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Microsoft Office Live Communication Server Instant Messaging FAQThe things covered in this FAQ relate to Instant messaging functionality in Microsoft Office Live Communication server the official FAQ from Microsoft can be found here. What are the requirements for Live Communication Server? What's the Difference between Exchange IM and Live Communication Server? What authentication can you use? Does Live Communication Server support client connections through a firewall? Can you control Live Communication Server clients using Group policies? Does Outlook support instant messaging? Does Live Communication Server Instant Messaging work on NT4 and 9X machines? Does LCS work with hand-held devices such as Pocket PC and Palm OS? What Protocol and ports does Live Communication Server use? Is there a limit to the number of Contacts a user can have? Is there a limit to the number entries in your Allow / Block list? Where are user contacts stored for Live Communication Server? Can Live Communication Server and Exchange IM Interoperate with each other? How do I migrate users from Exchange IM to Live Communication Server? Can I use the Exchange IM Client Runtime Components? What database does Live Communication Server use? Can you upgrade the LCS database to a centralized Microsoft SQL Server? How does the Live Communication Server user database get populated? Do I need to backup the Live Communication Server Database? Can I view the Live Communication Server Database? Can I Cluster Live Communication Server for high availability? Can I change the Live Communication Server service account? What is the IM Archiving Service? How can I enable users in Live Communication Server programmatically? Do I need to worry about virus's with Live Communication Server ? Where is the Office Live Communication Server Resource Kit Where is the Live Communication Server SDK? Are there any newsgroups for Live Communication Server? How do I enable diagnostic logging with Live Communication Server? GeneralWhat are the requirements for Office Live Communication ServerLive Communication Server can only be installed on Windows 2003 Standard edition server or higher. Active Directory is also required all Active Directory Domain modes from Mixed to Windows Server 2003 are supported. What's the Difference between Exchange IM and Live Communication ServerExchange IM is a first generation corporate Instant messaging solution it provides basic Instant Messaging capabilities using the RVP protocol. Office Live Communication Server is a next generation corporate Instant Messaging Server (or Real Time Communication server) it uses the SIP protocol and can provide an extensible platform for Instant messaging and real time Communication with features such as encryption and archiving . In Exchange IM Communication between clients is peer to peer with the server maintaining presence information in Live Communication Server all Instant messaging Communication is performed though the LCS server (this excludes audio and video streaming which is peer to peer once the connection has been established though the server). Live Communication server stores all user contact information in a centralized database where Exchange IM stores all user contacts on the local machine. To connect to Live Communication server you must use the Windows Messenger Client from version 5.0 onwards. Clients need to support a SIP Communication server. The MSN Messenger (any version) and Windows Messenger Clients below version 5.0 cannot be used to connect to Live Communication server . For more information on the Windows Messenger client the official FAQ can be found here. What authentication can you use? Live Communication Server supports 2 forms of authentication NTLM and Kerberos, Kerberos is the default mode of authentication that is set during installation. Which authentication you use depends on your current Active Directory Mode, If you have a Mixed Mode Windows 2000 domain then you should use NTLM authentication. If your domain in running in Native mode or higher then its best to use Kerberos authentication . Digest authentication is no longer supported as it was under Exchange 2000 IM. Does Live Communication Server support client connections through a firewall? Yes but the server needs to be configured to use NTLM authentication, Kerberos authentication is not supported if a firewall separates a Messenger Client and LCS server. The other thing to keep in mind is that NTLM authentication doesn't work though a proxy. Can you control Live Communications Server clients using Group policies? Yes the live Communication Server CD comes with a adm policy file RTCCLIENT.ADM, this policy file can be used to control the operation and options of the windows messenger client for more details on this see the Live Communication Server Reference Guide. Does Outlook support instant messaging? Outlook versions from 2002 onward support Instant message presence information (you need to have the Windows Messenger client installed on the PC as well for this to work) Does Live Communication Server Instant Messaging work on NT4 and 9X machines? No currently the only client you can use to connect to a Live Communication server is Windows