Summary:

• The live meeting conferencing functionality will be rolled into Communicator “14″.  There will be one client, Communicator, for all media modalities and the associated features.
• There will be a new Silverlight-based web client available for those users wanting to joing a web conference, but don’t have the rich Communicator client installed.  This is a new client and not a replacement for Communicator Web Access.
  • When a user clicks to join a meeting from a link, it detects whether the Communicator client is installed. If it is not, you can join via the Silverlight client.
  • Participation via the Silverlight client is anonymous (i.e there is no sign-in required).  This is a powerfull feature that will make it a whole lot easier for external (to your organization) attendees join a meeting.
• MCS 14 will federate with Windows Live “Wave 4″ and will support Audio and Video with Windows Live Messenger contacts.
• All MCS 14 features were designed ground-up to work on-premise, cloud, or hybrid:
  • both in terms of supporting a percentage of MCS users on-premise, in the cloud, and,
  • in terms of having some or all Exchange & SharePoint services in the cloud
• Supported virtualization for all server roles in MCS 14 (with the normal audio and video caveats;  i.e. you must closely follow the virtualization guidelines to support audio and video, and even then it could be more suceptible to jitter and latency)
• The MCS 14 will support a media bypass feature which will allow a consolidated MCS “14″ front-end server to go direct SIP to a supported IP-PBX’s without having to through a mediation server when the call is going to a locally dialed PSTN number.
  • the Media by-pass, coupled with the branch office survivability will remove the need for Mediation servers in most local or branch sites (in most cases)
• Multiple SIP Gateways can be connected to one Mediation server.
• Communicator “14″ will support the G.711 codec and will be able to talk to certified MCS “14″ media Gateways to go out local PSTN access points.
• The visual Presence circle is changing to a square in Communicator “14″!  :-)

Office Communicator “14″

• Many new features nicely summarized in this Microsoft Showcase video: What’s New in Microsoft Communicator “14″.

Management

• A new Silverlight web-based management console (Communication Server Control Panel) that is built on a new set of Communications Server PowerShell cmdlets.
  • Support for Role Based Access Control administration (similar to Exchange 2010)
  • Support for cut-and-paste in the UI (i.e. easily copy Normalization Rules)
  • Can easily see all the Policies (i.e. Voice, Conferencing, Client) for a particular user in one place
• A new Central Management Store (CMS)
  • a central database the holds XML documents that describe your deployment
  • all topology changes get written to the CMS, and a read-only copy is pushed to all servers in the topology
  • the topology is pushed out via a file transfer agent and via HTTPS for the the Edge role
• New tools to help with certificates!
• New support for ’server maintenance’ – a server can be put into maintenance mode for O/S and hardware maintenance
• New PowerShell cmdlet’s
  • Everything in the new UI can be done through PowerShell
  • Cmdlets to manage users, configuration, devices, policies
  • Support for synthetic transactions (test phone calls, sip registrations, simple conferencing)

Topology Changes

• More support for role collocation.  More roles, including the Mediation role and CWA, can be installed with the Front-End
• A new “Site” topology entity which can be used to represent a geographic boundary such as a center or branch location.  A site contains one or more pools
• Similar roles as OCS 2007 R2 (i.e. a backend role that defines a pool, Edge Mediation, AV Conferencing, Archiving, Monitoring, Director, Group Chat)
• The Director role now streamlined and includes a local SQL Express database – removing the need for a separate back-end SQL database.
• The concept of Standard and Enterprise edition still exists
• Support for DNS load balancing within a pool
• New Topology Builder UI which helps you build your topology document

Virtualization

• Support for the virtualization of almost all roles
• Client virtualization support is similar to Communicator 2007 R2 (i.e. IM and application sharing but audio/video is not supported)
• Cannot virtualize the new branch office workload

Monitoring

• New SCOM 2007 R2 management pack:
  • Support for synthetic transactions (monitor the user experience)
  • Media quality alerts
  • Call failure alerts
  • Actionable alerts
• Monitoring role can be collocated with the front-end role
• The ability to ‘heal’ the audio of a particular end-point if the Monitoring role detects degradation in quality.

