Microsoft Lync Server 2013 Part B

This is the concluding installment to my short blog post series on Microsoft Lync Server 2013 which is based on what I learn on the video training course by CompuWorks on this software. You can have multiple devices ie webcam, microphone etc configured with in Lync Server and choose with in the settings what you use. You can also adjust things like the volume of the ringer and the volume of the caller’s voice etc with in this. You can switch from one means of communication to another quite easily merely select the other medium during the call and this is useful if you have to send a file etc. In Lync you can go to a website and click on a phone number like where they have contact information even one that has letters in the number and it will automatically ask if you wish to call that number. In a video call it uses picture with in a picture technology, mostly a picture of you with in the picture of the person you are speaking to. You can include more than 2 people in a video call and it goes from one person’s picture to another as each person speaks. Lync classifies missed calls the same as missed IM messages and they are displayed together. It displays the number of messages next to the icon and the number disappears once you listen to it. Voicemail is amazingly configurable and you can apply specific personalized recorded greetings to things like someone phoning from a certain number. There is also an automated greeting you can use. The simplest way to start a meeting is simply click the menu button, then meet now to start the online meeting then select the people who are joining it. There are also settings for more important meetings, things like who is the presenter, and who has permission to review the powerpoint slides prior to the meeting. These have to be configured quite often prior to meetings. Also next to each phone record or email message it tells you that person’s status, useful if you need to get in touch with that person. I may try and review a book on Lync as this series is only an introduction and I would like to learn more about it.

Microsoft Lync Server 2013 Part A

This is the first installment in a brief series of blog posts on Microsoft Lync Server 2013 which is based on what I learn on the introductory video training course by CompuWorks on this software. This software which integrates with many of the Microsoft products in particular Exchange Server & Office is all about communication. It works with IM or instant messenging, telephony, email, video chat among others that comprise unified communication in general. You have a status for you to give updates. There is the option of preset status’s you can select ie in a meeting or busy. To a certain extent these status updates can be automated ie if away from the computer it will automatically send out busy or will automatically check the calendar to see what you are doing and update accordingly. There is a virtual phone dialler in this program and if you type part of a person’s name or number, auto complete will do the rest. Contacts are kept in groups to make it easier to find them. There is typically several of these groups and if you right click groups, click create new group and name it you can create a new one. You can have call forwarding with telephone calls and even have it ring 2 numbers simultaneously to make sure you are able to answer it. If you hover over the contacts icon or photo a menu comes including various options to contact them, ie email or IM etc. You can right click the icon and choose always on top which keeps the communication window visible regardless what work you are doing. When finished you can deselect it to turn this feature off. You are able to share files and format text. It also has emoticons to enhance your message. It can integrate with Powerpoint to show a presentation and you can teleconference so several of you have a similar screen. With teleconferencing more than 2 can be in contact at the same time. You also have a virtual whiteboard within the program for drawing and sharing illustrations. I did stop doing the video training course on Administering Sharepoint as it was too difficult but am enjoying this course and sadly there is only 2 installments to this course.

 

Microsoft Exchange Server 2013

The book I read to research this post was Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Unleashed which is an excellent book which I read at http://safaribooksonline.com. This book is quite comprehensive in its coverage of Exchange 2013. The first version of this software was Exchange 4.0 and the reason it was version 4 but the earliest version was that versions 3 and earlier were Microsoft Mail which was a desktop program not a server product. It had nothing to do with Exchange in its software architecture. Prior to this if a company wanted a server communications network they had to use Novell Groupwise which meant all the hassles of making sure the Novell operating system ran on their servers. Exchange is designed in particular to run with Lync 2013, Sharepoint 2012, Office 365 and in particular Outlook. Outlook comes in several flavours, there is OWA which can be used on a guest machine via the internet, or Outlook Anywhere which works via mobile devices. Sharepoint is useful if the works have to work together and communicate via computer in a complex way. Exchange is more than capable of straightforward communication. Lync handles instant messenging and Im in general has caused problems for companies in other programs because viruses can exploit vulnerabilities inherent in it. Having it in a server product that integrates with server Microsoft products is a way around that.If a computer handles sensitive data the company should consider issuing staff with smartcards you swipe in addition to using strong passwords and you can buy PGP which stands for pretty good privacy certificates which you can use with the computers in particular to discourage man in the middle attacks. I enjoyed this book which would have been out of my league had I not done a video training course in Exchange 2013. It covers it in lots of detail and must be one of the definitive books on the subject. I think a lot of people would find this book difficult to follow.

 

 

Outlook 2013

The book I read to research this post was Outlook 2013 For Dummies which is a very good book which I read at http://safaribooksonline.com . Outlook is primarily a personal organiser software that is part of the Office 2013 suite of programs from Microsoft and of course gets a regular update every couple of years or so. It also integrates with your email account although that normally can’t be a web based one like yahoo or gmail and most businesses use a personalized corporate email accounts system that works fine. It also has things like calendar and notes features. Apparently the average office worker spends 28 hours a week answering emails and things like spam and phishing are major problems, one feature in the program is you can block a user directly or based on a criteria like country suffix if you get a lot of spam from a certain country for example but bear in mind it might prevent legitimate customers from contacting you. There are some slightly different variants of Outlook mainly Outlook.com & Outlook Web App or OWA. Outlook.com is what Microsoft is upgrading all its email accounts to and this will share the Outlook interface and if you have ie a hotmail account the address will stay the same but it will be upgraded. New email accounts will have the Outlook.com suffix. OWA is a web based version of Outlook that works with Exchange Server 2013. It has a similar interface to Outlook. New users to Outlook are often surprised when they open the program they aren’t presented with a blank screen like the other Office products but it has quite a lot of information like emails and to do lists. You can color code to do lists so you can see at a glance what is the most important. Some things are quite simple like you click reply to open a replying message type you email and click send. There is a reply all feature which you wouldn’t normally use and is if you get a message sent to you and several others you can send the same reply to the other recipients which would probably be bad etiquette. It also has an RSS reader where you can subscribe to blogs and podcasts. It can also translate your messages to and from another language. I really enjoyed reading this book which does a good job of explaining this program.