Lukas Beeler's IT Blog

On my personal Machine (and all other machines in my office, running Vista and Office 2007), Communicator 2007 has been demanding an Outlook update since i’ve installed it (Outlook-Update erforderlich). Clicking it leads to this empty Microsoft page.

I have no idea why it demands this, because i’ve installed all the Office 2007/Outlook Updates there are, and even more funny I only found a single reference to this problem (this newsgroup posting).

The suggestion in said post was to contact Microsoft Support, which i’m not allowed to do. The problem does not exist on the Windows XP machines running Office 2003 (we don’t have any machines running XP/Office 2007). As such, i’m stumped.

Does anyone else know this problem?

Update: According to this post in the OCServer Blog, this icon works in English Environments and should remind users to install KB936864. However, i do have this package installed (according to systeminfo).

A few months ago, i did beta exam 71-649.

Finally, Microsoft posted the results – and i passed. This is great :)

Recently, Microsoft released exam 70-638 (no official info page yet, but it’s all in Trika’s Blog).

As you might know, i’ve played with OCS 2007 in the past few days, and i’ve got a few leftover exam vouchers anyway. So yesterday, i decided to sign up for 70-638, and do the test this Saturday morning. This was possible because my favorite testing center (Digicomp in Zurich) is now offering Saturday testing.

I didn’t really expect to pass this exam, but i did (with more than 800 points). Okay, so what did happen at this exam?

First, the hard facts:

• 1.5 hours of time (didn’t even need half of that)
• 40 questions
• Only multiple choice questions, no PBT, no drag and drop, no nothing

What did i do to prepare myself for this exam? Not much, really. I’ve deployed OCS 2007 internally in the past few days, and crossread a few deployment guides.

First off, the exam was structured completely different than what i expected after taking the 70-236 Exchange 2007 MCTS. The exam varied widely from installing, to configuring and design. As such, it was a more classical approach, covering all topics of OCS 2007 use.

The questions were well written, and a few of them were more or less exact duplication of content from the available deployment guides, with even the same names and everything.

There also were several design questions, for which you need to understand the general architecture behind OCS 2007 – that isn’t as difficult as it might sound, because OCS 2007 is rather well structured, and the infrastructure design is easy to learn.

No talk about hardware requirements, some questions about upgrading from LCS 2005, etc.

This exam is easy – not as easy as 70-620, but also less difficult than the Exchange 2007 MCTS/MCITP exams.

I was researching some docs about call normalization rules in OCS 2007, when i looked at a Microsoft website with a really, really obnoxious ad.

I’ve always hated all those 100 smileys for free / Jamba Mobile ads. Usually they weren’t found on “serious” websites, but apparently this has changed.

I wonder how many IT professionals like to get some free Live Messenger Smileys…

So i’ve been playing with Office Communication Server 2007 to pass time. Thanks to the Microsoft Partner Licensing Program we can use this software internally, in production, without paying anything.

After playing with it in VMs for a few days, I decided to deploy it internally. Of course, the current deployment is not very integrated – our PBX is years old, and we have no chance to get any decent sort of integration, and we’re not yet on Exchange 2007 (though this is planned). As such, I didn’t expect to much usefulness out of. Boy, was I wrong.

OCS 2007 is several products in one, and it has a few drawbacks in a small business deployment (because it was designed for bigger environments). The price of the product isn’t prohibitive for a small business – 1500 CHF for the server, and 100 CHF per CAL (for Standard versions – the Enterprise versions are more expensive).

So, what features can one expect from OCS2007?

Services

Instant Messaging

One of the OCS2007 functions is an internal Instant Messaging server, with all the standard features you probably already know from ICQ, MSN et al. This part could easily provided by using e.G. an internal Jabber server and a Windows Jabber client like Pidgin. So why use OCS2007 for instant messaging? The reason is easy: Integration. The server software integrates into your Active Directory environment. You extend the AD schema, and all the user information is stored directly in Active Directory, with no need to maintain yet another user database. While that’s an advantage, it not much of a selling point (because the CEO usually doesn’t care if need 3 more minutes to add a user).

