Information Technology – Page 2

February 16, 2022

Microsoft Bookings – No Staff Available

Sometimes trying to be on the bleeding edge (or just ahead) often means trying to get things done quickly, which can result in breaking things in new and creative ways. Some people never admit their mistakes, I’m humble enough to not only admit them, but to share them so other people pulling their hair out as to why their booking site isn’t working can learn from my mistakes. Especially when they’re kinda funny.

I was trying to set up Microsoft Bookings for a group of individuals, and no matter what I did, I just could not actually get it to work. The backend was all there – staff is there, availability is there, and I can even manually book a slot from the admin portal, but the customer portal just stays on “loading” for all staff and offered no availability.

It was me…I goofed it up, and an easy goof at that 😉

Under the service settings, there is a setting called “Buffer Time”. That allows you to specify how long of a gap to set between each booked slot, so the staff can complete paperwork, get coffee, etc. I wanted to default it to 15 minutes before and 15 minutes after.

In my infinite wisdom, I actually put the “15” in the hours box in the after area, as such, there would never be availability as 15 hours is longer than the user’s daily availability. Once I changed it to be 15 minutes after, the bookings site worked as expected.

Anyway, onto bigger and better screw ups!

January 20, 2022

Getting a full list of Exchange Online Powershell Commands

Again, I love to share things that seem to take a bunch of searching for, and in this case, trying to find a full list of commands when administering Exchange online/Office365 via Powershell. You won’t ever find a list really, because they’re changing all the time and may also be dependent on the type of tenant you have amongst other factors.

January 10, 2022January 9, 2022

Telephony Home Lab Part 2 – Mistakes Were Made

SO…buying any kind of old computer gear or technology can either be considered buying collectibles, or throwing money into a fire pit. In other ways its all about the experience; nobody is buying a $4k Altair to run Crysis; they’re buying $4k video cards. Since I’m not sure how collectible an old PBX will ever be, I’m considering it the latter, so the idea is to minimize the amount of spend as much as possible. That said, sometimes it makes sense to look at the big picture and try to find something that best fits your ~~needs~~ wants, instead of trying to find “the cheapest stuff possible”.

Why a Merlin PBX? In Part 1 I mentioned that I saw a ton of Merlin stuff get scrapped back in my childhood days, and the 1980s retro-futuristic (or perhaps space-age) look of the hardware has me on a nostalgic kick. In addition, after reading up on the Merlin stuff, I find it has some relatively interesting features, including the ability to “live behind another PBX” (like Asterisk), and handles a venerable plethora of connectivity, including POTS, T1/PRI, IDSN (including BRI!), and supports several generations of phones from the old space-age devices to 90s-rific Avaya 44xx series phones. So long story short, I wanted one for both nostalgic reasons, as well as even a few practical-ish ones. There are MANY MANY other PBXes, some of which may even fit all my actual needs (see my notes below regarding ISDN), but for now I just wanted a Merlin.

Read on to find out what I ran into buying/building an old PBX. These nuggets can be applied to other things in life as well, and I’m humble enough to admit my fumbles. Buckle-in as this is a multi-part…part.

The Devil is in the Details – Research EVERYTHING.

Telephony equipment varies a LOT when it comes to standards, and even devices that LOOK similar, from a similar era and even the same company, may not be compatible. For example, At&t made a variety of those space-age-looking phones, that while looking identical, some were not compatible with the Merlin systems; they were for the Definity family.

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January 10, 2022

Merlin Legend PBX rejecting PRI calls

As always, if I find a really obscure answer, I try to repost it here to make sure it’s findable down the road. This isn’t quite part of the telephony lab series, although related to it as I work on and fiddle with stuff, but I ran into a doozy of an issue and AMAZINGLY found the answer, that would have likely taken me forever to figure out, if I ever figured it out.

January 9, 2022

Telephony Home Lab Part 1.1 – Use cases and Justification

Before I get into the mistakes made part, let me take a moment to talk about the telephony home lab, what my thoughts/ideas were behind it, and why I chose to include a vintage PBX into the mix (short answer – because I felt like it).

In some cases, IT people like myself often run “home labs” (or homelabs if you prefer), basically small (sometimes not so small) IT setups in their home, partially just to tinker and have fun, partially to learn or TRY things , and sometimes providing useful services to the household in the process.

November 11, 2021November 11, 2021

Error trying to print Dymo Labels with Powershell

I like to post about the stuff that always seem to evade my google fu, or perhaps requires a LOT of searching and research to find that oddball answer in the 5th reply to a thread, so here’s one of those answers that will hopefully help someone down the road.

August 20, 2021August 20, 2021

Problem using Invoke-Webrequest in a Powershell task on Windows Server

I figured I’d share this one, since it’s one of those fun Microsoft-isms that just like to pop up on a rainy Friday. I had a script that runs on a server, that I had to modify to grab some info off a web page using Invoke-Webrequest. Super simple basic request with no auth. Added it to the script, run the script on the server, works great, life is good!

July 15, 2021July 15, 2021

A common Microsoft conundrum: Updates Stuck at 67%

One thing thats certainly anxiety-inducing to an IT nerd is the above screen; you installed some updates, and now waiting…waiting…waiting…and praying the update actually completes. Depending on what version of Windows you have (like Windows Server 2016) – this may often mean HOURS of waiting. I feel for you.

April 22, 2021

Lenovo T15 – Missing Microphone – Intel SST Driver Issue

Here’s a fun one I tackled recently; brand new Lenovo T15 laptop, fresh Windows install, but the built-in microphone is missing (in Windows)! Camera is working.

February 26, 2021March 3, 2021

Microsoft Teams Direct Routing – SIP 404 Not Found

My first experience with switching a user from an existing calling plan in Microsoft Teams to Direct Routing did not go as planned. Not at all. I’ll walk you through what I did…and what I did wrong, as googling this particular error didn’t really lead me to the answer!

I seemingly had everything right – I followed the Configure Direct Routing documents to the T, and to switch the user over, I removed their calling plan, and then used powershell to add the ONPREMURI property (aka the user’s phone number) in E.164 format with the tel: prefix to the Teams user. I have the SBC all set up and outbound calls are working fine, yet inbound calls don’t seem to be working, as I’m getting a “404 Not Found” reply to the SBC invites in the SIP traces.