GotUC : UCMA

New UCMA 2.0 Release

marshallharrison — Thu, 27 May 2010 11:19:00 GMT

Without much fanfare Microsoft released a significant update to the Microsoft Unified Communications Managed API 2.0 last weekend.

This release is not only significant given the impressive set of new features, but most of all because it provides direct interoperability of the UCMA 2.0 with major VoIP Gateways and IP-PBXs. Where till today a developer needed to connect UCMA based applications to such 3^rd party products via Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2, you can now build voice applications like IVR, ACD, Call Recording, etc. directly connected to a Dialogic, Audiocodes, Cisco or Avaya SIP connection (these are typically the ones tested by Microsoft).

Other new features include:

Support of UCMA 2.0 Core deployment on 64-bit client Windows Operating Systems (Windows Vista SP1 and Windows 7) – so now also applications
Support for UCMA 2.0 on Windows Server 2008 R2.
Support for diversion.
Support for in-band FAX tone detection (CNG 1100Hz).
Introduction of the UCMA 2.0 Core Runtime to ease deployment
Support for Privacy settings.
Support for (“Split-Domain”) deployment in hybrid deployments where an enterprise is using the same domain for both Exchange Online as well Exchange on-premises.
Introduction of the default routing endpoint concept to build voice services. The default routing endpoint enables an application to process incoming SIP requests that are received by a CollaborationPlatform instance, that are not promptly dispatched to another ApplicationEndpoint on the same CollaborationPlatform, based on the ApplicationEndpoint owner or Conversation information matching the incoming request. Instead of being automatically declined by the CollaborationPlatform, such a received request is raised on the default routing ApplicationEndpoint, when one exists. This enables an application to process these requests.
Introduction of support for SIP DNS load balancing where UCMA 2.0 Core SDK is now capable of load balancing outbound SIP requests to a next-hop proxy with multiple front ends using DNS A records.
Voice call setup failure troubleshooting info, and Quality of Experience (QoE) monitoring allowing applications to display key indicators for voice quality (Jitter, voice quality score, etc) in their reporting framework against Communications Server and SIP PSTN Gateways/IP-PBXs.
Support for sampling rate for both audio stream directions.
Support for modifying playback speed.
Support for Recorder with Enhanced features.

A lot of these features were released to enable Exchange Unified Messaging to migrate from Speech Server to the UC Managed API. But as a side effect the UC Managed API has become a very attractive platform to build custom IVR applications on and even more sophisticated contact center applications as demonstrated at VoiceCon.

The update can be found here: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=187420

The UCMA 2.0 redist here: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=164007

And the new UCMA 2.0 Runtime here: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=163815

There is a KB article posted here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/977547/EN-US (Note: my original post had the wrong link)

Microsoft UC Developer Survey

marshallharrison — Wed, 27 May 2009 11:27:00 GMT

Microsoft asking UC developers to take a quick survey to better get to know its developer audience, carried out by Frost and Sullivan.

For example, what applications have been developed, what other communications tools besides Microsoft’s unified communications products (like Microsoft Office Communications Server, Microsoft Office Communicator and Microsoft Exchange) you have been using, and most importantly, what Microsoft could do to better help the community?

In order to get a better insights Microsoft engaged Frost and Sullivan, an independent third party, to conduct a Unified Communications Developer survey.

If you are a developer of unified communications applications such as OCS and Communicator, please take 15 minutes and fill out this survey:

http://www.globaltestmarket.com/survey/s.phtml?sn=134581&lang=E&secid=9f8cbb

When you click the link you will be directed to a secured site hosted by Frost and Sullivan that will allow you to fill out the survey. It requires cookies to be enabled to work correctly.

Please note that Frost and Sullivan will keep all your individual responses confidential and anonymous.

Based on the data collected in the survey, Microsoft hopes to develop a set of activities to provide better assistance to you in building great enterprise solutions on the Microsoft Unified Communications platform.

Of course we will keep you posted on such activities via this blog.

UC Workflow Error Message

marshallharrison — Tue, 26 May 2009 19:38:00 GMT

UC Workflow Error Message

When you build a Windows Workflow application you might see the following error pop-up:

This is a known issue for which Windows Workflow team released a QFE. The QFE can be installed from http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/KB960109

How to get the UC AJAX API to work on OCS 2007 R2?

marshallharrison — Fri, 15 May 2009 11:15:00 GMT

In Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Microsoft only supports the UC AJAX API in case you add a CWA Server of OCS 2007. The UC AJAX API will not be updated beyond the 2007 release, and programming directly the UC Managed API will be the recommended way to build reach applications. Yet if you want to deploy any existing UC AJAX application, you will need to go through some hoops.

For installing an OCS 2007 CWA server is not trivial in case you start with a fresh install of OCS 2007 R2: it turns out to be you need the AD Schema Prep of OCS 2007 before installing a 2007 CWA Server in an R2 Forest or else the setup will fail. If you want to read the exact steps to take to make this work, please read KB article 969336.