So let’s talk about integration on the client. After installing Office Communicator (the IM/VOIP client for OCS) on the client, you will notice full IM integration into Outlook, see the status of all the recipients and senders of the mail. This is a very nice feature, because it offers you information at a glance, without having to open the IM GUI to see whether someone is available for a quick follow up or not. But it gets better: this Integration also works in Sharepoint Services 3.0 and MOSS 2007. Also, the Unified Messaging part of Exchange Server 2007 integrates nicely into OCS 2007. You can check your voicemail using OCS 2007, with a fully graphical interface (similar to how the iPhone handles it’s voicemail)

Besides the ability for instant messaging, there is another very important feature – at least in our company: availability and presence. We have a HQ and a branch office, and our HQ is split over three floors. So usually it’s not easy to tell if someone is at his workplace or not. While Outlooks calender helps to establish the general whereabouts of a person, its not at-a-glance, and it doesn’t help if the person just isn’t at his desk (for whatever reason).

Office Communicator sets your presence to away at the instant you lock your machine, which people do when they walk away from their desk. As such, you can tell whether someone is currently working at his desk or not. This is very cool, and helps to save time on unnecessary phone calls to which no one answers.

There’s also a web client – Office Communicator Web Access. At the first glance, it is indistinguishable from the full desktop client, so the web interface is very nicely done.

Voice over IP (SIP)

OCS 2007 is also a fully blown VoIP solution. I can’t talk about this part too much – i haven’t worked with the mediation server or more enterprise VoIP integration (as said, our PBX doesn’t support that).

The Softphone client, integrated into the Office Communicator works nicely though, the voice quality is normal, and we didn’t have much problems using it over WAN lines.

You can also connect hardware IP phones to OCS2007, which should work with standard SIP phones – not having one, i didn’t test this. There are some very nice looking OCS specific IP phones out there.

Live Meeting

I’ve attended a few Webcasts done using Live Meeting 2005. With OCS 2007, you can now host Live Meetings (using the 2007 client) directly in your company, with no need for any hosted services. This feature might not be terribly useful if you’re working for a single-location Small Business, but it can be a timesaver when spread across the country (or world). Live Meeting also integrates into Outlook (see the above screenshot).

It works flawlessly, and i had few problems using Live Meeting. Didn’t really deploy this into production yet, though.

And more

OCS 2007 can also do a lot more stuff than i mentioned here. Most of this, like CDR and Archival is not necessary (or financially viable) in Small Businesses, so I didn’t invest too much time.

Drawbacks

So, what are the drawbacks of OCS 2007 in a Small Business? The main point i see here is that you need at least three servers – a Standard Server (hosting all the services), a mediation server for connecting to your PBX, and an Edge server offering internet connectivity. These are at least three OS instances that need to be maintained. Add to that the cost of either a proper virtualization server, or a few 1U boxes, and you’ll get into unviable price regions pretty soon.

For basic functionality, you can leave both the Mediation and the Edge server away. This means no integration with your PBX, and no external access to your server – at least in theory.

If you just need external access to IM, you can create appropriate SRV records in your public DNS, and forward port 5061. This will not result in a clean service, but it’s better than nothing. But without a proper edge server, you won’t be able to access other IM networks. Not cool.

Microsoft should really make single-server deployment possible, but probably we’re too small of a market to make this financially viable.

So what’s my conclusion? If you’re an SMB, give OCS2007 a try. It’s a very cool software, and the basic IM functionality isn’t that expensive.

If you have a few printers, you usually want to take good care of them. There are many network administration tools that can help you do that, and here i’m talking mostly about HP’s free offerings. Let’s start with the biggest one first.

HP Web Jetadmin

HP Web Jetadmin is HP’s enterprise tool for printer management. It is free though, so i gave it a try. Turns out it really is an enterprise tool, and much too convoluted for SMB use. I like that it has the ability to at least manage some features from printers made by different manufacturers (in my case, Lexmark). You don’t see that every day. I can’t give a full review of the product, because i only invested half an hour in it, only to find out that it is too big for our environment.

It offers all the features one could possibly need – it can monitor toner, media, configuration, time firmware upgrades and can even be used to configure and maintain print servers. With all these features, deployment of this tool is most likely not going to be a short process. You’ll need to invest a few days to find out about all the kinks, functionality and integrate it into your environment meaningfully.

HP Easy Printer Care

HP Easy Printer Care is HP’s Small Business printer management tool. It only supports up to 15 printers, which is not a problem if you’re a small business that uses workgroup printers. For companies that are using a printer on every desktop, 15 might be too low.

