Provisioning OCS Users (and the AD msRTCSIP-OptionFlags Attribute)

If you are deploying OCS 2007 or 2077 R2, and especially if you are migrating from LCS 2005, you will want to be careful about setting the OCS AD attribute msRTCSIP-OptionFlags.  This is an important AD attribute which is typically set by manually enabling/disabling specific user features in the OCS Administrative Console, or programmatically through scripting (e.g. VBScript).

The underlying value is an integer bit-mask which controls whether the user is enabled or disabled for several specific features.  If you have an existing automated provisioning process (i.e. script) that sets this AD attribute, ensure that it is not inadvertently clobbering any OCS features that you are setting through the OCS Administrative Console. This can be an issue if there is an existing automated LCS 2005 provisioning script that is still being applied after users have been migrated to OCS 2007.

For example, if you are setting Enhanced Presence (bit 256), and want to preserve the ability for the user to have Public IM functionality, be sure to set the value to 257 (i.e. add a “1″ to set the enabled for PIC bit). A good way to approach this is to just add the value of the bit representing the feature you give to the user to the existing msRTCSIP-OptionFlags value. You can do this through several command line options outlined in my blog post “Provisioning OCS From the Command Line“).

The msRTCSIP-OptionFlags AD attribute is documented here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb663647.aspx . If the user was migrated to OCS 2007 (or R2) from LCS 2005, the values 0 and 256 have significance. If bit 256 is set, the user is enabled for ‘Enhanced Presence’, and they will be able to log into OCS with Communicator 2007 or Communicator 2007 R2. After the first time they login with the newer client, they will NOT be able to login with the legacy Communicator 2005 client, so be careful to time the setting of Enhanced Presence with your client deployment.

Here are the values, what they mean, and where you can find the corresponding feature in the OCS Administrative Console.