Important Update about Microsoft Office Live Meeting
If your company is using Office Live Meeting, we have some important news to share with you. We’ve been working hard to get Skype for Business and Skype Meeting Broadcast ready with new conversation and meeting features, so we’re inviting you to begin the migration from Live Meeting to Skype for Business. We encourage you to begin the move from Live Meeting to Skype for Business as quickly as possible, completing the migration no later than December 31, 2017, at which time the existing Live Meeting service will be fully shut down.Simplified 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.Live demo of VMware VDI running Skype! See us on Friday 6/23 @ 9 AM PT
Hopefully you are aware that Skype Marketing does a broadcast every 2 weeks on product topics. We have a great one coming up! Recently VMware announced here on Technical Communities the general availability of their VDI solution. Please join us Friday 6/23 - 9 AM PT at http://aka.ms/sfbcast as I chat with Tony Huynh from VMware to learn more about their approach and see a live demo. Gotta love the live demo as it is like tight roping walking without a net. Toward the end if time permits we will try to answer the best questions LIVE from the Q&A and maybe even hear what Tony has in store next for SfB customers. Looking forward to seeing (or actually, you seeing us) there!Now Available – Auto Attendant and Call Queues for Skype for Business Cloud PBX in Office 365
Customers around the world are replacing their traditional phone systems with our modern voice solution delivered in Office 365 with Skype for Business Online. Skype for Business Online provides end-users the ability to make and receive business calls in the office, at home and on the road using their phone, PC, or mobile device. As part of Office 365, we are able to innovate rapidly to deliver new capabilities to customers without the need to build out new servers or install software updates. This week at Enterprise Connect, we announced exciting new capabilities that are now available for our cloud voice customers. Generally grouped under the category of “media services”, these new features operate completely out of Office 365 and provide new experiences for the management of phone calls, from answering to call treatment to queueing to routing. What it means is that Office 365 customers everywhere now have an option for a truly powerful set of communications capabilities all driven out of the cloud. Auto Attendant provides an automated system to answer inbound phone calls to a company, play prompts to interact with the caller and determine the destination of the call. Prompts can be made from uploaded pre-recorded material or using text-to-speech in 27 languages while replies from callers can be captured using DTMF (touchtone) or speech recognition in 14 languages. Callers can speak the name of an end-user in the tenant directory to be routed directly to that person or they can be presented with a customized menu to support routing to different departments. Auto Attendant Call Queues implement an automated distribution system for calls that includes playing licensed music on hold for the caller and matching the caller with an available agent. Custom music on hold and custom prompts can also be uploaded to Office 365 for use with a customer’s Call Queue. Agents can be quickly configured for handing calls from a queue by using a simple distribution list, with calls routed in parallel to all agents who are signed in and configured to handle calls from the queue. Call Queues Both Auto Attendants and Call Queues are managed from Office 365 and allow customers to have powerful call management functionality homed completely out of the cloud. To support this capability, customers can acquire both toll and toll-free phone numbers from over 90 countries around the world, all without additional subscription cost. The system administrator then simply associates the numbers to the Auto Attendants and Call Queues directly from the Office 365 Admin Center or automates the process through PowerShell scripting. One of our first partners to take advantage of this new functionality with Skype for Business Online is Enghouse Interactive with their new attendant console. Utilizing the Skype for Business Client SDK, Auto Attendant, and Call Queues, their TouchPoint Attendant solution natively integrates into Microsoft’s Skype for Business Online and Office 365. Want to learn more? Check out the new documentation for Auto Attendant and Call Queues to learn more about these key enhancements. Sean Wilson & Marina Kolomiets recorded a broadcast on 4/28 on the topic, here. With these new capabilities, now is the time to upgrade your legacy phone systems and/or to start with new users in the cloud. If you aren’t using our cloud voice solution, you can upgrade your existing Office 365 subscriptions to Office 365 Enterprise E5, add Cloud PBX to any other Office 365 Enterprise plan, or you can get your own tenant with Cloud PBX at http://aka.ms/e5trial.
