Rauschenblog

Adding Call Center Capabilities to Office Communications Server

With Office Communications Server 2007 R2 (OCS) Microsoft has delivered a market leading Unified Communications platform that understandably is generating a great deal of interest (and deployment…).  As organizations adopt OCS many are naturally looking for ways they can leverage the investment they have made to address needs within their organization, often times these companies realize that they need capabilities that OCS does not support out of the box…this is where our new market leading Clarity Connect service comes into play.

Clarity Connect is a unique Software + Services offering that redefines how organizations plan and deploy call center and Customer Interaction Management solutions.  We are excited about what our service combined with Microsoft products enables for our customers.  Watch the video below to learn more about our service.

New UCMA Samples Posted to Codeplex

The 2007 R2 release of Microsoft Office Communications Server adds major new capabilities to the Unified Communications Managed API (UCMA).  UCMA 2.0 ships with R2 and for the first time gives developers access to the voice capabilities of OCS.  Over the past few months we’ve been working with the UC Platform team to build out a series of sample applications that highlight some of the scenarios that are enabled by UCMA 2.0…these samples are now available on Codeplex:

• Client Billing:  Web-based billing application that manages voice calls between attorneys and clients.
• Cellular:  UCMA powered service that publishes and subscribes to presence of users.
• Enhanced Reminders:  Notification service and Outlook plug-in that leverage UCMA to remind users of appointments and other events.

Michael Greenlee from Clarity did much of the engineering work on these samples, his blog is an excellent source of information on these samples and UCMA development.

Upcoming MSDN Webcasts

I’ll be delivering 2 MSDN Webcasts focused on the Microsoft Unified Communications developer platform.  Details and registration links below.

1. Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and Exchange Server 2007 SP1: Under the Hood for Developers
   4/1/2009 01:00 PM PST
   http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032402872&Culture=en-US
2. Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Architecture and Deployment for Developers
   4/29/2009 01:00 PM PST
   http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032402947&Culture=en-US

Hope you are able to join me for these sessions.

jon

Enabling Click to Communicate in Web Applications

One of the most compelling and value-add capabilities of the Microsoft Unified Communications products is the ease with which you can initiate communications with others.  In many instances, starting an IM conversation, phone call, or Live Meeting with another person takes no more than a few mouse clicks, or as Microsoft refers to it ‘click to communicate’.  When implemented well, this is a powerful capability that not only saves time/money by reducing the effort required to start a conversation, but also results in people communicating more frequently by streamlining the process.

We see wonderful examples of this in applications like Microsoft Outlook where every place that a contact is displayed we now have a rich set of options for establishing communications with that person.  One of the questions we hear most frequently from customers, however, is how they can enable these types of features in their Web applications…or in Web applications from external sources.  While enabling click to communicate capabilities in a Web application does introduce some interesting challenges, we do have some great options for doing this.  In this video, I walk through three options that we are working on delivering to customers:

• ActiveX Control:  With Office 2007 Microsoft installs an ActiveX control (name.dll) that you can use to embed a presence bubble for any user.  This bubble includes a variety of click to communicate options – this is the control that Microsoft uses in SharePoint 2007.
• Browser Add-in:  Using a browser add-in, you can enable click to communicate capabilities for any web page that displays phone numbers. 
• Communication Enabled Workflows:  Initiate server-side communication enabled workflows from your Web applications.  These workflows can place outbound calls to employees/customers and bride other people into the calls.

Take a look at the video to see examples of all three options:

The Power of Unified Communications - Part 2

Managing, automating, and streamlining communications is increasingly becoming a critical way for organizations to reduce costs, improve customer satisfaction, and increase employee productivity (and satisfaction if done properly).  To achieve these goals, it’s critical to not only deploy a modern Unified Communications infrastructure, but also to make smart investments in customizing business processes to leverage the power of that infrastructure.  While there are meaningful benefits that can be derived simply by deploying a product like Microsoft Office Communications Server, the real opportunities to differentiate your brand and reduce costs come through the extensibility platform the product exposes.

With the release of Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Microsoft introduced version 2.0 of the Unified Communications Managed API (UCMA 2.0).  This API puts powerful real time communication capabilities into the hands of millions of .NET developers.  For the first time, we no longer need to use specialized tools to develop and deploy things like automated call distribution solutions or automated response systems.

In Part 2 of the Contoso Retail demo, we worked with Microsoft to build an innovative solutions for the retail environment that was focused on delivering the following benefits:

• Costumer Satisfaction:  Reduce the time for customers to get answers to product questions and allow them to have the products delivered as early as possible.
• Workforce Utilization:  Allow Contoso to better utilize their workforce by leveraging presence-based routing to tap into idle associates across all of the retail locations.
• Brand Differentiation:  Deliver a brand strengthening/differentiating experience for customers when they communicate with Contoso.

We’re incredibly excited about the opportunities this new platform enables.

The Power of Unified Communications - Part 1

Last month Microsoft released the R2 version of Office Communications Server.  This release adds some powerful new features to the product which we are excited to be using here at Clarity, but what really sets the R2 release apart from the 2007 version...and everything else on the market is the extensibility platform that Microsoft delivered along with it.  We've been looking and and working with this platform for the past 9 months and are VERY excited about the capabilities it exposes for us to leverage both presence and real-time communications in the solutions we are building.

To demonstrate some of the things you can do with this platform, we have worked with Microsoft to build out a demo that highlights some of the more powerful capabilities now exposed to developers.  Take a look at this video to see Part 1 of the demo which focuses on the client-side extensibility options:

 I'll post Part II which foucuses more on the server-side capabilities shortly.

WinFX now = .NET Framework 3.0

Microsoft announced today that they are renaming the WinFX to “.NET Framework 3.0”.  WinFX was the (confusing in my opinion…) umbrella name for things like WPF (aka Avalon) and WCF (aka Indigo).

They are basically killing the WinFX name all together and will brand everything as .NET Framework 3.0 which will ship with Vista.  Framework 3.0 will be available on the following platforms:

• Vista
• XP SP2
• Windows Server 2003

They are officially dropping support for Windows 98 and NT 4.0 with this version of the Framework.

One important note; the core .NET Framework functionality is NOT changing meaningfully with 3.0.  There are a bunch of new services being layered on top of the current core functionality in the Framework.  There was likely alot of discussion about calling this .NET Framework 2.5 rather than 3.0 to indicate that it is not a major upgrade, but they likely decided to go with 3.0 because of the scope of the new services.

There are some details here.

I think this is a great move - the WinFX name was always confusing and never established any traction with decision makers or developers.  This falls into the 'sometimes less is more' school of thought.  The .NET name has so much momentum that even if Microsoft wanted everyone to use the WinFX name, everyone was going to end up calling it '.NET '.  People talk about building '.NET apps. - they weren't going to start talking about building 'WinFX apps'.

Biggest concern I have is the rate/frequency of churn Microsoft is introducing to the .NET Framework.  We are going to go from 2.0 to 3.0 to something else (Visual Studio 2007 will likely require some level of update to the Framework) in 18 months.  That's faster churn that corporate customers are going to adopt and distribution of the Framework is still a big hurdle to using .NET to build apps that will be broadly distributed.

In the end, the changes are positive (both the naming changes and the changes to the technology Microsoft is making).

MIX06 - Does This Change Everything?

Last week I was at the MIX06 conference in Vegas.  I wanted to post my thoughts/comments on the conference.

A couple of areas of focus for the content at the show stuck out to me:

Web UE Guidance:  I think as an industry we do a pretty bad job of building software that delivers a first-class user experience.  We (in general) know how to build software that performs well and is reliable, but we don’t (in general) know how to build software that behaves the way people expect it to and delivers a user experience that is independent from the underlying services.  It was great to see MS taking a leadership position on this.  A couple of the sessions I attended on AJAX/Atlas and more generically on building great user experiences were very informative.  I see a LOT of the theories on building great UEs applied to the image search results page on the Live search site.

Atlas:  Atlas reminds me a LOT of ASP 1.0.  At the time ASP came out there was no ‘easy’ framework/toolset for building Web apps.  ASP changed that; for the first time it was easy (relatively speaking) to build a Web application.  It looks like Atlas is poised to do same for AJAX, but the complexity bar will be a little higher.  Like most/all things to come out of the ASP.NET team, Ajax looks to be a well thought-out framework with the promise of great tools support to make it easy to build on.  I say ‘great promise’ for the tools because at the moment the framework is clearly ahead of the tools.  You can build great apps with Atlas today, but it is going to be ‘harder’ than a lot of people would like.

