Microsoft's Lync Room System (LRS) is the latest addition to the family of client editions built for Lync Server 2013. LRS is optimized to bring the immersive Lync meeting experience to participants in a meeting room. With its slick surface-like user interface, LRS makes joining meetings a "one-finger-touch" experience. During the meeting, LRS brings together both in-room and remote attendees, allowing everyone to see and collaborate on content as well as view each other in full high definition video.
Microsoft provides the LRS software to certified OEM partners which include Crestron, Polycom and Smart. This article explores the various topologies which are supported by LRS and walks through provisioning an Office365 environment for LRS. Full details of deploying an LRS for both on-premise and online environments can be downloaded here.
Microsoft provides the LRS software to certified OEM partners which include Crestron, Polycom and Smart. This article explores the various topologies which are supported by LRS and walks through provisioning an Office365 environment for LRS. Full details of deploying an LRS for both on-premise and online environments can be downloaded here.
Supported Topologies
LRS supports on-premise Lync environments, pure Office365-S environments, as well as hybrid Lync On-Premise + Exchange On-Line environments. What's not supported today are Hybrid topologies with Lync On-Line with Exchange On-Prem. As of this writing, Microsoft is also testing LRS with Lync Hosting Pack and Office365-D; supportability statements for these can be expected in the coming months. The table below summarizes the various supported topologies today:
LRS supports on-premise Lync environments, pure Office365-S environments, as well as hybrid Lync On-Premise + Exchange On-Line environments. What's not supported today are Hybrid topologies with Lync On-Line with Exchange On-Prem. As of this writing, Microsoft is also testing LRS with Lync Hosting Pack and Office365-D; supportability statements for these can be expected in the coming months. The table below summarizes the various supported topologies today:
Provisioning Exchange Online
LRS, as with any meeting room resource provisioned on Office365, requires an Exchange resource mailbox. The easiest way to provision this is via an Exchange remote powershell. Simply open a Windows powershell window and if not already done so, set the execution policy to unrestricted. Then create a new remote powershell session to your Exchange online tenant environment using the New-PSSession cmdlet and import it. Next use the New-Mailbox cmdlet to create the mailbox and make sure to set the EnableRoomMailboxAccout flag to $true to enable the account in order for Lync provisioning and sign-in. The diagram below shows an example of these steps for the tenant polycomap.onmicrosoft.com with the mailbox name of "CX8000 Conf Rm":
LRS, as with any meeting room resource provisioned on Office365, requires an Exchange resource mailbox. The easiest way to provision this is via an Exchange remote powershell. Simply open a Windows powershell window and if not already done so, set the execution policy to unrestricted. Then create a new remote powershell session to your Exchange online tenant environment using the New-PSSession cmdlet and import it. Next use the New-Mailbox cmdlet to create the mailbox and make sure to set the EnableRoomMailboxAccout flag to $true to enable the account in order for Lync provisioning and sign-in. The diagram below shows an example of these steps for the tenant polycomap.onmicrosoft.com with the mailbox name of "CX8000 Conf Rm":
To verify that the Exchange resource mailbox has been created successfully, simply open the Exchange admin center and navigate to recipients->resources. The newly created resource mailbox for the LRS should appear similar to the diagram below:
Next we also want to set several properties of the newly created resource mailbox in order for LRS to work properly. These properties are shown in the diagram below along with the powershell cmdlet example for the resource mailbox "CX8000":
Provisioning Lync Online
Once the Exchange resource mailbox account has been created, we can proceed to provision Lync Online for LRS. Again this is done via remote powershell but this time using the LyncOnlineConnector module. This first requires installation of the Lync Online Connector Module and Microsoft Online Services Sign-In Assistant for IT Professionals RTW which can be downloaded here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn362839.aspx. Once installed then the we can import the module into a powershell session and run the New-CsOnlineSession cmdlet to create a remote powershell into your Lync online tenant environment. To enable the account for Lync, we first need to determine the Lync registrar pool used by the tenant via the Get-CsOnlineUser cmdlet. After getting the registrar pool we can proceed to use the Enable-CsMeetingRoom cmdlet to enable the account for Lync. The sequence of cmdlets for my tenant using the identity cx8000@polycomap.onmicrosoft.com is shown in the diagram below:
Once the Exchange resource mailbox account has been created, we can proceed to provision Lync Online for LRS. Again this is done via remote powershell but this time using the LyncOnlineConnector module. This first requires installation of the Lync Online Connector Module and Microsoft Online Services Sign-In Assistant for IT Professionals RTW which can be downloaded here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn362839.aspx. Once installed then the we can import the module into a powershell session and run the New-CsOnlineSession cmdlet to create a remote powershell into your Lync online tenant environment. To enable the account for Lync, we first need to determine the Lync registrar pool used by the tenant via the Get-CsOnlineUser cmdlet. After getting the registrar pool we can proceed to use the Enable-CsMeetingRoom cmdlet to enable the account for Lync. The sequence of cmdlets for my tenant using the identity cx8000@polycomap.onmicrosoft.com is shown in the diagram below:
To verify that the account has been created successfully, simply open the Office365 Admin Centre and look for the newly created account. At this stage we also need to ensure that the proper Lync Online licenses has been assigned to the account. LRS requires a Lync Online Plan P2 or P3 license.
Conclusion
It's worth noting that the above steps for provisioning LRS for Office365 are similar to those for an all on-premise environment. The only difference would be that all the cmdlets will be run locally on the on-premise Exchange and Lync servers rather then via remote powershell to the online tenant environments. With the above steps completed, the LRS is provisioned for Office365 and now ready to be unboxed and configured. Details steps on how to configure the LRS itself will be covered in a future article.
It's worth noting that the above steps for provisioning LRS for Office365 are similar to those for an all on-premise environment. The only difference would be that all the cmdlets will be run locally on the on-premise Exchange and Lync servers rather then via remote powershell to the online tenant environments. With the above steps completed, the LRS is provisioned for Office365 and now ready to be unboxed and configured. Details steps on how to configure the LRS itself will be covered in a future article.
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