Entries tagged with office communications server - TechNet Edge

What is New in Administration and Management with Office Communications Server 2007 R2

Adam Bomb — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 07:01:00 GMT

Episode 6 in a series

I wrapped up my interviews with the OCS team with Anand Lakshminarayanan, who showed me some of the IT Admin specific features in OCS R2.

Color me impressed.

Need to plan an OCS architecture? How about a wizard that you provide with your locations, users, and feature requirements and it spits out a detailed Visio style architecture for you, including recommendations for number of servers and locations. Bandwidth requirements too!

Need to expose your OCS environment to the internet? No problem. Here's a wizard that will list out all the ports, IPs, etc. that you need to open. Just print it out and hand it off to your firewall guy.

Reports? Lots of reports added in R2. breakdowns of voice and video activity. Performance reports, including types of devices and how they're performing.

He also talks about virtualizing, scaling and managing OCS R2.

If you’re interested in learning more about Office Communications Server 2007 R2, go ahead and sign-up for their FREE virtual event and evaluation bits here: www.microsoft.com/communicationsserver

What's New in Mobility and Anywhere Access with Office Communications Server 2007 R2

Adam Bomb — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 07:01:00 GMT

Avi Sagiv is a Product Manager in OCS, and I met with him to talk about the new OCS features coming for mobile phone users. When OCS talks about mobility, they aren't just talking about Windows Mobile devices - they have a java client for phones that Avi showed me as well.

There have been some significant enhancements to performance and functionality of OCS on mobile devices, and OCS has some great features that make mobile computing really viable - like the ability to start a conference call with one press - the OCS server actually calls you back, as well as your other conference attendees, so you don't pay any outgoing minutes.

If you’re interested in learning more about Office Communications Server 2007 R2, go ahead and sign-up for their FREE virtual event and evaluation bits here: www.microsoft.com/communicationsserver

What's New in Group Chat with Office Communications Server 2007 R2

Adam Bomb — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 07:01:00 GMT

Part 4 in a series

Who? Ashima Singhal and Bob Serr.

What? Group Chat - new functionality coming in OCS 2007 R2. Once I saw it, I got it. Group Chat gives you the ability to set up multiple chat rooms, and subscribe to those rooms. You can set up key word notifiers to let you know when certain topics come up. All chat transcripts are archived and indexed, so you can go back and search for previous discussions. All this, plus a lot more. Bob and Ashima give a great demo of all the things you can do with Group Chat.

If you’re interested in learning more about Office Communications Server 2007 R2, go ahead and sign-up for their FREE virtual event and evaluation bits here: www.microsoft.com/communicationsserver

What's New in Office Communicator, Communicator Web Access, and Devices with OCS 2007 R2

Adam Bomb — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 07:01:00 GMT

Part 3 in a Series

This time, my visit to the OCS team lead me to Huat Chye Lim and Ashima Singhal. Huat shows us some device integration with an IP phone, showing how presence and OCS contact details can be leveraged on devices other than a PC. Ashima shows off some of the functionality available in Communicator Web Access - the browser based Office Communicator client - the look and functionality is almost identical to that of the desktop client.

They also show us some of the new features in the client, like one click desktop sharing and video conferencing - more cool stuff coming in R2!

If you haven't already, go ahead and sign up for the FREE virtual event and evaluation bits here: http://www.microsoft.com/communicationsserver

What's New in Conferencing with Office Communications Server 2007 R2

Adam Bomb — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 17:24:00 GMT

Part 2 of 6 on new OCS features!

Renee Lo is definitely the gadget girl of the OCS Product Managers that I met with - a quick look around her office showed the latest slick HTC Smartphone, a Roundtable and big video conferencing TV. Why does she need all that stuff? She's looks after the conferencing features in OCS, and in this interview she gave me a tour of some of the new features. Like the ability to start a conference on your cell phone, then seamlessly move it to your office phone when you get in. She showed the new video conferencing performance, and the ability to change resolutions on the fly during a video conference.

She also spent some time at the whiteboard drawing out the OCS architecture, showing how your connection, via corp LAN, pots, internet/etc., works, and the workflow of a con call initiated in OCS. Cool stuff!
To learn more about Office Communications Server 2007 R2, go ahead and sign-up for their FREE virtual event and evaluation bits here: http://www.microsoft.com/communicationsserver

OCS and the new Attendant

Adam Bomb — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 07:01:00 GMT

I've recently been spending a lot of time with the Office Communications Server (OCS) team, and they've shown off some of the new features coming in their next release, OCS R2.
In this interview, I met Jamie Stark, a Technical Product Manager that looks after VoIP in OCS. In this interview, we talked a little about integrating OCS into existing telecoms, and Jamie walked me through the new Attendant Console in OCS R2. If you've got a busy receptionist that spends a lot of time taking and routing calls, the Attendant Console was built with that job in mind.
*This is the first in a series of visits I made to the OCS team, so keep checking back as we unveil more cool new features*
Check it out!
The OCS team also wanted me to remind you that to learn more about Office Communications Server 2007 R2, go ahead and sign-up for their FREE virtual event and evaluation bits here: http://www.microsoft.com/communicationsserver