The software is meant for use on a desktop computer, not on a server. I see this as a bit of a drawback, as we usually use Microsoft Small Business Servers at our smaller customers, but you can also install the software on a server – it just can’t send emails and notifications (though most of the larger HP printers can mail notifications!).

The tool can not manage the printer firmware, which is a huge drawback. But it allows easy configuration of several settings even by end users, which are sometimes intimidated by the printer menu or the printer web interface. It also allows rudimentary printer accounting on selected (not all) printers (If you’re looking for a more complete printer account software, i can recommend PaperCut NG).

While i think that Web Jetadmin is overkill for any SMB, Easy Printer Care is sometimes too light on functionality. But i like it’s end user oriented design. If HP adds a few nudges to EPC (like mail, firmware management and minimal third party printer support), it could very well become a good tool for SMBs.

HP Download Manager

Using HP Download Manager is like stabbing a fork into your eye. It’s not pleasant, and after the pain stops you’re blind. Okay, so this might’ve been a bit colorful, but the point still stands. This software is junk, mostly because it doesn’t work. HP Download Manager is a firmware management solution for JetDirect print servers that are either stand alone or embedded into printers. It can’t manage printer firmware, which HP Web JetAdmin can.

Internet mode is broken since ages, there are numerous references about this on the web. Using Wireshark, a web server, and the hosts file will get the software to at least download firmware, but it won’t be able to install the software, complaining about “no firmware file”. It could download the file just fine, and manually applying the file using the JetDirect Webinterface worked just dandy.

As such, i can’t recommend this tool. Don’t install it, it doesn’t work right, and will probably eat your eyes.

Conclusion

HP’s Easy Printer Care is a step in the right direction, HP Download Manager doesn’t work, and HP Web Jetadmin is most likely overkill. My hope is that HP improves Easy Printer Care, allowing it to takeover the functions that HP Download Manager should do.

I’m a bit biased on this, so just a precaution.

We needed a new MFP to replace our aging fax, and so we purchased a Brother MFC-9420CN. My first impressions of this device weren’t really good. At first, it lacks a good display (HP’s M3027 is really good on this). This makes using the device much more complicated than it ought to be.

The biggest advantage of the MFC-9420CN is the fact that it is a color laser, with a rather low price point of around 1000 CHF. At this price point, it’s of course a multi pass laser and prints about 9 color pages per minute. Copying and faxing works, through network integration here is almost non-existant. You can’t fax through a web interface, there is no LDAP integration to lookup mail addresses for scan2email or fax numbers, you can’t scan to folders. Not active directory integration for authentication either.

If you have look to the right, you’ll find a screenshot of the web interface of Brothers MFC-9420CN. It doesn’t look current. In fact, even the copyright notice clearly shows that it’s not current. Add to that page load times of several seconds, a very convulated page structure and few available settings (much less than ever smaller HP printers like the CLJ2605) clearly shows that this device has aged badly.

I even checked Brothers Website to see if they have a firmware update available, but they don’t. At least they have drivers for Vista, but they also look rather outdated, and are not signed (though Brother claims that they’re WHQL certified). If you look to the right side, you’ll see a comparison screenshot between the driver for the HP CLJ 4700 and Brothers 9420. While HP took care to make their driver look polished (it’s the only software the end users will ever see), Brother’s drivers looks outdated (especially the 256 color graphic of the device).

There is no address book or even LDAP interface for sending e-mails – thus sending mails requiring you to type in the adress using a standard number block, similar to typing SMS on a mobile phone. HP’s M3027 provides you with a keyboard on it’s mighty touchscreen display, while Brothers device requires you to spend minutes trying to type up a single mail address.

Copying and faxing works fine, but the whole network integration barely exists. I think this is a huge disadvantage of this device. Even though Brother advertises it’s device as being network integrable, Brother’s device massively fails at this point.

This doesn’t make it a bad device. For 1000 CHF, you can get a color laser printer that can be used to print over the network, and can also act as a fax and a copier. While HP’s devices offer much more functionality, they’re only b&w and more expensive. As such, there is a certain market for Brother’s device.

I’m still disappointed though, because i expected Brother to put up more of a fight – it wouldn’t be hard to fix the cosmetical issues, offer appropriately signed drivers, and integrate more functionality into the device.