New OCS 2007 installation

I just completed a new Office Communications Server 2007 installation at work last week and I have to say “Awesome product!”.

After using OCS for a little under a week I have to admit that I can see my desk phone going the way of the dinosaur and Dodo bird. It was a very simple and straight forward install. The one caveat is that you have to pay close attention to the policies that are created on the OCS server after the installation is complete. It took me a bit of hunting around to figure out that the default policy for OCS out of the box has Live Meeting disabled for your clients. Once finding the default policy and updating it we were creating on the fly meetings from Outlook and Office Communicator regularly.

I can see that there is a subset of people who will have a hard time adapting to the new paradigm that OCS brings to the workplace, as I am already having users ask me how to use their phone with OCS meetings, not understanding that when using the audio and video capabilities of your computer there really is no need for using your phone when communicating within our company.

I also must admit that our OCS installation does not connect to our phone system at this time. This is due to limitations of our already in place VOIP system which happens to not be SIP compliant, once that piece is in place, then there truly will be no need for a phone on my desk and I think some people are scared by that idea. Personally, I just want more desktop available to work on.

About me.

Hello all. I thought I would tell you all a little about myself to give you some perspective on what I write and why I write it.

I am an IT Professional who has been working to build Microsoft-centric networks in the SMB market since 1995. I am definitely a Microsoft apologist and I believe that using their products together to form a complete solution is the best way for small to medium businesses to go.

I do alot of reading and writing reviews for a few different publishers, so I will share some of what I find (both good and bad) as I continue blogging also.

Lastly, I am the president of the local Microsoft IT Pro Association here in Tulsa, Oklahoma so I am sure to write about what is happening in the local area as well.

The large majority of what I cover will be Microsoft though since working with their products is what I do both as a job and as a passion.

WordPress vs Live Spaces

Just a little experiment on my part.

I have  blogs on both WordPress and Live Spaces . I’m curious to see which, if either, gets the higher number of hits, as well as higher search results. Once I get a feel for the results I will move to just one blog on a permanent basis.

Tim