Creating a Conferencing Directory after you delete it

Update 5/18/2015 - I stumbled across my own blog today solving this same problem!  If the issue here is you cannot uninstall the CAA because you already moved your CS Conferencing Directory, you can user move-csconferenceDirectory to move it BACK to OCS 2007 R2 so you can uninstall the CAA properly.  Then you can move it back to Lync 2010/2013 prior to OCS Front End deactivation.


In OCS 2007 R2, the decommission steps are widely documented by both Microsoft Technet and many other bloggers.  And with Lync 2010 and Lync 2013 now being generally available, I find myself cleaning up a few OCS 2007 R2 implementations.  I got fairly comfortable with the steps, and I goofed on the order of things.  I removed the assigned conferencing directories to an OCS pool before I deactivated the Conferencing Attendant.

I found this related post on Lee Desmond's blog, which matched the error I was receiving in my attempted deactivation:

"A call to a subtask failed.: The call to subtask AppServer.GetAppState failed. Pool is not ready."

The error associated was  0xc3FC200D

I searched a while and finally found that I made the mistake of removing the conferencing directory prior to deactivating the Conferencing Attendant.  Simple, enough - I'd just need to create a new conferencing directory.  Only there is not a way to do so in the OCS GUI.  So I had to take to ADSIEdit.msc for this one.

Much of this is thanks to this blog entry, which solves a different issue, but contained most of the knowledge I needed!

Open ADSIEDIT.

Navigate to the following:

CN=Configuration

CN=Configuration,DC=,DC=com

CN=Services

CN=RTC Service

CN=Conference Directories

Right Click on "CN=Conference Directories"

New -> Object

On the New Windows that opens which says "Select a Class:" choose msRTCSIP-ConferenceDirectory

In the Value Field type 2.

Note:- Value Field corresponds to the Common-Name of the Conference Object that we are creating.

Click on Next.

Click on Finish.

Now under the "CN=Conference Directories" we will see the new Directory Created with name "CN=2".

Now expand the following.

CN=Configuration.

CN=Configuration,DC=,DC=com

CN=Services.

CN=RTC Service.

CN=Pools

CN=

CN=Microsoft

CN=LC Services

Right Click on "CN=LC Services" and go to properties.

Check for the Attribute called distinguishedName.

Copy the value of distinguishedName.

Now expand the following.

CN=Configuration.

CN=Configuration,DC=,DC=com

CN=Services.

CN=RTC Service.

CN=Conference Directories.

Cn=2

Right Click on the "CN=2" and go to the Properties.

Check for the Attribute msRTCSIP-ConferenceDirectoryHomePool**

Paste the distinguishedName Value here.

Also check for the Attribute msRTCSIP-ConferenceDirectoryId

Enter the Value 2 there.

Now, close and reopen (refresh didn't seem to pull the update) your OCS server console, and you should see your Conferencing Directory ID of "2" show up again.  Now you can deactivate the Conferencing Attendant successfully!

**Thanks to Refik Unver for the Update in the comments, which has now been added to the post!