Unified Communications within Apps - Sharepoint

UC Within SharePoint

SharePoint has become a trendy portal where many information workers spend a good part of their time.  Making decisions about how to best reach someone from within SharePoint is easy – contacts’ names and status appear on each page where they’ve loaded or updated a document or workflow.

  

From within the Lync client itself, you can use SharePoint-based Skill Search to help you find the expertise you need. In Skill Search, you can enter keywords that describe skills, expertise, and group information to get a list of experts in your organization who have the skills you are looking for. Results are displayed directly within the Lync 2010 client.

 

And when you’ve found experts with the right skills, you can contact them directly through Lync 2010.

Additional recorded meetings can be saved directly to a SharePoint asset library. This enables organizations to treat meeting recordings like other digital assets by setting retention periods and adding meaningful metadata.

Finally, SharePoint workflows can initiate communication functions within Lync.  This is non-standard capability is valuable for workflows that usually stand still or stall when traditional notification methods (namely, email) are not timely enough.  Take for example, the case of a scheduling application within SharePoint.  If a slot on the schedule becomes available and needs to be filled quickly, sending emails to available personnel may not be fast enough.  The first to get the email may take an hour to reply, at which point a second may be alerted, etc.  The process can be made much faster by using presence from Lync – if the first available person is online and available, they may be sent an IM, to which they can reply yes or no to their availability.  If the answer were no, then the scheduling app could try the second available replacement immediately, rather than wait for a preset timeout. 

The example below shows how when a task in a workflow has been assigned to someone, SharePoint can alert Lync with pertinent syntax about the task, ensuring the assignment is understood and acknowledged.

To summarize, Lync users can do the following when in SharePoint:

• Use the Skill view, in Lync search results, to search Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 My Site pages for people with specific skills or expertise
• Access their SharePoint Server 2010 My Site profile page from the Lync - Options dialog box
• On a SharePoint Server page, view a user’s Lync presence indicator and its associated menu or contact card

The integration involves no scripting or back-office integration… simple dlls on the desktop allow client PCs with Lync installed to see presence and communication options on the SharePoint screens.  Specifically, to display the presence indicator and its associated contact card (in Office 2010) or menu (in Office 2007 and Office 2003), SharePoint uses the Microsoft ActiveX control name.dll. The ActiveX control makes calls directly to the Microsoft Lync 2010 API, and then Lync makes MAPI or Exchange calls to supply the requested information.

For details about how presence is displayed on a SharePoint Server page, see "How to add presence/pawn to SharePoint contacts list" on the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=147181.

Unified Communications within Apps - Outlook

This review has been created in connection with The Ultimate Voice Career Promotion. NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Ends 6/30/12. To enter and for Official Rules, visit www.ultimatevoicepromo.com.

Some of UC’s most productivity-enhancing use cases start when users are working within an application on their PC.  When presence and click-to-communicate capabilities are integrated right there in the workflow of the user, it is simple to make a decision about how to best reach someone and begin communicating wit h them.  Here’s what you can get and links to how to implement.

UC within Outlook

There’s no need to skip over to the Lync client when working within Outlook to check presence status or begin a real-time communication.  No matter what you’re doing within Outlook, chances are you’re a click away from and IM or voice conversation.  For instance, contacts and presence status appear on the lower right hand side of Outlook’s main screen.  

When writing an email to a colleague or group, you can see the presence status of the recipients and if they’re online, could IM or call them instead.  In the screen below, an email is being forwarded to follow up on a request from a partner to take action.  The approval of three people is needed to proceed.  Since one of the approvers is offline, and approval is needed from all three, an email is the most effective way to collaborate. 

 

On the other hand, had all three approvers been online, a quick IM conversation between all parties could have concluded the transaction quicker, and with less inbox clutter.

Even set up a meeting where one of the many attendees is showing tentatively available?  Rather than sending the invite on the hope that they can make it, and having to reschedule everyone if they cannot, you can IM or call the tentatively available person to see if they can make it.  Saving time and rework is becoming table stakes in the ‘do more with less’ workforce of the 21^st century.

In organizations where it’s helpful to use Outlook contacts or the Global Address Book within Outlook, presence and options for communicating are embedded in the GAL.  Searching for a contact and choosing the best way to communicate with them improves the ease of productivity in day-to-day life and will leave users wondering how they lived without.

Tying Lync into Outlook is a mature, rather simple integration but has a lot of feature options and scripts.  There are many features aside from those listed here, including:

• Access conversation history and voice mail
• Play back voice mail message
• Display free/busy information and working hours
• Display meeting subject, time, and location
• Display Out of Office status and note
• Exchange contact sync
• Search Outlook personal contacts

The integration and associated scripts are described at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg398806.aspx

Lync Mobile App news - If you use the "Call via Work" feature you will get billed twice.

If you have a customer that does not want the "Call Via Work" feature turned on due to double long distance charges applied to both the cell phone and work phone numbers, you can do the following at the global level from the Lync Cmd Shell:

Set-CsMobilityPolicy -EnableMobility $True -EnableOutsideVoice $False

Now when users call a Lync Contact via Mobile, it will use their 3G cell line and use their Cell Caller-ID. 

