Exchange 2007 and machines with underscores in their name

I somehow completely forgot this won't work. Luckily there is a workaround.

Rename the machine :( Easier said than done for some situations.

Group Chat - Microsoft's take

So I have noticed the Group Chat stuff is getting a LOT of hits on here, and one of the questions I seem to see being asked a lot elsewhere is "how would we use this"

So I figured I would rely on Microsoft's devarketing team (ha!) to explain this for me some. These are from a series of OCS R2 videos I posted back in January. This one only had 500 hits when I posted it, so I think the "spin" on Group Chat usage will help some people get a better understanding of where it fits in to an organization.

OCS 2007 R2 Group Chat Installation - Part 3, Client install

Earlier, in Part One, we installed Group Chat Server and in Part Two, we learned how to connect to the admin tools and to create a channel and allow people in it. Now it is time to Deploy the client.

The Group Chat client requires the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 and Visual C++ runtime installed. Unfortunately, Microsoft provided only an executable client install, so we cannot easily GPO this installation without an MSI file. There are the below options for the clientsetup.exe executable:

Working with this, I created a logon script to do this installation. If a client does not have .NET 3.5 SP1 installed, and you skip that install, the unattended install will give an error.

\\2008dc\netlogon\dotnetfx35setup.exe /qb \\2008dc\netlogon\Clientsetup.exe /Unattend

An added dose of fun - .NET requires a reboot, and /qb tries to force that reboot.

The actual manual install process is very simple - just take all the defaults.

Getting the software installed is just one part - getting it configured is another. First I will cover the manual configuration. Then I will discuss deploying these settings in an enterprise.

The more critical knowledge here is how to deploy this to clients and have the logins work out of the box. Using the "Automatic Configuration" provided, my first sign in was less than desirable. I got the below error:

And was unable to search for a channel (it just seems to hang there trying) so I created a new configuration named domain.com like I did in Part 2. I had to investigate further.

So I decided to try the Administrator account. It worked fine. So for some reason - the "Server Address" had to be "Administrator@domain.com" and then when I actually log on, I use my Chris@domain.com SIP URI. Very odd behavior. Above is the NON working config. Below is the working config.


Odd for sure. Again, when I sign into the application, I am clearly me, not admin:

Now, configuring another piece of client software might be easy for us, but not for most users, so it's time to learn how to deploy these settings.

So I downloaded the OCS 2007 R2 ADM files and went to create a new GPO, and quickly found that none of the GPO names in the XLS document for Group chat are in there.

It seems as is there should be an additional ADM coming, or an updated one with these settings.

I did find that you can manipulate these by dropping an XML file into the workstation directory of:

C:\Users\%username%\Application Data\Microsoft\Group Chat\Common\Accounts (on Vista) and by editing or replacing the file at:
C:\Users\chris\Application Data\Microsoft\Group Chat\Group Chat Console\Accounts\_default.account_.xml

So I made a second script:

copy \\2008dc\netlogon\_default.account_.xml "%userprofile%\Application Data\Microsoft\Group Chat\Common\Accounts"
copy \\2008dc\netlogon\Internal.xml "%userprofile%\Application Data\Microsoft\Group Chat\Group Chat Console\Accounts"

Since these folders won't exist until the application is installed, you may want to stagger your install and your configuration GPOs/Scripts.

If anyone has any better way to roll out the configuration, please let me know, I really do feel like these are some non-enterprise level workarounds.

OCS 2007 R2 Group Chat Installation - Part 2, Administrative Tools Installation

Earlier, in Part One, we installed Group Chat Server and now it is time to install the administrative tools. I have already done this a few times and ran into some oddities, that hopefully I can help you not run into!

In this instance, I am installing the tools on my OCS Standard pool server (which is also my group chat server) We can begin by running the 'AdminSetup' installer.

The installer will warn you if you do not already have MS Visual C++ redistributable installed. If you run their installer of this, do note, you will be cleaning up the root of your C drive.

Icky. Easy enough to clean up though. Once this is installed, its easy to click through all the defaults and complete the Admin tool console install.

Once installed, we can launch the Admin tools console. The "proper" name doesn't fit in the start menu, really.

So I attempt to logon:

I see "Connected to OCS server" and then I get this:

"Cannot sign in because of a problem with the chat room service. If the problem persists, please contact your system administrator"

Time to not trust Automatic Configuration. I will come back to this in the client deployment some more, but for the admin console, a manual configuration is OK.

Choosing Edit Accounts here, I made a new Account and used the below settings:

I then chose the Domain.com account and signed in without error. In the screen above, the Host is my OCS std pool, the domain.com is my AD FQDN and note the capitalization on Administrator to match my SIP URI.

Now that I am in the tool - lets create a test channel and set it up.

File>New>Chat Room brings up this dialog:
This gave an error. Channel names cannot have spaces. I removed this moving forward.

Once the room is created you need to add members to the channel. Since this is a lab domain, I decided to add my members to the Root of the server. In a production environment, I would likely be much more careful about security.

Now, Part 3 will come soon, and discuss the client installation, but I will give a brief preview here as the client is obviously needed to test this.


Here, you can see presence integration.

That's all for now. Check back soon for the client deployment, which I hope to include GPO settings to configure the client as well.