Planning Multi-Forest Environments for Hybrid Skype for Business deployments
Understanding how to establish a hybrid connection between Skype for Business on premises and online can be challenging when customers use multiple forests. The Skype for Business product group has worked hard the last couple of months to unblock additional scenarios and make the existing documentation clearer. The authoritative documentation can be found here but we wanted to include a quick summary in this blog article: For either a single user forest or multiple user forest deployment, there must be a single deployment of Skype for Business Server. Lync Server 2010, Lync Server 2013 and Skype for Business Server 2015 are supported in this topology (please note that availability of features depends on server version you are using). Exchange can be deployed on premises only, in hybrid or online only. Exchange Server can be deployed in one or more forests, which may or may not include the forest containing Skype for Business Server. For details on support for and limitations with co-existence between Exchange and Skype for Business in various combinations of on-premises and online, see Feature Support in Plan to integrate Skype for Business and Exchange. Exchange Server 2013 and Exchange Server 2016 are supported in this topology. Cloud PBX is supported in complex forest scenarios (as long as all Cloud PBX requirements are met: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt455212.aspx). We used to state that “central forests” were not supported. Since the definition of central forest was quite ambiguous, we replaced it with the following wording and hope to unlock additional scenarios: When Skype for Business Server is deployed in one forest (a resource forest) but provides functionality to users in one or more other forests (account forests), users in other forests must be represented as disabled user objects in the forest where Skype for Business Server is deployed. An identity management product, such as Microsoft Identity Manager, needs to be deployed and configured to provision and synchronize the users from the account forests into the forest where Skype for Business Server is deployed. Users must be synchronized into the forest hosting Skype for Business server as disabled user objects. They cannot be synchronized as Active Directory contact objects, because Azure Active Directory Connect will not properly sync contacts into Azure AD for use with Skype. Regardless of any multi-forest configuration, the forest hosting Skype for Business server can also provide functionality for any enabled users that exist in the same forest. Call to action Get familiar with the updated TechNet documentation If you are in complex forest scenario and were blocked from Skype for Business Hybrid, reevaluate your situation based on the updated documentation Any questions or feedback? Discuss with us in our Community.Windows Server 2016 support for Skype for Business Server 2015
We are happy to announce that Skype for Business Server 2015 is supported to run on Windows Server 2016 - if you have the May 2017 update (aka CU5) for Skype for Business Server installed. Please refer to the following resources for more information: Our official support article: Supports to use Windows 2016 as the operating system in Skype for Business Server 2015 The Updated TechNet documentation: Operating systems for Skype for Business Server 2015 Our blog article on CU5: Announcing the release of Skype for Business Server Cumulative Update 5 Any questions or comments? Please let us know in our community! This post is brought to you by Skype Academy. Visit Skype Academy for technical trainings and readiness around the Skype Operations Framework.Welcome to the new Skype Academy page
When we started to provide technical and Skype Operations Framework (SOF) readiness training through Skype Academy, we only had a few Readiness sessions available. But over the last year, the number of training materials grew substantially, so we decided to add a few new features to Skype Academy to give our customers and partners a better learning experience, including personalized training plans, the ability to add/remove training assets to your plan, and the ability the track the progress of your learning path. Personalized training plans If you are interested to learn about Skype for Business, you might wonder where to start: This is where My Plan will help you. When you navigate to Skype Academy, you will now be asked for your “Learning Preferences” – the areas you are interested in – and based on your selections, you will receive a customized training plan showing only the training assets which specifically meet your needs. Browse the full training catalog While it is great to have a customized training plan, you can still browse the full training catalogue. In the Search options, you can search training titles and descriptions or, if you don’t provide any search terms, just see all available training. Add and remove trainings to your plan As described above, your personal training plan is driven by your learning preferences. However, you can manually add or remove trainings if you feel your learning needs are different. You can remove training material directly from My Plan and add training in the Search view. Track your training progress Ever lose sight of which training materials you've already completed? The new Skype Academy allows you to track the training you have already completed. With this feature, you always know which training material have not yet been completed. In addition, we have now added an overall progress bar to show you what percentage of your training plan you have completed. Rate our training Have feedback on our training material? For us to improve our training, we need your feedback on each training asset. Click on the Rate it link beside each asset and rate the quality of our training on a scale from 0 to 10. We encourage you to provide additional (written) feedback to helps us further understand how we can improve our training. Call to action Go to Skype Academy and test the new features. Tell your peers. Share your feedback. Please let us know what you think about the changes. Is this useful? Is something missing? What are your challenges when getting ready on Skype for Business? Feel free to add ideas to our feedback site or discuss with us in the forums.Meeting Migration Service training now available!
