Microsoft Lync

Are you implementing Microsoft Lync? SSW can help. SSW can install, setup, manage and backup your Lync solution. Our Expert Lync consultants can assist resolving problems with existing Lync solutions.

Overview

Basic features include instant messaging, Voice Over IP and Video Conferencing inside the client software. Advanced features are related to integration with other Microsoft software:

• Availability of contacts is based on Microsoft Outlook calendars stored in a Microsoft Exchange Server.
• Contact lists can be retrieved from a local directory service, like Microsoft Exchange Server.
• Microsoft Office can show if other people are working on the same document.
• All communication between the clients is done through a Microsoft Lync Server. This makes communications more secure, as messages do not need to leave the corporate intranet, unlike with the Internet based Windows Live Messenger. The server can be set to relay messages to other instant messaging networks, avoiding installation of extra software at the client side.
• A number of client types are available for Microsoft Lync, including mobile clients.
• Uses SIP as the basis for its client communication protocol.
• Offers support for TLS and SRTP to encrypt and secure signalling and media traffic.
• Allows sharing files.

The main new features of this version are the addition of real-time multi-client Collaborative software capabilities, (which allow teams of people to see and simultaneously work on the same documents and communications session). These features are implemented as follow:

• Collaboration through Whiteboard documents, where the participants have great freedom to share text, drawing and graphical annotations.
• Collaboration through Power Point documents, where the participants can control and see presentations, as well as allow everybody to add text, drawing and graphical annotations.
• Polling lists, where Presenters can organize polls and all participants can vote and see results.
• Desktop sharing, usually by allowing participants to see and collaborate on your windows screen.
• Windows applications sharing, by allowing participants to see and collaborate on a specific application.

All collaboration sessions get automatically defined as conferences, where clients can invite more contacts. Conference initiators (usually called organizers) can either promote participants to act as presenters or demote them to act as attendees. They can also define some basic policies about what presenters and attendees are able to see and do. Deeper details of policy permissions are defined at server level.

SSW can help you install, setup, manage and backup your Lync solution. SSW runs its own Lync infrastructure, so you can be sure that our consultants have hands on experience when it comes to supporting your Lync in a critical business environment.

Benefits

Organizations can gain the following major benefits from using Lync:

• Know whether others are available to communicate. Repeatedly attempting to reach each other by phone or email is a common communication problem in today's business world. Often the problem stems from workers who are physically separated by geography and time zones and who lack visibility into other people's availability or presence. Presence information is especially important when there is a need for a critical business discussion or a time-sensitive decision has to be made. Lync helps organizations increase individual productivity by adding presence, IM, and PC-to-PC audio and video calling to the business IT infrastructure.
• Presence and click-to-communicate from Microsoft Office Outlook.
  

  

  Figure: Lync from within Outlook

  
  Collaborating with others can be challenging for workers whose jobs require constant use of business productivity applications during the work day. Lync connects presence and real-time collaboration capabilities with the Microsoft Office Outlook messaging and collaboration client. This enables higher productivity by allowing workers to collaborate using the programs they're already familiar with.
• Connect with people and be more productive through a rich and immersive meeting experience. meetings enable users to connect wherever they are through PC-based audio, video, and web conferencing, both as scheduled meetings and spontaneous, ad hoc collaboration sessions. With Lync, users can collaborate, share information, and coordinate their efforts in real time, all within the context of an existing workflow. Lync supports an integrated conferencing experience, enabling users to join the same conference from the PC (via the Microsoft Lync 2010 and 2013 client) or from a phone (requires a separate dial-in audio conferencing service from a qualified partner).
• Collaborate within SharePoint sites.
  

  

  Figure: Lync from within SharePoint

  
  Lync serves as the presence engine for SharePoint team sites and portals, providing presence and IM access from within Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Server sites. For example, users can enable the Members Web Part to see the presence of anyone associated with a SharePoint site, which allows information workers to spend more productive time in their business productivity applications.
• Communicate with other organizations running Lync. The federation feature of Lync establishes trusted relationships between an organization and one or more external organizations. This allows users to see user presence and communicate using IM and PC-based audio and video across organizational boundaries.
• Communicate with Windows Live Messenger contacts. Lync enables your users to connect with Windows Live Messenger contacts using IM, audio and video calls directly from Lync.
• Reduce costs. Lync facilitates rich and engaging communications across and outside an organization without expensive business travel or costly phone bills.