Enabling is honored with SmartCEO Magazine Volt Finalist Award

Enabling Technologies is proud to be selected as one of three finalists in the Technology Implementer category - Check out the video below to see all of the finalists - including us!  SmartCEO's Volt: Leaders in Technology program celebrates the role that technology plays in our business community and the future impact the technology sector will have on our economic growth.

2012 VOLT- Technology Implementer Category

Lync Mobility Cumulative Update 5

MSFT released Lync Cumulative Update 5 in February.  One of the key features was that Lync Mobility now support “Call via Work” for Android, bringing it up to par compared to the Windows Phone and iOS feature set.

 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft.office.lync&feature=search_result

What's in this version:

1. Enabled call-via-work – allowing Enterprise Voice enabled users to make and receive calls using your Enterprise Voice (Lync ID) number only. Connect with others using a single identity.
2. Added user controls for adjusting the sound/vibration for incoming notifications
3. Improved the Lync status icon : know if you can receive IM messages
4. Enabled copy of IM text to the clipboard
5. Multiple bug fixes

Allowing Lync Attendant to transfer calls to boss's voicemail

A customer had an issue when using Lync Attendant.   When an Attendant transferred a call to a Lync Enterprise Voice/UM enabled user, and that called party doesn’t pick up the call, the call is transferred back to the operator.  The operator sees the pop up shown here:

The operator has the option to either “retrieve” it or “end” it.  This is working as designed… by default, Lync Attendant will require the call transfer back to itself if no one replies to it.

The desired behavior in some companies/users is to have the call directly into voicemail if they don't answer.  To do that, you must disable the callback setting in auto attendant console. 

Here are the steps.

 =====

1. Logon to auto attendant console.

2. Click option-> action and alert

3. Uncheck the setting “return a transferred call to me if the recipient doesn’t respond”

4. Restart console and try to transfer a call.

This also fixes the symptom that if the called party has their Lync set to “Forward calls to…”, then it immediately rolls back to the attendant and doesn’t forward to the phone specified by the user.

Happy with your PBX but want Lync Benefits and Features?

With all the buzz about Lync’s improvements in PBX-like features (911, survivable branch appliances, call admission control), what good might Lync do for firms and agencies that are happy with their PBX?

Lync has the following end user benefits over OCS R2 (not including the enterprise voice features).

• Activity Feeds (a la Facebook walls)
• Pictures
• Lync Mobile on iOS, WinPhone, Android OS, allowing mobile users to IM/See Presence/Click-to-join audio conf calls
• View all active IM conversations at once
• New status choice – ‘off work’
• Find an expert in SharePoint - searching for contacts is more comprehensive in Lync than it has been in the past.  In addition to being able to search for names or phone numbers, you now can search for items such as job title, department, or skills and expertise from a SharePoint profile.
• But most importantly, Lync does away with the separate Live Meeting 2007 client, so now you can use a single program for instant messages, ad-hoc collaboration, and scheduled online meetings.

 - Meeting organizers can control who gets directly into a meeting and who waits in the lobby. Any presenter can admit or decline people who are waiting in the lobby.

 - Outside attendees can join meetings to which they’ve been invited from the Internet using the Lync Attendee client (full A/V/Web content) or from Mac/Linux, using the Lync Web App for web content 

- You can record Lync audioconferences – with the Lync client you simply hit the record button and it catalogs the call on your PC.  With OCS you had to be in LiveMeeting to record the A/V/Web meetings, since dial in conferences on their own could not be recorded.

From a back-office IT perspective

• Can run all server roles on VMs (HyperV or WMWare)
• Can collocate server roles (i.e. archiving+monitoring, or Front-End+Mediation)  on same VM or physical hardware
• DNS load balancing provides a more HA experience without the complexity of Hardware Load Balancers
• Role-Based Access Control
• Cleaner monitoring server reports
• Removes MMC
• Single storage (Central Management Store) and easier addition of server roles through Topology Builder

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. You can email, IM, call their work or cell #, or view their contact card, right from the pop-up that flies up when you hover over the contact’s name 

  

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
• Get alerts from SharePoint workflows, with instructions and options to get more information, interact with the business process, or launch a communication with decision maker

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.