One of These Things is Not Like the Others: Challenge 3
Those of us here at the Lync Server PowerShell blog pride ourselves on our modesty; of course, it's easy to be modest when you've never actually done anything. But those of you who entered last week's One of These Things is Not Like the Others challenge? Well, you guys have redefined the word modesty . After all, a good many of the submissions started off similar to this one:
"This was really hard for me. I'm, really not sure now."
And yet, almost all of them concluded something like this:
"I vote for New-CsUnassignedNumber."
In other words, although many of you claimed not to know the answer, everyone who submitted an entry got it right. You guys aren't giving yourselves enough credit: you really know your Lync Server PowerShell!
Note . Unless, of course, you're cheating. After all, there are plenty of sites on the Web where you can purchase prewritten term papers; could there be similar sites where you can purchase the answers to the weekly Lync Server PowerShell Challenge? If not, how much would you be willing to pay for an answer if such a site did exist?
Oh, no reason. Just wondering ….
If you've spent the past week trapped on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago , let's take a moment to review last week's challenge. Last week we presented you with the following four cmdlets, and asked you to tell us which one is not like the others:
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New-CsDialInConferencingAccessNumber
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New-CsExUmContact
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New-CsCommonAreaPhone
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New-CsUnassignedNumber
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As we've already noted, the correct answer (at least in our opinion) is New-CsUnassignedNumber . Why? Let's let “ewright19” explain it for us:
· New-CsDialInConferencingNumber creates a new access number and is scoped to the site where the contact object’s home pool is located.
· New-CsExUmContact creates a new auto attendant or subscriber access contact for Exchange UM.
· New-CsCommonAreaPhone creates a new common area phone that can be managed by using Microsoft Lync Server 2010
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New-CsUnassignedNumber creates a new range of unassigned numbers and the routing rules that apply to the numbers that have been assigned to an organization but not users or phones.
Therefore, New-CsUnassignedNumber is different. It is the only one that does not create an Active Directory Object.
We couldn't have said it better ourselves … which, of course, is why we let “ewright19” say it for us: New-CsUnassignedNumber is the only cmdlet in the set that does not create a contact object in Active Directory. As many of you pointed out, New-CsUnassignedNumber can optionally reference a contact object. But that's a little different than actually creating a contact object that is SIP-enabled and ready to be used by Lync Server.
But wait: there's more. As Matt S. points out, New-CsUnassignedNumber is global only; you can't create separate sets of unassigned numbers at the site or service scope. That's not the case with the other three cmdlets in the set. Nice job, Matt; that slipped right past us. Also, Thomas L. noted that New-CsUnassignedNumber is the only one in the set which doesn't include the PassThru parameter. Nice observation, Thomas. And imagine that: someone figuring out something that the Lync Server PowerShell blog writers didn't figure out first? What do you think the odds of that happening are?
Note . Yes: pretty darn good.
But that was then, and this is now. That means it's time to forget Challenge 3 and move on to Challenge 4 , which is waiting for you this very second. Feel free to play along, and, remember, satisfaction guaranteed, or your money back.
