Aastra 6725ip Lync Telephones

I finally got my hands on some Aastra 6725ip telephones and could connect them to Lync.

Don't miss the YouTube video about them!


The phones had version 4.0.7400.0 installed when I received them, so they and my system needed a few things done before I could call home with these nice phones

Configuring DHCP

First I had to prepare my DHCP server for the phones.

I used a Windows 2008 DHCP server and configured Option 42 (NTP Server) in my scope.

Then I copied DHCPUtil.exe from the Lync server (C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Lync Server 2010) to a folder on the DHCP Server. This little tool greatly simplified the configuration of the DHCP server.

This tool will set DHCP option 120 - UCSipServer and also add a new vendor class called MSUCClient to the DHCP server. The new vendor class will have five suboptions which the tool will populate.

• UC Identifier
• URL Scheme
• Web Server FQDN
• Port
• Relative Path for Cert Provider

It is possible to first run the tool to see what it would do

DHCPUtil -SipServer standard.kressmark.com -WebServer standard.kressmark.com

and if it looks ok, add the -RunConfigScript parameter at the end to actually apply your settings.

DHCPUtil -SipServer standard.kressmark.com -WebServer standard.kressmark.com -RunConfigScript

And after this it is possible to test the DHCP configuration with the tool using the -EmulateClient parameter. Only make sure you do this from another computer than the DHCP server itself where it will not work. A good detailed summary of what is needed DHCP-wise can be found here.

User Configuration

Here I would recommend changing the PIN Policy in Lync control panel / Conferencing / PIN Policy to allow a PIN of 4 digits at once. Maybe I am just old-fashioned or unsecure, but to me a PIN is a 4 digit number and nothing else.

Next step would be to get a PIN for a user enabled for Enterprise Voice. To do this use the dial-in conferencing webpage at

https://standard.kressmark.com/dialin/

This does not feel really right, Dial-in conferencing PIN same as telephone PIN but different than Exchange UM PIN. There are still room for improvement in the Lync product it seems... Anyhow, when done the number and PIN can be tested with the following power shell command:

Test-CsPhoneBootstrap

This command will generate a lot of text, but as long as you get "Success" somewhere at the end you are fine.

Configuring & Upgrading the Phones

Next I downloaded the "Microsoft Lync 2010 Phone Edition for Aastra 6721ip and Aastra 6725ip" (a.k.a. UCUpdates.exe) package and extracted it on my Lync server.

Then I needed to know the web server identity, which can be done with the Get-CsService command. (For me: "WebServer:standard.kressmark.com")

and to import the update files

Import-CsDeviceUpdate -Identity "WebServer:standard.kressmark.com" -FileName C:\Aastra\UCUpdates.cab

Now the update will be visible from the Lync Control Panel / Clients / Device Update, and here the update must be approved in order to be applied to any phone.

And I almost forgot to add the A record ucupdates-r2.kressmark.com to my DNS server.

The next thing to figure out was how to reset the phones so that they would forget the old settings they had stored and connect to my system instead. Here it turns out the manufacturing date of the phone is important. On the back of the phones there is a label where you can find the manufacturing date expressed as YYYYMMDD.

One of my phones was from 20100709 and the other one from 20100817 which is a pivotal date it seems.

When resetting the phones there are two different types of reset you can perform a hard reset or a factory reset, with the difference that the factory reset will also downgrade any firmware update that has been done on the phone.

Anyhow,

For phones built before 20100817 the sequence are (cycle power, press and hold while booting...)

Hard reset: “#” “4” “BACK KEY” 

Factory reset: “*” “2” “HOME KEY”

For phones built after  20100817 the sequence are (cycle power, press and hold while booting...)

Hard reset: “*” “#”

Factory reset: “4” “6”

After the reset, log in and just wait, don't touch the phone, just wait, and waaait, and waiiit. (I like what Mr.Schertz wrote: "In fact, go to lunch.")

and finally a firmware upgrade will happen automagically!

Good blogs that helped me with this: (Thanks guys!)

Jeff Schertz

http://blog.schertz.name/2011/01/updating-lync-phone-edition-devices/

http://blog.schertz.name/2010/12/configuring-lync-server-for-phone-edition-devices/

Drago

http://www.lynclog.com/2011/04/device-updates-firmware-upgrade-with.html

Tom Pacyk

http://www.confusedamused.com/notebook/using-dhcputil-for-lync-phone-edition-dhcp-server-configuration/

Some other "phone-related" documents from Microsoft I would like to link to:

Integrating Microsoft Lync Server 2010 and Avaya Communications Manager S8300

(Avaya Communications Manager S8300 is from the "original" Avaya, not Nortel, but when can we have something working for CS1000 ?)

