Welcome, Skype for Business Cloud Connector Edition

The road has been a bumpy one, but the project formerly referred to as "Min Topology" is finally out of Preview and available for download in General Availability (GA). Everyone, can we please give a warm welcome to the latest member of the Skype for Business Hybrid family, Skype for Business Cloud Connector Edition!

Before I discuss too much about Cloud Connector Edition (CCE), let me provide a few helpful links. I must point out this post is NOT a deep-dive into CCE; rather it is a discussion about what CCE is, and how your organization can take advantage of it. The below links will provide deep-dive information from Microsoft for all the specific requirements and deployment steps.

 First, before you go racing to download it, check out the TechNet article on how to plan for it: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt605227.aspx.

Once you feel like you have a good handle on planning for CCE, read up a bit on how to configure it: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt605228.aspx. That last one doesn't appear to be quite ready for prime time yet, though, as it says that it is "Coming Soon", and refers to the product as still being in Preview. So, one of these days soon, that link will be a bit more useful...

Alright, finally, the link to download CCE: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=51693.

Excellent! Now, if you are still reading this, and haven't raced off to start tinkering with CCE, let's talk a bit about the nature of this product. At the heart of this tool is a very specific deployment: CCE addresses a scenario in which all Skype for Business users in your organization are using Skype for Business Online in Office 365, but you have an on-premises voice infrastructure already in place that provides PSTN connectivity. This means that your organization DOES have the on-premises voice infrastructure, but DOES NOT have any Skype for Business infrastructure deployed on-premises; all Skype for Business users are Office 365-based users. Savvy?

Now, of course your users in Skype for Business Online could simply use PSTN services offered by Microsoft through Office 365, assuming they are licensed for Cloud PBX already, but you will also have to pay for the extra voice licensing (in addition to Cloud PBX licensing). If your organization has already invested in the on-premises voice configuration, and still has a contractual obligation to use this infrastructure, it is likely that the most desired approach would be to leverage this on-premises voice infrastructure to provide PSTN connectivity to your Skype for Business Online users. How, you ask, when there is no on-premises Skype for Business deployment to facilitate the needed hybrid configuration that could provide such functionality? This is where Cloud Connector Edition comes in!

Available as a download from Microsoft, CCE is actually a collection of four virtual machines (VMs) that get deployed on a Hyper-V host server in your organization's DMZ network. These four VMs serve as a mini on-premises Skype for Business deployment, but no users will actually be homed on this instance; it exists solely to facilitate connecting the Skype for Business Online Cloud PBX users with your on-premises voice infrastructure to provide PSTN connectivity to them. The four VMs that get deployed and configured via a guided wizard are:

1. Domain Controller
2. Central Management Server (CMS)
3. Mediation Server
4. Edge Server

Before you become concerned about the Domain Controller component, let me make it clear that this little virtual environment is completely self-contained, including the Domain Controller (DC). That means this DC is deployed in its own brand new forest, and will not be connected to your corporate Active Directory.

The other pieces are fairly obvious, as they put into the place the bare minimum requirements for a functioning Skype for Business deployment that can facilitate the traversal of the media from your Cloud PBX to your on-premises voice infrastructure (thus the previous term, "Min Topology").

Now, what would this look like in your environment? At a very high-level, we can see the overview of traffic flow through CCE to your on-premises voice infrastructure here:

What would a more detailed media flow look like? The below image shows us that our signaling traffic does have to traverse through Office 365 before coming back through our CCE deployment, and then making its way through the gateway and out into the wild PSTN. It seems like this would be less than optimal for audio, though, doesn't it? Luckily, as we can see in the same diagram below, once the signaling traffic verifies the information for the user, that user's media is able to flow directly to the CCE host (completely skipping the Office 365 infrastructure), and on to the on-premises PSTN gateway. Beautiful!

So, would do you think? Is this a pretty cool solution for providing existing on-premises PSTN connectivity to your Skype for Business Online users without having to have a full-blown, licensed, on-premises Skype for Business Server 2015 deployment? I think so!

