We are updating the way our customers/partners federate with Microsoft.

Prior to the change on Friday, October 2, 2015 at 8:00 PM PDT, customers need to update their federation using URL filtering.

If you or your customers “hard-code their IP addresses,” they will need to allow IP: 167.220.67.163 to ensure there is no interruption to their federation with us.

Going forward, please use “URL filtering” on sipfed.microsoft.com, which means you won’t need to update your IP addresses when Microsoft makes a change anymore!

TomL LCSKid

I am one of the employees already using the PSTN Conferencing and Cloud PBX with PSTN Calling features.

Being one of the earliest users I have uncovered a few bugs but with it working, you can't describe the difference.

The meeting invite has a new Bridge number and Conference ID, but it still works by joining and calling.

Other than getting a new phone # from Portland OR and confusing the wife on the first call, it just works.

Having started with LCS 2003 and moving to our Office 365 Dedicated team with Lync 2010 to do Voice, where we are going is amazing.

As I work with our corporate deployment I will seek to share insight into the complexities that customers will need to prepare for such as how do you handle number porting.

TomlLCSKid

The offering allows for PSTN connectivity using Sip Trunks from qualified UCOIP vendors who connect to our approved Edge Sites or the customer can deploy their own SBC, also from the UCOIP qualified devices.

In that time our customers have upgraded from Lync 2010 to Lync 2013 pools but we kept the Mediation Servers running at Lync 2010 versions. The time to upgrade them is now upon us and while I'd hope for a rinse repeat process, we are dealing with individual corporations and their production voice infrastructure.

Here are just some of the approaches we are taking

One customer is adding an SBC to an existing configuration with SIP Trunk vendor. The approach here is to create a new voice site with a new number range that will be assigned to test users. The dial plan details will include only the SBC as the outbound path for PSTN allowing us to test the infrastructure components without disrupting the SIP Trunk traffic using the 2010 Mediation Servers.  When this test topology is fully tested and signed off, the plan is to modify the production dial plans to now use the SBC as the outbound path instead of the SIP Trunk vendor.

Another customer has 2 SIP Trunk vendors, one for the US and another for Canada. The contracts with each carrier are owned by the customer and ultimately they must approve of the change as well as provide us the approved day/time to do the work without disrupting the production service. The approach for this will be to work with each carrier independently and modify the topology to use the new Lync 2013 Mediation Servers instead of the 2010 servers. The nice thing about this approach is that both carriers can be done independent and service will function with a mix of Lync 2010 and 2013 Mediation Servers in use. The approach would be a hot cut in the change window and test the call flow. In the event a problem is identified, you can simply roll the change back to the 2010 servers.

These little differences are what offer the jolt to my day and not become stuck in a routine.

TomL LCSKid

The solution I found and continue to reference is here - http://www.excelforum.com/excel-general/680284-prepend-text-in-cells.html

In a 3rd column enter this formula
="Question. " & A1
fill formula down

copy column with formula
select 1st column
PasteSpecial > Values
Delete column with formula

Here is an overview of how we use the tools, not saying this is best or even good, it was the first thing we found that achieved what we wanted.

Having an existing project plan and Excel list, we opted to use Excel being a simpler list.

We first create a new User Story with all the required fields and save it.

Editing the User Story we select the Open Work Item in Microsoft Excel on the toolbar, and then to that we paste our list of tasks and complete the required fields.

After saving we use the step above to prepend the customer name to each task, the reason we do this is because the tasks are named identical and we want to ensure any report or view clearly identifies the customer.

Now there may be something I'm missing here in our approach but we have to then open the User Story to link these tasks (or link Tasks to the User Story)

My role today leverages much of my technical skills but as the Program Manager my value to the team is ensuring that our offering is clearly communicated with updated documentation for sales teams and customers along with the internal documents we use to run the program and execute on a customer build out.

While I am not a PMP now, it is part of my career path which means my inherent organization skills serve me well but gaps are there for sure. Just this year I was able to learn the power of building a SharePoint site and including the Project plan. Here is a quick screen shot of the test site I am working with now, beneath are the things I am trying to figure out and test.

The main question I have is how I would suggest this be organized. While I own Voice projects and tend to have autonomy in my choice, we do work with and have interdependence with many other teams that have a well used approach already in place.

• Should I create a site with all customers and all of their projects? Customer A Voice, Customer B 2013 Upgrade, Customer B Voice, Customer C Service Expansion?
• Should I create a site per customer for all of their projects? Customer A - Voice, 2013 Upgrade, Service Expansion?
• Should I create a site per customer per project? Customer A Voice  

Now a new wrinkle to my work, the engineers on the team have prior experience with Visual Studio Team Foundations (VSTF) http://www.visualstudio.com/ and value this as an approach to managing our workload. Prior to this week my familiarity was mostly referencing a url to someone else's User Story, Bug or Task to get an update. Just this week we've made early progress transitioning our work items from Excel over which means I have been introduced to the Excel and Project integration but only just enough to have many questions.

Our Project Plans are not much more elegant than a list of tasks bucketed when appropriate with dependencies and on occasion the resource. So do is it matter if we create VSTF entries using Project or Excel, I don't know but another peer suggested Excel being cleaner.