Messenger V 5.0 this client can only be installed on a PC's running Windows 2000 or greater. Does Live Communication Server work with hand-held devices such as Pocket PC and Palm OS? Currently their is no Messenger client that supports connection to LCS available from Pocket PC or Palm OS. Some ISV's are developing products to enable this sort of connectivity one example is Rivotek Gateway which provides this type of functionality. Live Communication Server supports 2 Client connection methods, the first method uses TCP which sends packets as unencrypted clear text over a network. The second method you can use is TLS which provides an encryption path between the client and the home server (using certificates). This however does not guarantee end to end encryption between sender and receiver as the path between the receiver and their home server could be configured to use TCP. So Live Communication Server provides the provision for secure Communications but it depends on the clients configuration at both ends to ensure a secure message path between sender and receiver. What Protocol and ports does Live Communication Server use? To Create and maintain instant message sessions, send and receive instant messages and maintain presence information the SIP protocol and (SIMPLE) Presence Leveraging Extensions are used. SIP is a open standard application layer protocol developed by the IETF for the purpose of establishing, modifying, and terminating multimedia sessions you can find the RFC here. By default SIP over TCP uses port 5060. If your using TLS the default port SIP will use is 5061. For more information on SIP check out the SIP Center. For voice and audio streams the SIP protocol is used to establish the connection and then both the clients talk peer to peer over the RTP protocol. The T.120 protocol is used when users perform data collaboration such as whiteboard sharing and application sharing. In-Band provisioning is the ability for the Windows messenger client to discover its client configuration settings by just entering the sign-in name (or SIP URI) of a user. To enable in-band provisioning you need to setup a DNS SRV record for your SIP domain. Is there a limit to the number of Contacts a user can have? Yes the number of contacts one user can have is limited to 150. Is there a limit to the number entries in your Allow / Block list? Yes the combined number of Allow / Block entries for one user is 300 see this Qbase article for more detail. Where are user contacts stored for Live Communication Server All Live Communication Server contacts and Allow / Block entries are stored in the Live Communication Server MSDE database. This allows a user to logon on to any machine in their domain and see all their contacts and allow /block entries. Can Live Communication Server and Exchange IM Interoperate with each other No Exchange IM uses the RVP protocol for Instant Messaging and Live Communication Server uses the SIP protocol so no communication is supported between servers. Clients using the Windows Messenger Client Version 5.0 and above can connect to a Live Communication Server server and a Exchange IM server at the same time. Running both systems in parallel is one way to support interoperation during a migration. How do I migrate users from Exchange IM to Live Communication Server The first thing you should do is read the Migration guide from Microsoft which you can find here and also lesson 7 of the Live Communication Server course. Microsoft have written migration scripts which can assist in enabling users in Active Directory for Live Communication server and also to migrate User contacts into the LCS database. These scripts have been updated since release so check the Microsoft Office Live Communication Server Support Center for the latest versions. Can I use Exchange IM Client Runtime Components The Exchange IM Client SDK contains 2 client host components that could be used to create simple client based and web based Instant Messaging solutions. These client components use the RVP protocol so they won't work with Live Communication Server. Currently no replacement for these components has been release by Microsoft for LCS. The RTC client SDK provides the functionality for you to build your own client solutions for Live Communication Server. The Windows Messenger API can also be used to build client solutions you can view the documentation for the Windows Messenger API here. What database does Live Communication Server use? Live Communication server (User services Module) uses the Microsoft SQL Server Desktop Engine (MSDE) database to store all user presence information, user contacts and allow / block list for users that are homed on that server. Can you upgrade the Live Communication server database to a centralized Microsoft SQL Server? No Live Communication server uses a named instance of the MSDE engine and there is no provisions to change this configuration How does the Live Communication Server user database get populated? A custom version of the Active Directory Connector (rtcadc.exe) is used to replicate users Active Directory Live Communication Server attributes from Active Directory into the Live Communications Server database. Synchronization is one way only from Active Directory to