Unable to Schedule Online Meetings

The Scenario
I recently had a user that was unable to Lync 2010 Online Meetings from Outlook 2010. He didn't even have the button to create one. Otherwise his Outlook worked fine, no problems sending or receiving email, or scheduling meetings.

Fixing the Issue
My first thought was the Conferencing Addin was disabled. When I looked into his settings it was, but the Conversation History Addin was active. For some reason the Online Meeting Addin would not enable though. I ran a repair on the Lync client, no change. I had my Service Desk uninstall and reinstall the client thinking something was still corrupted with the install. No change.

Then one of the guys fixed it. Somehow the user had corrupted his Navigation Pane view. To fix this, click Start and in the search/run box type outlook.exe /resetnavpane

After this was done, we could enable the Online Meeting addin and schedule meetings.

Hope this helps!

~brad

Fun Fact:
There is no definitive history about how the word “barbecue” originated – or why it’s sometimes used as a noun, verb, or adjective. Some say the Spaniards get the credit for the word, derived from their “barbacoa” which is an American-Indian word for the framework of green wood on which foods were placed for cooking over hot coals. Others think the French were responsible, offering the explanation that when the Caribbean pirates arrived on our Southern shores, they cooked animals on a spit-like devise that ran from “whiskers to tail” or “de barbe a` queue.”

Smilies as Links

I ran into an interesting bug/fluke the other day. This happened to one of the guys working on our Service Desk. Jonatan (our Service Desk hero) is homed on one of my 2013 pools and is using the 2013 client. Dana is one of our end users, and is homed on a 2010 pool and uses the 2010 client.

While they were on IM working through an issue, every link that Dansa IM's came across on Jonatan's client as a smiley. We do have links enabled, and it didn't matter if it was an email address or URL.

In Dana's chat window, and in Jonatan's Conversation History everything appeared normal. Links other users would send him would appear and work fine. Restarting Jonatan's Lync client didn't resolve the issue either.

This is the first time I have had this reported. I'm still not sure what caused this to happen, but figured I would share anyway.

~ brad

Fun Fact:
During the initial compilation of the Oxford English Dictionary, the largest contributor of more than ten thousand words was Dr. W.C. Minor, an American Civil War veteran who was an inmate in an asylum for the criminally insane.

OT Article: All Our Patent Are Belong To You

In a rare move by any business these days, Tesla Motors has opened their patents to anyone who wants to use them. They are doing this to help promote the electric car market as they simply cannot keep up with demand.

From the blog:

Yesterday, there was a wall of Tesla patents in the lobby of our Palo Alto headquarters. That is no longer the case. They have been removed, in the spirit of the open source movement, for the advancement of electric vehicle technology.

 We believe that Tesla, other companies making electric cars, and the world would all benefit from a common, rapidly-evolving technology platform.

 You can read the full article over here.

~ brad

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." ~ Albert Einstein

PowerShell: Disabling Lync Accounts

When you use certificate authentication with Lync, a user can still use Lync for up to 6 months by default. You can change this setting using the Set-CsWebServiceConfiguration -MaxValidityPeriodHours XX cmdlet. Even when we change this setting, once a user's AD account has been disabled we don't want them signing into Lync and using the system. In my environment when the user's account is disabled, the Lync account is disabled that night. Rather than adding to the Service Desk's task list, I automated the process.

This script searches AD for disabled accounts, checks to see if the account is still enabled for Lync and if so Lync disables it. It also removes the account from the AD Lync groups that we have. It then sends an email report of the accounts disabled and what the Conferencing Policy was.

Email report

** I'm posting the script here for you to review, but the display can mess with some of the HTML code I have included in the script. If you waould like to use it, I would recommend you download it from here.

#******************************************
#
#   DESCRIPTION:  Disables Lync accounts after the AD account has been disabled and removes from Lync AD groups
#   VERSION:  1.0
#   UPDATED: 
#   AUTHOR: Brad Roberts
#   CONTACT: brad@thatucguy.com
#   BLOG: http://www.thatUCguy.com
#   BLOG ENTRY:  http://www.thatucguy.com/2014/06/powershell-disabling-lync-accounts.html
#
#   DISCLAIMER: You running this script means you won't blame me if this breaks your stuff. This script is provided AS IS and is not guaranteed to work perfectly in your environment. Testing is always a good idea. Any risk in running this script is entirely on you.
#
#******************************************

#******************************************
#
# Variable Definitions
#
#******************************************

$strComputerName = gc env:computername
$strSMTPServer = "smtp.thatucguy.com"
$strToEmail = "lync.admin@thatucguy.com"
$strFromEmail = "no-reply@thatucguy.com"
$strSubject = "Lync User Disablement Report"
$dtTimeNow = get-date