Same process applies for joining a meeting from the Mobile Client, it will just use the cell phone to call into the meeting.

This policy can also be applied at a site or user level.

I had thought that when the OutsideVoice was turned off, that you could not make a call from Lync,  and would have to go to your cell phone contacts list to make the call, but this is not the case.  Tested today.

"Hold the Presses" - Droid Lync Mobility now Available!

The Android Lync Mobility application is now available at:

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.microsoft.office.lync

Christmas Goes Mobile!....Lync Mobile that is!

The much anticipated Lync Mobile has finally arrived.  After much anticipation Microsoft has released updates to the Microsoft Lync 2010 family that will allow users to participate in the Lync ecosystem using their Apple iPhones and iPads, Windows Phones and Android phones as Lync endpoints.  Lync Mobile is comprised of server and client side components of which the server side components are now available.

We’ve already been hit with many questions about Lync Mobile and we’ve posted answers to these (See below).  So in this article, I’ll talk a bit about what is and isn’t supported and elaborate on the implementation requirements of Lync Mobile.  Here at Enabling we are ready to deploy Lync Mobile in your new installations as well as add it to existing ones.

Lync Mobile is designed to allow you to use your mobile device as an active endpoint in your company’s Lync environment.  The beauty of it is that it allows you to use a single mobile device for both your corporate and personal needs.  Sure, it sounds like mixing the chocolate with the peanut butter which, it is, but it will allow you to switch “corporate” mode on and off as you like.  Microsoft refers to this as being able to control your own availability.  In other words, you’ll be able to manage when your mobile device is an available Lync endpoint.  This is a lot better than carrying a company and a personal mobile device!

Features

Now, the capabilities and features of the platforms are not uniform.  They have differences that are related to the capabilities of the platform and the operating environment in which it runs.  For example, iPads don’t have built in 3G phone numbers.  So for iPads, if you are joining a meeting, you’ll have your Lync server outdial to your cell phone or some other device.  All devices share these common features in this initial release:

•          Keep connected with the company while controlling your availability
•          Use a single consistent identity
•          Join audio conferences and Lync Online Meetings by pressing 1 button
•          An Interface design available to your Lync users
•          Flexibility in seeing the status of your contacts.
•          Support for both on and off (Office 365) premises Lync
•          Support for Contact Groups
•          See your contacts presence and personal notes
•          Search the Address book
•          Single Number Reach.  You need only your work number on your business card.  No need to advertise your personal cell number to the world! (Android doesn’t support this for now but you can accomplish this through call forwarding and simultaneous ringing)
•          Ability to manage multiple conversations simultaneously
•          Can view missed conversations easily
•          Peer to Peer and multiparty Instant Messaging
•          Lync Mobile is gentle on your battery usage
•          Delivers push notifications to Apple and Windows phone devices
•          Requires no new Lync server roles.  Depending on your Mobile client load you may need to increase your Lync pool capacity

Implementation

For an existing installation of Lync, deploying Lync Mobile includes:

•          Install Lync Cumulative Update 4 on all roles
•          Add a LyncDiscover.sipdomain entry to your Lync Certificates
•          Modify the Reverse Proxy rules
•          Add DNS records internally and externally
•          Modify the Outside Voice Policy
•          Enable push notification for Apple and Microsoft devices 

          Setup Federation with the Push Clearing House

          Can enable Push for Apple or Microsoft device  

          Configure your push policies

          Then, download the client side software from the respective marketplace

There will be exceptions to the implementation with certain customers.  For example:

•          If you use hardware load balancers, cookie-based persistence will have to be enabled
•          If you use Push Notification, some additional firewall ports will have to opened up
•          DNS will have to be properly configured to support users transitioning their mobile devices from using the mobile networks to internal WiFi networks
•          If not already configured, the internal web FQDN and external web FQDNs on the front end pool must be different

Implementation Planning

There are a few questions you’ll need to answer before starting the installation of Lync Mobile:

1. Do you want to use automatic discovery for Lync mobile clients?
2. If you are using automatic discovery are you willing to update existing certificates on the front ends and reverse proxy?
3. Do you want to support Lync mobile clients internally or externally or both?
4. Do you want to deploy push notification for Apple devices or Windows phones or both?
5. Will all users have access to Lync Mobile or will it be a subset?
6. For users not enabled for Enterprise Voice should they be able to use "Click to Join" to join conferences?
7. How many users will be enabled for Lync Mobile?
8. Of enabled users and their devices, how many will use a background enabled client (Apple and Windows Phone users) and how many will use an “always connected” client (Android and Nokia devices)?
9. How much available memory do your Front End servers have?

The Bottom Line

 Lync Mobile is here!  Think of it as an early Christmas present!  This is a first release and may not have all the features you had written Santa for but it will take the Lync experience and expand its scope even further outside the office (or away from your desk while in the office!). 

For more information or to schedule and installation of Lync Mobile please contact info@enablingtechcorp.com   We look forward to helping our new and existing clients with a successful deployment of Lync Mobile.

Due to the overwhelming response we are having informal online Q and A sessions on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at 1pm EST. Let us know which day you are interested in attending and we'll send you the link.  info@enablingtechcorp.com.