Small Fysh in a big pond

Taking a Lync Polcom CX600 home to meet the family.

2011-11-17T11:55:00.000-08:00

When demoing Lync to teams within Freebridge one of the hardest concepts to get across is that a phone number is now not tied to a bit of plastic that sits on your desk but it is now part of your user account (the same as your email).

Some people thought still like the idea of having a traditional looking handset to pick up. For these people we supply either the Polycom CX600 or the Plantronics P540. Once our end users have the freedom to login from anywhere (home, coffee shop, train) then they start asking can they use their handsets there too.

The P540 is a dumb USB device so just taking it home with you and plugging into an internet connected and Lync cliented PC means that “it just works.” The CX600 is a different beast. It’s an IP phone using Power Over Ethernet (POE) that when on the corporate network finds our front end pool and allows you to login fully on the phone.

When at home then you have a few barriers to overcome to get the CX600 to login.

Barrier Number One

It’s a POE phone.

I would wager that not many people have POE on their home network. So you will either need a POE injector or a power supply for the CX600

Barrier Number Two

The phone needs to know how to connect to the Edge Server.

For a phone that has been setup at work this is no problem. The phone already has the domain name that it needs to connect and authentication details saved into its internal memory and when it boots up on an external network it simply finds the Edge server and signs in with the cached credentials

For a new out of the box phone we have an issue though. The sign in on the phone is your extension and passcode. The phone has no knowledge of what that extension number connects to and as such will fail to find the Edge server. The solution is to plug the USB cable into a computer that has Lync on it and then us the “better together” feature to pass the network credentials from the Lync client on the computer to the phone which will then be provisioned to find the Edge server and log in successfully in future.

CX600 plugged into BT Home Hub and connected to Edge server

Outlook not showing attachments

2011-08-18T09:01:00.000-07:00

One of our users contacted the ServiceDesk to say that they were no longer getting attachments from specific senders. The email would show the paperclip icon but when the email was opened no attachments were there.

The emails were all from users of Applemail and the end user was on our Exchange 2007 server.

Client was Outlook 2007, upgrading them to Outlook 2010 didn't help.

Only change on the server was the patch Update Rollup 3-v2 for Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 3 (KB2530488) was applied to the server.

To fix on our server I followed http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954684 which was to run the following PowerShell command:

set-OrganizationConfig -ShowInlineAttachments:$true

After running the command I restarted the Transport service and the test email came through correctly.

Performing a Consultative Transfer using Lync

2011-06-24T04:13:00.000-07:00

A consultative transfer is a common scenario where before transferring a call to someone you want to contact the person you’re transferring to first to ensure they are able to take the call. Let’s walk through this scenario to show how this is accomplished using Lync.

Matt Webster has called me and is inquiring about the project we are working on.

As I don’t have the experience in this specific project, I start a new phone call with Andy Robinson from the Contact List, the project manager for this specific project.

When I start the new call to Andy, Matt’s call is automatically put on hold.

Andy has indicated that he is free to take the call, so I return to Matt’s conversation window and click on the Transfer Button. The transfer menu automatically includes people I’m currently talking to, so I’m able to select Andy from here.

While the call is transferred I can see the status from both Matt’s and Andy’s conversation window. After the transfer has completed both windows are closed :)

The beautiful part about Lync is that you are not just limited to consulting using a phone call. Next time you want to consult someone before transferring, try using an IM.

As you can see from this simple scenario, the ability to consult with someone before sending a phone call to them can be quite useful in ensuring that the person is available, and has the background required to help the caller.

This blog post uses the text from http://blogs.technet.com/b/lync/archive/2009/10/21/using-consultative-transfer.aspx but with the images of Lync instead of OCS for all us early adopters!

Feel free to add me on your Lync - sip:tobie.fysh@freebridge.org.uk

Lync 2010 forgetting contacts

2011-06-22T01:47:00.000-07:00

I have a problem with Lync 2010 on Windows 7 SP1 with Office 2010. Excahnge 2007
It is reproducible across other machines in the organisation on both Outlook 2007 and 2010.
The problem is as follows:

Create a contact with an email address and phone number in your personal contacts in Outlook

Then switch to Lync and search for the contact and add them

As you can see the contact is added with all information present.

Logout of Lync and back in, Lync will then try to sync contacts with Outlook (shown by updating…)

After a while the sync finishes but the contacts do not have the details left in them to be able to phone the contact. Sort of defeats the point of adding it in the first place.