The big question gnawing at me though is can I take the SharePoint site with Project work above and integrate VSTF into the mix?

SharePoint provides us an easy way for people to self serve if they want to know what the team is doing and need our content. Integrating Project on the SharePoint site lets them see the current project view and my team can update the status rather easy. VSTF will let us create our work, track it and measure it consistent with other engineering teams.

If anyone reading this post knows of online training, classes, online samples or even willing to reach out direct and chat let me know - toml at Microsoft dot com (email and IM)

TomL LCSKid

http://www.jabra.com/business-solutions/for-your-platform/microsoft?ref=mega

High level findings
Monoaural devices - I prefer for when I want to hear additional sounds.

Binaural devices - I prefer when I want to enjoy listening to music or need to reduce external sounds.
While not perfect, you can slide this askew on one side of your head and make a poor man's monaural device.

Jabra UC Voice 550 MS Monoaural
Having the luxury of choice, this model would be treated as an extra or loaner.
Foam ear pieces and boom.
Nice clear audio
Having used a device with straight boom, the curved foam form factor is in my peripheal so it becomes a bit of a distraction.

Jabra BIZ 2400 Duo
Nice neoprene zippered carrying case, I'll use this if my preferred form factor doesn't have as nice an option.
Leather like ear pieces which rotate making it comfortable on the head. A small disc to control on/off hook and mute is a nice touch allowing you to not be forced to watch the Lync UI.
There is a clip but I never use them.

Jabra UC Voice 750 MS Monoaural
Nice neoprene zippered carry case
Leather like ear piece
Inline device controls for on/off hook, volume and mute.
It was as I used this device that I realized I like the Monoaural devices, however not with the flex booms.

Jabra Pro 930 / 935
Monoaural form factor with the solid stick boom mic which I personally like.
Mono sound so music suffers a little.
The change between usb corded and wireless is huge, let people feel the freedom of movement and then connect them with a cord again, unless they are a true all day desk worker I think this is huge.

Ultimately you have to review the product specs for the 935 and 930 to see differences such as DECT or 2G4 connectivity and the 930's Conference Call Capacity feature, being a home user I don't have 4 colleagues to test this.

Jabra Motion UC with Travel & Charge Kit MS
http://www.jabra.com/Products/Wireless_Headsets/Jabra_MOTION_UC_Series/Jabra_MOTION_UC__MS
This was the device I immediately was drawn to in the kit. I would strongly suggest folks investigate this form factor and reviews from others as I thought it held the most potential.
I took the approach of leave the best for last and am still evaluating. The hard travel charge case is awesome. In the past my travel devices had wires and was so cumbersome to include in my bag, the hard case is a huge win. The reason I am still playing with this device is that I have yet to be successful with fitting this to my ear which I feel is because I wear glasses and I haven't spent the proper time to get the right fit.
This is a bit larger than the Jabra Supreme but if I get the fit corrected, it very well will be my go to mobile device.

Jabra Supreme
I am a desk jockey and don't use my phone too much so I would never be the first person to ask about solutions for highly mobile people. That being said this ear bud form factor has become the third device in my personal aresenal for when going into the local office or when I am heading out for personal items (kid's ball practice) but know my peers in a different time zone might need to reach me.
I wear glasses and the small ear clip works just fine for having this device on my ear, unlike the Jabra Motion I mentioned earlier. The size makes this an easy choice for being on the go and comes with a small zipper "box" for packing. I have this paired with both my PC and Phone and have used it for both.
This device might be the catalyst for me changing my default device!

The fantastic generosity from Jabra made me quite the popular guy when I dispensed out to the local Lync team and appreciate the opportunity to see what our customers get to sample so that I can tell them I have personally tried that device and what I thought.

TomL LCSKid

https://aimenterprise.aol.com/microsoft/

Excerpt from page:

Microsoft Lync Customers:
How to Establish Direct Federation with AIM

John Weber to the rescue - Next Hop in a box  http://tsoorad.blogspot.com/2014/05/nexthop-archive.html

Original Post

As part of an overall Office initiative, the Lync Team Blog and the NextHop Blog have been consolidated into the new Office blogs.

The move was made in response to customer feedback that content was difficult to find.

Moving forward, all Lync related blog posts will be posted to Office Blogs. Lync content can be found at blogs.office.com/lync.

TomL LCSKid

Couldn't make the Lync Conference 2014 event and want to see all the great presentations?

The content is now publicly posted https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Lync-Conference/Lync-Conference-2014

Enjoy

TomL LCSKid

While I start conversations with IM, they almost immediately become an audio call.

There are a few folks that simply do not like typing which makes sense but ultimately the result is far better as you get more of the persons speaking tone, and the conversation can move dynamically as the topic continues.

Another aspect of audio is that you are speaking with that person and they become more human to you as a result, not just some faceless entity you are working with.

Video I still don't see the uptick on, for myself it is because as a remote user working from home adding video many times causes the quality of my audio to drop.

To a lesser degree I am also picking up on those people who don't require the cordial IM asking if they are available. This tends to be those on my team or that I work with on a weekly basis, and most also work from home or have been with this technology for considerable time.

TomL LCSKid