WPF/WPFE:  I came away from the conference with a solid understanding of WPF/WPFE in terms of the technology.  What I’m still not entirely clear on is when/if this will be a relevant technology to a meaningful portion of the development community.  From a skeptics point of view, MS is working hard to deliver something about a year from now that will be roughly the same as what you can get today with Flash.  There is some truth to that point of view…especially in the context of WPFE.  In truth, I do think that MS is doing some innovative work with WPF what does leapfrog what Flash offers today.  The real value, however, comes from the deep integration of WPF and supporting technologies into the MS application development tools/runtime stack.  I do believe that WPC will replace the current Windows forms runtime for building desktop applications.  I also think you will see Web applications taking advantage of WPF, but I am less confident on this one.  The big question here is when.  Personally, I think it’s going to be a while before WPF becomes a relevant technology developers…if I had to guess I would say 3-4 years.  It will take that long for the runtimes to become generally available, the tools support to be there, and the technology to mature.

Live Services:  This was the area where I came away least interested/excited.  I think MS has a good story with the services they are working on and the concept of ‘software as a service’, I just don’t think much of what they are building will be useful to a meaningful portion of the development community.  I’m exited/interested to see what MS can deliver on top of these services, but I don’t think there is a big opportunity for developers outside of MS to integrate them.

Media Center:  A bit off topic, but there was some amazing demos of the next version of Media Center.  The product just keeps getting better and better with the Vista release.  Once I can get HDTV content into the box over something other than an antenna (ideally via DirectTV, but digital cable will work as well…) I will be all over putting an MCE box in my living room!

All in all, it was a productive couple of days.  The conference had a different feel than most big MS conferences.  It felt less rehearsed/less like a 3 days marketing session which was a nice change of pace.

In the end, is Microsoft ‘changing the way we build apps’ with the announcements and information they shared at MIX – no.  The messaging and direction they provided felt very consistent with their past messaging to me.  Sure, there was more of an emphasis on Web UEs at MIX, but MS has always had a strong story when it comes to Web development so this was nothing ‘new’.  It was great, however, to see MS taking a strong/leadership position on delivering compelling software over the Internet.  There is definitely a perception that other companies are doing a better job of that (not JUST a perception...but largely one), so it was good t osee a compelling/cohesive story from MS in this area.

Cool AND Functional

Microsoft is doing some pretty innovative stuff with the search engine on the Live site.  Today I stumbled on the new image search results page and was pretty amazed with what they've done.  Check this out:
http://search.live.com/#q=chicago%20skyline&scope=images&lod=2&page=results

 The roll-over effect makes the page much more usable than the traditional image search results page.  Compare the Live page to the same search done on Google:
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=chicago%20skyline&btnG=Google+Search&sa=N&tab=gi

By burying all of the metadata behind the roll-over effect, the Live page is able to show significantly more images in the same number of pixels.  In addition, the Live page scales WAY better as you resize the browser.  With Google, I get rows of 4 images no matter what size I make the browser.  The Live page adjusts the number of images on each row as I make the browser window larger/smaller.

Also note the slider control at the top of the Live page.  It allows you to dynamically resize the images and updates the page without refreshing.

Last but FAR from least, note the scrolling behavior.  As you move down on the Live page, more images simply appear.  No more concept of “Results 1 - 20 of about 12,700” which I’ve always thought was confusing.

Overall, it is a markedly better user experience for viewing the results of the search.

Oh yea, give it a try in Firefox…you’ll like what you see.

Hate is a Strong Word

• AJAX apps are SO good that they make desktop apps obsolete.
• Microsoft doesn't GET Web development

Nice Free Upgrade to XP Shell

Streaming Media Center Content to PCs

Looks like Microsoft is going to take a shot at the market that Slingbox currently dominates:
http://www.betanews.com/article/MS_Testing_Media_Center_TV_Streaming/1137177825

I have to say, however, that based on what is reported here, it doesn't look all that compelling/exciting to me.  The inability to watch Live TV and/or access the full MCE TV experience is a big disappointment.  Sling allows users access to both live and recorded TV...I can't think of a good technical reason that MS couldn't do the same with MCE.

It also falls well short of what BeyondTV and SageTV both offer with their software extenders.  Both Beyond and Sage allow you to access the full DRV shell from any TV in your house over the network.  In other words, with a single PC running Beyond or Sage with TV capture cards in it, you can watch live or recorded TV from any PC in the house...even laptops via WiFi (802.11 G or better...).  I don't understand why MS hasn't built the same feature into MCE...and it looks like they won't be doing it any time soon.

Live Version of VS.NET?

