Inside OCS » Development

Additions & Changes to Microsoft TechNet OCS Resources

Curtis Johnstone — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:45:43 +0000

There have recently been several noteworthy changes to the Microsoft TechNet OCS and UC resources available on TechNet. Here is a summary of the changes:

1) The OCS TechNet Forums have Moved

If you have never used them before, the Microsoft OCS TechNet Forums are a great resource for asking questions and resolving problems. As of last week (Nov 9, 2009) Microsoft moved and re-organized the OCS community discussion forms. One major drawback to this is that the old content could not be moved into the new forums.

The old Office Communications Server TechNet Forums can be located here: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/ocs and are now locked down (no new posts), but you can still search and read the old content.

The new Office Communications Server TechNet Forums is located here: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/ocs.

Jeff Schertz has a good article detailing the re-organization of categories if you want more detail.

2) New OCS Troubleshooting and UC Update Resource Center Pages

The Microsoft Office Communications Server Team have released several two new OCS web resource portals in the last month. Here is a summary:

a) Office Communications Server and Client Troubleshooting and Support Page

This is a round-up of resources available for solving problems:

An embedded Knowledge Base search – surprisingly not customized for OCS or Communicator.
Links to the OCS forums.
Contact information for Microsoft support.

b) Updates Resource Center for Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and Clients

A web page detailing the most recent updates (information and links to the actual update) for OCS and the UC Clients (Communicator, Live Meeting, etc…).

3) The ‘Next Hop’

Recently announced at PDC, there is a new TechNet resource portal called NextHop which is designed to offer helpful hints and information on OCS.

OCS WMI Reference

Curtis Johnstone — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 20:19:14 +0000

OCS installs a set of Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) classes that expose a wealth of information on everything from global settings about an OCS deployment, OCS user settings, or configuration information about a particular server. These classes can be used to programmatically gather configuration information, manage an OCS environment, and automate administrative tasks using a Windows Scripting Host language or Powershell.

The WMI classes that are installed with the OCS Administrative Tools and Server Roles are part of the Office Communications Server Management API. Below I provide a handy reference to the most useful MSDN OCS WMI information. Note: R2 = OCS 2007 R2; R1 = OCS 2007.

Description	OCS 2007 R2	OCS 2007
OCS WMI Reference Portal Start here if you are unfamiliar with the WMI classes.	http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd146871(office.13).aspx	http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb679969.aspx
OCS WMI Class Reference A complete reference to all the available classes and their respective details.	http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd146501(office.13).aspx	http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb680173.aspx
WMI *Class Management Scopes and Roles ()** What classes are available on which server roles (or admin tools installation), and what scope a class has.	http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd130068(office.13).aspx	http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb680173.aspx
WMI Error Messages What specific error codes mean (which can be difficult because of the WMI provider architecture).	MSDN WMI Error codes returned by the Office Communications Server 2007 WMI provider MSDN WMI Error Constants How to track down the WMI error in OCS (from Joe Calev’s WebLog)

* Note: Practically speaking, the class scope affects your ability to use the class in two ways:

The WMI class might only be available on a particular machine (server role), meaning your script will need to remotely connect to that machine to get access to it. If there is a “*” in the Admin column, you need to connect remotely to the machine.
You need the appropriate access rights to a particular scope if it is a Singleton. For example, if your script is running in a child domain, and a particular class is can only have one instance in the Global scope (AD), the user running your script needs permissions to access to the parent AD domain.

Importing and Exporting OCS User Contacts

Curtis Johnstone — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 19:40:10 +0000

There are several administrative uses for manipulating user contacts – the two primary uses are backup & restore, and inserting a standard set of contacts for an organization or department. There are two options available to import and export user contacts which I explain below.

1) Command Line Tool (DBIMPEXP.EXE)

DBIMPEXP.EXE is a little-known tool which can be used export or import a contact list for any user hosted in an OCS Enterprise Pool, or OCS Standard Edition server. The tool is available in one of three places:

On an OCS 2007 Front-End in the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007\Server\Support directory.
On an OCS 2007 R2 Front-End in the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2\Support directory.
In the ‘Support’ directory on the OCS 2007 or OCS 2007 R2 installation media.

In the same directory there is a DBIMPexp.exe Readme file that gives good information on usage and a FAQ.

With an Enterprise pool configuration, the big difference on the command line is the need to specify the backend SQL server with the /sqlserver switch. Here are 2 examples of how to use this tool:

To export the contact list for all users in an Enterprise Pool: dbimpexp.exe /hrxmlfile:contacts.xml /sqlserver:
To import a contact list for a specific user homed on a Standard Edition server: dbimpexp.exe /hrxmlfile:contacts.xml /user:

2) Using WMI (via a Custom Script or the LCSAddContacts.wsf Resource Kit Tool)

Two WMI class expose user contact information. The MSFT_SIPESUserContactData class specifies a single contact for an Office Communications Server user, and the settings for a contact group are represented by the MSFT_SIPESUserContactGroupData class.

You can use your favorite scripting language (VBScript, Jscript, or Powershell) and write a custom solution, or you can use the Windows Script LCSAddContacts.wsf in the OCS Resource Kit. This resource kit script uses the above mentioned WMI classes and allows programmatic adding of contacts for OCS users.