Haiku #46
Ex-President. Ex-
Wife. Ex-Ray. (Get it, X-Ray?)
Ex UM Contact.
Welcome to the daily Lync Server PowerShell haiku, where every day is Tuesday, November 16, 2010!
To tell you the truth, the author of today's haiku had never actually noticed this, but last Friday it was pointed out to him that the daily Lync Server PowerShell haiku always has this date emblazoned up at the top of the page:
16 Nov 2010 12:21 PM
Note. Should we be surprised that the author of today's haiku wasn't aware of this fact? No, not really; he wasn't aware of the fact that we published a daily Lync Server PowerShell haiku, either.
If you're concerned that, like Billy Pilgrim, you've become unstuck in time, well, relax: we're sure that you have not become unstuck in time, and are not "re-experiencing moments from various points in your life, albeit without any control over which moments." (Well, pretty sure.) Instead, there's a good reason why the date emblazoned at the top of the default Haiku of the Day page never changes: that's because the date emblazoned at the top of the page never does change. Thanks to a quirk in the software used to power the Lync Server PowerShell blog, the first time you publish a page the date and time of publication gets stamped at the top of that page. Each time that page gets republished (for example, each time we write a new haiku) the content on the page gets updated, but the date and time do not. As a result, each time you look at the daily haiku you could swear that it was the middle of November, 2010.
Which is something those of us who live in the Seattle area are used to. After all, no matter what time of year it is, every time we look out our windows we could swear that it was the middle of November.
Note. In case you're wondering, no, the software used to power the Lync Server PowerShell blog is not software produced by Microsoft. Microsoft software doesn't have quirks.
At any rate, it will probably always be Tuesday, November 16, 2010 around here. There are some workarounds that might enable us to update the date each day, but seeing as how the word workaround contains the word work, well, don't hold your breath. Besides, there are worse days that it could be than Tuesday, November 16, 2010. After all, on that date:
· Police in Lexington, NE arrested a man on 12 counts of Burglary and Criminal Mischief and formally charged him in two of those cases.
· Glenwood Elementary School in Enid, OK hosted a Flapjack Fundraiser at Applebee’s. Breakfast included a short stack of pancakes, sausage, milk, juice and coffee.
· No babies were born in Minot, ND. (!)
· The first daily Lync Server PowerShell haiku was published.
All in all, not a bad day to relive over and over again, eh?
At the very least it's a way better day to relive than this one; it shouldn't be too hard to tell that we were running late this morning and didn't have time to come up with a good haiku. (Unlike all those other morning when we did come up with a good haiku.) Which is too bad, because there're no doubt that the CsExUmContact cmdlets (Get-CsExUmContact, New-CsExUmContact, Remove-CsExUmContact, and Set-CsExUmContact) deserve better.
So what do the CsExUmContact cmdlets actually do? Well, as you probably know, Microsoft Lync Server 2010 works with Exchange Unified Messaging (the UM in CsExUmContact) to provide voice-related capabilities such as Auto Attendant and Subscriber Access.
Note. Good question: what is Subscriber Access? To begin with, a subscriber is nothing more than a user who has been enabled for Exchange Unified Messaging. Subscriber access provides a way for these users to access their individual mailboxes to retrieve email, voice messages, contacts, and calendaring information. Outlook Voice Access is an Exchange 2010 Unified Messaging feature that lets subscribers access their Exchange 2010 mailbox.
When Exchange UM is provided as a hosted service (rather than the on-premises version that you host yourself), you need to create contact objects in order to tap into the Auto Attendant and Subscriber Access functionality. These objects are created – tah-dah! – by using the New-CsExUmContact cmdlet.
And, of course, once those contacts have been created, they can be reviewed, modified, or even deleted by using the other CsExUmContact cmdlets.
For example, here's a command that creates a new Subscriber Access contact:
New-CsExUmContact -SipAddress sip:exumsa1@fabrikam.com -RegistrarPool RedmondPool.litwareinc.com -OU "OU=ExUmContacts,DC=litwareinc,DC=com" -DisplayNumber 2065554567
How do we know this contact is for Subscriber Access? That's easy: because we didn't include the AutoAttendant parameter. To create an Auto Attendant contact, just add that parameter, and set the parameter value to $True:
New-CsExUmContact -SipAddress sip:exumaa1@fabrikam.com -RegistrarPool RedmondPool.litwareinc.com -OU "OU=ExUmContacts,DC=litwareinc,DC=com" -DisplayNumber 2065554568 –AutoAttendant $True
Pretty easy, huh? To take a look at all your Exchange UM contacts just run a command similar to this one:
Get-CsExUmContact
If you only want to see the Auto Attendant contacts then just add the appropriate filter:
Get-CsExUmContact –Filter {AutoAttendant –eq $True}
And if you no longer need a particular contact, well, just get rid of it:
Remove-CsExUmContact -Identity sip:exumsa1@fabrikam.com
Keep in mind that contact objects created using New-CsExUmContact are not available for use until a hosted voice mail policy has been applied, a voice mail policy that configures routing information for the contact. You can retrieve hosted voice mail policies by calling the Get-CsHostedVoicemailPolicy cmdlet. From the policies retrieved you can determine whether an appropriate global or site policy exists, or if a per-user policy exists that needs to be granted to this contact.
At any rate, the CsExUmContact cmdlets are a good set of cmdlets to know about. And it's also good to know that the very first Lync Server PowerShell haiku was published on Tuesday, November 16, 2010. After all, someday you're going to walk into a bar and a group of people will be yelling and screaming at each other, arguing vehemently over the exact day and time that the first Lync Server PowerShell haiku was published. When you provide the definitive answer, we're sure that you'll be a hero.
Well, pretty sure.