Like I said, I am not going to go deep on this post in regards to requirements, planning, and detailed deployment; that is all highlighted quite nicely in the Microsoft links provided above. Instead, I hope this post has been helpful in familiarizing you with what Cloud Connector Edition is, how your Office 365-based Skype for Business users can benefit from it, and whether or not this is something your organization needs to explore a bit more deeply. For the consultant crowd, this is certainly a deployment option to gain knowledge on to be ready to pitch it to the customer that is the right fit!

Stay techy, my friends!

Conferencing in Skype for Business: Choosing the Proper Infrastructure

Howdy, UC Enthusiasts!

**Queue the cricket noises**

I know, it has been too long, and my blog has been a little too quiet. The new year saw me ending one job, and starting a new one, so things have been a wee bit busy. Now that I am about a month into my new role, and becoming nicely oriented, I figured it was time to start bringing some fresh content with a fresh perspective! Let's talk Conferencing!

Why is Conferencing is a Critical Component of a UC Strategy?

Depending on the politics involved in deploying Lync or Skype for Business in your organization, conferencing may or may not have been one of the main drivers in the technology decision. While it may be primarily known in your organization as the adopted conferencing tool, Skype for Business may also be mostly known to your end users as the IM system, or the phone solution. Regardless of what it is known for in your company, bringing a positive conferencing experience to meeting attendees is critical to the success of your unified communications strategy, and Skype for Business does an incredible job providing that experience - if you plan appropriately!

A consistent, reliable, simple, and intuitive meeting experience will foster greater collaboration internally, and will ensure that precious employee time is not wasted on trying to navigate confusing and stubborn conferencing software. Providing this experience to external customers or clients can also translate into greater confidence in your organization's ability to work efficiently and effectively for them. Conversely, a poor meeting experience only serves to bring confusion, frustration, inefficiency, and in the case of your valued clients, less confidence that your company has the tools and organization to bring solid results.

If I have now done a decent enough job of convincing you that conferencing is worth putting a little bit of extra consideration into, let's dive into how to make sure you are deploying the proper infrastructure for your intended conferencing participants.

Skype for Business Conferencing Infrastructure Choices

Deploying conferencing in Skype for Business is not equal across all deployments. After all, the infrastructure needs of an SMB will likely vary greatly from those of a large global organization of several thousand end users, right? Is it all just about how many end users you have and how big the rest of your Skype for Business environment needs to be, though? If you guessed "No", then you are correct. While the number of users and scale of your environment will come into play for the size of your conferencing deployment, the type is more specific to the number of attendees that you plan for in your meetings. Let's start out with the most common and simple of choices for your conferencing infrastructure.

Collocated Conferencing - 250 Attendees or Less

Technet calls this scenario a "shared pool", and the idea here is that the Conferencing workload is installed on the same servers, in the same pool, with the other workloads (IM & P, Enterprise Voice, etc.). This will be the deployment method that most organizations are familiar with. As a matter of fact, this deployment method is not restricted to only small and medium size business; it can very well apply to very large Enterprise environments with Enterprise Voice and the whole nine yards.

So, if this option can be used for organizations of all sizes, why would you not just use this option for every deployment? Well, simply put, you would just choose this option - unless you need to hold meetings with more than 250 users. And there it is folks. The "shared pool" deployment method is only appropriate if you plan to only have meetings with less than 250 attendees.

Dedicated Conferencing Pool - 250 to 1,000 Attendees

If your organization has a specific requirement to hold Skype for Business meetings of greater than 250 attendees, but less than 1,000 attendees, then you will not be able to take advantage of the simplicity of a shared pool deployment (i.e., your conferencing workload is collocated on the same server(s) as your IM & P and Enterprise Voice workloads). In this particular situation, you will have to deploy a Dedicated Pool for your Conferencing workload.

A pool that is dedicated to Conferencing is not really much different in configuration; the difference lies in the practice of how this pool is utilized. The goal is to reserve the resources (Memory, CPU, etc) of this pool for large meetings of up to 1,000 attendees, and to meet this goal, it is recommended that almost no users are "homed" on this pool, with the exception of a single SIP-enabled account that is used for scheduling these large meetings. In some cases, a small staff of people may be selected to work closely together on organizing and running these meetings in place of a single generic account, and when this is the case, those users should be homed on the Conferencing pool. Outside of these users, though, no other IM&P or Enterprise Voice workloads should be placed on this pool.

