Office Communications Server 2007 Act 2 -- Er, R2

According to F. Scott Fitzgerald, “There are no second acts in American lives.” Fitzgerald’s point was that in America – and elsewhere, for that matter – you never get a second chance; instead, you get one shot at doing something and from then on what’s done is done. Remember heavyweight boxing champion Joe Frazier’s singing career? Of course you don’t. And that was Fitzgerald’s point exactly. Joe Frazier had his first life: he was heavyweight boxing champion of the world. As for his second life? Well, there are no second lives.

Words to live by indeed. Except for one thing: F. Scott Fitzgerald must never have heard of Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2.

In its first life, Office Communications Server 2007 was released in the fall of 2007 and was an immediate hit with both customers and critics alike. As Brian Chee and Oliver Rist noted in InfoWorld:

“Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 is a breakout communications system for Windows shops, featuring smooth integration of IM, conferencing, and voice telephony. It has great potential to streamline worker interactions within the enterprise, particularly if you're also running Exchange Server 2007 and SharePoint Server 2007 in the server room and Office 2007 on users’ desktops.”

Not bad, eh? Or, as Tom Keating of TMCNet, put it:

“My overall impression of OCS 2007 is that it is an excellent platform that can certainly boost employee productivity through its unification of several disparate communications mediums - voice, video, IM & presence, and web collaboration.”

In other words, Office Communications Server 2007 was one heck of a first act. Could the second act, Office Communications Server 2007 R2, really be better than the original release of the software? Well, there’s only one way to find out: you’ll have to read the rest of this article, an article which takes a detailed look at some of the cool new features found in the R2 version of Office Communications Server 2007.

With that in mind, here’s a look at some of the new (and/or improved) features found in Office Communications Server 2007 R2, including:

• Instant messaging
• Dial-in conferencing
• Desktop sharing
• Group Chat
• Call routing and answering (Response Groups)
• Team Call
• Call Delegation
• SIP Trunking
• Enterprise Cellular Telephony
• Communicator Phone Edition

The first cool feature we’re going to look at is Instant Messaging. Instant messaging isn’t new to the R2 version of Office Communications Server 2007, but there has been one very nifty enhancement: instant messaging is now available to just about anyone.

What does that mean? Let’s take a moment to talk about instant messaging and how it works. For example, suppose you could use your telephone only to call people who had the exact same type of telephone as you do. Would a setup like that interest you? We didn’t think so; when you pick up the phone in order to place the call it shouldn’t matter to you what kind of phone the person on the other end has.

In other words, you wouldn’t like the idea of being able to communicate only with people who had the same phone, or were clients of the same telephone company, as you. And yet, historically, this has been the case for people trying to send instant messages on their computers. As a general rule, instant messaging services have been an island unto themselves: if you belonged to Instant Messaging Service A then you couldn’t send messages to people who belonged to Instant Messaging Service B, or vice-versa. Consequently, people often resorted to joining multiple instant messaging services, and had multiple instances of instant messaging software installed on their computer. Not very convenient, but, then again, what else could you do?

Well, one thing you could do is install Office Communications Server 2007 R2. Instant messaging in office Communications Server is pretty cool. For example, the instant messaging service is tightly-integrated with Active Directory: that means it’s very easy for you to locate people and send those people instant messages. You say you don’t know Bob’s SIP address? That’s fine: as long as you know his name or his email address you can track him down.

Of course, you’d expect that any instant messaging service would make it easy for you to communicate with people within your own organization. But that’s not the problem; the problem is communicating with people outside your own organization. How can Office Communications Server 2007 R2 help you communicate with those people?

Believe it or not, there are several ways that Office Communications Server can help bridge the gap between disparate instant messaging services and disparate organizations. Suppose you need to communicate with another organization (say, a partner, or maybe a subsidiary that maintains its own Active Directory directory service). If that organization is also running Office Communications Server 2007 R2 then you can set up a “federation” between your two groups. Do that, and you can seamlessly share presence information (information that tells people if you are online and available for communication) and exchange instant messages across organizational boundaries.

That’s kind of nice, isn’t it?

But it gets even better. As hard as it is to believe, there are organizations that don’t currently use Office Communications Server 2007 R2. (We know, we know. But it’s true.) Instead, they simply have their users subscribe to a public instant messaging service such as AOL, Yahoo!, MSN, or Windows Live. Can you set up a federation with a public instant messaging service like AOL? No, you can’t.

