Announcing the first ever Lync Saturday!

One of the most amazing parts of Microsoft Lync is the community of experts that supports it. It is completely natural for the MVPs and contributors to the Lync community to selflessly help others. I see this even between competing consultants! It is great. The reason I am mentioning this is that I have worked with a great group of community experts to start up Lync Saturday.

Posted on June 6, 2013 by Randy Wintle in Uncategorized 2 Comments

Donate to charity and win a free signed copy of Lync Server 2013 Unleashed!

I have 3 signed copies of Lync Server 2013 Unleashed that I am looking to give away. Here is the catch, donate $5 or more to the First Tee of Maine Golf Tournament, and I will enter you in to the drawing for one of the books.

Simply send me an email with your proof of donation (screenshots or confirmation emails from the org) and I will add your name to the drawing.

Donate Here: http://bit.ly/15pa7Ql

Email me your proof of donation- rwintle@live.com

Please support this great cause, and get a free book in the process! Ends Friday June 7th at 5PM US Eastern Time.

Posted on May 31, 2013 by Randy Wintle in Uncategorized Leave a comment

Lync Server 2013 Unleashed has been… Unleashed!

I am super proud to announce that the new book I Co-Authored, Lync Server 2013 Unleashed is now available! This book is available on Amazon in ebook and good ol paperback! http://amzn.com/0672336154

The Microsoft NextHop blog provided an incredibly generous review of the book, which is available here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/nexthop/archive/2013/04/17/hot-off-the-presses-microsoft-lync-server-2013-unleashed.aspx

What I want to do in this post is provide an overview of the sections in the book, and how they will apply to readers of all types. When we started writing this book we wanted it to be the number one resource for Lync. This includes covering all aspects of a Lync journey, from early conception to detailed troubleshooting and advanced technical scenarios. I have broken the readers down into two broad categories, although I am sure there are many other scenarios out there.

Posted on April 19, 2013 by Randy Wintle in Uncategorized 2 Comments

Update to the Lync 2013 Centralized Logging Tool

As anyone who came to this blog probably realized, my Lync 2013 Centralized Logging UI quickly became outdated. Luckily, James from MyLyncLab.com has done a great job of bringing it back to life!

http://www.mylynclab.com/2013/04/lync-2013-centralised-logging-tool.html

Definitely check this out and support that project. He has done a great job of not only fixing my tool, but making it better. Thanks!

Posted on April 15, 2013 by Randy Wintle in Uncategorized 1 Comment

Locating the AlwaysOn Centralized Logging Files for Lync Server 2013

Lync centralized logging is a great new feature with Lync Server 2013. This feature also allows you to configure AlwaysOn logging, which will keep logging on, always J This is helpful in situations where an issue has been reported and you are not able to reproduce, or do not want to bother users to reproduce.

The commands for configuring centralized logging allow you to specify file locations, rollover time limits and sizes. However, these settings are only for when a user initiates a logging session. The AlwaysOn logging files are stored as part of the network service account, and in order to locate these ETL files, you must navigate to the following folder, by default:

%WINDIR%\ServiceProfiles\NetworkService\AppData\Local\Temp\Tracing Read more

Posted on December 10, 2012 by Randy Wintle in Uncategorized 1 Comment

My First Days with Surface

I consider myself to have a major bias towards Microsoft products. It is what I have made my living on ever since I started my career. I will say however, when the Surface was set to release, I was skeptical. My goal was to have a tablet that could be used for work and play, and to have said tablet be a replacement for my laptop when I travel for work. After testing the Surface in the Times Square store on launch night, and after a few days of use, I think I may have found my dream device. Read more

Posted on October 28, 2012 by Randy Wintle in Uncategorized 6 Comments

Lync Server 2013 Centralized Logging UI- Beta

Update 4/24/2013:

As anyone who came to this blog probably realized, my Lync 2013 Centralized Logging UI quickly became outdated. Luckily, James from MyLyncLab.com has done a great job of bringing it back to life!

http://www.mylynclab.com/2013/04/lync-2013-centralised-logging-tool.html

Definitely check this out and support that project. He has done a great job of not only fixing my tool, but making it better. Thanks!

_________________________________________________________________

All of this talk about Lync Server 2013 centralized logging has driven me to start a little side project. A powershell UI for the lync centralized logging. I am hopefully going to add a lot more features to this, but figured I would share the early beta to get some feedback.