We’ve just published the latest Skype Academy training on Meeting Migration Service (MMS). If you want to learn about what Meeting Migration Service is, how to use it and what impact it has on users, check out the latest Skype Academy training by Nick Smith (TEAMS), Principal Program Manager on the Microsoft Customer and Deployment team. Meeting Migration Service automatically sends meeting updates to all meeting invitees when an admin moves the user who is hosting the meeting from on-premises to online or when those users are enabled for Cloud PSTN Conferencing. The new service removes the need for users to run the Meeting Migration tool locally to send meeting updates for all future meetings. Watch the readiness presentation to learn more about the scenarios when the Meeting Migration Service is invoked, when the Meeting Migration Tool is still required, how to plan for the best user experience, and reporting capabilities to report on the result of Meeting Migration Service processing. Resources Training recording: http://aka.ms/sa-mms Pptx deck: Attached to this blog Support information on Office.com: Setting up the Meeting Migration Service (MMS) Listen to Dan Strader and nomorephones talking about MMS and why it is important for the upcoming regional hosted meetings in the SfB Video Broadcast: Ep. 30 Regionally Hosted Meetings and Meeting Migration Service To learn more about migrating your on-premises environment to Skype for Business Online, please refer to our Cloud Migration customer journey in the Skype Operations Framework Looking for more technical training? Please visit Skype AcademyCall Queues and Auto Attendant trainings updated
Note: Please note that Call Queues and Auto Attendant got another update. For the latest information see http://aka.ms/sa-aacq-blog As announced in last week's blog post What's new for Auto Attendants and Call Queues in July 2017? Call Queues and Auto Attendant got updated with new features and improvements. Korneel Bullens updated the Skype Academy training for Call Queues and Auto Attendant with this latest content. If you have already watched the previous versions of the trainings, you probably want to just review the blog article mentioned above, but if you have not seen the sessions yet, you can leverage them to learn all you need to know about these Cloud PBX features. Please let us know if you have any questions or feedback in the community. Resources: Call queues training Auto Attendant training SOF Auto Attendant and Call Queues training Pptx decks: Attached to this blog (removed outdated content) Looking for more technical training? Please visit Skype Academy This post is brought to you by Skype Academy. Visit Skype Academy for technical trainings and readiness around the Skype Operations Framework.Skype for Business on Mac Insider: File Transfer
Update: File Transfer for users homed on Office 365 has been released. For more details see this article: Skype for Business on Mac April update is here - and File Sharing during chat for Office 365 users! File transfer is coming to Skype for Business on Mac! While the general availability is still a few weeks out, you can access it now via the Office Insider program for Mac. Note: Initially this will be available only for users homed in Skype for Business Online. What is Office Insider The Office Insider program for Mac allows users to install early builds of upcoming Office and Skype for Business on Mac releases to test new features before other they will be released publicly. For more details see this blog article: How to access early Skype for Business on Mac versions. File Transfer File Transfer between two users – without having to join a meeting – has now been added to the latest Insider versions (both fast and slow). You will now be able to send files from one client to another. This has been one of the most requested features and we are happy to add it to the feature set of Skype for Business for Mac. We are continuing to add additional features to the client so please ensure to stay tuned for more! Note: Currently you will be able to send only one File in any conversation. We are working to get this resolved. Call to Action Read How to access early Skype for Business on Mac versions Deploy Office Insider on some test machines Share Files between the test machines and enjoy this new functionality If you have any comments or questions, feel free to post in our CommunitySimplified port requirements for Skype for Business Online
Note: This article applies only to Office 365 Worldwide (including Government Community Cloud). For guidance on Office 365 operated by 21 Vianet, Office 365 Germany, Office 365 U.S. Government DoD or Office 365 U.S. Government GCC High click on the respective links. We are happy to announce that the 50,000-59,999 port range (UDP and TCP) is no longer a requirement for Skype for Business endpoints to communicate with Skype for Business Online. Earlier this year we talked about making simplification for network connectivity for Skype for Business Online (see blog article here) and we recently updated our guidance and removed the mentioned port range as a requirement: Office 365 URLs and IP address ranges So which ports are required for clients? All clients need to be able to directly connect to Skype for Business Online on the following destination ports: (the IP addresses and FQDNs can