But what you can do is purchase a few Public Internet Connectivity licenses. Do that and your users will be able to easily view the presence of, and exchange instant messages with, users with accounts on AOL, Yahoo!, MSN, or the Windows Live instant messaging services.

Again, that’s nice. However, not everyone has an account with a public instant messaging service. If a person doesn’t have an account in your organization, or in a federated organization, or on one of the compatible public instant messaging services, well, that person is just plain out of luck, right?

Wrong. With the 2007 R2 version, Office Communications Server has added support for “anonymous users.” Suppose you’re hosting an instant messaging session and you’d like a consultant to join in; however, this consultant doesn’t belong to any instant messaging service. What then?

Hey, no problem. As it turns out, both Office Communicator and Communicator Web Access (the two instant messaging clients included in Office Communications Server) enable you to invite anyone (and when we say “anyone” we pretty much mean anyone) to take part in an instant messaging session. With just a few button clicks an Outlook e-mail invitation will be generated for you, an email that contains complete instructions (and valid URIs) for your session.

Address the email to the appropriate people and then send it off. Each person who receives the mail can then join the instant messaging session by doing one of the following:

• If they happen to be running Office Communicator then they can click the link Join using Communicator.
• If they are not running Office Communicator then they can click the link Join using a Web browser.

And yes, we know: the problem is that these people don’t have user accounts or passwords on your system. But that’s OK: with Office Communications Server 2007 R2 they don’t need user accounts or passwords. Instead, they can log on to the instant messaging session without being authenticated; in fact, they can even log on without having to supply their real name (they are free to choose a pseudonym). And once they are logged on they can exchange messages, participate in desktop sharing sessions, and do many of the things authenticated users can do.

OK, true: like we said, they can do many of the things authenticated users can do, but not all. These so-called anonymous users are subject to a few restrictions:

• They cannot log onto the system unless they have been invited by an authenticated user.
• They cannot view presence information for anyone.
• They cannot create Contact Lists.
• They cannot start their own instant messaging sessions. They can only participate in a session they were invited to.

But that’s a small price to pay seeing as how anonymous users can do one very important thing: they can exchange instant messages even if though they don’t belong to an instant messaging service. In fact, they can exchange instant messages even if they don’t have any instant messaging software installed. That’s something we’ll talk about in just a moment.

Looks like a moment is up: let’s take a closer look at Communicator Web Access.

For more information, see Internal IM and Conferencing.

Communicator Web Access offers many of the capabilities found in Office Communicator (including presence, instant messaging, audio conferencing, and desktop sharing) without requiring you to install Office Communicator. What’s so cool about that? Well, some people choose not to use Office Communicator, and other people simply can’t use Office Communicator. This includes people who:

• Are not running Windows. For example, Macintosh or Linux users can fully participate in instant messaging sessions as long as they are running a supported version of the Safari or Firefox Web browser (see below).

• Are logging on from outside the organization firewall. For example, a salesperson might stay in contact with the home office by logging onto the Internet from a hotel room or Internet café. Office Communicator requires a connection to your internal network; Communicator Web Access merely requires a connection to the Internet.

  Note

  Worried about security? Relax: you can run your Communicator Web Access under the HTTPS protocol.

• Have locked-down computers. Do you frown on users installing software on their computers (perhaps because these users have to share computers)? That’s fine. If these computers have Internet Explorer or another compatible Web browser installed, well, then they already have everything they need to run Communicator Web Access.

• Do not have accounts in your Active Directory domain or the Active Directory domain of a federated partner. If invited by authenticated users, these anonymous users (the same anonymous users we mentioned earlier) can participate in audio conferences or desktop sharing sessions without needing to log on to the system.

Pretty cool, huh? With Communicator Web Access you don’t need to have any client software installed (other than a Web browser), you don’t need to have a VPN connection to the internal network, you don’t even need to be running Microsoft Windows, and yet you can still check the presence of other users, manage your contacts lists, send and receive instant messages, etc., etc. Now, admittedly, there are some tradeoffs. With Office Communicator you can easily send a file to other users: from within an instant messaging Conversation Window simply click the Send a File button, select the file you want to send, and then click OK. However, you can’t exchange files like that using Communicator Web Access. With Office Communicator you can search for contacts in both your organization’s global address book and in your Microsoft Outlook contacts. The same is not true for Communicator Web Access. Although the two are very close in both functionality and appearance, there are some differences.

But that’s OK, because here’s something else that’s cool about Office Communicator and Communicator Web Access: it’s not an either/or proposition. Are you forced to choose between using either Office Communicator or Communicator Web Access? Heck no; use them both if you want. (And no, that’s not some crazy, hare-brained scheme: many people use Office Communicator while in the office and connected to the internal network. And when they’re on the road and logging onto the Internet from a hotel or conference room? You got it: at that point they switch to Communicator Web Access.)

The reason you can use the two applications interchangeably is because they share a common Contact List. Contacts you create in Office Communicator (as well as the Access Level you assign to them) are available in Communicator Web Access; contacts you create in Communicator Web Access (as well as the Access Level you assign to them) are available in Office Communicator. Remember the old commercial that included the line, “It’s like two, two mints in one”? Well, this isn’t anything at all like that.

But it does give you two different ways to check presence, manage contacts, send instant messages, and share your desktop.

What’s that? Oh, right: we did say something about supported platforms, didn’t we? Here you go:

Find out all about Communicator Web Access here: Deploying Communicator Web Access (2007 R2 Release).

If you’ve set up Live Meetings or conference calls in the past, you know that it doesn’t always go so smoothly. (Actually, you might never have set up Live Meetings or conference calls seeing as how things don’t always go smoothly.) This is especially true when you have people calling in from outside your company, or trying to connect from different links. Dial-in Conferencing is a new feature in Live Meeting and Office Communicator that enables you to easily set up conference calls and web conferences so that others can join the meeting, and can join whether they are part of the corporate network, or are joining from their computer, desktop phone, or mobile phone.  Dial-in Conferencing eliminates the need for complicated conference bridging to connect people who join by phone or computer. On top of that, you no longer need a third-party teleconferencing service provider, which means that Dial-in Conferencing is a cost-efficient audio solution for conference calls and Live Meetings – and that can mean significant savings for your company.

Wow.

And, believe it or not, there’s more. With Dial-in Conferencing you can use any telephone (even a cell phone) to join in the audio portion of a conference. Granted, you won’t be able to send text messages and you won’t be able to see the slides or participate in desktop sharing, but you can fully participate in the audio portion of a conference.

Incidentally, Dial-in Conferencing is especially nice if you use the Conferencing Add-in for Microsoft Outlook. If you schedule conferences using this tool, Outlook will automatically prepare an email invitation with the conference URLs. That email will also include audio-only information, similar to this:

AUDIO INFORMATION

To join a conference from your phone, dial in using the following information:

Phone:18665554268 [English]

Phone:14255551000 [English]

Find a local phone number for your region

Conference ID:71589

Passcode:Passcode is not required.

Note: If you have an account on this corporate network, use your PIN to join. Have you set your PIN?

Users can now dial the appropriate phone number (e.g., 1-866-555-4268) and, when prompted, enter the Conference ID code (71589). Like that, and like magic, they’ll be connected to the audio portion of the conference.

For more information, see Dial-in Conferencing.

Are you looking for a “killer application,” that one feature that makes you say, “Omigosh, I have to rush out and buy Office Communications Server 2007 R2 right this very minute!”? Well, here’s one nominee for that killer app: desktop sharing.

What’s so cool about desktop sharing? To answer that question, let’s pose the following scenario. You’re working on a major proposal and you’re just about done; however, before calling it good you need to run the draft by the other members of your team, and you need to make sure that the proposal has the latest and most up-to-date budget figures. So how are you going to do this, especially in light of the fact that your team is a “virtual team,” with team members scattered all across the country?

Most likely what you’ll do is email the proposal to everyone, and then wait for them to email you their feedback and their budget numbers. You’ll collect all the comments, update the proposal, then email the revised document to everyone. This cycle continues until everyone agrees that the proposal is finished. Or until the deadline for submitting the proposal has passed.

So will that work? Beats us. We’d never engage in such a tedious process of review-revise-review-revise-review-revise-review because we use Office Communications Server 2007 R2. Instead, we’d use the desktop sharing feature built into both Office Communicator and Communicator Web Access.

Good question: how would we use this desktop sharing feature? Well, to begin with, we would initiate an instant messaging session between all our team members.

Once our instant messaging session is up and running one click of a button is all it takes to share our desktop. When we do that, an alert will appear on the computer of each person taking part in the instant messaging session; that alert will ask the person if they would like to take part in the desktop sharing session. If they agree, a special viewing pane will open up on their computer. And what’s inside that viewing pane? You got it: a live look at whatever is currently up and running on your computer. If you’re looking at your proposal in Microsoft Word then guess what: they’re looking at the very same proposal. And when we say “the very same proposal” we mean it. In a desktop sharing session everyone sees exactly what you see on your computer screen. If you open up Excel, they’ll see Excel. If you change the font in the proposal they’ll see the font being changed. That’s because they are viewing the actual document on your computer, not a copy of some kind.

And what if someone says “No” when asked if they want to join the desktop sharing session? That’s fine. They can still participate in the instant messaging session; they just won’t be able to see what’s happening on your computer.

In other words, with desktop sharing everyone can simultaneously review and comment on your proposal. But that’s not the half of it. Remember when we said that you need to update all the budget figures in this proposal? (Trust us; we said that.) Well, if you prefer, you can have people type all the up-to-date numbers in a series instant messages, have those sent to you, and then you can start entering the numbers yourself. Alternatively, you can temporarily give up control of your computer and allow everyone (or one designated person) to type those numbers in for you. That’s right: using the same fundamental principles on which Terminal Services is based, you can let people operate your computer over the Internet. In other words, other people can use their computer – and their mouse and their keyboard – in order to edit the proposal. And, at the risk of belaboring the point, keep in mind that they are editing the real proposal, not a copy: when they click Save that updated file will be saved on your hard disk.

That is cool, isn’t it? And yet there’s more. Suppose one of your teammates has been putting together a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation to accompany the proposal. As long as everyone is online it might be a good idea for the whole team to take a look at that presentation. So what’s stopping you? At any time any person involved in the desktop sharing session can share out their desktop; as soon as they do that you’ll be looking at whatever happens to be running on their computer. After you finish looking at the PowerPoint slides you can then re-share your desktop and go back to reviewing the proposal.

Very cool.

What’s that? You say that’s still not enough? OK, how about this: if you have multiple monitors you can choose which monitor to share. That way you can share out a portion of your desktop while still keeping other parts private.

If that’s not a killer app, we don’t know what is.

Get the details on desktop sharing by taking a look at the Desktop Sharing Architecture

There’s definitely a reason why the word “instant” is so prominently featured in the term instant messaging. Needless to say, instant messages are messages that can be created, sent, and received instantly. At the same time, however, instant messages can just as easily disappear: the moment you end an instant messaging session the public record of that session disappears. On top of that, there is no way to pick up and resume a conversation that has ended. When it comes to instant messaging, at least, F. Scott Fitzgerald was right: what’s done is done.

At any rate, there are some tradeoffs to using instant messaging. Which is exactly why the Group Chat component was added to the R2 version of Office Communications Server 2007.

Group Chat enables users to take part in persistent and on-going instant messaging conversations. With Group Chat, you use a client application to log onto a “chat room” (a chat room, for all intents and purposes, is simply an instant messaging session taking place under the direction of the Group Chat server). Within the chat room you can exchange instant messages, you can upload files, you can share hyperlinks. And when you’re done? You simply log off and go about your business.

You’re right: that doesn’t sound all that different from instant messaging, does it? Here’s the difference. Suppose later in the day (or later in the week or month or year) you need to refer back to that conversation. Or suppose that someone asked a question that was left unanswered and now, sometime after the conversation ended, you have the answer. That’s fine: just log back onto the chat room and pick up right where you left off. It’s not just that a transcript of the conversation is still available; the conversation is still available. Just type a new message and the conversation will resume.

You can just imagine how much useful information will now be saved rather than lost. And because there no doubt will be a lot of useful information, Office Communications Server makes it easy for you to search for information across all your organization’s chat rooms. For example, the Chat Server client application includes an “Ego Filter,” a filter that makes it a snap to search for any message that includes your name. (Believe it or not, that’s the actual name of the filter: Ego Filter.)

Alternatively, you can create your own filters and search for designated words or phrases. If you are so inclined you can even use regular expressions to create some pretty sophisticated search filters. And, best of all, you can name your filters anything you want.

Except for Ego Filter. That name is already taken.

See the Group Chat documentation for more details.

In order to save money, and in order to faster and more effectively handle customer inquiries, many organizations use automated systems for answering and routing phone calls. What’s an automated phone call answering system? Well, have you ever dialed a phone number and then heard something on the order of, “If you are having problems with your service, press 1. If you have a question about your bill, press 2.” That’s an automated answering system. Have you ever dialed a number and then heard something on the order of, “Please hold for the next available representative,” and then, after a brief (or, alas, sometimes not-so-brief) interlude your call is automatically directed to the next available representative. That, too, is an automated answering system. Have you ever dialed a number and then heard something on the order of – well, you get the idea.

