This is post number 2 in a series of 4 on using UCMA Workflow. If you need more information on this or are looking for a reference guide, I highly recommend Professional Unified Communications by George Durzi & Michael Greenlee, which has an entire chapter (50 pages) devoted to Workflow.
In the last post I introduced UCMA Workflow, the sort of applications it lends itself to, and how to prepare a UCMA application to run a workflow. In this post I’d like to look at some of the different workflow shapes which are available for you to use with UCMA – the Unified Communications Workflow objects. read more…
This is post number 1 in a series of 4 on using UCMA Workflow. If you need more information on this or are looking for a reference guide, I highly recommend Professional Unified Communications by George Durzi & Michael Greenlee, which has an entire chapter (50 pages) devoted to Workflow.
The UCMA SDK comes with some added functionality, which isn’t immediately obvious. It’s called UCMA Workflow SDK and is a Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF) layer on top of UCMA.
By providing an additional layer on top of UCMA, UCMA Workflow (from now on just called Workflow) allows you to perform UCMA operations by using and joining together shapes in a WWF workflow. This “workflow focused” approach to working with UCMA makes it ideal for scenarios such as IVR applications, where you want a bot to answer an incoming call and traverse a pre-determined set of paths, based on user feedback and other information. read more…
I just wanted to share this bit of data with you, because it makes my head hurt.
I wrote a post this morning – on a weird UCMA error. I published that post at 10:15:30 AM exactly. On my blog, publishing a post also updates the home page, with the new post. read more…
UCMA App Error: Microsoft.Lync.Model.LyncClientException: Generic COM Exception. Code is 0x80EF01F8
I just spent a bit of time debugging this cryptic error message. I couldn’t find anything online about it, hence this post.
The Lync Trusted Application and Trusted Application Endpoints have been created, the UCMA application starts fine, and establishes endpoints fine. However, when you send a message to it, you get this:
Microsoft.Lync.Model.LyncClientException: Generic COM Exception. Code is 0x80EF01F8
at Microsoft.Lync.Model.Internal.CBWBase.BlockUntilDone()
at Microsoft.Lync.Model.Conversation.InstantMessageModality.EndSendMessage_private(String& message, NamedPropertyList& formats, IList`1& participants, IAsyncResult asyncResult)
at Microsoft.Lync.Model.Conversation.InstantMessageModality.EndSendMessage(IAsyncResult asyncResult)
I’ve no idea whether there are multiple possible causes for this error, but, for me, the problem was solved by turning off the firewall on the Application Server (the server hosting the UCMA application).
Now that we know the problem, we can turn the firewall back on – keeping it off probably isn’t the best idea 
But at least now we know what to do:
We need to add an Incoming Rule to allow TCP traffic on the port the application is using.
Don’t know which port that is? Use the Lync Server Management Shell and command Get-CSTrustedApplication. Find your application, and the port number will be listed there.
Disclaimer: This worked for me. It might not for you(!) Due to the nature of the error message, it’s impossible to know if this is the only reason for the error. But, if you find something else which causes this, please mention it in comments.
Edit: in fact, I found that you can also get this error if you try and send a message to an application endpoint tied to a UCMA service, and the service isn’t running. So, that’s work checking as well!
The list is out, here are all the keyboard shortcuts for Windows 8.
Now’s the time to take a look through them and try to get to grips with any new ones, especially with the removal of the Start bar. (which, by the way, is IMO a Good Thing – anything that encourages me to keep my fingers on the keyboard and not on the mouse is good).
You can download the PDF or the XPS directly from Kent Walter, of the Windows Team.
By the way, in looking through the list, I just tried out Win + X in Windows 7. Quick Links to things like brightness, sound, wireless etc. Brilliant! Try it now!
