When users are enabled for Office Communications Server, they are assigned a home server. If you are moving from Office Communications Server 2007 to Office Communications Server 2007 R2, you might still have users who are homed on the earlier version of Office Communications Server. This is a problem because users who are homed on Office Communications Server 2007 cannot log on to Communicator Web Access (2007 R2 release). Only users homed on a server running Office Communications Server 2007 R2 can log on to a Web site hosted on a server running Communicator Web Access (2007 R2 release).

The solution to this problem is twofold:

  1. Continue running at least one server with Communicator Web Access (2007 release) installed.

  2. Define a redirect URL for your virtual servers that are running Communicator Web Access (2007 R2 release).

The redirect URL is the URL for the server running the Communicator Web Access (2007 release) (that is, the legacy version of Communicator Web Access). When a user logs on to Communicator Web Access (2007 R2 release), the server verifies the user account in Active Directory. If the user is homed on Office Communications Server 2007 that user will automatically be redirected to the server running the earlier version of Communicator Web Access. Otherwise, the user will be logged on to the server running Communicator Web Access (2007 R2 release).

Instead of using a redirect URL you can give users two different URLs: one for users homed on Communicator Web Access (2007 release), and the other for users homed on Communicator Web Access (2007 R2 release). However, it is much easier to give users one URL, without having to worry about which version of Office Communications Server each user is homed on. This way, as users are moved to Office Communications Server 2007 R2 they can continue to access Communicator Web Access by using the same URL they used previously. The only difference is that, after they are homed on Office Communications Server 2007 R2, they will no longer need to be redirected.

Redirected users will not have access to the new features included in Communicator Web Access (2007 R2 release). They will only have access to the features available in the previous version of Communicator Web Access.

To specify a redirect URL

  1. Log on to the computer that is running the Communicator Web Access snap-in.

    Note:
    To specify a redirect URL, you must log on as a member of the local Administrators group and the RTCUniversalServerAdmins group.

  2. Click Start, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2, Communicator Web Access.

  3. In the console tree, expand the name of the computer that hosts the virtual server that needs to be configured with a redirect URL, right-click the name of the virtual server, and then click Properties.

  4. In the Propertiesdialog box, on the Generaltab, type the URL of the server to which legacy users will be redirected in the URLbox and then click OK.