Whats new in Lync 2013 Mobile client

The beginning of this month Microsoft released the new 2013 mobile client.
The client is available for the following platforms:

The server backend must have the February 2013 (CU1) updates installed.
These can be downloaded at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2809243

Below you will find a feature list for Lync 2013 mobile clients on different platforms.

Below is my handson with the Lync 2013 client for Iphone.
The start screen and options menu.

It’s now possible to start audio / video calls over Wifi or 3G.
In the options menu is an option to require Wi-fi for audio / video calls.
I recommend selecting this to reduce bandwith usage and reduce cellular costs. You can also disable photo’s to reduce bandwith usage.

The contact list and contact card.
From the card you can initiate chat, audio call, video call or email.

When clickin the call button you can initiate a call.
When initiating a Lync call the client automatically dials the number or creates a peer to peer session. Within the Lync 2010 mobile client the server always called back to initiate a call.

The chat and video calling functionality.

Also new is when you are added to a response group, the response group call will also ring on your phone and you have the ability to pickup this call on your mobile.
The keypad still looks the same.

The voicemail is also available from the client and you have the ability to delete of call back.

Whats new in Lync 2013 Mobile client

The beginning of this month Microsoft released the new 2013 mobile client.
The client is available for the following platforms:

The server backend must have the February 2013 (CU1) updates installed.
These can be downloaded at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2809243

Below you will find a feature list for Lync 2013 mobile clients on different platforms.

Below is my handson with the Lync 2013 client for Iphone.
The start screen and options menu.

It’s now possible to start audio / video calls over Wifi or 3G.
In the options menu is an option to require Wi-fi for audio / video calls.
I recommend selecting this to reduce bandwith usage and reduce cellular costs. You can also disable phot’s to reduce bandwith usage.

The contact list and contact card.
From the card you can initiate chat, audio call, video call or email.

When clickin the call button you can initiate a call.
When initiating a Lync call the client automatically dials the number or creates a peer to peer session. Within the Lync 2010 mobile client the server always called back to initiate a call.

The chat and video calling functionality.

Also new is when you are added to a response group, the response group call will also ring on your phone and you have the ability to pickup this call on your mobile.
The keypad still looks the same.

The voicemail is also available from the client and you have the ability to delete of call back.

Invalid column name MPResourceElementId Operations manager 2012 SP1

We have a 3 server Operations manager environment to monitor our customers.
Last week I started upgrading the servers to System Center SP1.

First I created back-ups of all the databases and VM’s.
( OperationsManager, OperationsManagerDW, Reporting )

After that I started upgrading the first management server.
The upgrade of the first management server went OK, this upgraded the server and Operations Manager databases. Great, everything was still working.

When upgrading the second server, the setup showed me an error upgrading the database.
Wait, wasn’t this already upgraded? I restored the VM and started over, this time successfull.
After testing I realized it did not work as expected.

When viewing task status and alerts the console started giving me all kind of errors.
” Invalid column name ProgresValue”  and “ Invalid Clumn name “MPResourceElementId” .

 

At the time of the install, there was nothing to be found on the internet about this error.
So I restored the VM’s and Databases as I did not have the time to troubleshoot.
Fortunately, now there is!

Yesterday J.C. Hornbeck posted the solution on technet blogs.

A quote :

“As all the management servers share the same database, these changes only need to be made when installing the Service Pack on the very first server you install to. When you run the Service Pack 1 installation it communicates with the database to determine if this is the first installation, and then decides if it needs to run a SQL update script or not.

This means that you need to be patient with your installation and wait for the first management server to have Service Pack 1 installed before beginning the next installation. If you don’t then the SQL script will run again and issues may occur. It is very early on in the Service Pack installation process that the management server checks to see if the DB has already been upgraded, so do not be tempted to tee up your other management servers and run through the initial wizard while you wait for the first server to install because by then it will be too late.”

So I was a little impatient.

He also provides a solution if you were impatient like me .

To get this resolved, do the following:

“ 1. Stop all OpsMgr services that access the DB (the System Center Data Access Service, the System Center Management Service and the System Center Configuration Service on all Management Servers).

2. Run the following SQL commands:

USE OperationsManager
IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sysindexes where [name] = 'idx_StateDatabaseTimeModified' AND id = object_id(N'[dbo].[State]'))
DROP INDEX [idx_StateDatabaseTimeModified] ON [dbo].[State]

3. Next run the build_mom_db.sql script from the Service Pack Setup directory against the OperationsManager DB.

4. Finally, restart all of the OpsMgr services.”

The above solution is provided by J.C. Hornbeck, knowledge Engineer @ Microsoft.

