I have heard this many times lately, and wanted to get the word out as a one of the best user features in the Microsoft Communicator R2 client, and remind people that it is a peer-to-peer feature when there are 2 participants, so you do not have deploy the OCS R2 backend to use it. If you have the OCS 2007 R2 Application Sharing role deployed, users can share their desktop with many participants in a Conference. The user who initiates the conference (2+ participants), must have a meeting policy that allows web conferencing.
If any participant is using the Communicator R2 Web Access (CWA) client, the R2 Application Sharing role is required. Also, users participating through a web browser will require a browser plug-in (CWAPlugin.exe: available on the OCS R2 installation media in the CWA directory). The user is given the option to install the plug-in the first time they attempt to use desktop sharing in CWA.
More information about the requirements for using Desktop Sharing through CWA can be found in the Inside OCS blog posting “Communicator Web Access Top 10 “.
More details on the Desktop Sharing Architecture can be found in this Microsoft Technet article: Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Desktop Sharing Architecture.
Also, just a reminder that the Communicator R2 client works with a OCS 2007 server/pool, but several net new R2 features will not be available, and that audio and video interoperability with Office Communicator 2005 is not supported in Office Communicator 2007 R2 (although I have heard first-hand reports of it working).
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In Microsoft Online Services Communicator version, what may be the cause of the Desktop Sharing Icon being inactive? Thanks.
Yes. You can go into the policy you are using under the forest properties…global properties… and edit it.. on the meetings tab, Desktop sharing needs to be checked.
nevermind.. these users were part of an old pool. When I moved them to the new pool, i thought it would make them actual R2 pool members, but I guess there is a glitch. I disabled them from using OCS, then re-enabled, and after logging back in, they now have the capability to share screens.
I agree, screen sharing is one of the best new features in R2. Quick question, though… We have rolled out R2 in our production environment and screen sharing works great. In my test environment, though, the screen sharing icon does not appear in the communicator clients. If i log into the same client using a username from our production environment, the icon is there.
Is there some hidden setting that I need to find and switch on to give users on the test pool screen sharing capability?
Thanks
[...] Desktop Sharing is one the best new features of Communicator R2 (see my previous post: Communicator R2 Desktop Sharing Rocks!). [...]