Sophos Install on Vista/W7

2011-01-05T13:10:00.001-08:00

Have recently upgraded to Sophos Enterprise Manager 4.5

Still didn't seem to be a way to push the install to the more modern of the Microsoft Windows family so had to work out how to script it.

I could see the PC's that were not showing up as connected in the Enterprise manager and hacked together this script:

e:\pstools\psexec.exe \\ComputerToInstallTo -u Domain\Adminitrator -p Password -h -i \\SophosServer\SophosUpdate\CIDs\S000\SAVSCFXP\setup.exe -mng Yes -crt R -user Domain\Administrator -pwd Password -s yes -ni yes

The PC that you are trying to push Sophos to needs to be logged on but only as a standard user

For information about the above check out these two help pages:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897553

http://www.sophos.com/support/knowledgebase/article/12570.html

An Alarming Time (or Facebook stalking works out)

2011-01-02T09:16:00.000-08:00

I live beside a Gardman warehouse, the one that is mentioned in this press release.

For some reason the alarm at the building was triggered between the end of 2010 and the start of 2011 (Saturday), being a good neighbour I wandered down to the sign saying who looked after the building to see if they were aware.

On phoning the local security company (GSL Darden) they informed me the key holder had been contacted but he was in Essex and it would be a while before he turned up.

A second night of the alarm sounding went by and (now Sunday) I again phoned GSL who told me that the key holder had decided to stay in Essex until late Monday probably Tuesday.

Humm – that’s a bit of a pain as this alarm is getting slightly annoying now. So what to do?

I rang all the numbers I could find on the Gardman website (http://www.gardman.co.uk/contact-us) and got either no reply or automated “thanks for calling but we are closed”
Searched Twitter for an account -Found @gardman but don’t think that Keith Lee is the guy I need!
Did a bit of digging for directors names and came up with:

Mark Pearson (CEO)
Tim Stainton (Commercial Director)

Thought about buying the financial reports online from Companies House to get home details (did that before to get them for First Choice when they gave poor customer service) but didn’t want to spend the money.

So where to turn next...... FACEBOOK :-)

So, lets start at the top – Mark Pearson, I found this profile : http://www.facebook.com/mark.d.pearson who is friends with a Tim Stainton but not sure its the CEO

On to Tim – he was easier to find as he has a nice clear photo http://www.facebook.com/tim.stainton and reading down from his (unsecured) wall there is this comment about B&Q.

When you refer to http://www.diyweek.net/news/news.asp?id=12511 you can see that Tim came from B&Q in the past and he also has a boat http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=226355&id=777438972

so I’m thinking reasonably successful guy with the same name – probably a match.

It's time to craft a message to him:

Hi Tim,

Sorry to disturb you on a Sunday but myself and my family have been disturbed by one of the security alarms on your new West Lynn site since New Years Day. The site is the one this press release is about : http://www.gardman.co.uk/gardman-ready-growth

I phoned the local security company, who tell me that the key holder has been informed but wont be back until late Monday or probably Tuesday when the site re-opens.

I think this is a tad antisocial and would appreciate if you would please get someone to site earlier to firstly turn off the alarm and secondly for your peace of mind ensure that the site and products are secure.

With kindest regards Tobie Fysh

I’ll post any response that I get.

Chrome is eating my session varibles (or how a Favicon saved the day)

2010-12-23T06:03:00.000-08:00

Have had an interesting problem with the latest version of Google Chrome and a classic ASP site that I am responsible for.

The site uses session variables to control the authentication of logged in users. These are compared against a backend database to ensure that the logged in user is still authenticated while they move around the site.

I had a report from one of our external customers bemoaning the fact that we were not allowing Chrome to navigate the site, they could log in correctly and arrive on the landing page but as soon as they tried to move to any of the other authenticated pages they would be logged out.

I tried to replicate the problem on the internal test site but could not. Looking at it the differences between the two they were that the external site was secured (SSL Certificate) and being published through ISA 2006.

I created a new site (by copying the live site in IIS) and created a rule for access through the ISA server (purchasing certificate from Digicert - best certificate provider around).

AND IT WORKED. Wahoo, so the problem must be in the ISA Rule/IIS/Certificate (as these are the only things that are different).

I then spent the next day comparing the two sites (Live and Dev). Unfortunately I could find no differences at all. The rules in ISA are identical; the IIS settings are exactly the same. I rekeyed the SSL certificate so it was created from the same IIS configuration but I could not get the original site to work.