There are a few points to keep in mind with this deployment option:

• Due to the nature of meetings with such a large attendee list, these meetings are usually meant to have one or two main presenters while the rest of the participants are present in an audience-only capacity.
• These meetings are usually audio only, with PowerPoint being the main content-sharing mechanism, but with the right controls in place (muting all other users, disabling video for all other users, etc), one or two presenters could also use video.
• Only one (1) very large meeting at a time should be held, and the best way to control this is by having meetings run through a central SIP-enabled account that is homed on the pool.
• There is no in-band method for scheduling these meetings, so an out-of-band process needs to be implemented for coordinating times for these meetings. This is especially important if more than one SIP-enabled account is homed on the Dedicated Pool and is capable of running these large meetings.

Skype Meeting Broadcast - Up to 10,000 Attendees

So, there are conferencing solutions for up to 1,000 users using an on-premises Skype for Business Server 2015 infrastructure, but what if you have a need to hold a meeting for more than 1,000 users? Well, you are in luck, so long as you don't plan on having more than 10,000 total attendees. Oh, and so long as you are willing to configure a Hybrid deployment with Skype for Business Online in Office 365. Yeah, just a small detail there...

The reason you have to have Hybrid to accomplish meetings on this scale is that Skype Meeting Broadcast is actually a component of Skype for Business Online; it does not exist in Skype for Business Server 2015 in any capacity. Really, the main reason you would want to use this option, aside from achieving audiences greater than 1,000 and up 10,000, is because it provides you that Broadcast-functionality. With one or two presenters, the goal here is to reach a wide audience with a one-way presentation, potentially inside and outside your audience, and to record it for providing the content to others after the broadcast. This is a great option for conducting "Town Hall Discussions" in a large organization that is very geographically dispersed!

Microsoft Mechanics Episode on Skype Meeting Broadcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLWpAEH2cyI.

If your organization has not even considered "Hybrid" yet, there is no need to get too stressed out about this. Yes, there will be some leg work and planning involved to configure your on-premises infrastructure (and your S4B Online tenant) for Hybrid, but it is nothing overwhelming, or terribly costly. You essentially will just need one or two SIP-enabled accounts to be homed in Skype for Business Online for configuring and organizing the meetings. These accounts will have to have the proper licensing assigned to use the Skype Meeting Broadcast feature, obviously, but once it is all setup, there is a simple dashboard for configuring these meetings, and scheduling them. This streamlines management.

Conclusion

As you can see, depending on your audience requirements, you may have to do a little more planning than the typical Skype for Business Server 2015 install. Luckily, the options are fairly straightforward, and there is not a great deal of technical complexity in the differences between your options. Plan, Plan some more, and then PLAN again. If you do this, you will achieve great Conferencing experience for all your audience members, employees and customers alike!

Stay techy, my friends!

Configure Hybrid Skype for Business and Move Users (GUI)

In an earlier post, Configure Hybrid In Your Skype  for Business Environment, I discussed the pre-requisites for setting up a Hybrid environment, and then walked through the configuration via PowerShell. In this post I will be demonstrating the Hybrid configuration and moving of users between environments all from the GUI within the Skype for Business Control Panel. To view details about the environment and the needed pre-reqs, please visit the blog post referenced above.

Configure Hybrid

Assuming that you have already satisfied all the pre-requisites per the blog post mentioned above, it is now time to connect your environments using the provided wizard in the Skype for Business Control Panel (on-premises).

From the Skype for Business Control Panel, on the Home tab, click the Set up hybrid with Skype for Business Online link as shown below: 

The Set up Hybrid with Skype for Business Online wizard will open, and the first screen simply presents a list of pre-requisites that must be satisfied. Click Next.

The next screen will likely prompt you to sign in to Office 365. Click the Sign in to Office 365 button.

Enter your credentials, and then click Ok.

You will then see that the wizard is attempting to sign in to Office 365 with the provided credentials.

The next screen will show that you are successfully signed in to Office 365 if your credentials were correct, and you can click Close.