Lync Phones and Peripherals Datasheets

Mobility in Lync

While waiting for Microsoft to release mobile clients for Lync, there now are some alternatives available.

Audiocodes Mobility Plus definitely looks promising.

Damaka is a company demonstrating video calls between an Ipad2 and Lync on their homepage.

There is also an unofficial mobile Lync client for Windows Phone 7 available.

(With a little Niklas included! :-)

Please comment if you have any experience with these solutions!

Troubleshooting Lync Edge 101

We installed a "simple" Lync Edge system with collocated Front-End and Mediation server and Enterprise Voice connected to the PSTN via a Nortel CS1000 PBX.

After configuring (among other things)

• Internal DNS
• External DNS
• Routing on the EdgeServer
• Internal Certificate
• External Certificate
• Public IP addresses
• Primary DNS suffix on the EdgeServer
• Open ports on the Internal Firewall
• Open ports on the External Firewall
• The mediation server to find the PBX
• The PBX with a SIP Trunk
• The topology, exported it and imported it on the EdgeServer
• Users with external access, enterprise voice and a valid line URI
• A Voice Policy, PSTN Usage and Route
• Automatic login internally and externally

and checking the configuration a few times, we could call…

External Lync <---> Internal Lync

Internal Lync <---> Mobile Phone

But not…

External Lync  ---> Mobile Phone

Mobile Phone  <---  External Lync

The signalling from the External Lync client to the Mobile phone went through, the phone would ring and we could answer the call. On the external Lync client the status shifted from "Calling" to "Connecting call", where it sat for a few seconds and finally displayed "Call failed due to network issues". This indicated that the signalling path were working fine and the problem was happening as the system tried to setup the media stream.

We then used the Lync Server 2010 Logging tool to find this error message:

"Call failed to establish due to a media connectivity failure when one endpoint is internal and the other is remote"

Which led us to this post on the Lync forums: Incoming PSTN call to external user fails to connect

After investigating the logs some more we saw that the mediation server tried to establish a media path straight to the external client!? Did it not know we had an edge? - No, it actually did not!

After looking in the Lync Control Panel / Topology / Standard Edition / Mediation Server, we noticed that the EdgeServer setting were "Not Set"

With Power Shell we could check this with the following command:

Get-CsService -MediationServer

Identity                 : MediationServer:standard.kressmark.com

Registrar               : Registrar:standard.kressmark.com

EdgeServer            :

SipServerPort         : 5070

SipClientTcpPort     : 5060

SipClientTlsPort      : 5067

AudioPortStart        : 49152

AudioPortCount       : 8348

DependentServiceList : {PstnGateway:10.10.10.40}

ServiceId             : 1-MediationServer-4

SiteId                 : Site:Stockholm

PoolFqdn             : standard.kressmark.com

Version               : 5

Role                   : MediationServer

Also, in the Lync Control Panel / Topology / edge.kressmark.com / Edge Server / Dependents, we could only find “Registrar:…” and “ConferencingServer:…” and no "MediationServer:....

So our Mediation Server did not know we had an Edge, and the Edge server did not know about the Mediation server. My guess is that internal calls to PSTN worked simply because the Mediation server were collocated with the Standard server.

However, we used the following command to make things right:

Set-CsMediationServer -Identity "MediationServer:standard.kressmark.com" -EdgeServer edge.kressmark.com

And after restarting the Lync control panel it displayed correct data, and calls from the external Lync client via the collocated mediation server to PSTN worked (and the other way around as well!)

Puh!

Psychology in Unified Communications - Part I

When moving circuit based communications to digital packet based networks a large concern is bandwidth. There never seem to be enough bandwidth, so the engineers designing voice (over IP) codecs have developed techniques to limit the need for bandwidth. The media sent over the network is basically a bunch of 1's and 0's, where a 1 indicates a value, activity or sound on the line, and 0's, or rather a bunch of 0’s indicates silence. So, if there are constant silence we could send a quadrillion zeros from one device to the other, but this would not be very efficient bandwidth-wise. Add to this the dynamics of telephone call - you are talking and I am listening, or I am talking and you are listening; we realize that a lot of bandwidth could be wasted here.

The solution to this problem is called Silence Suppression. With this technique a telephone system will only send digits (1's or 0's) when someone speaks or when there is voice activity detected.

