Description

One of the really cool features of Lync Server 2013 is the Lync Room System. LRS is comprised of a single or dual screen system, video camera, and control unit. This system provides for a rich conferencing experience by providing HD video, touch screens with white-boarding, audio & video inputs, and more. For more information on Lync Room system, see the Product Group’s blog post. To see the systems optimized for Lync, see the catalog.

Deploying a Lync Room System involves several steps, and is outlined (albeit poorly) in the LRS Deployment Guide. I say poorly because from a PowerShell perspective, the 10 steps outlined can be combined down to about 6. Some are Exchange related, some are Active Directory related, and some are Lync related.

What I’ve done is to automate & streamline the process, add a ton of error checking, optimization, and validation. Instead of picking an Exchange server, the script will automatically find and connect to Exchange. It then performs the following tasks:

1. Create an Exchange mailbox configured as a room resource. Additionally, the description is defined, and the company name on the account is configured (see https://www.ucunleashed.com/2266 for why this is important). The room account is enabled. You’re prompted for a password for the account, and that password must conform to the organizations’ password policy for complexity. If the mailbox already exists, which would be common in most scenarios, the script will handle it gracefully, ensuring it’s configured properly.
2. The mailtip for the account is defined. It merely reminds users to make meeting requests a Lync meeting.
3. Set calendar processing to AutoAccept so that when the room account is added to meetings, it will automatically accept the request.
4. The AD account is enabled
5. The Lync Meeting room is created, and uses the email address for the SIP address. This is important to avoid Exchange Web Services (EWS) issues.
6. If a LineURI is defined, the meeting room is enterprise voice enabled. LineURI should be specified in E.164 format.

Any other configuration, such as conferencing policies, etc., can be set after the script runs. I’ve used this script to deploy a 70″ dual display SMART Room System.

See the assumptions section below for more info.

Syntax

New-CsLyncRoomSystem.ps1 [[-Alias] ] [[-Name] ] [[-UPN] ] [[-SamAccountName] ] [[-RegistrarPool] ] [[-LineURI] ] [[-CompanyName] ] [[-ResponseText] ] [[-ResourceCapacity] ] [-DeleteSubject ] [[-EnableResponseDetails] ] [-WhatIf ] [-Confirm ] []

example

New-CsLyncRoomSystem.ps1 -Alias nycconfroom -Name "New York City Conference Room" -Upn "nycconfroom@contoso.com" -RegistrarPool "frontendpool.contoso.com"

The SamAccountName only needs to specified if it needs to be different than the alias.

Installation

Execution Policy: Third-party PowerShell scripts may require that the PowerShell Execution Policy be set to either AllSigned, RemoteSigned, or Unrestricted. The default is Restricted, which prevents scripts – even code signed scripts – from running. For more information about setting your Execution Policy, see Using the Set-ExecutionPolicy Cmdlet.

Donations

I’ve never been one to really solicit donations for my work. My offerings are created because *I* need to solve a problem, and once I do, it makes sense to offer the results of my work to the public. I mean, let’s face it: I can’t be the only one with that particular issue, right? Quite often, to my surprise, I’m asked why I don’t have a “donate” button so people can donate a few bucks. I’ve never really put much thought into it. But those inquiries are coming more often now, so I’m yielding to them. If you’d like to donate, you can send a few bucks via PayPal at https://www.paypal.me/PatRichard. Money collected from that will go to the costs of my website (hosting and domain names), as well as to my home lab.

Assumptions

• The SIP address is set to match the SMTP address. This is to avoid issues where the two don’t match and Exchange Web Services (EWS) calls fail.
• Exchange 2010 or 2013 exists in the environment
• The user running the script has the appropriate rights in Exchange (Recipient Management or higher) and Lync (RTCUniversalUserAdmin or higher)
• The machine that the script runs on has both the Lync and Active Directory modules installed.

Download

v1.2 – 06-10-2014 – New-CsLyncRoomSystem.v1.2.zip

v1.1 – 02-08-2014 – New-CsLyncRoomSystem.v1.1.zip

v1.0 – 01-28-2014 – New-CsLyncRoomSystem.v1.0.zip

Changelog

See the changelog for information on what’s changed/included in each version.

This is the changelog for New-CsLyncRoomSystem.ps1. You will find a complete list of released versions, their dates, and the features and issues addressed in each. Please refer to the script’s main page for more information including download links, installation details, and more.

v1.2 – 06-10-2014

1. Added -AdditionalResponse option for Set-CalendarProcessing
2. Added -DomainController switch to every command that supports it to ensure that we don’t start getting errors due to AD replication being laggy.
3. A warning is now shown if the user services policy that is applied to the LRS has UCS enabled
4. ResourceCapacity option added. If defined, will set the mailbox capacity accordingly

v1.1 – 02-08-2014

1. comment help optimized per suggestions at http://www.lazywinadmin.com/2014/01/powershell-tip-adding-help-in-param.html
2. validation for registrar name
3. cleaned up param block
4. validate that FE pool is 2013, exit if not
5. new version of Set-ModuleStatus

v1.0 – 01-28-2014

1. Original version

Many people have noticed that after installing the Lync Server 2013 Cumulative Update from October, 2013, that the font in the Lync Server Control Panel changed to Times New Roman from the original Segoe UI font.

Lots of people commented online that they were not fans of the change (myself included), and wanted it changed back. The issue was raised with Microsoft who verified that there was no change in the font requested when displaying the Control Panel. This was confirmed by looking through the logs. The problem was an Internet Explorer compatibility issue. Servers that have IE 8 don’t exhibit the problem, but those with IE 9 or later, do. Instead of looking at the font defined by MS Shell Dlg registry value (HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\FontSubstitues\MS Shell Dlg), the Control Panel was using the font configured in IE. If you look in Internet Options>Fonts, you see that the Webpage font is set to Times New Roman.

We can get the original Segoe UI font back by simply changing the webpage font option to Segoe UI, closing the Control Panel, and opening it back up. We can also make the change using PowerShell by changing the value of the registry key that gets set when you use the above method. To do so, open PowerShell, and enter the following:

Set-ItemProperty -path "HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\International\Scripts\3" -Name IEPropFontName -Value "Segoe UI"

And after restarting the Control Panel, we see it’s back to the way it should be.

You can set the value to any font, really, including Comic Sans MS, as requested by my buddy Ken “The Hoff” Lasko.

Something to keep in mind is that changing that value does have the potential for changing the way other web pages look as well, as this is more of a work-around than a fix. But I’ve not run into that, yet. I’ll post more info as I get it.