Marc LaFleur

KB974571 Breaks OCS 2007 R2

MarcLaFleur — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 16:00:54 GMT

I came back from vacation to find that I was unable to login to OCS. Turns out that an update installed on 10/14 broke the front-end services for OCS. The event log shows the following error:

The evaluation period for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 has expired. Please upgrade from the evaluation version to the full released version of the product.

Uninstalling the KB974581 update corrected the problem.

Big thanks to Dietmar Kraume’s blog post at http://tinyurl.com/yjefeg9 for pointing to the solution.

2009 MVP Award

MarcLaFleur — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:18:00 GMT

Yesterday I received an email announcing that I had been made an MVP for my work in the Microsoft Communications Server community. This is my first MVP award. I’m very excited to be a part of the MVP program and to be a resources to others in the community. I expect Unified Communications (and OCS along with it) to experience substantial growth over the next 5 years and I’m thrilled to be a part of it.

MagicJack Catches Flack

MarcLaFleur — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 13:13:52 GMT

In what I think may be the most entertaining blog post this year, Richard Martin describes a panel discussion at the Internet Telephony Expo. This particular panel seems to have gotten nasty when the panel members started questioning the validity of fellow panelist Dan Borislow, the creator of MagicJack.

What makes this post so entertaining are the comments. The first from Dan Borislow who seems to have decided the best defense is a good offence, calling out Matt Bramson, CSO of InPhonex and post author Richard Martin. In concluding his comment Mr. Borislow said the following:

“If you are interested in learning how we have a huge cost benefit over our competition, send me an email.I think I can easily explain this to you. I believe you will be quite fascinated” – Dan Borislow

The following comment comes from Matt Bramson, who after explaining to Mr. Borislow who InPhonex is, ended with:

“If you are interested in learning how to sustain long-term, profitable business performance, send me an e-mail. I think I can easily explain this to you. I believe that you will be uninterested.” -Matt Bramson

And they say telecommunications is boring…

A Talk by jQuery Creator, John Resig

MarcLaFleur — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 18:22:35 GMT

I’ve you’re going to be in the Boston area this Wednesday the Boston .NET User Group is offering a talk by jQuery creator John Resig. It isn’t often that you have an opportunity see hear a talk by someone with this much influence. And it is even rarer to do so in such an small group (most of these talks have less than 40 people in attendance).

Boston .NET User Group
John Resig, jQuery Creator and Lead Developer
Wednesday Feb. 11, 2009 6:00-8:00 p.m.
MSFT Office, Waltham, MA

SIP Monitoring with Wireshark

MarcLaFleur — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 20:48:40 GMT

Wireshark is a free tool for capturing network traffic. It is an invaluable resource for troubleshooting problems with VOIP calls. It is available for download from www.wireshark.org (current version for Windows as of this post is 1.05)....

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Getting jQuery to work with MasterPages - Code Junkie

MarcLaFleur — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 04:27:18 GMT

Jared Roberts asked a question today on his blog about using jQuery with ASP.NET Master Pages (Getting jQuery to work with MasterPages - Code Junkie). Master Pages present some interesting problems. Because the Content Page could live at a different directory level than the Master you can quickly run into issues with relative paths breaking.

The solution is to place your scripts references into a ScriptManager on the Master Page. This ScriptManager will render the proper <Script> tags for you at runtime. For example:

     <asp:ScriptManager ID="ScriptManager" runat="server">

        <Scripts>

            <asp:ScriptReference Path="~/js/jquery-1.2.6.min.js" />

        </Scripts>

    </asp:ScriptManager>

The downside of this is that your Content Pages will lack Intellisense for the scripts you’ve referenced. The workaround for this is to give the designer a reference it can use at design time but that won’t render at runtime. This is done by placing the following code into your Content Page:

    <%   if (false) { %>

        <script src="../js/jquery-1.2.6-vsdoc.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

    <%   } 
%>

This gives you properly pathed <Script> tags at runtime and JS Intellisense at design time. This also works with User Controls where you’re using a ScriptManagerProxy and want Intellisense support.

As an aside, the <% if (false) { %> trick is useful for other design time content. We’ve used it to reference style sheets when building user controls. It lets the control developer get a good visual of what the final control might look like but allows the final styles to be controlled by the page hosting the control.

Fixing the Red-X on x64

MarcLaFleur — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 18:48:41 GMT

A while ago Microsoft released a patch for the nasty red X that would appear over certain workflow activities (KB950210). Unfortunately this patch only worked on 32 bit editions of Windows. If you were running Vista x64 for example the patch would fail during installation....

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Common Outbound Issues

MarcLaFleur — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 05:08:13 GMT

More developers are starting to work with Office Communication Server 2007 these days. As the community has grown I’ve noticed a number of developers running into a few “gotchas” when working with the OCS outbound calling mechanism. ...