#******************************************
#
# Load Required PS Modules
#
#******************************************

if ((Get-Module ActiveDirectory) -eq $null){Import-Module ActiveDirectory}
if ((Get-Module Lync) -eq $null){Import-Module Lync}

#******************************************
#
# Prepare HTML for email
#
#******************************************

$strScriptInfo = "


Script Info
Script Name:  " + $MyInvocation.MyCommand.Definition + "
Time:  " + $dtTimeNow + "
Run From:  " + $strComputerName

$strHTMLHeader = $strHTMLHeader + ""
$strHTMLHeader = $strHTMLHeader + ""
$strHTMLHeader = $strHTMLHeader + ""
$strHTMLHeader = $strHTMLHeader + ""
$strHTMLHeader = $strHTMLHeader + ""

$strHTMLFooter = $strHTMLFooter + $strScriptInfo
$strHTMLFooter = $strHTMLFooter + ""
$strHTMLFooter = $strHTMLFooter + ""

#********************************
#
# Look for AD accounts that are disabled but still enabled for Lync
# Remove from Lync AD groups
# Generate report of accounts to disable in Lync and disable them
#
#********************************

$strResults = $strResults + "
Lync User Disablement Report
"
$DisabledUsers = Get-CsAdUser | ?{$_.UserAccountControl -match "AccountDisabled" -and $_.Enabled -eq $true}
if ($DisabledUsers) {
 $DisabledUsers | Disable-CsUser
 Remove-ADGroupMember -Identity "Lync-2010-Users" -Members $DisabledUsers.samaccountname
 Remove-ADGroupMember -Identity "Lync-2010-Silver" -Members $DisabledUsers.samaccountname
 Remove-ADGroupMember -Identity "Lync-2010-Gold" -Members $DisabledUsers.samaccountname
 Remove-ADGroupMember -Identity "Lync-2010-Platinum" -Members $DisabledUsers.samaccountname
 $DisabledUsers = $DisabledUsers | Get-CsUser | Select-Object DisplayName,SamAccountName,SipAddress,ConferencingPolicy | ConvertTo-Html -fragment
 }
else {
 $DisabledUsers = "There is no one to disable."
 }
$strResults = $strResults + $DisabledUsers

#********************************
#
# Create email body
#
#********************************

$strHTMLBody = $strHTMLHeader + $strResults + $strHTMLFooter

#********************************
#
# Send email report
#
#********************************

$msg = new-object Net.Mail.MailMessage
$smtp = new-object Net.Mail.SmtpClient($strSMTPServer)

$msg.From = $strFromEmail
$strToEmail | foreach {$msg.To.Add($_)}
$msg.subject = $strSubject
$msg.IsBodyHtml = $true
$msg.body = $strHTMLBody
$smtp.Send($msg)

~ brad

"Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after." ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Case Study: Government of the US Virgin Islands

There is a new case study that has been released for the Government of the US Virgin Islands and their switchover to Office 365. While it is not the most detailed since it is a cloud-based solution it is a good promotion for collaboration and consolidation of disparate systems.

You can see the full blog post here, and the case study here.

Serving the people of the US Virgin Islands (USVI) is behind everything I do as the Chief Information Officer of the Government of the US Virgin Islands. It’s a big challenge. There are significant obstacles to providing efficient government services to constituents across our four main islands (St. Croix, St. John, St. Thomas, and Water Island) and the other islands that make up our territory. When I joined the USVI, the Governor had issued a mandate to improve services throughout its 23 agencies. We needed to reduce bureaucracy and red tape. I believe IT can play a big role in transforming our processes to achieve more citizen-centric services and demonstrate that we are putting taxpayers’ money to good use. So my mission became to change the culture of computing at USVI by incorporating innovative technology solutions to facilitate the business of government. I selected Office 365 to help me accomplish this goal.

~ brad

"You are the sum total of everything you've ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot - it's all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that I try to make sure that my experiences are positive."  ~ Maya Angelou, Interview from the April 2011 edition of O, the Oprah Magazine (2011)

Article: Microsoft emulates Star Trek, turns Skype into a Universal Translator

Microsoft is once again taking the world by storm. At the recent Code Conference in California they announced the newest service offered through Skype, Skype Translator. The service provides real-time translation of the spoken word.

From the article:

Yesterday at the Code Conference in California, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Skype corporate vice president Gurdeep Pall, introduced Skype Translator. It’s the first time that this new feature has been demonstrated publicly, and involved a Skype conversation between Pall speaking English in California and Diana Heinrichs speaking German in London.

More info is also available from the Microsoft blog. This will be available as a Windows 8 beta app by the end of 2014.

~ brad

"If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world."  ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein