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ive Communication Server 2005 SP1 extends the Active Directory schema of the user class with additional attributes that define new properties. These properties must be configured to enable users for Live Communications. In addition to being enabled for Live Communications, users can be configured for federation, public IM connectivity, remote access, archiving, and remote call control. Only administrators of the RTCDomainUserAdmins group can configure these settings. These properties are configured using the Active Directory Users and Computers MMC (DSA.MSC) and the Live Communications Server MMC (WRTCSNAP2.MSC) and are scriptable using the Live Communications Server WMI interface. The main difference between the Active Directory Users and Computers MMC and the Live Communications Server MMC is that users can be enabled for Live Communications only from DSA.MSC. Once enabled, they become visible from WRITCSNAP2.MSC.

he Address Book Service is a new feature that was introduced with Live Communications Server 2005 SP1. It was introduced to provide two important functions: to provide global address list information from your Active Directory to Office Communicator 2005 and to perform phone number normalization for Office Communicator telephony integration.

ederation is a feature introduced in Live Communications Server 2005 SP1 that allows users from one organization to communicate with users from another organization. Federated users can view each other’s presence information and initiate instant messages once they mutually add each other to their contact lists. This provides the benefit of not having to use a different IM client to interoperate. Users from different organizations maintain their corporate identity while communicating securely. Federating with other companies assumes that those organizations also have Live Communications Server 2005 SP1 deployed and that their infrastructure is configured for federation.

f you need to provide secure connections to external parties, such as business partners (who you are not federating with), customers, and others, you can now do so without using a separate instant messaging client that does not provide the security or traceability that Live Communications Server 2005 provides. This could be because the instant messaging traffic is effectively in clear text and because conversations cannot be captured in order to meet corporate or legal policies.

t is extremely important that you back up your Live Communications Server environment and that you can restore it if that fateful time ever arrives where you have to restore it because of either data loss or hardware failure, or worse. It is also extremely important that you test those backups—there is nothing worse than having to restore a backup only to find that the backup does not actually work. Now, we’re not suggesting that you perform a restore every day or even every week, but you should perform regular restores to ensure that they are working. And don’t forget to test your restore on a spare server and not on your live production server!

ogging is the process of recording the SIP traffic within a log file. You can then use these logs to produce reports that can help you debug and troubleshoot problems that you might be experiencing in your environment with routing or security. In addition, you can use these logs to provide some patterns of usage for all your users (or even just specific ones if you need) and to provide an audit trail.

ow that you have looked at logging, it’s time to look at archiving. is the process of taking copies of instant message conversations and keeping them for any number of reasons, including auditing conversations, ensuring that corporate policies are maintained, and even complying with regulations (such as HIPPA or Sarbanes-Oxley), depending on where you are in the world and what business your company is in. It is important to note, however, that Live Communicators Server archiving is not certified to meet regulatory auditing requirements—it is merely a tool that an organization can use to help it to meet its requirements. One of the reasons for this is that the archive is not considered to be “tamper-proof,” and as such it might not meet certain compliance requirements. Make sure you completely understand what the requirements are if you have to comply with any regulations.

earning to effectively troubleshoot problems with Live Communications Server 2005 SP1 is important because problems may arise while setting up, configuring, or using the product. As is the case for most products, the large majority of problems often occur during setup and configuration. With a complex system such as Live Communications Server 2005 SP1, isolating the root cause of the problem is difficult and time-consuming without the right tools and expertise. This chapter aims to provide you with guidance on how to troubleshoot a problem with your Live Communications Server infrastructure, and we will point you to tools to assist you in the process.

hen it comes to monitoring Live Communications Servers, Live Communications Server 2005 SP1 provides performance counters and events that can alert the administrators to problems and give information about the health state of the service. Since Live Communications Server 2005 SP1 exposes more than 400 performance counters and more than 400 events, monitoring each of these is unpractical and leads to generating noise that administrators are unable to decipher. A lot of these counters and events were designed to aid programmers in developing the product and server applications. So, which performance counters and events should you monitor? Luckily, the product team at Microsoft has researched the most pertinent performance counters and events of interest to administrators to monitor their servers; we cover them in this chapter.

evelopers can use the software development kit (SDK) to create applications and add-ins for Live Communications Server 2005. Specifically, the Live Communications Server 2005 API suite enables developers to create custom SIP applications.