Benefits for Lync Server Users

UC solution begins with the end-user experience. Lync Server’s newly designed Communicator client provides a concise, seamless, and logical view to enable users easy access to all communications modalities.


Contacts
Lync Server provides many new, yet familiar, ways to interact, learn about, and communicate with colleagues. The clear view of many data streams enables the user to choose the proper modality to communicate with another user. Users can save time when locating resources because they can search for others using keywords as well as names. Even with incomplete information, users can locate and communicate with others.

Lync Server also leverages the concept of social networks. Live contact cards, photos, and spoken names enable users to recognize and discover more about the people in their social network that matter to them most.

Users can save time and be more granular when searching, thanks to SharePoint skill search with address book service web queries (ABS-WQ). By simply placing a mouse over a contact, the hover card provides a consistent view of vital user data across all Office products, including Lync Server, enabling users to be more productive and save time by not switching applications as often.

Users that are part of a large enterprise might be overwhelmed by team-level or corporate wide changes by having users’ photos and their spoken name populating the OCS contact list. In this way, users can become familiar with their evolving social network. Users can become better corporate citizens by learning how a new colleague’s name is pronounced prior to meeting or speaking with him or her. You can now quickly see updates from all your contacts in a single concise view, called the Activity Feed.

Contact management is simpler thanks to the unified contact store. Lync Server now utilizes Exchange 2010 for its contact list, so users save time by not having to manage contacts in both Lync Server and Exchange. When the Outlook Social connector is deployed, users can search across their entire social network, such as Facebook from within Communicator.

Users now have easy access to the history of their communication with a particular contact, enabling them to easily determine the context of a conversation and eliminate the need to catch up on a conversation, for example, when usually just a simple IM can answer a question. Similarly, when starting new conversations, a user can easily provide context to a session to further streamline communications.


Managing Communications
Although there are many ways to initiate a call to a contact, users that are transitioning to Lync Server from traditional PBXs will benefit from having an easily accessible dialpad. In the previous version of OCS, the dialpad existed but was not easy to find.

Lync Server users migrating from simple instant messaging and presence on previous versions of OCS to Enterprise Voice on Lync Server will benefit from being able to conduct communications using any modality from a familiar, consistent interface.

When coupled with exchange unified messaging, users can now have a simple-to-view visual representation of each voicemail message. Lync Server users save time by easily managing voicemails within Communicator.


Panoramic Mode
Lync Server clients can leverage the panoramic video of roundtable devices, allowing for a more comfortable face-to-face video experience. This emulates a telepresence environment that integrates well with commodity desktop hardware.


Activity Feed
Users of common current social networks (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and so on) will immediately recognize and be comfortable with the new activity feed in the Lync Server Communicator client. With a simple glance, you can receive updates (notes) and pictures from those in your social network.


Privacy and Presence Enhancements
Executive users benefit most from the new privacy enhancements in Lync Server. By adding enhanced privacy to a pool, users added to a contact list appear as offline until granted permission by the added contact to see their presence updates. This is valuable, for example, to create ethical walls between departments or divisions. Even if this setting is applied to a pool, users can opt out, enabling all others to see their presence.


Audio and Video to MSN PIC Contacts
Although public instant messaging communication (PIC) has always been a benefit of OCS, Lync Server takes the PIC story a bit further by enabling one-to-one audio and video exclusively to PIC contacts that are homed to the MSN service. This change enables corporate users with a strong MSN presence outside of work to reduce the need to run a separate client on their corporate workstation, yet maintain a robust communications experience.

Source of Information : Pearson-Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Unleashed