I started to look at the live site in more detail, the return code from the logout is a querystring that showed that the error was that the username or password was incorrect. I didn’t have a reason to put the site into maintenance and block customers out of the system as it was “only” Chrome users who were affected, therefore the debugging had to be done live. To do so I added a couple of lines to the ASP to show the variables:

if Request.ServerVariables("REMOTE_ADDR") = "MYEXTERNALIP" then
response.Write("." & Request.ServerVariables("REMOTE_ADDR") & "
" & session("Username") & "
" & session.SessionID)
end if

This showed that all was correct and the logouts were only happening after the next click within the site. I then had to put some error trapping into the head of the page so on the next click I could see what variables we had:

if objRS.eof = true then
objRs.Close
Set objRs = nothing
objConn.Close
Set objConn = nothing
if Request.ServerVariables("REMOTE_ADDR") = " MYEXTERNALIP " then
response.Redirect("/debugpage.asp")
else
response.Redirect("/index.asp?Error=2")
end if
end if

My debugpage.asp had the following in it:
response.Write("." & Request.ServerVariables("REMOTE_ADDR") & "
" & session("Username") & "
" & session.SessionID)

Strangely the output on this had:
IPAddress
blankline
SessionID

So something was eating the session("Username") variable…..

Looking through the code there didn’t seem to be anything that would be removing the variable, I stepped through the code line by line on paper and could not see anything that would be removing the variable, the only sessions.abandon was in the logout, index landing page and the global.asa PLUS the other session variables were not getting cleared either (and this was getting away from the fact it was ONLY happening on Chrome).

I next fired up a test laptop and downloaded a copy of fiddler2. I put it onto a test laptop as I needed to decrypt and inspect HTTPS sessions, to do this in Fiddler2 you have to add a certificate to the local store and its recommended that you only ever install the HTTPS monitoring on a test machine.

Once I started to look at the output I saw the following:

This showed that there was a 302 response when trying to get to favicon.ico (line 91)……. Hummm, I don’t have a favicon so why was it redirecting?

AND HANG ON, what’s that on line 93? Why is the Secure URL turning up when I’m browsing the Dev site…… Suddenly a light bulb went off in my head. Scroll back to how I created the Dev site (hint ….. the IIS settings are exactly the same……).

The Dev site was a copy of the secure files, that includes the Web.config. Web.config contains the error page redirections:

So what was happening then?

Customer enters Dev site
Chrome (for some reason) demands favicon file
IIS can’t find favicon so issues a 302 redirect to a 404 page
Cusomised ASP page which includes the following code: session("Username ") = ""
As customer is on Dev site the session variable is NOT cleared (it’s the wrong domain) But if the user is on the Secure site then the code will execute correctly and clear the variable.

So, what the hell does this all mean?
For some reason the latest version of Chrome insists on trying to download favicon.ico, as this doesn’t exist a 404 is generated on the server and *if* you have some code to trap 404’s then it will execute.

The lesson:
When copying websites carefully look at your web.config and put a favicon.ico on the root of your websites so that Chrome doesn’t put a whole load of 404’s into your weblogs (or worse stops the customers from using your site).

Global Address List not up to date

2010-12-16T03:22:00.000-08:00

First Check Outlook Web Access as this will always be up to date. If the staff members are missing from OWA then this is a different problem.

If the staff members are in OWA try a manual download

Outlook > Tools > Send/Receive > Download Address Book

Uncheck Download changes since last Send/Receive > OK

If this fails then repair the Outlook Profile:

Outlook > Account Settings > repair > Next

If the wizard reports that Outlook need to be restarted then restart Outlook and retry the manual download above

If the manual download fails start Services.msc (elevated/run as end user is logged in)

Check that:

* Automatic Updates

* Background Intelligent transfer Service

are both set to Automatic and are started.

If not, make those changes.

Return to Outlook and try the manual download again.

Dynamic Distribution Group – Opposites are good too!

2010-07-14T08:57:00.000-07:00

Have hit an interesting error in Exchange 2007.

We have a Dynamic Distribution Group (DDG)that sends to all staff (Lets call is “Email All Staff”).

Originally the script was as follows:

Set-DynamicDistributionGroup "Email All Staff" -RecipientFilter{ Company -eq "Our Company Name" } –RecipientContainer "AD.Root.Node"

Which took everyone who had an email address and sent the email to them

When users leave our employment we change their account password and hide them from our address list before deleting them, the rational being that we can then share the mailbox to someone to dredge through for anything important and they can monitor any external email for the 1st month after they leave.

The problem is that any email that gets sent to the “Email All Staff” DDG gets evaluated and sent to the hidden users too.