So, absolute Silence Suppression would create an absolute silence at the receiving end of a call. However, this is not a good idea since the receiving human would then think the line is down. Since we all have got used to hear some background noise or some crackling static noise when using the telephone the last 100 or so years, we will miss this cosy feeling of being connected. We would actually miss it so bad so that we would complain if we did not get this crackling noise in our calls. I once tried a PBX system in development that had complete silence suppression and it was scary I must say. We both had to ask "Are you there?" several times during a short conversation. So in the time and age of digital Dolby hi-fi surround sound, we still want our phone calls to sound a little rough, crappy or noisy.

The solution to this problem is called Comfort Noise. With this technique a telephone system will generate artificial noise on the receiving end. Hence no need of sending a bunch of 0’s all the time to indicate silence. The crackling noise you hear then when calling with your shiny new VoIP system is not due to bad quality and it is not even coming from the calling party or the line. That crackling noise is added because you want it, and someone even wrote some code to add it artificially, isn't that strange? Well, to a technician it might be strange but it deals with concepts called human nature or psychology.

How can we verify comfort noise in Lync?

The easiest way is to listen; make a call between two Lync clients and on one client yank up the sound level in the computer and on the USB headset as much as you can. You should now hear some nice crackling comfort noise in the headset.

Another funny thing I noticed - on the called client mute the microphone and the noise will silence, now un-mute, but be quiet, and the noise will not reappear until you say something in the called client.

We can also check comfort noise in Lync via logs. In the Lync Server 2010 Logging tool start logging on SIP Stack, and make a call between two Lync clients. When you view this log you will find a SIP INVITE message containing the following two lines in the SDP body…

a=rtpmap:13 CN/8000

a=rtpmap:118 CN/16000

…and this indicates that Lync is indeed offering comfort noise when inviting someone to a call.

If you have connected your Lync system to a PSTN Gateway, such as a PBX, SBC or other type of equipment you can often see the "LS Mediation Server" component logging this warning in the event log of the mediation server:

The Mediation Server service has received a call that does not support comfort noise. This event is throttled after 5 calls from a single Gateway peer.

The Mediation Server service has received a call that does not support comfort noise from the Gateway peer, 10.10.10.10

Cause: The Gateway peer does not support comfort noise.

Resolution: Please ensure the comfort noise option on the Gateway has been enabled.

This does not mean that calls will fail, but you might not hear the nice artificial noise on the remote end of the call. However, if your remote device is on a mobile network or connected by copper lines there will plenty of noise anyway, so no need to add it artificially.

That’s a little something about how technology must adapt and are adapting to human nature and not the other way around. Good for us! Enjoy your noisy calls!



New Lync documentation available

Lots of updated documents, some new and even some new tools.

Docs

Client Virtualization in Microsoft Lync 2010
Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Security Guide
Troubleshooting Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Clients: Help Desk Resource
Uninstalling Microsoft Lync Server 2010 and Removing Server Roles

Tools

Lync 2010 Bandwidth Calculator
Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Capacity Calculator

Telia CallGuide Integration with Lync

Telia CallGuide is a contact center developed by TeliaSonera in Sweden. CallGuide is mainly distributed in Scandinavia and so far there are about 275 contact centers handling some 160 million calls per year with CallGuide. One of the modules in the system is called Unifinder, which is a search tool for the contact center agent to search for people to contact while on a call. Unifinder can search several types of internal directories and also Lync or OCS directories.

Functionality

• Unifinder will display presence for SIP-Enabled Lync users, the status might be Available, Inactive, Busy, BusyInactive, DoNotDisturb, Away, Offline.
• The agents can participate in IM conversations with Lync users from CallGuide Unifinder
• The agents can change their own Lync presence status from CallGuide

Click here for more information on Telia CallGuide

Lync Cumulative Updates April 2011

New fixes for the Attendant, Attendee, Group Chat, Phone edition for Aastra, Polycom, LG-Nortel phones, and for Lync 2010 (aka. Communicator) are released.

Also the Lync resource kit is out!
Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Resource Kit

I decided to try the Lync 2010 (Communicator update)
Description of the cumulative update package for Lync 2010: April 2011

So I downloaded the fix here
Lync 2010 Hotfix KB 2496325 (64 bit)

But I ran into some issues with the fix, so I posted at question at the forums. The fix seems to be updating to the January level of fixes?
I will update this post once I get an answer...
Lync Cumulative Update April 2011 - Lync 2010 Hotfix KB 2496325 (64 bit)

Ok, the issue I saw was probably due to it takes a while for the files to replicate out to the various download servers. So I patiently waited, downloaded again from the same page and voila!