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Office Communication Servers moves to 64-bit only

MarcLaFleur — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 03:52:13 GMT

The Office Communication Server team announced Friday that OCS 2007 R2 will support 64-bit operating systems only.

As a part of the broad initiative across Microsoft to support 64 bit versions across many of its product lines, the next release of OCS will support 64-bit operating systems only. This decision will help meet customer demand and is a natural progression of the product that aligns with the same approach taken by the Exchange team (with Exchange 2007) and the SharePoint team (with SharePoint 2007) to support 64 bit operating systems only....

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Building Custom Activities Using the Core API

MarcLaFleur — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 03:51:11 GMT

The Speech Server API is interesting to play around with. And understanding how Speech Server works behind the scenes is invaluable in debugging. But the real value of learning the API comes when you decide to build your own custom activities....

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Windows Live Writer 2009

MarcLaFleur — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 03:49:30 GMT

I updated my Windows Live Writer to the 2009 release candidate today. I’ve been a fan of WLW for a long time and this update seems like a nice incremental step forward. Scoble seems to like it too.

You can download the new version from http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/. It includes updates to the entire library of Windows Live applications (including a nice update of Messenger)

The only thing on my wish list is built in support for cross-posting to multiple blogs.

Getting Started with the Core API

MarcLaFleur — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 03:37:10 GMT

With the introduction of Voice Response Workflows in Speech Server 2007, Microsoft has greatly simplified voice-enabled application development. The entire process is relatively painless; even downright enjoyable. And for most applications it is all you'll need to build outstanding applications. ...

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Mono 2.0

MarcLaFleur — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 20:37:59 GMT

The Mono Project has hit 2.0. They seem to have done a lot of work around ASP.NET, Windows Forms, and ADO support.

It has been a while since I've poked around with Mono. Maybe it is time for me to take another look. Time to steal my children's Mac for a few days I think. :)

I Snapped My Chrome!

MarcLaFleur — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:33:47 GMT

One of the more interesting features in Google’s new Chrome browser is “Application Shortcuts”. These are web site links that Chrome places on your Start menu, Desktop and/or Quick Launch bar. When launched they open with a trimmed down UI, giving the web application a decidedly “desktop” feel. I’ve created shortcuts for a number of applications, including my GMail account.

Today, while responding to an email, I got what is best described as a “black screen of death”. Chrome informed me that “Ah, Snap! Something went wrong while displaying this webpage. To continue, press Reload or go to another page”.

Aside from being a rather silly error message, it tells me nothing of value. I don’t know what went wrong. It doesn’t help me diagnose if it was Chrome that failed or the site it was viewing. And the methods suggested for resolving this error are not valid in “shortcut mode” as there are no toolbar items to press or URL boxes to navigate with.

One aspect of this message that I like is that it assumes the user isn’t an expert. It doesn’t shove a bunch of technical information at the poor user who cannot do anything with it anyway. Why needlessly make things confusing?

The problem is that they didn’t give any obvious way to get at the technical information for those who can make use of it. And if you’re going to go with the simplicity route then you need to make sure your error message gives a working resolution to the user. That novice user isn’t going to make the same assumption that I did and press F5 to reload the page.

My First Chrome Experience

MarcLaFleur — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 00:51:25 GMT

My inbox has been flooded with emails asking me to blog about my opinion of Chrome. That is if you consider "flooded" to be one more than zero. And you include the email I sent to myself from work as a reminder to give it a shot...

Ok fine. No one asked. And even less likely care. But guess what, you're getting it anyway.

What I liked...

The download is a wonderfully small 475 KB. The same cannot be said for either IE or Firefox.

I was impressed with how quickly Chrome opened for me. Both IE and Firefox take between 3 and 5 seconds to load on my Vista machine. Chrome however opens instantly.

One feature that sticks out is the default home page. Rather than a search page like Firefox or that bloated MSN page from IE, you get a slick UI with personalized content on it. The "Most visited" site section is reminiscent of the XP and Vista start menu's listing of most commonly used applications. And having bookmarks displayed is also a nice touch.

Overall I'd have to say that Chrome is very quick and responsive. Pages render quickly and (from my limited testing) without any major issues.

What I didn't...

One major flaw in my view is that the default home page, while innovative, lacks any control over what gets displayed. If you search Monster regularly for example then it is going to show up on your home page. While convenient in some circumstances, imagine your manager walking past your desk and seeing a screen shot of Monster at the top of your list. And I've been told that some people have been known to use the net for more "adult" activities. Wouldn't that go over well when you open your browser during your quarterly sales presentation....

As a research project Chrome has some real value. If the benchmarks they present are accurate they have made some major improvements to JavaScript processing. But they are talking about it in much grander terms than just a research project. They seem to be positioning it as a first-class browser to replace IE, Firefox and the rest.

I'm still not sure why I should care. I've never felt an overwhelming desire to get a new browser. I use Firefox and IE and find very little difference between the two. I don't really see what market need Google is trying to fill here.