Microsoft has provided an extensive installation guide for the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 so that anyone can install it with ease. The most important is the hardware requirements because if your computer is not compatible then you will not be able to use the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 effectively.

There are two operating systems that can support the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and they are the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition and the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition. It will not be supported by any other pre-installed operating systems.

One of the important pre-requisites for installation is user permissions. In order to install the server, you need to be one of the members of a group of Administrators who operate the target or main computer. Verification is required for Administrators and for that you can log in using the User Accounts Control Panel located on the main computer.

The server is capable of setting different levels of permissions on the main computer where it has been installed. If the server is installed in a computer that is running on Windows Server 2003, then only power users and administrators will be given permission to log in.

There are certain prerequisites, which have to be installed or need to be present on your computer for successful installation of the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. If these prerequisites are not taken care of or are skipped then the OCS 2007 Server will not be able to function effectively.

The prerequisites that you need to install are:

• Microsoft .NET Framework - 3.0 Redistributed Package
• IIS and MSMQ
• MSXML 6.0.3883
• Integrated Windows Authentication should be enabled
• Need to have Hotfix for Microsoft Framework 2.0 and for Windows Server 2003

The OCS 2007 speech server installation guide will provide you details of how you can install the various prerequisites like for example if you had to install the IIS and MSMQ then the installation process will be:

• On your Windows Server 2003,
• Click on start and then choose control panel. Click on add or remove programs.
• Then go to add/remove Windows components
• When the components list box opens, check the box next to Application Server and then click on details.
• You need to also check the boxes next to ASP.NET and message queuing. Don’t check the box next to application server console or enable network DTC access.
• Click OK, and then click Next
• The system will prompt you for a Server installation disk. At this point, you can place it on the DVD drive and once all the information and components have been copied, click finish.
• Close add/remove programs.

Similarly, you can install all the other pre-requisites. The installation process is provided on the OCS 2007 server installation guide. One important thing to remember is that, if there is any real-time virus monitoring software on your PC then de-activate it prior to installation.