Live Communication Server and occurs every 60 seconds. The Active Directory Connector operation is not configurable. Do I need to backup the Live Communication Server Database? Yes the LCS database is used to store contact information and allow/block lists for all users that are homed on that server, this information is not replicated anywhere else so it needs to be backed up. To backup the database use the DBBackup tool that's provided with Live Communication Server in the Support directory. For more information see chapter 6 of the Microsoft Office Live Communication Server Course. Can I view the Live Communication Server Database? Although its not recommended you can view the Live Communication Server database by using one of the following two methods. The first method is to use the Osql utility that comes with the MSDE engine see this Qbase article for more details, the second is to install SQL enterprise manager on the Live Communication server. Because LCS uses the MSDE it only accepts local connections. LCS uses a named instance of MSDE the instance name is RTC so to connect to the LCS database using SQL Enterprise manager or OSql use servername\rtc as a connection string. The SIP URI replaces the Exchange Instant messaging alias, its has two main purposes firstly it acts as the sign-on name for a user and its also acts as a locator address (similar to a email address) for a user. The second part of the SIP address refers to the SIP domain that is hosted by Live Communication Server (by default the installation sets this to your active directory DNS domain name). Its recommended that you use the same domain for email and SIP (as this is easy to remember for users). A user can have only one SIP address. Can I Cluster Live Communication Server for high availability? No because Live Communication Server uses the MSDE engine for a database it will not support clustering. Some form of failover can be provided by using front-end LCS servers and Round-Robin DNS. Failover and restore scenarios are covered in the reference guide. Can I change the Live Communication Server service account? This is not currently supported if you need to change the account the LCS Service uses then you need to reinstall the server. (Changing this account name means you would need to reset all the MSDE database permissions the easiest way to do this is backup that current database using the dbbackup tool, reinstall the server then restore the data). What is the IM Archiving Service? The IM Archiving Service allows you to log all Instant message conversations to a SQL database. The IM archiving service requires MSMQ and Microsoft SQL server. How can I enable users in Live Communication Server programmatically? In the Office Live Communication Server resource kit is a script called Rtcusrdo.wsf which is located in the SIP integration folder, this script can be used to enable all users in a OU or from a list supplied in a text file. Do I need to worry about virus's with Live Communication Server? Live Communication Server provides the ability to transfer files as well as just plain text so yes it can be susceptible to virus's. A good desktop virus solution is a must for any business today and should stop the majority of IM based virus's, Vendors are also developing virus solutions to run on Live Communication server currently sybari has a product that can perform scanning at the server level and also provide some form of content filtering and file filtering. Where is the Office Live Communication Server Resource Kit? You can download the Office Live Communication Server resource kit from here Where is the Live Communication Server SDK? You can find the Live Communication Server SDK here You can download the Real time client SDK from here Are there any newsgroups for Live Communication Server? There are 2 LCS newsgroups
news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.livecomm.general How do I enable diagnostic logging with Live Communication Server? Two types of logging can be enabled when your trying to diagnose problems with communication between clients and Live Communication Server. The first and most useful type of logging is client side logging this allows you to see everything from client initiation and authentication to the client conversation with the server. To enable client side logging on the PC you want to enable logging on set the "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Tracing\RTCDLL\EnableFileTracing" registry key to 1 and then restart Windows messenger. A log file is then created in the users %USERPROFILE%\Tracing directory (unless you configure another location). You can also enable protocol logging on Live Communication Server this allows you to log the SIP communication as it passes though the server.. To perform protocol logging with Live Communication Server you need to use the SipLogger.exe from the Live Communication Server resource kit. Ensure your using the right
client you need to be using the Windows Messenger v5.0 or higher Read the latest release notes and reference guide especially the known issues Microsoft Office Live Communication Server Course Microsoft Office Live Communication Server TechNet Resource Center |
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