be found in the Office 365 URLs and IP address ranges) TCP 80, 443 UDP 3478, 3479, 3480, 3481 Optional: UDP/TCP 50,000-59,999 Is there a minimum client version required to benefit from the port changes? This change applies to all clients supported against Skype for Business Online. No clients are excluded and there are no specific minimum version required (although we always recommend to run the latest version). Why are these ports not required anymore? To answer this question, it is important to understand first how the 50,000-59,999 ports were used in the first place. (To understand all the details of their purpose, we recommend watching Troubleshoot media flows in Skype for Business across online, server and hybrid.) Let's have the following example: User A wants to call User B For the sake of the example, the direct connection between User A and User B is blocked (e.g. User and User B are at different branch offices behind firewalls), so the media traffic cannot go directly peer to peer and needs to flow via Skype for Business Online There are now the following possible media paths The 50,000-59,999 port range can be leveraged to include only a single Relay Server in the media path Without the 50,000-59,999 port range, the traffic needs to travel via two Relay Server. As you can see, closing the 50,000-59,999 port range will force the traffic to travel via an additional hop. While logic tells us that usually we want to avoid additional hops under all circumstances, the analysis on call quality data has shown us, that this additional hop does not significantly affect call quality - since both these Relay Servers are homed on the Microsoft Network, all traffic between the Relay Servers is sent over a highly reliable pipe designed for real-time communication. Our organization has these ports open, should we close them? Having the 50,000-59,999 port range open can still have (some) benefits when it comes to call setup times and under some circumstances on call quality. However in our data analysis and pilot deployments with some customers these differences did not show significance. If you have the ports open today, it makes sense to leave them open. What does this change for hybrid between Skype for Business Server and Skype for Business Online? This change only applies to users who are homed in Skype for Business Online. If you have an on-premises deployment of Skype for Business, the requirements for your Edge Server to communicate to Skype for Business Online remain unchanged (and also for any Federation scenarios including Skype for Business on-premises). The A/V Edge Server in your environment will need to be configured liked this. Please note that the Source Port is only relevant, if your firewall requires a source port to be specified (and a lot of firewalls do not require this setting): Source IP Destination IP Source Port Destination Port A/V Edge service interface Any UDP 3478 UDP 3478 A/V Edge service interface Any TCP 50,000-59,999 TCP 443 Any A/V Edge service interface Any UDP 3478 Any A/V Edge service interface Any TCP 443 Full requirements for Skype for Business Edge Server can be found here: Edge Server environmental requirements in Skype for Business Server 2015. Does this change anything for Cloud Connector Edition? No, the requirements for Cloud Connector Edition (see Plan for Skype for Business Cloud Connector Edition) remain unchanged. Call to Action Celebrate about the simplified port requirements Update any design templates you might have For future deployments, open only TCP 80, 443 and UDP 3478, 3479, 3480, 3481 per new guideline (and, optionally, 50,000-59,999 UDP and TCP) If you have any questions or comments, please let us know in the community This post is brought to you by Skype Academy. Visit Skype Academy for technical trainings and readiness around the Skype Operations Framework.Skype Room Systems v2 readiness training now available!
We’ve just published the latest Skype Academy training on Skype Room Systems v2. If you want to learn about what’s new with Skype Room Systems, how to plan for it, and how to deploy, check out the latest Skype Academy training delivered by Nick Smith (TEAMS), Principal Program Manager on the Microsoft Customer Experience and Deployment team. Skype Room Systems v2, formally known as ‘Project Rigel’, enables existing conference rooms with a projector or monitor to easily be turned into Skype for Business meeting rooms, making it a very cost-effective solution for conferencing. The new architecture of the Skype Room Systems v2 application, running on top of a Windows 10 machine, simplifies the management of Skype Room Systems v2 deployments by allowing IT to use existing tools and processes to keep devices up-to-date and secure. Watch the readiness presentation to learn more about the range of Skype Room Systems devices, when to deploy Skype Room Systems versus other Skype meeting devices, and planning and deployment considerations required for device availability. Resources: Training recording: http://aka.ms/sa-srsv2 Support information on Office.com for Using Skype Room Systems v2 Listen to Ilya Bukshteyn’s Microsoft Ignite presentation on Next Generation Skype Room Systems Watch Angela Donohue’s session: Skype for Business Video Broadcast: Episode 28 Logitech and Skype Room Systems Looking for more technical training? Please visit Skype Academy