Office Communications Online

• Second-half of 2010:
  • Peer-to-Peer Audio/Video and File Transfer across the firewall
  • Communicator Mobile
• First-half of 2011:
  • Federation and PIC
  • IM Archiving
  • Recording and Playback
  • Application Sharing
  • Unified Voicemail
  • ACP Integration

Additional Information

• More information on the end-user experience in MCS 14, see Microsoft’s  Communications Server “14″ web site.
• The new Microsoft Communications Server “14″ Powershell Page
• Jeff Schertz -  Communications Server ‘14’ Full Disclosure write-up
• Next Hop’s write-up on Call Admission Control in Communications Server “14″
• Mary-Jo Foley’s writeup: Microsoft shares more details on its next version of its PBX alternative, OCS 14
• UCStrategies Microsoft’s Communication Server 14 at TechEd write-up

Stay tuned – much more to come.

In a nutshell, the 32-bit version of the Office 2010 Beta integrated well with both Office Communicator 2007 R2 and the Live Meeting Conferencing Add-In.

The 64-bit version of Office 2010 Beta has some issues with Communicator 2007 R2 and the Live Meeting integration as described below.

Remember – only a 32-bit version of Communicator 2007 R2 and the Live Meeting Add-In is available today (which of course can be installed on an x64-bit O/S via WOW64). I have seen references to Office Communicator 2010 in relation to Office 2010 – I imagine this will have a 64-bit version available.

As a side note, as reported on Dec 16, 2009, it is looking like Office 2010 will not support Window XP 64-bit nor 64-bit Windows 2003.

Communicator Integration

Communicator R2 was able to get free/busy and Out-of-Office information for my Contacts, but I received the infamous “Outlook integration error” and my Presence was not being updated in conjunction with my 64-bit Outlook 2010 calendar. Outlook 2010 would also not display Presence or provide other Communicator integration functionality.

Details of the Outlook integration error were as follows: “There was a problem connecting to Microsoft Office Outlook. Outlook is not installed correctly. Repair or reinstall Outlook, and then update the personal information manager setting on the Personal tab in the Options dialog box”.

I also could not save my Communicator conversation history into Outlook 2010, and despite my best registry tweak attempts, I could not make it work.

Live Meeting Outlook Conferencing Add-In Integration

With Outlook 2010 the Meeting functionality (i.e. “Schedule a Meeting”) is available without installing the Live Meeting Conferencing Add-In. For good measure I tried installing it anyway. As with Communicator R2, everything installed and worked fine with the x32-bit version Beta of Office 2010. Also, installing the Add-In extended some meeting functionality – it made available a “Conference Call” toolbar button that which allows you to “Change meeting to an Office 2007 Communicator Call” as shown below:

Trying to install the 32-bit version of the Live Meeting Conferencing Add-In with the 64-bit version of Office 2010 however produces the following error when you attempt to install it on a 64-bit o/s with the 64-bit version of Office 2010 Beta: “Please install Microsoft Office Outlook 2002 or higher and then try again. Note that Outlook 14 64 BIT IS NOT SUPPORTED”. Indeed in the Office 2010 Beta release notes it also says “Note that the 64-bit edition of Office is not compatible with 32-bit Office add-ins”.

Built-In Outlook 2010 Meeting Functionality

Here are some other notes about the meeting functionality in Outlook 2010 (and other Office 2010 applications):

1. The “Meeting” functionality is more visible and accessible:
   1. Easily accessible via the Contact Card when you click or hover-over a contact (see the screen shot below).
   2. In an Outlook email, there is a “Meeting” button available in the toolbar.
2. The Meeting details are auto-populated with the context from where the Meeting request was launched in Outlook (e.g. if a user launches the meeting request from an email recipient, the meeting subject is pre-filled with the email subject and the meeting participants are pre-filled with the email To: and Cc: fields).

Schedule a Meeting from a Contact Hover-Over in Outlook 2010