Issue With Provisioning Skype for Business Online DNS Records in Office 365 for Recycled Domain

Happy Weekend, UC Geeks!

So, I was inspired to write a little blog post based on some odd behavior that I ran into the other day in Office 365 when trying to allow the Domain Management wizard to auto-create my required DNS records for Skype for Business Online. Yeah, sure, I could have just gone into GoDaddy's DNS tool (yes, I use GoDaddy for domain registration and DNS management - let the hazing begin!), but what is the fun in that when Office 365 has a handy little wizard for taking care of those DNS records for you?

The Scenario

Alright, in this particular Office 365 tenant, I have my domain, 's4blab.org', added in and verified. This domain was added in previously for other testing, but in the previous tests, the domain was used in a Hybrid environment, so I also used the domain name in my on-prem Skype for Business deployment as well. As such, my DNS records originally pointed to my on-prem Edge and Reverse Proxy servers. Savvy?

Now, that on-prem environment is long-since gone, but the Office 365 tenant has been left up, and therefore the domain was still verified and ready for use. I still had Skype for Business Online (Plan 2) licenses purchased. That meant that it was now time to make sure everything looked OK with the domain itself (DNS, etc.) within Office 365 so that I could start creating user accounts and assigning licenses.

To verify I was good to go, I first logged into the Office 365 Admin Center Preview (yeah, I am using the Preview interface cause I am awesome like that), hovered over the Settings menu item in the left-hand navigation, and then clicked Domains:

This brought me to my Domains page. Here we can see that I only have the Default 'onmicrosoft.com' domain, and my custom 's4blab.org' domain. Clearly the domain is not ready for production. It has a warning icon beside the domain name, and tells us that there are "Possible Service Issues":

Clicking on the domain itself brings up another modal screen that shows us that there are DNS errors. It then proceeds to highlight all of the required DNS records for the various Office 365 services that can be used in our tenant. Next I click on View Errors:

The next screen shows us what the expected CNAME Records are, compared with the Current values, which are empty. Reading the text at the top of this screen we can already see that Office 365 recognizes GoDaddy as the location of our authoritative DNS zone file for s4blab.org. We can also see that it lets us know that we can use that handy little Fix My Records button up top instead of going to GoDaddy and manually fixing the records. Sure, why not?!

Once we click the Fix My Records button, another pop-up window appears asking us to input our credentials. In my case, this is my GoDaddy credentials.

Upon successfully authenticating at the above screen, you are now presented with another screen in which you must click Accept, authorizing Office 365 to make DNS changes to your domain in the DNS zone file hosted at GoDaddy. Of course, we click Accept here:

Once we click Accept, this GoDaddy pop-up disappears, and we now see a grey box across the screen showing us that our DNS records are being configured:

The Problem

So, what's the problem? Normally, if this domain had not ever been used for another Skype for Business (or Lync) deployment before, your records would simply be created, and you would be on about your business! Remember though, I had used this domain for an on-prem Skype for Business Server 2015 deployment previously. So, at this stage in the game, that Configuring your DNS records... box just kept spinning, never completing. After about a few minutes I figured something was wrong.

My next step was to log into my GoDaddy portal and navigate to the 's4blab.org' DNS zone file. The Office 365 Domain Management wizard claimed that the CNAME records flat-out did not exist. Looking at my CNAME record section, I can see that this was indeed the case: no 'SIP' or 'Lyncdiscover' records were present:

Alright, so why won't the wizard just create the records and finish. Aha! My eyes glance up at the A Records above, and that's when I see the problem: The 'SIP' and 'Lyncdiscover' records did exist...as A Records!

Yes, I blotted out the IP addresses of the other A Records to protect the identities of the Innocent. And I put in fake IPs (non-routable on the internet) for these records. After all, I am just reproducing the problem for demonstration purposes!

In case DNS is not your bread and butter and you are wondering why this is a problem since the CNAMEs did not exist, and Office 365 was trying to create the CNAMEs instead of A Records, you cannot have similarly named records in the same DNS zone, regardless of record type. Therefore, I cannot have a 'SIP' A Record, and a 'SIP' CNAME. A conflict is detected on GoDaddy's end, and that is why the wizard never finishes in Office 365. It knows there is a problem, but has not been coded to properly display the problem to the Office 365 admin user.

The Solution

Now I know what needs to be done. First, as I am no longer using those A Records any longer, I delete both the 'SIP' and 'Lyncdiscover' A Records from my GoDaddy DNS zone file. Don't forget to click on Save Changes!