Some people though found there is only one difference between the UC AJAX API in OCS 2007 and API Communicator Web Access in OCS 2007 R2 is using: the URL CommandChannel.aspx became AuthCommandChannel.aspx. And it looks like that everything else is the same. This however does not solve the limitations of the UC AJAX API, such as that it does not support more than 15 concurrent IM end-points per web page. UCMA in any case remains your better choice for reach solutions. Doing it this way isn't supported by Microsoft so you do this at your own risk.

Sign-up for the UC Developer Sandbox!

marshallharrison — Wed, 13 May 2009 13:01:00 GMT

Today GotUC.net is proud to offer an opportunity for developers to start developing UC enabled applications, without having to overcome the hurdles of setting up Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Beta.

If you join the GotUC.net Community and you promise to behave well, and know we have the right to revoke your account at any time, GotUC.net will offer you two user accounts in the GotUC.net domain: one personal account, and one account you can use to enable bot scenarios.

The domain accounts are enabled for most UC capabilities Presence, IM, email and Exchange Web Services, and even some limited calling capabilities to the PSTN or to other Community users via Communicator.

What do you need to do? Simply, just -

1) Join the GotUC Community

2) Once you have joined our community you will see a new “Developer Sandbox” menu tab

3) Click the tab and you will be taken to the registration site. Once there just click the Register button then fill in the form.

I can hear you asking “Sounds great Marshall but what are the limitations?”

Well, I ‘m glad you asked. The limitations are really very simple also –

1. Please use your real name – this will be how you show up when you connect to GotUC.Net using Office Communicator. We want to present a positive image for those organizations that we federate with.

2. We expect you to behave reasonably and to not abuse the system. Other members are using the system too and we don’t want anyone crashing the system for everybody.

3. No applications that would be considered illegal or not appropriate for the intended purpose of this site. We don’t want someone using the system for Trojans or spam.

Note: we reserve the right to cancel without warning any accounts that break the rules.

We will have tutorials and videos coming shortly on how to create UC applications and debug them using our sandbox. If you have suggestions for new functionality or things that you would like to see then just let us know.

Help Shape the Future of UCMA and Speech Development

marshallharrison — Mon, 04 May 2009 12:40:00 GMT

As you might have noticed there are practically no speech tools yet in the UCMA 2.0 Speech SDK apart from some basic classes.

Currently Microsoft is prioritizing which tools to make available in the Wave ‘14’ release of OCS/UCMA, at which time the Speech Server functionality should become an integral part of the UC platform.

Microsoft would like to solicit the feedback from the GotSpeech.net and the GotUC.Net Communities on how to prioritize which tools to build and ship for Telephony Speech (for Desktop Speech, please check out the Windows Vista Dictation Resource Kit)

This is specifically about the speech recognition and speech synthesis tools and not about the dialog languages, like VoiceXML and Windows Workflow. UCMA 2.0 shipped with basic UC Workflow Activities including speech, and currently the Speech Server (2007) VoiceXML 2.1 browser is ported to the UCMA API and this browser will be released in the future.

Using the comment tool, could you please distribute $100 in value across the following tools we are considering to build/release, with $0 being not important at all, and any value above $0 giving it a relative value increasing with importance. You can just copy the table below into a comment or if you prefer you can just copy and email it to me – I’ll see that it gets to the right parties.

Tool	Relative value to you out of $100 total	Comments
Grammar Static Analyzer		Syntax checking
Grammar Static Analyzer		Grammar cop like in Speech Server (2007) (detecting OOV utterances)
Grammar Dynamic Analyzer		Simulator to measure grammar changes effect on the basis of existing log files
Custom Pronunciation Tool (text)		Create custom pronunciations
Custom Pronunciation Tool (audio)		Generate pronunciations from audio
Lexicon Editing Tool (app)		Tool to edit custom application lexicon
Lexicon Editing Tool (master)		Ability to edit the Microsoft provided master lexicon
Prompt Editor		Edit and align prompts in prompt database for prompt engine
Prompt Database		Store prompts, ability to check missing prompts and do version control
Prompt Engine		Concatenative prompt engine
Speech Synthesis Prompt Sculpting		Tool to edit TTS pronunciations
Custom TTS Voice Tool		Tool to create your custom TTS voice
Visual Grammar Editor		Visual SRGS grammar editor
Statistical Grammar compiler		Tool to import transcriptions and create a statistical language model from those
Conversational Grammar Engine		Conversational grammar engine like in Speech Server (2007)
Conversational Grammar Builder		Conversational grammar builder like Speech Server (2007)
Transcription Tool		Tool to transcribe and annotate the logs in a consistent manner
Log Analysis Tools		Analyze log files to see hit rates and success metrics for dialog states like in Speech Server (2007)
Offline Recognition Tool		Ability to read wave files and measure recognition rates
ASR Analysis tools		Measures word error rates, sentence error rates, etc.
Other – please specify

As per Microsoft’s default policy, this posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Many thanks in advance for your feedback.