Office

Setting up DNS SRV records for an Office 365 migration (on 123-reg)

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I needed to setup some DNS records for an Office 365 migration earlier and was initially slightly confused translating the settings Microsoft supplied us to those needed as input on 123-reg’s Advanced DNS configuration. The MX, TXT and CNAME records were simple enough, but it was the SRV records that needed a bit of fiddling to get right.

As an example on the SRV records, MS give you something like this:

Type Service Protocol Port Weight Priority TTL Name Target
SRV _sip _tls 443 1 100 1 Hour thedomain.co.uk sipdir.online.lync.com
SRV _sipfederationtls _tcp 5061 1 100 1 Hour thedomain.co.uk sipfed.online.lync.com

123-reg give you this interface to enter SRV records yourself:

Screen Shot 2013-06-13 at 14.24.42

 

By looking at the examples you can start to understand how to translate the Service, Protocol, and Weight items that MS give you, into the 123-reg input boxes (which do not exist individually for Service, Protocol and Weight).

In the first SRV record example –

Hostname therefore becomes: _sip._tls (the Service + the Protocol with a dot (.) between)

TTL of course becomes: 3600 (1 hr)

Priority is 100

Destination (the most confusing one) becomes: 1 443 sipdir.online.lync.com. (note that it starts with Weight (1), then a space, then the port number (443), then the Target (sipdir.online.lync.com), followed by a dot (.)

That forms your complete SRV record. By entering these along with the other records you require, you should have a fully functional Office 365 setup on your custom domain name.

AutoCorrect hell – VMware

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If you are like me and can’t stand it when Office Applications change the casing of Pronouns such as “VMware” to “Vmware” for example, there is a quick fix you can do. Most may already be aware, but this has hassled me one too many times today, and I therefore sought out the option to prevent it from happening. I was using Excel 2010, however similiar steps should apply to all Office Applications.

 

  • Go to the File -> Help -> Options -> Proofing menu.
  • Click “AutoCorrect Options” -> make sure the tickbox for “Correct two INitial CApitals” is either off, or alternatively and the better option, click “Exceptions”.
  • Add an entry called “VMware” under the “INital CAps” tab.
  • Apply

For a fun list of VMware spelling derivatives be sure to check out Darren Woollard’s “VMware, it’s all in the name” blog post.