Hey everyone, new to this forum, so I'll be posting a few questions(threads) as I am new to the Blackberry world. I have a BES 5 SP1 install on a dedicated 2008 SP2 64bit server. I also have a OCS 2007 R2 deployment (never had R1/RTM) and want to get my handhelds to work with my OCS. I have read that what I should have done is prep Active Directory first with RTM, install OCS 2007 CWA, then install OCS 2007 R2. Ok, didn't do that, so deed is done.

I have seen some confusing statements online where some will say,

"Sorry can't be done now... you'll have to wait for R2 support, if that ever comes" (paraphrasing).

then I've seen one or two posts that state,
"Run Forest and Domain prep with the OCS 2007 RTM setup..." and your good.
The Three UC Amigos : I need to support Rim?s COMO client in OCS 2007 R2

Before I attempt such a thing, I was wondering if anyone has done this and had success... if so, did you run from GUI or CLI, and did you have to re-run OCS 2007 R2 preps after?

Thanks.

We're running OCS 2007 - not R2 - and I believe the information "Sorry it can't be done" is correct unless you can somehow build the Communicator Web Access server with OCS 2007 (no R2).

I understand I'll have to load the CWA with OCS 2007 RTM, but what I've seen the disparagy in, is that some say it will not work due to me not having prep'd AD first with RTM and then some saying all I have to do is prep with RTM after the fact of already doing a R2 install.

Here are some links:
How to set up a Communicator Web Access 2007 server in a Communications Server 2007 R2 topology to support UC AJAX applications
How to set up a Communicator Web Access 2007 server in a Communications Server 2007 R2 topology to support UC AJAX applications

BTSC Note:
View Document

I had seen that one from Microsoft. The date on it is March of 2009, so it's older compared to that from the Three UC Amigo blog entry from technet (the link I reference) which is from June of 2009. Microsoft offers no clarification in their article for people that have already installed R2, just "before you install R2, here's what you do..." verbage.

Yes you can run the RTM prep even though you have already done the R2 prep

before we moved to R2 in a new domain we tested this in a VM test enviro

but make sure you do the prep as a domain ADMINISTRATOR (not just a domain admin)(if you don't use the almighty Built-in Administrators group you'll get errors)
(oh and it needs to be the top level administrators group (in case your in a multi-domain forest)

that last part got me and it wasted a fair amount of time

our current set up is

CWA-R1
CWA-R2
OCS-R2-SE
OCS-R2-EE

with the CWA's and the SE server in the same site but the users that are on the EE server can still chat via the CWA-R1 or the CWA-R2 but Bes only talkes to the CWA-R1

and to your other question about if you need to re-run the R2 preps the answer to that is no
I was worried about that as well because the people who set up the EE server had already done so and the new domain hadn't been R1 preped
thankfully we put togather a VMware test enviro so we could test before throwing it at production

hope this helps

When you ran your preps, did you have to run them all? When I go to run the preps from the GUI from RTM (just to see what shows up), it shows that that schema prep is already completed (I'm assuming this is because it's seeing those attributes from R2 prep). The Three UC Amigos blog posting mentioned earlier, only comments about running forest prep and domain prep from the GUI... Is this basically what you followed as well?
Thanks a bunch!

I did all preps that didn't show as done

You da man. Made sure I had backups, prep'd with no errors whatsoever, installed CWA, and everything is working as expected between CWA and BES. I likey!

Again, thanks a bunch.

Your welcome

I do look forward to when a Bes update lets it work directly with R2 so we don't have to have 2 cwa servers

(although the R1 cwa is on the bes itsself)

I am stuck in the same boat where I already deployed Communicator 2007 R2. However, when I run the GUI all of the domain prep stuff is done and it will not let me re-run any of them using Office Communicator RTM.