Perfect, now the A Records section does not reflect the records anymore:

However, going back into Office 365, I see that the grey bar is still present, and it still shows that it is trying to Configure the DNS records. Finally, I decide to try it from scratch. I click on the Fix My Records button again, and I am once again prompted to input my GoDaddy credentials:

After another successful authentication, click on Accept again, and like before, the GoDaddy window disappears. This time, however, we have much different results! We VERY briefly see the grey 'Configuring' bar, but then it disappears and we see a beautiful green bar showing us that the records have been created successfully! We can even see that the yellow warning icon has disappeared from beside our domain name:

Going over to our GoDaddy portal, we can see that the new CNAME Records are indeed created:

And there you have it, folks! The Domain Management wizard within Office 365 is quite the wonderful tool, making DNS management a walk in the park for admins across the world! However, if you have used your domain in a previous Skype for Business deployment and did not properly clean up your DNS zone file afterwards, the Office 365 wizard will not ever finish, but also won't tell you what the problem is. Now, thanks to my bumbling lab work, you know why!

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!

A New Year, and A New Journey

I know this is severely belated, but Happy New Year, all! While this blog post serves as my inaugural 2016 blog post, it is more of a personal announcement post than a technical-awesomeness post.

A new year often brings new beginnings, or at least new sets of goals (that usually fall by the wayside after a week or two). For me, there is a little bit of both. I won't bore you with any goals of achieving washboard abs or learning to speak conversational French (I can just use Skype Translator, after all!), but I will highlight some employment news, and talk about my some Skype for Business community-related topics.

One Chapter Closes...

Tomorrow, Friday, the 22nd of January, is my last day as a "Racker". Yes, after nearly 4 years at Rackspace, I am moving on. As goes the cliche, it is very bittersweet. While I am very excited about the adventure that lies ahead of me in my new position, and the next step in my career, Rackspace has been a phenomenal company to work for. Racker's are truly like an extension of family (the good kind, lol), and the culture is the envy of many companies.

I would like to thank Rackspace, my fellow Rackers, and especially my incredible managers, for all the years of opportunity to be a part of something unique and amazing. Rackspace prides itself on its Fanatical Support, and I truly believe it has built a solid reputation around this principle in the hosting industry. I am proud to have been a part of that!

Another Chapter Begins

So, what's next? This Monday, January 25th, will be my first day as a Unified Communications Architect at Deloitte Services, LP. I could not be more excited and grateful for this opportunity, and am really looking forward to getting oriented, meeting my team, and digging into some awesome UC deployments! I believe this role will bring tremendous opportunity to grow my knowledge and skill sets, and to give me exposure to a plethora of new (to me) configurations that I have been eager to sink my teeth into.

As you can imagine, I have been busy winding things down at Rackspace, and getting all my ducks in a row for starting at Deloitte, and as a result this blog has been a little quiet over the last month (que the cricket noise). While I am sure that I will remain quite busy in the coming months as I get settled into my new role and start taking on various responsibilities and tasks, I will try to do better at keeping up with fresh content and how-to posts here.

What else is new?

So, aside from a new job, what else have I been up to?

#Skype4BRecap Episodes

While the blog has been fairly quiet, I have managed to keep up with my weekly #Skype4BRecap episodes. I have really begun to enjoy doing these episodes, and while viewership is not exactly in the "viral" category, I fully intend to keep these up. However, I may end up shifting recording to Thursday nights. As the show is not being done in a "live broadcast" format yet, this does not really impact much (unless big news gets delivered to the community first thing Friday morning!). If you have not see these, check them out on my YouTube channel, and don't forget to Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKUU9Qm3DxJepggtAaO3q3w

My eBook: Skype for Business Hybrid Handbook, Version 1.2

When I released my FREE eBook on December 1st last year, it was pretty well received, but there was some work to be done. Thanks to some awesome feedback from various individuals in the community, I was able to update a chapter on User Management with accurate information and more detailed procedures, including new screenshots. I also update the few other areas in the book to reflect current information (Office 365 changes A LOT!).

About a week ago I released a newly updated version of the book, Version 1.2. This version replaced the available download on the Technet Gallery. I was quite blown away by the level of support I got from the community on this follow-up release. You all Shared, Re-Tweeted, and "Liked" the heck out the links to the Download page, and as of right now, I am just under 2,000 downloads! THANK YOU ALL! I would like to give a special Thank You to Fabrizio Volpe, Office Servers and Services MVP, for your kind blog review of the book. 

If you are interested in the downloading a copy yourself, you can grab it FREE here: https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Skype-for-Business-Hybrid-9218205e.

To read Fabrizio's review, check out the post here: http://www.absoluteuc.org/reading-the-skype-for-business-server-2015-hybrid-handbook.

Something's Cooking in the Kitchen...

I am also working on a little something-something that I will be sharing soon, once I get the details figured out. About this initiative:

1. It will be video in nature
2. My hat will likely be present
3. And there will be relief from concentrated screen time on my ugly mug 

But that's all I'm saying for now! Stay tuned...

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!