For more details on lync centralized logging, see this link: http://blogs.technet.com/b/jenstr/archive/2012/08/01/using-centralized-logging-service-in-lync-server-2013-preview.aspx

Couple of things:

Right now this must be run from a Lync 2013 Server
This assumes that the default C:\Program Files was selected on install, if this is not where Lync is installed, you may have issues, and may need to adjust that file path.
~~Right now it does not let you search specific text or components, I will be adding that functionality in the next rev.~~

Link to download is here:

http://bit.ly/LyncCLUI

If you have any suggestions, please let me know in the comments, thanks!

UPDATE: 9:30PM 8/2/2012- I just finished “Beta 2″ I re designed the UI. it can be found in the above link. Thanks!

UPDATE: 10:15PM 8/2/2012- I just finished “Beta 3″ I added filter options to Beta 3. Link is above!

UPDATE: 8/4/2012- I just finished “Beta 4″ I performed some cleanup and tweaks, as well as the ability to export your specific component logs as well.

Posted on August 2, 2012 by Randy Wintle in Uncategorized 11 Comments

An afternoon in NYC with Lync 2013- NYC Lync User Group

Quick announcement here:

See http://www.lyncusergroup.com for more details!

Meeting Details

August 16^th 2012 2PM-5PM, an Afternoon in NYC with Lync 2013

The NYC Lync User Group will be conducting its next meeting on August 16th, 2012 at the Microsoft Manhattan Office! This meeting will introduce everyone to Lync Server 2013. With all of the new features coming in Lync 2013, we will have plenty to talk about at this meeting. Food and Drink will be provided as well!

In addition to discussing Lync 2013, we will also have a special presentation from the Unify²UC Adoption Team. “The switch from legacy telephony to unified communications is a high hurdle for many enterprises, and changing the way workers conduct meetings from in physical locations to online is an even steeper learning curve. Unify2 Adoption Services are designed to lay groundwork for increased user satisfaction and improved productivity, and to help our customers realize their ROI in a shorter timeframe.”

Agenda

Item	Time
Intros and Welcome	2:00PM-2:30PM
Lync 2013 – What is New (Overview) Speaker TBD	2:30PM-3:30PM
Lync 2013 Functionality Demo – Randy Wintle	3:45PM-4:00PM
Break	3:45PM-4:00PM
Driving UC Adoption in Your Enterprise- Unify²UC Adoption Specialist	4:00PM-4:45PM
Sponsor Presentation- Jabra	4:45PM-5:00PM
Evaluation Surveys and Giveaways	5:00PM
Networking/Social Hour	5:00PM-6:00PM

Posted on July 25, 2012 by Randy Wintle in Uncategorized Leave a comment

New York Lync User Group June Meeting: Lync E9-1-1

I will be giving a presentation with 911 Enable and Audiocodes next week in NYC around E911. If you are deploying enterprise voice with Lync, you will want to be there to learn about how to properly deploy E911.

http://www.lyncusergroup.com

(Hint: There may also be a Lync meeting invite on Wednesday if people are not able to make it on-site)

Posted on June 8, 2012 by Randy Wintle in Uncategorized Leave a comment

Lync Push Notifications: 504 Timeout Error

I ran into an issue at a customer recently where push notifications for mobility were not working. Upon further investigation, the messages were receiving a 504 timeout with the Push Notification Clearing House (PNCH).

For reference, the push process interacts with the PNCH, and then on to the Apple or Microsoft Push Services. This happens through Lync Federation, through a Lync Edge Server.

When you are testing push notifications, Test-CSMCXPushNotification is the cmdlet to use. This will actually attempt to send a push message to the clearing house and report back any errors.

When using this cmdlet, use the following syntax: Test-CSMCXPushNotification – AcessEdgeFQDN <INTERNAL EDGE POOL>

In my case, the error below was displayed:

PS C:\Users\rwintle> Test-CsMcxPushNotification -AccessEdgeFqdn edgepool.contoso.com

Test-CsMcxPushNotification : A 504 (Server time-out) response was received from the network and the operation failed. See the exception details for more information.

At line:1 char:27

+ Test-CsMcxPushNotification <<<< -AccessEdgeFqdn edgepool.contoso.com
+ CategoryInfo : OperationStopped: (:) [Test-CsMcxPushNotificatio
n], FailureResponseException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : WorkflowNotCompleted,Microsoft.Rtc.Management.Sy
ntheticTransactions.TestMcxPushNotificationCmdlet

After some investigation, Microsoft has confirmed that the Federation SRV record is required for push notifications to work properly.

The PNCH will perform a look up on the SIP Domain for the Federation SRV record (_sipfederationtls._tcp.contoso.com). If this does not succeed, a 504 error will be thrown.

To fix this issue, you must configure that SRV record to point to your access edge server used for outbound Lync Push Federation Requests.

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Randy Wintle in Uncategorized 15 Comments