Source : http://blogs.technet.com/b/momteam/archive/2013/01/16/patience-is-a-virtue-with-the-system-center-2012-operations-manager-sp1-installation.aspx

Installing and configuring ADFS on Server 2012 for Office 365

Recently I upgraded our Dirsync server to Windows server 2012.
ADFS could not stay behind.

In this blog I will be explaining how to get ADFS 2012 to work wit Office 365, as it is not yet supported and there are issues with the Online module. In our scenario we already have a federation in place with Office 365 with an ADFS 2.0 farm running on Windows Server 2008 R2.

Follow the below steps at your own risk!

Installing Windows Server 2012 and prereqs
The first step is to prepare a new server installed with Windows Server 2012.
( I used Standard )
I am replacing my ADFS farm with Windows Server 2012 servers, so I am using the same name for the machines and ADFS farm. ( The old servers have to be shutdown , don’t forget this )
I exported the certificate from the “ old”  ADFS and imported it on the new machine, this certificate will be needed later in the ADFS configuration.

Download and install the following, these are needed to federate with Office 365:

Microsoft Online services assistant
http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/1/E/71EF1D05-A42C-4A1F-8162-96494B5E615C/msoidcli_64bit.msi

Microsoft Online Services 64 bit module
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?linkid=236293

Install ADFS feature
In Windows Server 2012, ADFS 2.0 can be installed as a feature.
No need to download the installers from Microsoft.
To install ADFS, run the following command from an elevated powershell prompt.

“add-windowsfeature ad-federation-services”

Once completed there will be a message saying  you still need to configure ADFS, so that’s what we will do in the next step.

Configure ADFS
After the installation of the feature you will be able to start the configuration wizard.
Open ADFS management from administrative tools and start the configuration wizard.

In my case I am replacing my old farm so I will create a new federation service.
For the second ADFS server I run the wizard with the “ Add a federation server to an existing federation service” option.

I create a new federation server farm, if you only have one server, choose the standalone federation server option.

Choose the certificate you imported in the first step ( the certificate used for federation service ) and choose the federation service name. Use the same name as your old federation service if you are replacing your old ADFS server.

The last step is to specify a dedicated ADFS service account. use a domain account here and finish the wizard. ADFS is nog configured!

But, if you try to federate with Office 365, you will end up getting an error when using the Online Service Module.

Registry tweak
You need to register the following keys  to get the Microsoft Online services module to work.

Copy the below information and save this to “ adfsregistrytweak.reg”  and run this on the new Server 2012 ADFS.

“Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\PowerShell\1\PowerShellSnapIns\Microsoft.Adfs.PowerShell]
"ApplicationBase"="C:\\Windows\\ADFS"
"Version"="6.2.0.0"
"AssemblyName"="Microsoft.IdentityServer.PowerShell, Version=6.2.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"
"Description"="This powershell snap-in contains cmdlets used to manage Microsoft Identity Server resources."
"PowerShellVersion"="1.0"
"ModuleName"="C:\\Windows\\ADFS\\Microsoft.IdentityServer.PowerShell.dll"
"Vendor"="Microsoft" “

Update domain federation
We allready setup a federation with our old ADFS farm. Therefore we need to update our federation information on the ADFS server and on the Office 365 side.

If you are creating a new federation, refer to the following article :
http://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/en-us/office365-enterprises/ff652539.aspx#bk_deployfsfarm

If you already had ADFS setup, follow the below steps
Open the Microsoft Online Services Module for Windows PowerShell from the start menu.

Run $cred=Get-Credential. When this cmdlet prompts you for credentials, type your Office 365 administration account credentials.

Run Connect-MsolService -Credential $cred. This cmdlet connects you to Office 365.
Creating a context that connects you to Office 365 is required before running any of the additional cmdlets installed by the tool.

Run Set-MSOLAdfscontext -Computer <AD FS 2.0 primary server>, where <AD FS 2.0 primary server> is the internal FQDN name of the primary AD FS 2.0 server. This cmdlet creates a context that connects you to AD FS 2.0.

Run Update-MSOLFederatedDomain -DomainName <domain>. This cmdlet updates the settings from AD FS 2.0 into Office 365 and configures the trust relationship between the two.

Now your new Windows Server 2012 federation server is ready to use!
After updating the federated domain setting it took about 5 minutes tilll it worked.

Setting service to auto start
After all the above is done, the ADFS service is set to “ automatic delayed start “.
In my case the ADFS service was not started correctly when rebooted.
I set the startup type to “ automatic”, this starts the ADFS service directly.

To do this, run the following command from an elevated command prompt.
set-service -name adfssrv -startuptype automatic

Well, you now have a working Windows Server 2012 ADFs server to federate with Office 365.