The next meeting will be held on May 30th from 4-6pm at the Microsoft offices in the Denver Tech Center. We will be celebrating our two year anniversary! Come join us as we discuss Office365, Lync On-premises and physical devices. KEMP Technologies will be sponsoring the meeting and providing food at the conclusion of the meeting. The agenda is as follows: 4:00 - 4:45 – Gayle Giguere: Customer experience with Office 365 for Exchange + Lync On-Premises for Voice 4:45 - 5:15 – Mike Stacy: Voice handset functionality and options with Lync 5:15 - 6:00 – Kemp product overview and... Continue reading

The next meeting will be on February 28th. It will be held at the Polycom office in Westminster. We have a very special guest for February! Microsoft Exchange MVP Jason Sherry will be talking to us about Migrating Exchange 2010 to another Active Directory Forest (without 3rd Party tools) as well as giving an update on Exchange 2013 (co-existence, Cumulative Updates, etc). Please RSVP early so we can ensure we have enough seats. The meeting is from 4-6pm. We will try to end the formal talks by 5:30pm in order to allow for people to network and ask questions on... Continue reading

The next meeting will be on January 31st and will be held at the Microsoft Office's in the Denver Tech Center. This month we will cover Office 365 Unified Communications solutions. The meeting is from 4-6pm. We will try to end the formal talks by 5:30pm in order to allow for people to network and ask questions on any aspect of Microsoft Unified Communications. RSVP Today! The meeting will take place at Microsoft's office, which is located at: 7595 Technology Way Ste 400 Denver, CO 80237 Continue reading

This month we will focus on migration to Lync and Exchange 2013 for our north-side attendees at Polycom’s Westminster office. Agenda: 4:00pm - Welcome and Introductions 4:15-5:30 - Migration to Lync and Exchange 2013 5:30-6pm - Open Discussion and Networking RSVP Today! The meeting will take place at Polycom's office, which is located at: 1765 W 121st Ave Suite 100 Westminster, CO Continue reading

This month we will focus on migration to Lync and Exchange 2013. Agenda: 4:00-5:00 – Overview of Migration to Exchange 2013 5:00-6:00 – Overview of Migration to Lync 2013 RSVP Today! The meeting will take place at Microsoft's Denver office, which is located at: 7595 Technology Way Ste 400 Denver, CO 80237 Continue reading

Join us in September to hear all about What's New in Exchange and Lync 2013! Microsoft released a ton of info in late July and we're going to spend some time looking at it. We are hoping to be able to spend the next few months talking about the exciting new features that are coming in 2013! The meeting will be on September 27th. Agenda: 4:00pm - Welcome and Introductions 4:15-5:30 - What's New In Lync 2013 and Exchange 2013 5:30-6pm - Open Discussion and Networking RSVP Today! The meeting will take place at Polycom's Westminster office, which is located... Continue reading

Join us in August to hear all about What's New in Exchange and Lync 2013! Microsoft released a ton of info in late July and we're going to spend some time looking at it. We are hoping to be able to spend the next few months talking about the exciting new features that are coming in 2013! The August meeting will be on August 30th. Agenda: 4:00pm - Welcome and Introductions 4:15-5:30 - What's New In Lync 2013 and Exchange 2013 5:30-6pm - Open Discussion and Networking RSVP Today! The meeting will take place at Microsoft's office, which is located... Continue reading

Last week there was a question in the Technet forums by an admin who was writing a script to enable new or disabled users for Lync and the admin was trying to figure out how to handle the error that is returned when a Lync user doesn’t exist or is disabled (thread is here). While there are probably a number of ways to do this I was intrigued by how one might find specific errors and act upon them. As you can see in the Technet thread I gave a quick workaround by suggesting the use of -errorvariable to write... Continue reading

Join us in June for a special discussion with members of the System Center Product Team! We will be discussing System Center Operations Manager and how it applies to Exchange and Lync. This is a one time meeting so it will not be repeated up at the Polycom offices. Please mark this down on your calendar and RSVP today! This meeting is sponsered by Uncommon Solutions. They will be presenting on their VisitorLink solution based on Microsoft Lync. You can learn more at VisitorLink.net. In June we will be meeting at the Microsoft offices in the Denver Tech Center. The... Continue reading