The next wizard screen seems a bit repetitive, but it confirms that you are now signed in to Office 365. Click Next.

Now the wizard will actually perform a check to see if the pre-requisites have been satisfied. 

If any checks come back with an "X" in a red circle, no problem. Just click Next, and the wizard will take care of the needed configuration. As you can see, all pre-requisites were taken care of. The image below reflects that the "Federation with Office 365 is not configured" error in the above image was automatically configured for you. Click Close.

Wasn't that easy? Hybrid is now configured!

Move Users From On-Prem to Online

Now navigate to the Users tab in the Skype for Business Control Panel. Select the user that you want to move to Skype for Business Online, and then click on the Actions drop-down from the top navigation menu. Select the option to Move selected users to Skype for Business Online....

The Move users to Skype for Business Online wizard opens, and you are presented with a warning to make sure that the user has a Skype for Business Online license assigned in Office 365, and with another warning to make sure that you are familiar with the feature differences between environments. (NOTE: if you need to assign a license to the user in Skype for Business Online at this point, stop and do so. Then go grab a coffee from Starbucks; I have seen provisioning take between 30 - 60 minutes for this license assignment to be recognized from the Control Panel.) Click Next.

Again, you may be prompted to sign in to Office 365. If so, enter your credentials, and click Ok. Once you are signed in, click Close.

Repetition. More confirmation that you are signed in to Office 365. Click Next.

You are now presented with another prompt asking if you are sure you want to move this user to Skype for Business Online. Click Next.

Next, a screen appears displaying the progress of the move operation.

Once the move completes successfully, you will see the below screen. This would show if the move was unsuccessful for any reason (like licensing not being recognized yet). This report can be more helpful in cases where you are moving multiple users. Click Close.



Now, if you look at your users in the Control Panel, you can see that Shaggy and Thelma are still homed in the on-prem pool, but Scooby is now in Skype for Business Online.



Again, Provisioning may take its sweet time for your Skype for Business Admin Center to reflect this new user as being homed Online, but once it has finished, you should see this on your Skype for Business Admin Center dashboard:



Clicking on the Users tab in the Skype for Business Admin Center further confirms that Scooby is now indeed Online.



Back in the on-prem Control Panel, if we open the Properties of Scooby, and read the message, it hits the point home just a bit further that he is definitely homed in Office 365.

Move Users from Online to On-Prem

Alright, so you have moved a user to Online. Before they get too comfy, let's move them back to on-prem!

From the on-prem Skype for Business Control Panel, navigate to the Users tab, search for your user, and with the user highlighted, click on the Actions drop-down menu. Select the option to Move selected users from Skype for Business Online...

In the Move users to Skype for Business Server on-premises wizard, you are prompted to select the pool that you want to move the user to. Make your selection from the drop-down box, and then click Next.

This operation requires you to connect to Office 365 once again, so click the Sign in to Office 365 button, enter your credentials, click Ok, and then once you are signed in, click Close. 

You will receive the expected confirmation window stating that you are now signed into Office 365 as was demonstrated above. Click Next. The next screen is asking you to confirm that you want to move this user to your on-prem pool. Click Next.

Again, you are presented with the progress of the move operation.

Lastly, you will see the results screen. In our case, you can see that Scooby moved back successfully. Click Close.

Now, if we take another look at all of our users, we can see that they are all back nice and snug in our on-prem pool. 

And that's it! Once your pre-reqs are in place and Directory Synchronization is working, configuring Hybrid and moving users between environments is very simple and straightforward from the Skype for Business Control Panel.

Stay techy, my friends!

New eBook Annoucement: Skype for Business Hybrid Handbook

Good morning, everyone, and Happy December! Today is a big day, both for me, and for Skype for Business and Office 365. Today, Office 365 begins selling their brand new premium license: E5, making Cloud PBX with PSTN Calling Generally Available. On my side of things, I am launching a new, free, e-book titled, Skype for Business Hybrid Handbook!

I planned the launch of this book to fall closely in line with the arrival of E5 and Cloud PBX, as I feel that this new subscription option will really bolster the implementation of Hybrid models across many organizations. The fact that I finished in time to actually launch on the same day is just icing on the cake to me!

