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Communicator Web Access Requirements

Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 will reach end of support on January 9, 2018. To stay supported, you will need to upgrade. For more information, see Resources to help you upgrade your Office 2007 servers and clients.

This section describes the hardware and software that are required to install Communicator Web Access. Support client configurations are also described.

Server Requirements

The infrastructure, hardware, and software that are required to install Communicator Web Access are described in this section.

Required Infrastructure

The network in which the Communicator Web Access server will reside must include a DNS (Domain Name Service) server and a PKI (public key infrastructure).

The server where you will install Communicator Web Access must be a member server in the same Active Directory forest as an Office Communications Server 2007.

Note

Installing Communicator Web Access on a workgroup computer is not supported and will cause an error during setup.

The root CA (certification authority) chain is trusted by the server, and a certificate from the trusted root CA is located in the trusted root CA store of the server. For information about how the certificate should be configured, see Planning for Certificates later in this guide.

Required Hardware

The minimum hardware requirements for the Communicator Web Access server are as follows:

  • PC with dual 3.20 gigahertz (GHz) processor

  • 4 gigabyte (GB) DDR (double data rate) RAM

  • 1 36-GB NTFS-formatted hard drive or partition

  • Gigabit (1 gigabit per second) Ethernet network adapter

Required Software

The following software must be installed on the computer on which you will be installing Communicator Web Access:

  • Windows Server 2003 R2 SP2 or Windows Server 2003 with SP1 or later

  • Windows Installer 3 (included in Windows Server 2003 SP1 or later)

  • IIS 6.0

  • .NET Framework 2.0, including ASP.NET 2.0

    Note

    ASP.NET is automatically registered with IIS if the .NET Framework 2.0 is installed after IIS 6.0 is installed. If you install the .NET Framework first, you must manually register ASP.NET. For details, see https://r.office.microsoft.com/r/rlidOCS?clid=1033&p1=kb325093.

In addition, the following QFEs must be installed:

Client Requirements

Communicator Web Access is supported on the combinations of operating system and Web browser shown in Table 2. Mechanisms for user authentication that are available for each client configuration are also shown.

Table 2: Supported Browsers

Operating System Browser Authentication Mechanism

Windows® 2000 SP4

Microsoft Internet Explorer® 6 SP1

NTLM

Kerberos

Forms-based

Custom

Windows XP SP2

Internet Explorer 6 SP2

Windows Internet Explorer 7

NTLM

Kerberos

Forms-based

Custom

 

Mozilla Firefox 2.0.latest

Forms-based

Custom

Windows Vista

Internet Explorer 7

NTLM

Kerberos

Forms-based

Custom

Mac OS X 10.4.9

Apple Safari 2.0.4

Firefox 2.0.latest

Forms-based

Custom

Note

If you use a browser other than the Microsoft Internet Explorer® 6.0 SP1 Internet browser or later, titles in desktop alerts, options dialog boxes, and permissions dialog boxes may not always be displayed correctly.

Snap-In Requirements

You can use the Communicator Web Access Manager (2007 release) snap-in to manage one or more Communicator Web Access servers from a remote computer. You can install the snap-in on any computer that is in the same Active Directory forest as the Communicator Web Access server. The computer where you install the snap-in must already have the IIS 6.0 Manager snap-in installed, and it must be running one of the following operating systems:

  • Windows Vista®, Enterprise Edition

  • Windows Server 2003 with SP1 or later, Standard, Enterprise, or Datacenter Edition

  • Windows Server 2003 R2 with SP2, Standard, Enterprise, or Datacenter Edition

  • Windows Server 2003 with SP1 and above, 64-bit edition, on 64-bit hardware with WOW64 mode

  • Microsoft Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 (SP2)

Communicator Web Access Manager is not supported on any version of Windows 2000.

Note

Before you install the Communicator Web Access Manager (2007 release) snap-in on a remote computer, you must first install Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager. Only the management components are required; you do not need to install IIS on the computer. In order to install the Internet Information Services snap-in, you can use Add/Remove Windows Components in Control Panel (Windows XP) or Internet Information Services Manager (Windows Server 2003), or you can download Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 Manager for Windows XP.

Communicator Web Access Active Directory Account Requirements

The following table lists the minimum group membership requirements for deploying Communicator Web Access.

Table 3: Minimum Group Membership

Group Minimum Requirement

Administrators (local)

To install and activate Communicator Web Access

Domain Admins

To install and activate Communicator Web Access

RTCUniversalServerAdmins

To activate Communicator Web Access

In addition, the service account that will run Communicator Web Access (by default, RTCComponentUniversalServices) must be a member of the RTCHSUniversalServices group.

You can delegate installation of Communicator Web Access to someone who does not have the required group memberships. For details, see the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Active Directory Guide.