Join us in May to hear about Monitoring Lync! We will discuss everything you need to watch on your Lync servers to ensure that your end users are having the best possible experience. This will include a discussion on the Lync Monitoring Server and QoE. In May we will be meeting up north at the Polycom offices in Westminster. The May meeting will be held on May 31st. Agenda: 4:00pm - Welcome and Introductions 4:15-4:45 - Monitoring Lync Server 2010 4:45-5:30pm - How to leverage the Lync Monitoring Server 5:30-6pm - Open Discussion and Networking RSVP Today! The meeting will... Continue reading

Join us in April to hear about Virtualizing UC! We will have speakers talking on best practices when running Exchange and Lync in a virtual environment. We will also have the great folks from Jabra dropping by to talk on their line up of UC Certified devices for Lync! In April we will be meeting down south at the Microsoft offices in the Denver Tech Center. The April meeting will be held on April 26th. Agenda: 4:00pm - Welcome and Introductions 4:15-4:45 - Virtualizing Lync Server 2010 4:45-5:30pm -Virtualizing Exchange Server 2010 5:30-6pm - Open Discussion and Networking RSVP Today!... Continue reading

I noticed this little gem after upgrading my Lync client to CU5. A very brief poll seems to indicate that this is indeed a new feature. Note the small down arrow below the call button. Clicking that expands the view so that you can see the entire out of office (OOF, to current and former Microsoft employees) note, complete with a scroll bar if the message is long. This is a nice little feature that saves me from having to open the contact card to read people’s (sometimes lengthy) out of office notes. Now I just need more people to... Continue reading

About a month ago I acquired a Jabra 9470 headset to test out, and now that I’ve been using it for a while I thought I’d give a quick review for others who may be interested. Prior to receiving the 9470 I had used a 9350 for years and really liked it, so I was looking forward to some of the new features of the 9470. Configuration My configuration on the 9470 includes a USB connection to my docking station and an electronic hook switch (EHS) connection to my Polycom VVX 500 phone, which is also registered to Lync. Note... Continue reading

Join us in March or April to hear about Virtualizing UC! We will have speakers talking on best practices when running Exchange and Lync in a virtual environment. In March we will be meeting up north at the Polycom offices and in April we will give the same talks down south at the Microsoft offices in the Denver Tech Center. The March meeting will be held on March 29th. Agenda: 4:00pm - Welcome and Introductions 4:15-4:45 - Virtualizing Lync Server 2010 4:45-5:30pm -Virtualizing Exchange Server 2010 5:30-6pm - Open Discussion and Networking RSVP Today! The meeting will take place at... Continue reading

We had a great January meeting up on the North side talking about Lync Mobility! In fact it was so great that we've decided to repeat the talks but this time we'll do it down south at the Microsoft offices. We wanted to make sure that our friends on the south end of the Denver area can see the demos, experience the devices, and get in on the discussion. The meeting will be held on Thursday, February 23rd. Agenda: 4:00pm - Welcome and Introductions 4:15-4:45 - Lync Mobility - Usability and Features 4:45-5:30pm - Lync Mobility - Deployment, Configuration, and... Continue reading

I hope everyone had a great Holiday Season! COUCUG will be kicking off the New Year with a special session at the Polycom Solution Center in Westminster. We will be discussing the Lync Mobility bits that were released in the middle of December. Afterwards stick around and hang out with folks and check out Polycom's Lync solutions. Drinks will be provided! The meeting will be held on January 26th. Agenda: 4:00pm - Welcome and Introductions 4:15-4:45 - Lync Mobility - Usability and Features 4:45-5:30pm - Lync Mobility - Deployment, Configuration, and Troubleshooting 5:30-7pm - Polycom Open House and Lync integration... Continue reading

I’ve been fortunate enough to have a Polycom CX7000 available to me for a while and I thought I’d give a quick run-down of the device now that it’s getting close to release. Please note that since the product is not yet released some of the capabilities and/or UI elements may change in the release version. The official CX7000 product page can be found here. The CX7000 is a dedicated room system that is designed to be used in a very similar manner to a traditional video conferencing system, but instead of being based on the traditional H.323 protocol it... Continue reading