John Montgomery from the VS.NET team posted something today about an idea that MS has been floating in private for a few weeks - creating a 'Live' version of VS.NET:
http://blogs.msdn.com/johnmont/archive/2006/01/11/511402.aspx

I have mixed feeling on this one.  I was one of the 7 people (outside of Microsoft...) that was REALLY exicted about Hailstorm a few years back when they started talking publically about it...I even wrote an article on!  I still remember attending the big unveiling they had in Redmond where everyone from Verizon to eBay to Groove showed really compelling demos of how they were planning to leverage Hailstorm services to make our online lives better. 

Obviosuly Hailstorm died on the vine for a bunch of good (and some not-so-good...) reasons.  Now we have Hailstorm 2.0 rebranded as 'Live' and Microsoft is once again taking a shot at providing online services that will make our lives better.  Interestingly this time around Microsoft has done a lot more marketing of the Live concept and released a lot fewer detials about what Live is.

In his post, John is intentionally vague about what services Microsoft is considering integrating into VS.NET.  I spoke with John about this a few weeks back and floated some ideas I think would be of use:

• Killer Hosted Team Development...Focued on Students:  Provide a simple free way for a team of developers to work together on a project.  Give them everything Sourceforge provides, but integrated it right into the IDE.  This would be killer for college students working on class projects together.
• Integrated Community Managed Documentation:  Think MSDNpedia integrated into the IDE.  Give developers quick context appropriate content from the community along with enabling developers to contribute and edit contet from the IDE.
• Opt-In Framework Usage Analysis:  Tool integrated into the IDE that would analyze the framework APIs that are used most frequently along with rich metadata about the use case (e.g. ISV, corp developer, hobbyst...).  Tie this to the documentation above and you would have a killer set of documentaiton that can be tailored to a specific user's needs.

Have other/better ideas?  John is looking for feedback and they are early enough in the planning stages for your feedback to make a difference...post a comment!

Solution for Managing Passwords

Like just about everyone I struggle to manage the various credentials I use to authenticate with web sites/applications/systems I use.  For the past couple of years I’ve used a VERY crude mechanism for this.  I created a Note in Outlook and had about 25 entries that looked something like:

eBay
UserID: xxxxx
Password: xxxxx

This was reasonably functional in that the credentials were kept in a secure location and I could quickly access them.  What became problematic, however, was the inability to search Notes for a string (at least I can’t find a way to do it…) and the need I had to access my credentials from PCs where I don’t usually run an Outlook connected to Clarity’s exchange server.  So, I started looking for an alternative.  I had these requirements: 

• Quick simple access to credentials.
• File-based storage (credentials stored in a local file)
• Secure storage…contents of the file encrypted using strong encryption mechanism

After doing a bit of research I settled on the following configuration:

• Password Minder:  Simple .NET app that stores credentials (encrypted) in an XML file.  No install required…just need the Exe on your PC along with the .NET Framework 1.1 and it will run just fine.
• Folder Share:  I just keep finding new uses for Folder Share.  For passwords, I just created a Passwords folders under the folder I sync across all of my machines and put the Password Minder XML and Exe files in there.  Now I have everything I need on all of my PCs to run the app and get to my credentials.

I’ve been using this for about a week and absolutely LOVE it.  It’s simple, secure, and now that it is setup I don’t have to think about it again…exactly what I was looking for.

Microsoft and DirectTV Announcement

One of the more exciting (to me anyway...) announcements from CES last week was the partnership announced between Microsoft and DirectTV.  The announcement was made during Bill Gates' keynote - he said that MS would work with DirectTV to bring both SD and HD content into the Media Center world.  No details given on what that means or when it will happen, but this is the first time I've heard of any plans to bring DirectTV content directly into Media center.

This is a BIG announcement for DirectTV fans like me given...especially in the light of their decision to drop their partnership with Tivo.  I currently have an older dual tuner Sony/Tivo DirectTV PVR that I love.  It only does SD, but it works brilliantly and has been our main PVR for the past 4 years.

I love Media Center, but without a clear path on how to get DirectTV HD content into the box I haven't seen any reason to move to it.  My guess is that we won't see anything in terms of DirectTV integration until this time next year (will almost certainly be tied to Vista along with cable card support...), but at least there is now a reason to believe it will happen at some point!

Couple of interesting links:

MS Press Announcement: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/jan06/01-05WMDIRECTVPR.mspx

Additional Coverage: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060105-5913.html