Outlook Web App Integration

Outlook Web App integration is a feature that provides a nice convenience for Lync users who frequently use OWA to connect to their Exchange mailbox. Lync integration with OWA allows presence and IM capabilities to be extended to an OWA session, and also includes the following useful features:

• Presence for internal and federated Lync Server contacts

• The capability to start and maintain chat sessions directly from OWA

• Lync Server contact list integration, including adding and removing contacts and groups

• The capability to control Lync presence states from OWA

Depending on whether Exchange UM is configured, the systems running OWA may need to be added to the list of known servers within Lync, which can be accomplished using the New-CsTrustedApplicationPool cmdlet. After Exchange is trusted by Lync, the OWA integration can be performed by adjusting the properties of the OWA virtual directories. For example, the following commands would be used in the Exchange Management Shell to configure the OWA virtual directories for Lync integration, with a combination Front End/Backend Exchange 2013 server named ex2k13 and the Lync pool named lyncse1.companyabc.com:

1. Log on to a system where the Exchange 2013 administrative tools are installed using an account that has administrative rights to Exchange.

2. Open the Exchange Management Shell, and execute the following command to view the certificates that are available to be used with Exchange:

Get-ExchangeCertificate

3. From the list of certificates presented, identify the certificate that has been assigned to IIS, which will be the first certificate listed where the letter W appears in the Services column. Then, copy the thumbprint for this certificate to the Windows Clipboard and use it to add the following two lines to the <AppSettings> section of the Web.config file in the c:Program FilesMicrosoftExchange ServerV15ClientAccessOwa directory:

Click here to view code image

<add key="IMCertificateThumbprint" value="03554BB4BF96AC1081BDA4878997C7FE52D43127"/>
<add key="IMServerName" value="lyncse1.companyabc.com"/>

4. Using a single command, execute the Get-OwaVirtualDirectory cmdlet to retrieve the OWA virtual directory, and then pipe the results to the Set-OwaVirtualDirectory cmdlet to adjust the properties of the OWA virtual directory. For example, the following command would be used to enable OWA integration for a server named ex2k13:

Get-OwaVirtualDirectory | Set-OwaVirtualDirectory -InstantMessagingEnabled $True -InstantMessagingType OCS

5. Execute the following command to enable Lync integration for the default OWA mailbox policy:

Set-OwaMailboxPolicy -Identity Default -InstantMessagingEnabled $true -InstantMessagingType OCS

After OWA integration has been enabled, the users will see the results the next time they log in to OWA. The first indication that OWA integration has been enabled is that the presence states are listed in the drop-down menu that appears when a user clicks on the display name in the upper-right section of the OWA window, as shown in Figure 21.8.

Figure 21.8. Lync presence states within OWA.