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Consider this a diary or blog without feedback.
The structure, or lack of, will be chronological. At the start
of this page, I'm well into the process of setting up UM, but far
from finished. This could be just a series of notes, for my
own benefit, or something of a road map for someone on the same
journey.
The release of Lync Server 2010 raised my interest
over the threshold of inaction and started the process. The
environment is a lab setup. This is a "side" project on a
personal budget. Exchange 2010 is in place with individual
servers for each role, except UM. The unstated goal is to
implement Lync with most features, including Enterprise Voice, and
enable the Exchange UM features.
My background... I've had a lot of experience
with Microsoft messaging, from Microsoft Mail 3.0 to Exchange 2010.
In a pre-IT life, I was also a telephone tech. Not as a tech,
but a user, I can remember rotary dial telephones. As a bit of
nostalgia, on one installation I replaced a rotary stepper relay
switch with an electronic key system. Everyone should have the
experience of standing in the switch room, yes it is a room, of good
size, filled with thousands of open rotary relays chattering away as
each digit of a rotary dial phone clicks off a digit. I also
worked on some Siemens and Northern Telecom PBXs. And we
programmed systems with a bank of toggle switches/buttons and a
memory position counter; and later with an exotic device, the TI
Silent 700 terminal. Enough reminiscing. That should
give some foundation for telephony, but more on that later.
I had spent a little time with Lync, as a Release
Candidate, configured for IM and presence only. On
release, I reinstalled the gold code, added conferencing and began
looking at voice. The platform is a Standard Edition Server
implementation with all roles on a single server.
AV Device
Planning to use the Lync Server Client as the
endpoint, so I needed something to talk/listen with. I had
a box of old audio-only headsets and a few cheap desktop
microphones that could be used with a sound card.
Workstations haves speakers. One of the cameras has a
built-in mic. But go with a potentially portable setup, I
decided to start one station with a USB headset-mic. There
is a Lync device compatibility page,
available here, listing several. I looked at those.
Apparently Logitech has not submitted devices for testing.
Checking out a local retail outlet, I found economical units
from Logitech that seemed to fit the bill, and ended up
selecting a Microsoft-labeled device (not on the compatibility
list) that touted OCS compatibility. It has volume
and call controls on the cable. It works well, my only
complaint is that the headband is hard plastic. A little
cushion would be nice for us bald guys...
Gateway Device
Now this is a big deal. MS has a
compatibility list for this too,
available here. But since I'm not putting together a
system for an enterprise, or even medium-sized business, the
devices on the list were overkill in capacity and perhaps more
importantly, in price. I did the obligatory Internet
search for solutions. The minimal criteria were the
ability to connect a single POTS line and low cost. I
found a Linksys device, SPA3102 and Grandstream device, HT-503,
in the sub-$100 range. The HT-503 is a road warrior,
pocket-sized, device for softphone/PC access to POTS.
Supportability is an issue, and I have scars to
prove it, so I floated a question to the Lync forum. I
asked specifically about the two devices mentioned because I had
seen information about configuring them with Asterisk and 3CX
systems. The only positive response was about the
AudioCodes MediaPack product family. Apparently MS uses
these for their demo/training systems. In a presales
discussion with AudioCodes, they claimed MS has standardized on
their larger systems, Mediant family, for in-house use.
MediaPack family shares software with Mediant family.
I selected the MP-114, a device with 2 FXS and 2
FXO ports; 2 telephone devices and lines, respectively.
AudioCodes told me, in a presales call, I needed version 6.X
firmware to work with Lync Server. The device came with
version 5.6.X. Update was straightforward after another
call to AudioCodes. Their website has a link to
"Documentation and Software" as you would expect, but the
software is not visible until after you have registered yourself
and your product and been granted access to software. Here
is more information on setting
up the device to work with Lync...
Lync Server
As mentioned, the latest incarnation of the MS
platform was the final nudge to get me into this. This is
the Geek corner, so I won't go on about the benefits of
presence, IM, conferencing, etc. but focus on the voice
component. The starting point for this is a functional
Lync Server for IM/presence. The rest of the journey to
functional Enterprise Voice is chronicled in the
Lync Server configuration page...
Exchange Server
For this installation, enabling the Exchange
auto-attendant and voicemail storage was the last piece of the
puzzle. Here is the information on
Exchange Server configuration...
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