Public IM and Private domains

Issue:

Using Public IM (PIC) with Office Communications Server 2007 there might be problems adding Windows Live (MSN) users to the Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 (MOC) contact list.

Users might experience that they are unable to receive status information for contacts that are using personal or private domain names as part of their MSN account name (example: will@robinson.com) Other contacts using hotmail.com or msn.com addresses will appear normally with presence information.

Communicator will show a grey presence icon, and display “cannot get presence for this contact” or “acquiring status” or similar

Enabling logging on the Communicator will generate this error in the Communicator-uccp log file:

ms-diagnostics: 1008;reason=”Unable to resolve DNS SRV record”;source=”sip.robinson.com”

Cause:

This is because the OCS will try to contact the domain as a federation partner and not an PIC partner, and lookup the sip address for the domain. The domain does not have a sip record in dns and therefor will fail.

Solution:

When adding contacts with private domains in there MSN address, use the following format:

will(robinson.com)@msn.com

This will add the contact to the MOC contact list, and presence will be available

For information about enabling logging in Communicator, see (http://it-proknowledge.blogspot.com/2008/01/troubleshooting-with-office.html)