Ahhh I though, if I have the script do the following:

Set-DynamicDistributionGroup "Email All Staff" -RecipientFilter{ -not(HiddenFromAddressListsEnabled -eq $false) -and(Company -eq "Our Company Name" )} –RecipientContainer "AD.Root.Node"

then it will only send to mailboxes that have not got the hidden attribute set.

I was thus happy that I’d solved a little problem and would help our end users by them not getting additional email that was not relevant.

A support call drops into my queue say that an email to “Email All Staff” has not been delivered to any recipients.

Humm, lets investigate

Looking at the properties of the DDG (Exchange Management Console > Recipient Configuration > Distribution Group > Open “Email All Staff” > Filter Tab > Preview)

You can see all the mailboxes who don’t have the “Hide from Exchange address lists” checked are shown.

So all seems fine with the DDG so lets investigate the email.

I fire up the Exchange Message Tracking tool (Exchange Management Console > Toolbox > Message Tracking) and drill down to the message.

Looking at the screen shot above you can see that the email expanded and delivered to only three recipients – “Richard, Ann and Simon”

Looking at the properties of these mailboxes you can see that they are all Hidden from the address book – The exact opposite of what the script and the Exchange Management Console says……

After 3 hours on the phone Microsoft want use to upgrade to the latest Service Pack and retest. I’ll update when I have more information……

Free iPhone game from RBS

2010-06-02T10:27:00.000-07:00

Ahhh RBS, Royal Bank of Scotland. How us tax payers loved bailing you out so it's nice to see you repaying some of this love by giving away free iPhone games.

Yea, I know. Free iPhone games.

Emma for some reason wanted to download Wheres Wally from the iPhone. She still wanted it after seeing that it would cost a whole 59 pence. What can I say. She likes hunting for the little guy (!)

So she pays her money and takes her choice.

Around a month later her credit card statement turns up from RBS. The only purchase that month was against her iTunes account and underneath it a credit line of 59 pence with the title "small balance write off". So thanks tax pagers of England. You have paid for Em's purchase. Next month we are going to see if they will do the same for a 99 pence game.......

Turning £1 into £100

2010-04-02T02:51:00.001-07:00

Have had notification from Blue Square that they have released a Web App for the iPhone. I'm not a big gambler in any way but thought that I would try an experiment.

So, is it possible to turn £1 into £100 by making bets based on nothing but the odds. As any who knows me will say that I know nothing about football so obviously that's where my first bet will be.

Why do I have £1 in my account and also for that matter a BlueSq account if I'm not a gambler then?
Well, when I saw Barrack Obama on the campaign to be selected I put some money on him becoming the next president of the USA hence the account. And the £1 is from a bet on Norwich to win against Leeds. I withdrew the rest of the winnings with the quid remaining for this experiment.

DPM 2007 Publish via RDP

2010-02-12T03:23:00.001-08:00

Have been on the Managing Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 course at QA in London for the last week.

One of the annoyances is that in DPM 2007 and 2010 you cannot install the GUI onto your own workstation and as such you'll have to always connect to the server to run the software (unless you are a Powershell Guru).

David Allen has published how to conenct using RDP and remote app but his is shwoing how to do it via 2008 TS, if you are on 2003 try the following:

On your DPM server right click My Computer > Properties > Remote.
Click Enable Remote Desktop and select the users you want to have access.
On the client computer Start > Run > mstsc > OK
Click the Programs tab
Tick Start the following program on connection
Program path and file name is:

c:\Windows\System32\mmc.exe "c:\program files\microsoft dpm\dpm\bin\microsoft system center data protection manager 2007.msc"

(note the speech marks around the second part).

Change the local resources that you want (screen size/colour depth etc)
Then save the resulting RDP file into your start menu.

And as Gorden Ramsey would say:
DONE

ISA change from Edge Firewall to 3 Leg

2010-02-01T00:32:00.000-08:00

So this is one of the things that I've had to work on over the last few days.

The easiest way is to follow the infomation from Bret Fisher's Blog - fishbrains

Some gotchas though are:

VPN Configuration gets blown away, make a note (print screen is your friend) and reapply after.
The bitmap image of the network will be wrong. To fix this in the XML before importing search for msFPCNetworkTemplate and amend the next GUID from "{e826736f-262a-47af-8871-980561676073}" to "{9be6f18a-57ad-4cea-b924-2cfedfef3799}"

The full list of template GUIDS are:
EDGE "{e826736f-262a-47af-8871-980561676073}"
THREE LEG "{9be6f18a-57ad-4cea-b924-2cfedfef3799}"
FRONT FIREWALL "{2EF25ED2-C029-4a5b-B274-590B9953F2F5}"
BACK FIREWALL"{1C02D67F-7CF6-429c-9B46-B7805FCCED41}"
SINGLE NIC "{2C02D67F-7CF6-429c-9B46-B7805FCCED42}"

Outlook Web Access Query Strings

2009-12-08T04:52:00.000-08:00

Having some fun with OWA links at the moment to embed them into Sharepoint Services (the free one!)

