TANDBERG V 11.8 - Manual (Page 4)


Technical Description Both TMS and Exchange have their own database for booking information.
For Exchange the database contains resource availability based on free/busy
information for resource accounts. This information is stored in Exchange mail-
boxes and public folders.
TMS knows the resource availability based on its SQL Server database. That
means that there are two different systems that are separate, but must show
the same resource availability.
Two Exchange terms are important in the Exchange Integration; sinks and syn-
chronization. A sink is a Microsoft concept in Exchange where the sink is a
‘hook’ which allows another process to be ran when calendar data is written.
This is used for intercepting meeting reservations in Exchange, making sure
that the meeting is validated and stored in TMS before the meeting is stored in
Exchange. A result from a sink is either true or false, so if true is returned the
meeting is booked in Exchange as well. If it is false, an e-mail is sent to the
requester describing why the meeting could not be booked on the TMS server,
and the meeting booking is aborted.
A synchronizer is used to ‘sync’ the data between the TMS server and Ex-
change. Meetings that are booked in TMS will be duplicated in the Exchange
database by the synchronizer. This syncronizer is run every 5 minutes, making
sure that meetings created in TMS are also copied to Exchange. In addition,
each time a meeting is booked in TMS, an e-mail is sent to the TMS-service
account. The TMS-Service mailbox has a sink installed that triggers the syn-
cronizer when it receives e-mails.
Impacts on the Exchange server
In order for the Exchange Integration to function, the installer must make some
changes to the Exchange environment and server. The following changes are
made by the installer:
Creates a Windows service for the synchronizer to run as – runs as
LocalSystem
Creates a tms-service account in the current Windows domain
Uses a strong password, can be changed via Configuration Tool
Creates mailbox for the tms-service account and configures the required
settings and sinks
Adds 6 role-restricted COM+ components. These run as tms-service
Creates an address book in Exchange that will automatically list all TMS
integrated rooms
Can be safely removed
Creates a new local Windows user account named tmsconfuser on the TMS
Server (Normal Windows User privileges only)
Alternatively the installer can use a pre-defined account on the TMS
server
Assigns the tmsconfuser a special Exchange Integration Account
permission in TMS
Creates some registry values, among others, an encrypted representation of
the password of the TMS server user
Creates 2 Security Groups
One for users who can book, and one for ‘admins’ who can access other
people’s bookings in resource calendars
Logging
TANDEBERG log files are available at the installation directory of the integra-
•
•
–
•
•
•
–
•
–
–
•
•
–