Communicator Web Access Top 10

If you are planning on deploying Communicator Web Access (CWA) here are 10 important things to know based on experience:

1. A CWA R2 server is needed for providing users with PIN numbers for the OCS R2 dial-in audio conferencing feature.
2. A CWA R2 server is required to enable desktop sharing with Anonymous or Federated External Contacts.
3. To make desktop sharing work in CWA R2, additional firewall ports 49152 through 65535 must be opened in most configurations.
4. CWA desktop sharing users need a browser add-on (CWAPlugin.exe) on their client machine.
   • The user is given the option to download and install the plug-in the first time they attempt to use CWA desktop sharing.
   • 64-bit users must launch the 32-bit version of their browsers.
   • The list of supported web browsers are: IE 6.0 Service Pack 2 or later,  Safari 1.3 (or later) or Firefox 3.0 or later.
5. A CWA R2 user must be enabled for Web Conferencing and Program and Desktop sharing to use the desktop sharing feature in CWA.
6. A CWA R2 user must have the ‘Allow anonymous participant’ feature turned on to initiate a CWA conference (2+ participants). The Allow Anonymous Participant feature allows the user to ‘Invite By Email’ to conference in other participants. To enable this setting for users, the ‘Enfore per user’ option must be selected in the global policy section.
7. A CWA R2 server is not required for remote Communicator 2007 R2 (non-CWA) clients to use desktop sharing.
8. CWA users must be enabled for Enhanced Presence to login using CWA R2. If they are not, the user will be prompted multiple times to authenticate and then be shown an error message. If there are Office Communicator 2005 clients still deployed, there are implications enabling Enhanced Presence (see previous blog entry Enhanced Presence and Upgrading Communicator Clients).
9. The CWA R2 experience can be customized in several ways:
   • A custom CWA sign-on page for users (e.g. custom headers and footers, etc..). See the TechNet article ‘Customizing the Login Page’ for specifics.
   • A custom set of tabs and menus in the CWA client menu.
10. The CWA R2 role is not officially supported to run on a virtual machine. I have it fully functionally running on virtual machines in a lab environment, and there are several accounts of it running successfully in small production deployments. As end-user usage increases on a virtualized CWA server, the most notable issue is the slowing of client refreshes in IE.

Also note: a separate management console (mmc snap-in) is used to Administer CWA R2.

If you have any top CWA tips to share, I would like to hear them (in the comments section).

For more information CWA 2007 R2, see the following:

• Microsoft TechNet portal for Administering and Troubleshooting CWA R2.
• Microsoft TechNet portal for Deploying CWA R2.
• A good architecture overview of CWA R2 (on TechNet).