Category Archives: Skype for Business Tools

Whats new in Skype for Business Monitoring Tool V1.3?

03 Saturday Oct 2015

Posted by in Lync 2013 Monitoring, PowerShell GUI, Powershell Scripts, Skype for Business, Skype for Business Monitoring, Skype for Business Tools, Tools, UC Sorted Tools

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A few months back a new pet project resulted in an application called Skype for Business Monitoring Tool. Simply stated this application is a series of synthetic transactions in a PowerShell wrapper. The tool will run a selection of tests then report the results to the local event log.

Shortly after that a reporting module was added. The reporting module will compile an email report covering the previous 24 hour cycle of tests. The report includes a success vs failure rate and colour codes the ratio either green, amber or red to indicate health for each test in question.

What’s new in V1.3?

The following features have been added:-

Alert emailing

This is an alert email that is generated at the end of a test cycle if any of the synthetic transactions fail. The email consist of the Event ID and description of the error (the format is rough at present but server its purpose well – a review of this is planned)

UC Sorted Skype Monitoring
TIP
Since the FROM address isn’t checked for validity, I like to use this address to identify the Customer or Pool that’s reporting the issues. That way I can write an email rule that automatically deals with messages according to my required behaviour (eg escalate or also send to etc.). Of course you need to be sure that your email scrubbing policies allow these through.

More Tests

A total of 24 tests are now available, that equates to 12 new tests introduced in this release. These include:-Skype Monitoring Test

  • Group IM
  • Application Sharing
  • Persistent Chat
  • Data Conferencing
  • UCWA Conferencing
  • Web App Conferencing
  • Web App Anonymous Conferencing
  • Web Scheduler
  • XMPP
  • Audio Video Edge
  • Mobility IM
  • PSTN Peer-to-Peer

New “About”

A ReadMe.htm file now contains all the “About” information, version details, event ID references and notes. The ReadMe.htm file is also sent by email as the test email function

UCSorted Help File

Download

What’s planned for VNext?

A new module that monitors and reports on the Skype Server roles. The items I plan to include are as follows:-

  • Skype related Services
  • CPU usage and peaks
  • Memory usage and peaks
  • Disk usage
  • Daily report on Skype related Event Log warnings and Errors

Please do chime in if you have any suggestions or feedback.

-Sorted

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Free Skype for Business Monitoring Tool gets Daily Reporting Module

18 Saturday Jul 2015

Posted by in Lync 2013 Monitoring, Lync 2013 Tools, Lync Tools, Monitoring, Skype for Business Monitoring, Skype for Business Tools, Tool, Tools, UC Sorted Tools

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The more I think about this the more excited I become about the potential of the freely available Skype for Business Monitoring Tool launched early in July.

So today I would like to introduce my first update which I am labelling Version 1.2

What’s New?
Daily Report function of course.
This function will generate a daily email report based on the previous 24 hour test cycle.

A few tweaks and bug fixes have been included as well.

How does it work?
I will let the video clip do the talking.

Download

Credit goes to Guy Bachar for providing the basis on which the report email was developed.

Skype for Business 2015 – Visio Stencil

15 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by in Lync 2013 Tools, Lync Tools, Skype for Business Tools, Tool, Tools, visio, Visio Stencil

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As I start thinking about the design of Skype for Business solutions it becomes apparent to me that its time for a new visio stencil. Having been a little reserved with the new images that were introduced in the Lync 2013 stencil I thought its time to embrace the new.

The official Office Viso Stencil published on 19/01/2015 can be found here.

Having taken a look at these I must say that these will need to grow on me. Not a big fan of the dark shadow looking images that represent the servers (yet!). Feels a bit gloomy to me, I need clean, open looking shapes.

Below is an extract of the my Skype for Business stencil transformation

Skype visio stencil

So what shapes are in the stencil?

  • Skype for Business Servers, Roles and clients
  • Anywhere 365 Servers
  • Zeacom Servers
  • Sonus SBCs
  • Audiocodes SBCs
  • All the usual Infrastructure and Server roles
  • A bunch of Skype for Business\Lync related components

Here is a snippet of the shapes..

skype for business visio stencil

Of course I will update the library of shapes as and when needed. Happy to take on board suggestions.

Download S4B Stencil