April 26th, 2019 | Tags:

Yesterday Microsoft published a blog article, which announced their plans to revoke support for the existing Azure application ID leveraged by their 3rd party device vendors.

The existing application ID is embedded within each respective device firmware and today this is pointed at an Azure application hosted within Microsoft’s tenant. Microsoft’s goal here is for each respective device vendor to deploy their own Azure application with the permissions required for the device to register to Azure Active Directory.

The change from a device standpoint is a simple one and speaking from a Poly perspective, my employer, we’ve tested this across our VVX, Trio and Group Series lines of product. However…once this change is implemented within our firmware it requires that the customer or specifically the customer’s administrator, performs a tenant-wide consent as our Azure application is not whitelisted like Microsoft’s.

This consent would grant the Poly Azure application with the rights required to perform authentication on behalf of the device against the respective customer’s Azure Active Directory.

Full list of rights can be seen below:

I will update this post as soon as Poly have a date for each respective device firmware, but rest assured our friends at Microsoft won’t pull the plug on the existing application ID until this transition is completed.

In the meantime for those that want to be ahead of the curve the Poly consent URL is here.

Timelines for updates below, please note these are targets and could be subject to change. Also note: prior to upgrading to these releases online customers must perform the consent via the URL above.

Device nameSoftware VersionTimelineDownload
VVX Phones5.9.4.3247Late-SeptURL
Poly Trio5.9.1.10419Late-SeptURL
Group Series6.2.1.1Mid-JuneURL
CX55001.3.5Late-AprilURL
January 31st, 2019 | Tags:

So apparently I’m not alone here. One day you can be happily scheduling Microsoft Teams meetings to your heart’s content and the next the add-in just vanishes into thin air. Whilst I don’t know why this happens I have a solution I’d like to add to the existing repertoire of blog posts within the wild.

The most informative post, that extends beyond the basic troubleshooting is one from fellow MVP Michael LaMontagne, in this post he shares registry settings from a PC where the add-in is loading successfully. This approach did work for me, but I also identified a vastly reduced set of registry settings that seemed (for me anyways) to resolve my issue.

The issue in my case was that Outlook no longer loaded this add-in or gave me the option to add it. When I looked within the registry I found that the add-in didn’t have a key at all when I looked at:

Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Addins\

Shouldn’t there be a key called TeamsAddin.Connect here?

So I manually created the key by adding the following to a text file (renaming the extension from .txt to .reg)

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00


[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Addins\TeamsAddin.Connect]
“Description”=”Microsoft Teams Meeting Add-in for Microsoft Office”
“FriendlyName”=”Microsoft Teams Meeting Add-in for Microsoft Office”
“LoadBehavior”=dword:00000003

After importing this, I re-started Outlook and voila – the add-in had returned!

December 31st, 2018 | Tags: ,

With Exchange and Skype for Business Server 2019 now GA I decided to created a new lab environment, both are Hybrid installations and I opted to create a brand new Office 365 tenant.

For those not already aware Skype for Business Server 2019 (when paired with Exchange Server 2019), no longer has the ability to provide Unified Messaging and Microsoft expects customers to instead leverage Azure or “Cloud” Voicemail. There’s a great table (I’ve stolen from TechNet below) that illustrates supportability across the various versions.

Exchange Server 2013 Exchange Server 2016 Exchange Server 2019 Exchange Online
Skype for Business Server 2019 Exchange Server UM Exchange Server UM Cloud Voicemail Cloud Voicemail
Skype for Business Server 2015 Exchange Server UM Exchange Server UM Cloud Voicemail Exchange Online UM
Lync Server 2013 Exchange Server UM Exchange Server UM Cloud Voicemail Exchange Online UM

The planning and setup is well documented here and I followed this guide without any issues, however when I placed a call to voicemail I was seeing call failures, specifically:

“Failed to route to Exchange Unified Messaging Server”;source=”FE.DOMAIN.COM”

;dialplan=“Hosted__exap.um.outlook.com__YourDefaultDomain.onmicrosoft.com”

;appName=”ExumRouting”

The first thing I checked was the licensing, now Microsoft’s requirement is that at least a single user is licensed for Skype for Business with a Teams license assigned. This new tenant met all the prerequisites, but still voicemail would not route correctly and was being rejected by Office 365.

Next step, I logged a ticket with Microsoft. It turned out that the issue was due to the fact that because no calls had been made between any cloud homed users voicemail had not yet provisioned itself correctly. As a workaround I was asked t0 log into two Teams users within the tenant in question and place calls in both directs. Voila – Cloud Voicemail immediately started working!

I was given the impression by Microsoft support that this is a temporary issue and will be addressed in the near future, in the meantime I’m sharing this workaround with other folks.

November 9th, 2018 | Tags:

Just a brief update, I was asked to put together a RealConnect for Microsoft Teams provisioning walk-thru. This includes some recent updates to the Polycom provisioning Web App.