For now, this ebook is available exclusively in the Technet Gallery. It is 100% FREE, and will remain so, at least for this first edition. To download your own copy, whether for educational purposes or for a handy resource to guide you in your own Hybrid Skype for Business efforts, visit the Technet Gallery: https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Skype-for-Business-Hybrid-9218205e.

As with all my community contributions, I am one of the most open individuals to thoughts and feedback that there is. So, with that in mind, I would GREATLY appreciate your thoughts. Accolades, constructive criticism, and outright sarcasm are all welcome!

For a preview of the structure of the book, below are the included chapters and sub-sections:

Terminology Review.. 6

Chapter 1: Introduction to Skype for Business Environments. 7

     - Skype for Business Server 2015 (On-Premises)

     - Skype for Business Online. 9

Chapter 2: On-Premises vs. Online: Feature Comparison. 11

Chapter 3: Supported Hybrid Configurations and Available Features. 13

     - Exchange Server On-Premises Integration

     - Exchange Online Integration

     - SharePoint ServerOnPremises Integration

     - SharePoint Online Integration. 16

Chapter 4: Hybrid Prerequisites and Requirements. 18

     - Skype for Business Online Management with PowerShell 18

     - On-Prem Infrastructure Requirements. 19

     - Supported (Required) Topologies. 19

     - Federation in a Hybrid Environment. 20

     - DNS and Port Requirements. 20

Chapter 5: User Data, Features, and Policy Limitations. 21

     - Notes About User Data. 21

     - Notes About Policies. 21

Chapter 6: Configure Directory Synchronization with Azure AD Connect. 23

Chapter 7: Set Up Federation with Skype for Business Online Tenant. 33

     - GUI-Based: Set up Hybrid with Skype for Business Online Wizard. 33

     - PowerShell-Based: Configure Federation with the Management Shell 34

     - Federating with an Audio Conferencing Provider. 39

Chapter 8: Move Users from On-Prem to Skype for Business Online. 40

     - Pilot Users First. 42

     - Move Users in the Control Panel 42

     - Move Users in the Management Shell (PowerShell). 43

Chapter 9: User Management in a Hybrid Environment. 49

Chapter 10: Deploy Hybrid in a Multi-Forest Environment. 52

     - Forest Topology. 52

     - Forest Trusts. 54

     - Hybrid User Placement Considerations. 54

     - Notes on AD FS Configuration. 54

     - Notes on Azure Active Directory Connect. 57

Chapter 11: Configure Hybrid in Reverse: Online-to-On-Prem.. 60

Chapter 12: Cloud PBX with PSTN Connectivity via On-Premises Environment. 64

     - Feature Comparison. 64

     - Enabling a User for Cloud PBX with PSTN Connectivity. 65

     - Configure & Assign Voice Routing Policy. 65

     - Assign Licensing in Office 365. 66

     - Move the User to Skype for Business Online. 68

     - Enable for Enterprise Voice and Cloud PBX Voicemail

I hope you have a chance to download a copy for yourself, and more importantly, I hope it is useful in your pursuit of a Hybrid environment!

Stay techy, my friends!

Mac for Skype for Business Client News

The "Mac for Skype for Business" (what a mouth-full!) client is around the corner, sort of, and we finally got some details today. The Skype for Business Video Cast shared many details about what is on the horizon in today's episode. In the presentation, we got some screenshots of the client's look and feel, and a few details around timelines. Let's break this down below:

What We Know Now

So, the details that we have now that we did not have before seem to be centered around the aesthetics of the client, and timelines, vague as they may be. For the look and feel of the client, Matthew Landis (@matthewlandis) did a great job capturing some screenshots during the video cast, and you can take a look on his blog: http://windowspbx.blogspot.com/2015/11/take-look-at-totally-new-skype-for.html?showComment=1448046343744#c7496842788115337775. 

One of the cool things that stood out to me is having the control buttons float over the video feed itself, giving more of the screen real estate to the video, without fumbling for the controls. This is an improvement from even the latest and greatest PC client. It seems that Microsoft is really trying to establish that they are making Mac users 1st-class citizens in the Skype for Business arena. This is wise, as they have really begun to alienate many Mac users, and even entire organizations because of subsets of Mac users, simply because this client has been neglected for so long.

