course to add a whole host of new features to the OCS platform which will make it even more of a contender in the UC arena.

I really feel that MS OCS 2007 coupled with the Roundtable is a winning combo when it comes to Unified Communications.

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Jabra/Microsoft Unified Communications Headsets


I was talking to our account manager at Jabra today about their latest range of headsets and they’re really impressive.

Jabra were the first, and I believe still the only, company to have their headsets certified by Microsoft as “Optimized for Microsoft Office Communicator” which is a nice badge to have 🙂

I’ve got the M5390at work and it’s a great bit of kit, especially now I’ve worked out how to use it properly! I’ve always held out against headsets, always said I “need to have a phone in my hand”, always thought headsets were a little bit “Posey” but not any more.

I’ve had the M5390 for about 4 months and find it to be great…the best thing is being able to type properly whilst on the phone, particularly during webcasts, conference calls etc. As the headset is wireless with up to 70M range, I can wander off from my desk to pick up a fax, make a brew, buy a Wispa and all sorts of things, that extra bit of freedom really does help increase productivity.

Also, I’ve got it paired to both my desk phone and my PC “softPhone” so it can hook into Microsoft Office Communicator really well. It also means that you can use it to listen to internet radio, Youtube etc during your lunch hour (of course!) and then webcasts and the like during work hours without bothering any of your colleagues.

Jabra OCS headsets

Sorry the text is a bit small, I’ll try and rectify that ASAP 🙂

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Microsoft Roundtable Demo


I (along with our friends @ Microsoft) did a demo of the Microsoft Roundtable today down at a customer’s very impressive site and I’m pleased to say, it went very well 🙂

We tested out a couple of different setups and I can tell you now that 2 Roundtables in the same room just isn’t a good idea! Having both devices live means feedback and general audio-confusion for all involved so even in the bigger boardrooms, 1 is the limit really.

Some people were worred that the panoramic view across the bottom would be too small for effective video-conferencing and that may be true, but it’s easy enough to enlarge the video for conversations and then drop it back down when you want to share data etc*.

The ability of Live Meeting to share presentations, take polls and provide collaborative whiteboarding was a definite hit with the demo attendees, and helped show that the Roundtable, in conjunction with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, really is a great business benefit.

The demo was such a hit that even the Managing Director of this world famous multi-national company came down to take a look, and was instantly impressed with how it could help increase productivity among their 2000+ users 🙂

It was great to see first hand what customers think of this product and also great to see that they agree with me about the many different benefits such as increased productivity, reduction in travel expenses, helping reduce a company’s carbon footprint and more.

Here are links to some of my other Roundtable posts:

Documents & Downloads

Unboxing Pics

Review

*I’ll hopefully be able to update this post with some example images soon…

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PDC 2008 Wrap Up


I think we can all agree that the PDC 2008 was pretty special. Azure, Windows 7, Office Web, Azure Services, Live Mesh..the list goes on. The sheer amount of information given out at these conferences often means that we miss bits that are interesting and/or pertinent to our jobs & lives (this was certainly the case when I was at the WPC in Houston!).

Fear not, as Mike Swanson over at MSDN Blogs has put together a wonderful collection of all the Keynotes and sessions, and where possible he’s included the Powerpoints and sample code!

Some of the sessions I’m glad to see are below. The main links go to the video on Channel9, the Powerpoint link will download the .pptx presentation.

A lap around the Azure Services Platform (Powerpoint)

Microsoft Office Communications Server & Exchange: Platform Futures (Powerpoint)

Office Communications Server R2: Enabling Unified Communications (Powerpoint)

Microsoft Silverlight 2 for Mobile: Developing for Mobile Devices (Powerpoint)

The whole, wonderful list can be found here. There are countless sessions on SQL, Azure, .NET, Windows 7 and more!

I really want to give a big thank you to Mike for doing this..there are sooo many sessions on there I didn’t know about that are really interesting and useful!

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Microsoft OCS 2007 R2- More Info


Microsoft OCS 2007 R2, the new version, was recently (14/10/08) announced at VoiceCon. My other posts talk about the features that were expected to be included and can be found here.

BrettJo has got some links with extra info over at his blog, and some of the info from those is below.

The “Communicator Attendant” is a PC Client that adds a whole host of traditional operator features to OCS 2007; it’s advanced features allow you to transfer IM’s (Instant Messages) and/or typed notes along with a phone call <–that’s pretty cool 🙂

Also, ACD Response Group includes a set of workflow and routing rules, IVR and queuing, agent presence, Music on Hold (MOH), and inbound call context.

NoJitter.com also says:

“Other new telephony features include Delegation (assistant/executive support capabilities), Call Monitoring (call records, call voice quality, usage reporting, and ROI analysis), and SIP trunking direct from the OCS 2007 Mediation Server to the ITSP (PSTN and Cellular networks) without need for a premises SBC.”

Video Conferencing sees a number of improvements including VGA as standard with an HD option and one click screen sharing from Office Communicator, with Polycom & Tandberg endpoints being supported.

Dial-in Conferencing (scheduled or ad-hoc bridging) with VOIP or PSTN access is do-able and the Conferencing Attendant enables you to see the call roster, drop callers from the conference and more.

Another new feature that could lead to some really cool things is the ability for developers to add presence information to other MS AND 3rd party applications such as CRM. So if you’re in Finance and you’ve got a question about the latest order on the Jenkins account, you could see the presence of the customer account manager and contact them via chat…still within that application!

The guys over at TechWorld.nlhave got a video which includes an interview with Senior MS Director Eric Swift and a great demo of the new OCS 2007 R2 features:

If anyone can translate the Dutch article over at Techworld that’d be cool 🙂

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Microsoft Unified Communications Demo


Microsoft’s Unified Communications portfolio contains some brilliant products and when they’re all used together, the results are amazing. However one thing I know first hand is that an actual demo works infinitely better than any number of .ppt slides and presentations so courtesy of Technet Edge, here’s a demo of:

Exchange Server 2007, Office Communications Server 2007 and Roundtable

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