October 27, 2016

Skype for Business Mac Client Released

Hot of the presses, the new Skype for Business Mac Client was released today. You can get it here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=54108

You can read the FAQ here: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/FAQ-Skype-for-Business-on-Mac-878fff6e-fc22-4917-870a-584478cb55ef?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US&fromAR=1

A few key notes:

  * Need El Capitan or later
  * No support for Pchat
  * Works with Lync 2013, Skype for Business and Skype for Business Online

UPDATE

Known issues: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Known-issues-Skype-for-Business-on-Mac-494ac5d5-50be-4aa7-8f5a-669c71c98c9a?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US

If you have been using the Preview Client, you will need to uninstall it before you install the GA client.

July 27, 2016

Skype for Business at VMworld 2016

Are you going to VMworld? Do you work with Skype for Business? Are you planning a deployment of Skype for Business that you want to virtualize? Are all your first choice sessions full?

If you answered “Yes” to any of these questions, you should register for VIRT7620: Successfully Virtualize and Operate your Microsoft Skype for Business Infrastructure on the VMware vSphere Platform.

I will be speaking alongside VMware IT on how they deployed Skype for Business and the best practices that were implemented. We will highlight why latency, IOPs and other resources are important to Skype for Business and other Real Time Protocol products.

July 26, 2016

Centralized Logging Service not working in Skype for Business

I haven’t written a new post in a while as I have not been doing as many deployments lately. I have been focused more on evangelism and speaking with different organizations that are thinking about deploying Skype for Business.

That said, recently I had the opportunity to get back in to the game and start a deployment for a large organization. We were experiencing some issues that necessitated us to do some logging on the Front-end servers. I turned to my favorite tool for this, the CLSLogger which takes advantage of the Centralized Logging Service (CLS).

May 11, 2015

Skype4B In-place Upgrade and LRS Admin Portal

While reading through the In-place Upgrade docs, I spied this little nugget:

Be sure to uninstall LRS Admin tool for Lync Server 2013 before running In-Place Upgrade. The LRS Admin Tool for Lync Server 2013 cannot coexist with Skype for Business Server 2015. After running In-Place Upgrade install the new LRS Admin tool, see Microsoft Lync Room System Administrative Web Portal for Skype for Business Server 2015

I haven’t tested this but the fact that they say to Uninstall the Lync Server 2013 LRS Admin Portal was the big catch. Make sure you read all of the docs a few times before you start the upgrade process.

March 30, 2015

Lync Edge Server Port Ranges and QoS

Ran into this and felt like until the documentation is updated, I should call this out. On this Technet article, it shows you how to configure port ranges for Edge Servers in Lync Server 2013. In the hopeful case that this page is updated, here is a static image:

EdgeServerPortConfig

The issue with this article is that it appears to tie the port ranges for the Edge server to QoS which is not the case. You need to read the article very carefully. The first sentence in it tells you that you do not need to configure separate port ranges for Audio/Video/Application Sharing on the Edge. It then goes on to tell you how to change the port ranges to match up with what you may have set for your front-end servers.

March 5, 2015

Thinking vs Hope

The most dangerous words that come from my mouth are usually “I’ve been thinking.” When I think, my thoughts go everywhere. Most of the time they go to good places but when things get serious, when big decisions are on the line, my thoughts usually betray me. They go to the dark places of my mind. Fear creeps in and takes over.

I recently had a moment like this. It took a bit to recognize it but once I did, I knew that I had to refocus my thoughts. What I found was hope. We hope for things to come, things we don’t yet have. By focusing on hope, it becomes easier to see good outcomes. Hope for a better a situation, a better future. Hope.

February 25, 2015

Hotfix for Lync for Mac 2011 14.0.10

This is a hotfix that you can apply to your Mac if you are running 14.0.10. From the folks I have helped deploy this to, it makes a significant improvement.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/3019983

The funny part about this is that the hotfix comes as a .exe file which is not native to Mac’s. In order to extract it, open a command window and use the Unzip command, i.e. “unzip hotfix.exe”.

One of the first things I noticed that was fixed in this is that screen shares are much faster and smoother. A co-worker reported to me that he sees less crashes with the Mac for Lync client.

October 27, 2014

October COUCUG meeting on 10/30

If you are in the Denver, CO area on Thursday (10/30), you should come join us at the October Colorado UC User Group (COUCUG) meeting. We have a great line up of speakers! Topics are Lync with Office 365 UM and Lync Contact Center.

We have a ton of give aways from our sponsors too! We will be giving away a tablet, Jabra headsets and more!

Please visit www.coucug.org to learn more and to RSVP.

September 9, 2014

Lync Invoke-CsBackupServiceSync and No Central Management Services

Working with larger Lync deployments, I have run into this a few times where we need to force the Backup Service using Invoke-CsBackupServiceSync and we get the message “No Central Management services were found for the pool you specified to backup.”

NoCentralMgmt

The first time I saw it, it made me pause but I noticed something, it wasn’t an error. Errors always display in red. I went back to Technet and read about the cmdlet.

August 26, 2014

High CPU after Publishing Lync Topology

I have now experienced this issue at two different clients so I thought I would share how we are handling it in case others are experiencing it.

Background: After you publish a Lync topology where you add and/or delete and object, you see the CPU utilization spike to 100% across all of your front-ends.

This issue has been around awhile. Ken Lasko talked about it on his blog (http://ucken.blogspot.com/2014/01/high-processor-utilization-on-lync-2013.html) back in January of 2014. He had suggested simply restarting the AppPool’s on the CMS servers.