Now, for timelines, we have estimates as specific as Quarters, but no more granular than that. The part that I am really disappointed about is that from the rumors I had previously heard, we should have been getting a new Mac client in Q4 2015. It looks like we are looking at next year, though. Check out the below schedule:

• Q1 2016 - Nominations for Preview Program
• Q2 2016 - Technical Preview Program
• Summer 2016 - General Availability. 

So, yeah...it would appear that the general public will not have an updated Mac client for nearly 6 more months. Not the best news ever. Yeah, the client looks like it will be pretty, and it also sounds like a lot of effort is being put into it being very stable, but 6 months is a long time in technology. That also puts on a lot of pressure to make sure they get this right, and that it truly is extremely stable once it is in GA.

What We Still Don't Know

Ok, there is one thing I am going to focus on for this section, and they even touched on it in the episode: Mac client support for PERSISTENT CHAT. Now, to be fair, they did fess up about the fact that this first release of the product will likely NOT provide support for Persistent Chat capabilities. I repeat, do NOT hold your breath hoping for Persistent Chat support in the first release of the Skype for Business Mac client. So, that begs the question, are there at least plans to add it in as an update, much the way they mentioned plans to update the client with Video-Based Screen Sharing at a later date? Of course, there was no comment on that, and so we are still left in the dark about whether that functionality will ever become a reality for Mac users. *SIGH* And this has left a lot of room for the rise of tools like Slack within larger organizations, or other competing products like IRC.

In Conclusion...

At any rate, at least we have some real details on the upcoming client, and it is really slick. Sadly, it is still a ways off, and will not likely deliver on missing features at GA. My thoughts? If Microsoft really wants to prove that Mac users are 1st-Class citizens in the Skype for Business arena, a more feature-consistent experience needs to be delivered across the enterprise, for ALL mainstream OS types. Yes, even a solution for Linux users, even if it is 100% WebRTC-based. Your thoughts?

Stay techy, my friends!

#Skype4BRecap Episode 4 - Call Recording Pro, Cloud PBX E5, and MVP Summit

Happy Friday, everyone! This week, we jumped into a number of awesome topics. First, we started out with a shameless ask on my part for feedback on your experiences with Server-Side Conversation History with Android Lync 2013 app in a Skype for Business Server environment. From there, we dove into the MVP Summit in Seattle, Matthew Landis' announcement for the new Call Recording Pro, new details on the Cloud PBX E5 license that hits on December 1st, and the introduction of Number Porting to the Cloud PBX Preview.

You can check out the video for the rest, but I will briefly touch on the preliminary pricing details that have been making their way through the grape vine:

1. E5 is pegged at $35/month, currently.
• This includes PSTN Conferencing
• This includes Cloud PBX functionality
2. DID and national PSTN Calling functionality comes at an additional $12/month.
3. International PSTN Calling will be another $12/month.
4. For all Cloud PBX functionality (as mentioned above), the grand total for a user per month is $59.

Video Content Links

• Server-Side Conversation History: http://ucmart.uk/2015/06/15/skype-for-business-enable-server-side-conversation-history/
• Call Recording Pro (Thanks Matthew Landis!) http://attendantpro.blogspot.com/2015/10/call-recording-pro-for-skype-for.html
• Skype for Business Bandwidth Calculator: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=19011

Honorable Mentions 

• Todd Klindt (@ToddKlindt)
• Matt Landis (@matthewlandis)
• Martin Boam (@MartinBoam)
• Kevin Kieller (@kkieller)

**CORRECTION** A quick correction. I made the mistake off of a post that I must have half-read that SEFAUtil Done Right and Call Recording Pro were one and the same product. They are indeed separate products. Call Recording Pro was making a debut, while SEFAUtil Done Right is a codename for a project that is still in progress. I apologize, and will do a much better job of thoroughly researching topics that I speak about in the future. Matt was a stand up guy, and even re-tweeted my video post, without calling me out! Another great soul had pity on me, and showed me the error of my ways. Finishing up a Friday strong!

Stay techy, my friends!