OCS 2007 R2 – CWA Presence Shows As Offline

I recently assisted with a deployment of Office Communications Server 2007 R2. During the deployment I experienced an issue with Communicator Web Access. When signing in via CWA, either internally or external, my SIP enabled accounts presence always showed as offline, even if I explicitly told the web access client to sign me in as available. The strange thing was, when I viewed the account signed in through CWA on a Communicator Client, the presence was correctly shown as available. After a lot of testing and investigation it turned out this was an issue related to deploying the Communicator Web Access role on Windows Server 2008 R2. To resolve the issue I performed the following actions:

1. On your CWA server download and install the latest July 2010 Communicator Web Access patch which is included in Microsoft KB 968802. This can be downloaded from the following location, however please note you will need to scroll down the article and download the cwamain.msp file.

Microsoft KB 968802: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=b3b02475-150c-41fa-844a-c10a517040f4

2. Perform the following actions as detailed in KB 982021:

– Start secpol.msc on a Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system server.

– Click to select Local Policies and then click Security Options node.

– Make sure that the following values of the policies are set to “No Minimum.”

– Network Security: Minimum session security for NTLM SSP based (including secure RPC)

– Network Security: Minimum session security for NTLM SSP based (including secure RPC) servers

3. Reboot your CWA server to ensure the security policy change takes affect.

4. Testing signing into CWA and ensure you presence status is correct.

For more information on deploying OCS 2007 R2 server roles on Windows Server 2008 R2 please see the following URL: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982021