Some Calendars in Public Folders need to be pushed to the Intranet, thought I'd just drill down to the URL and copy over.

In OWA right click the Public Folder Calendar and select Open in New Window.

URL of opened Calendar is :

https://ExchangeServerName/owa/?ae=Folder&t=IPF.Appointment&id=PSF.LgAAAAAaRHOQqmYRzZvIAKoAL8RaAwBkfUVX3QErSbWC4zOBPd2lAAAAAGTOAAAC

This URL is of no use as its linked to my login so wont display for all users.

The actual URL needed is :

https://ExchangeServerName/owa/?cmd=contents&module=publicfolders&f=PublicFolderName/PublicFolderCalendarName&part=1&view=daily

Notice that at the end of the URL the view=daily In OWA you can have the following query strings:

Day = daily , Work Week = ?????? , Week = Weekly , Month = Monthly

If anyone can tell me what the Work Week one is I'll be very grateful!

Apple Jokes

2009-11-03T04:43:00.001-08:00

Now I can laugh at these as I now own an Apple product (the amazing iPhone) but made me smile just the same.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Q: How many Apple programmers does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: Only one, but why bother ? Your light socket will just be obsolete in six months anyway.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q: How many Apple and PC fanboys does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: An infinite number: nothing useful gets done while they're arguing. Finally a disgusted generic computer user (who will use any type that is in front of him) gets up and changes the bulb, elbowing the participants aside. The size of the crowd arguing seems to be a function of time, although whether or not the function is exponential is not known.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How many Mac owners does it take to screw in a light bulb?

Three: One to change the bulb, one to copyright the method for changing the bulb, and one to call in the lawyers on anyone who infringes on the "look and feel" of the bulb changing method."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Flu Jab

2009-10-16T05:45:00.001-07:00

So just had my seasonal flu jab at work. Slightly embarrassing as a too tight shirt arm required me to disrobe to the waist to enable me to be pricked. A slightly surreal moment being in the conference room semi naked…..

Test from the iPhone

2009-10-15T15:03:00.001-07:00

Let's see how this works

-- Posted from my iPhone

Switch on

2009-10-15T13:55:00.000-07:00

Josef has had his switch on, we went for the Cochlear Nucleus 5 which was the first time that Addenbrooke's had used. Our little man is a trailblazer! This is just a test post really to see if I've got all the links to Twitter sorted out.

This is also due to Lesley at Addenbrooke's asking if I had a blog to keep track of Josef's progress - so just for her there will be posts with the tag "Progress"

Future posts:

Exchange 2007 Dynamic Distribution list bug
Cochlear Unboxing Experience
Deaf journey (up to date!)
iPhone stroking (!)
Hospital car parking
Thank you NHS

Why, How, What now

2009-01-07T13:57:00.001-08:00

Welcome to the blog about my deaf son. Josef is 11 weeks today and I thought I might as well write about the process of finding out about his deafness and what is happening in his life. I'm going to try to write this in chronological order until I get up to date and then post at least once a week (or try to, you know how these things are!!)

Josef was born on the 22nd October at the Queen Elizabeth hospital in King's Lynn. He was delivered by forceps after a normal pregnancy with no indication that he had anything wrong with his hearing. He was assessed under the NHS Newborn Hearing Screening Programme on the 23rd but both ears showed no response to the Automated Otoacoustic Emission (AOAE) screening test. This test basically sends a sound down the ear to the cochlear which echos the sound back. If the machine hears the echo all is well, if not its an indication that something within the ear is not working. We were told not to worry as he could have mucus in his ears so we didn't really think any more about it (did you know that you don't clean a baby when they are born nowadays? Those TV programmes showing babies being handed over all clean - lies I tell you LIES!)

Josef had another hearing test on the 24th which again showed no response to the AOAE so he had an additional test called the Automated Auditory Brainstem Response (AABR) screening test. This test involves tiny little headphones being put on Josef and little probes attached to his skin, the probes look for electrical activity in the brain when sounds are played into the headphone.

Again Josef "failed" so we were told not to worry as he could still be "drying out" and that we were given an appointment to be reassessed on the 7th November in the outpatients department.

Next - Outpatients and Audiology