About
Pat Richard
I have been working with messaging environments since the MS Mail days, and spend a majority of my time designing and implementing unified communications solutions based around Skype for Business and Teams. Complex migrations and implementations, as well as large-scale upgrades, are my specialty. I have been awarded the Microsoft MVP award more than a dozen times for Lync Server, Skype for Business, Microsoft Teams, and Exchange Server for my contributions to the various communities.
A published author, I continue to be active online, assisting others with SfB/Teams related issues.
Outside of SfB/Teams, I enjoy all things technology. I live in the Southeast part of Michigan, but have traveled extensively for work.
Employment
At this time, I’m not looking for any new employment opportunities.
Consulting
I do independent consulting from time to time. Primarily based in the Greater Detroit, Michigan area. If you have a UC related project (Lync, Skype for Business, Teams, Exchange, etc), information about my services can be found at http://www.innervation.com/.
Social Media & Forums
Check me out on Twitter (@patrichard), LinkedIn, Microsoft. Tons of info at those links. As a general rule, I don’t accept friend or link requests from people I don’t know. Otherwise, the list gets unmanageable. I’m also the moderator of the Exchange and Lync forums at http://www.powershell.org/, and a regular contributor to the Exchange, Lync, and Windows forums at http://www.tek-tips.com, as well as being on their advisory board.
Publications
I’m a principal author for the following Skype for Business related books:
I’m a contributing author on the following Exchange related books:
- Mastering Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 by Jim McBee and David Elfassy
- Microsoft Exchange Server 2007: The Complete Reference by Richard Luckett, William Lefkovics, and Bharat Suneja
I’ve also written articles for other web sites, including Petri IT Knowledgebase.
Podcasts
I am the host of UC Inside Track, an occasional podcast on the Microsoft UC stack.
I was one of two hosts of the popular The UC Architects podcast, a bi-weekly audio podcast on all things Microsoft UC. The podcast included a group of ~15 UC architects including MVPs and MCMs and frequent guests from the industry. We averaged over 10,000 downloads per episode.
I am looking for a Microsoft Exchange Users Group somewhere in Michigan. I have been working with Exchange since version 5.5 (but skipped Exchange 2007). The closest MS Exchange user group I have found on the Internet is in Chicago.
Any ideas?
There used to be one at the Southfield MS offices a while back, but I’m not sure if it still meets there. I know a bunch of people who work there and can ask. I wouldn’t mind seeing something that was UC related, tying Exchange and Lync groups together.
We have some issues with the Polycom CX600 LCD turning white and lines appearing. We believe that an upgrade may or may not solve this issue from all of the blogs we have read. We are currently not sure how to upgrade these phones. We have no problem upgrading the VVX series. We have Polycom CX600 connected to the PC with a user license for Office 365 in the Cloud. Do you have any suggestions on how we can attempt to upgrade these phones without buying 20k in infastructure?
Any insights are greatly appreciated! Thanks for your time in advance,
You have a bad phone. To upgrade all of the phones, see my script at http://www.ehloworld.com/1217
Hi Pat. I’m in abit of a quandry. I’m trying to come up with a PS script to mass enable skype users as meeting rooms by way of csv. So far this is what I have, but i’m not having a lot of success.
Import-Csv C:\PolycomList2.csv | Foreach-Object { Enable-Csmeetingroom -Identity $_.SipAddress -DomainController Contoso.com -RegistrarPool contoso.com
Tony.D.Hart@gmail.com
Hi Pat,
One question man, how to “Run in the Setup Or Remove Lync Server Components section by lync powershell” in skype for business? After changes?
Is corrrect to run the commands bellow?
Disable-CSComputer -Confirm:$false -Verbose -Report
Install-CSDatabase -Confirm:$false -Verbose -LocalDatabases -Report
Enable-CSComputer -Confirm:$false -Verbose
Enable-CSReplica -Verbose -Confirm:$false -Report
I recently read an article that was written last year comparing CS and RBAC roles when administering / engineering a Lync/Skype for Business deployment. This article is a great resource when a deployment is on premises, but what about a purely Office 365 deployment with Exchange on premises and Active Directory being synced to Office 365? I need to provide some sort of justification to management to provide me the appropriate level of access both in Office 365 and on premises. I continue to struggle with the deployment and administrative tasks on a daily basis. What are your thoughts on this? I’ve read MS articles about RBAC and roles in Office 365, but they aren’t real clear on permissions that are necessary to allow an employee to complete their job in an effective manner. I’d also like to add that the permission that I’m concerned about are my permissions and my ability to develop / administer our environment. My permission are currently in a state that is ineffective and hinders me from completing my job in an effective and efficient manner. I am continually having to either elevate my permissions or ask someone for assistance.
Hi Pat. We’re currently using the New-PasswordReminder2.ps1 script to send reminder emails to users via our on-premises hub transport server (Exch2010). We’re experiencing delivery issues to the end-user mailboxes. Are we able to update the script to send these using the O365 SMTP service instead? At the moment the script is set to use the “Setting Variables” of $OWAUrl and $PSEmailServer
Hi,
I’m looking for a way to create Skype for Business (on-premises) meetings with powershel (SfB Management Shell).
We are setting up a Large Meeting server pool and need to manage the meeting booking in an easy way that our Service Desk could manage.
So we are looking for a script to schedule/create a SfB Meeting in that SfB Pool and set the Moderator and Presenter for that meeting.
Is this something You have or can advice us on How to establish?