October 1st, 2018 | Tags:

For those not able to join the session Sri and I presented at Ignite (from session feedback, a lot of people were turned away), the video is now live on YouTube

 

September 24th, 2018 | Tags:

The dulcet screaming from youngsters, toddlers running up and down my airplane’s aisles and folks donning their Mickey-branded attire can only mean one thing – I’m Microsoft Ignite bound.

This is the Microsoft IT Pro event of the year and a big deal for my Polycom/Plantronics colleagues.

This year I’ve been closely involved in building the next cloud iteration of RealConnect, specifically geared toward bringing a standards-based video room system or VTC into a Microsoft Teams meeting. Today the only room systems compatible with Microsoft Teams are exclusively Skype Room System v2 based – and this isn’t likely to change any time soon. Making this new service, RealConnect for Teams, extremely relevant for customers that don’t have Skype Room Systems in situ and can’t rip and replace their existing estate of VTCs.

For the past few months a number of large enterprises have been in beta and as of today this new Azure-based multi-tenanted solution is live and orderable!

Polycom has proven track record in providing Microsoft video interop solutions since, OCS, Lync, Skype for Business and now Teams, in fact they created the category for scheduled Microsoft video interop technology – I’m on of the patent holders 😉

Also Polycom is the only CVI service provider with a Microsoft supported interop solution for Skype for Business Online.

We learnt a lot of valuable lessons since we launched RealConnect for O365 (the cloud RealConnect Service for Skype for Business Online users).

  • Customers prefer concurrency-based licensing
    • Integration with Office 365 Admin Portal is no longer a requirement and replaced with PowerShell
  • Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) integration is optional for RealConnect for Teams (only required for RealConnect for O365)
    • Single license SKU for both Teams and SfBO (concurrent licenses shared across tenant)
  • Completely re-architected and purpose-built MCU infrastructure – designed for Teams and Azure multi-tenancy
  • First-party scheduling and support for Office 2013 or greater, Teams mobile etc.

With this service now live, Microsoft added some new PowerShell cmd-lets.

New-CsVideoInteropServiceProvider and CsTeamsVideoInteropServicePolicy

CsVideoInteropServiceProvider is used to define your provider, there will be additional providers (Pexip and Blue Jeans) so customers have the ability to create up to three providers. All of which can be active within a single tenant.

Users can then be granted via the CsTeamsVideoInteropServicePolicy with a video interop service policy, each user can have a single provider allocated. Once these are defined a user’s Teams meeting invitation will contain additional VTC co-ordinates (see below)

So let’s run through an example setup.

Step 1. Define video interop service provider. Note, items in bold are tenant-specific and issued when a tenant is provisioned

New-CsVideoInteropServiceProvider -Identity Polycom -AadApplicationIds a39192d4-7b9b-4c07-87d7-cbcd3fd97af7 -TenantKey “123456@t.plcm.vc” -InstructionUri https://dialin.plcm.vc/teams/?key=123456&conf={ConfId}

Step 2a. Enable CVI for a user. user@domain.onmicrosoft.com is an example user account

Grant-CsTeamsVideoInteropServicePolicy -PolicyName PolycomServiceProviderEnabled -Identity user@domain.onmicrosoft.com

Step 2b. Enable CVI for your entire tenant

Grant-CsTeamsVideoInteropServicePolicy -PolicyName PolycomServiceProviderEnabled

Step 3. (optional) Enable lobby bypass for VTCs

Set-CsVideoInteropServiceProvider -Identity Polycom -AllowAppGuestJoinsAsAuthenticated $true

Within 8 hours of policy assignment the users Teams invite will then have the new co-ordinates. That’s it!

For those attending Ignite this week there are a number of sessions that will go into more information in regard to Cloud Video Interoperability – one of which is delivered by yours truly 😊

BRK3122 – Connecting Microsoft Teams to third-party meeting room devices with Cloud Video Interop

Microsoft Teams and its partners are enabling integration with third-party meeting room systems with our high quality meeting experience. Learn more with demonstrations and resources that will set you on the path to a better meeting experience.

VIEW DETAILS

BRK3398 – Best practices for a successful Video and Voice deployment on Microsoft Teams

Hear best practices from Adam Jacobs, Microsoft MVP, around how to get the best voice, video and cloud video interoperability experiences for Microsoft Teams. Plus, learn how to seamlessly transition your existing Skype for Business devices into your Microsoft Teams environment. As part of this session, we walk through solution options, deployment recommendations, and even perform live test calls.

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THR2342 – Microsoft Teams communication and collaboration made easy with Plantronics and Polycom

Ignite success with Microsoft Teams with voice and video solutions that meet all of your use cases. From personal spaces, to conference rooms to home offices, having the right integrated solutions will make or break your communication and collaboration experience. An increasingly mobile and collaborative workforce requires flexible, dynamic solutions and services to power the most human experiences. In this session, Jose Mateo, Polycom’s Microsoft Solution Architect and Jennifer Adams, Plantronics Solution Expert will showcase the newest Microsoft Teams voice and video solutions from Plantronics/Polycom and share best practices around driving adoption within your organization.

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