Pretty fancy stuff, eh? And no doubt fancy stuff like that requires a lot of fancy, and expensive, hardware, doesn’t it?

It might. But it sure doesn’t have to. Not if you use the new Response Group Service feature built into Office Communications Server 2007 R2.

So what’s a response group (sometimes known as a “hunt group”)? For the most part, a response group defines the steps you want the system to take when the phone rings. For example, you might set up “serial routing” for a group of help desk personnel. When someone calls the help desk, the call is routed to the first person (agent) in the routing list. What happens if that person is busy, or if he or she is offline or away from his or her desk? No problem; the call will automatically be routed to the next person in the routing list. And what if that next person is unavailable? You got it: the call will automatically be routed to the third agent in the list. Etc., etc., etc. If no one is available (or if the call comes in after hours) then the call can be routed to, say, a shared voice mail. Pretty slick, huh?

Here’s another example. A call comes in to the Human Resources department, and a recorded voice asks the caller which department he or she would like to speak with (Payroll, Benefits, Career Counseling, etc.). The caller actually says the name of the department (“Benefits”) and the call is immediately forwarded to the appropriate phone.

And yes, we did say that the caller says the name of the department. Thanks to the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) feature Office Communications Server can both detect and respond to voice input. It can also detect and respond to dual tone multi-frequency keypad input, which is just a fancy way of saying you can press numbers on your telephone instead of speaking into the phone.

Sounds cool, doesn’t it? Trust us: it is cool. Sounds kind of complicated, too, doesn’t it? Trust us: it isn’t complicated. (Sophisticated? Yes. Complicated? No.) Office Communications Server includes a Web-based application for configuring response group workflows. Log on to the Web page and then simply answer a series of questions: specify the group the call should be forwarded to; select a recording to be used as a welcome message; configure the interactive voice response and the actions to be taken; etc. Voila: just like that, you’ve got a response group workflow.

Bet you can hardly wait for someone to call now, can you?

Need to know how to get set up with Response Group Service? Take a look at this: Response Group Service Support

OK, here’s something cool. Let’s assume that you’re leading a team currently charged with an important project. As the leader of the team, people tend to call you rather than your subordinates; as the leader of the team, however, you’re likely to be either too busy to answer calls, or be too involved in a meeting and not even able to answer those calls. So what do you do? Just let the phone ring through to voice mail, and then engage in an ever-enjoyable – and never-ending – game of “phone tag” as you try to return all of those calls and answer all of those questions?

Well, that is one way to approach the problem. But here’s another way: suppose you could set things up so that any time your phone rings the call is automatically forwarded to all the members of your team. Someone calls you, and – immediately – the phones of each member of your team begin to ring. As soon as someone answers, the other phones stop ringing. Wonder of wonders: people trying to reach you on official team business end up talking to a real person rather than to voice mail!

Well, assuming your team is composed of real people, that is.

But wait: we aren’t done yet. There’s more to Team Call than simply causing a whole bunch of phones to ring all at the same time. For example, you have a number of options for determining when (or even if) phone calls will be forwarded to the entire team. These options include:

• Ring leader, then ring team. Your phone will ring first and then, after a specified number of rings, the call will be forwarded to all the members of the team.

• Ring leader and team simultaneously. Everyone’s phone rings at the same time: your phone and the phones of all your team members.

• Ring team only during working hours. Only phone calls received during working hours (as set in Microsoft Outlook) will be forwarded to the team. Calls received after working hours will not be forwarded to anyone.

  Note

  This might be a good time to point out that, if you took advantage of all the productivity enhancers found in Office Communications Server 2007 R2, you wouldn’t have to work such long hours.

• Ring team when leader status is set to Do Not Disturb. Calls will be forwarded only when your status is set to Do Not Disturb.

• Ring team when leader status is set to Offline. Similarly, calls will be forwarded only when your status is set to Offline.

Oh, and don’t worry: if your wife or your husband calls, those calls will not be forwarded to team members. (Although, admittedly, sometimes those are the calls you’d prefer not to take yourself.) Personal contacts (as determined by the contact’s Access Level) are never forwarded to team members.

And what happens if no one is around to answer the phone? That’s fine: unanswered calls will simply be forwarded to your voice mail.

Learn a little more about Team Call here: New Team Call Feature.

We’ve all seen war movies where the commanding officer turns to his adjutant and says, “Get me General Hafner on the line!” Truth be told, we have to admit that there are times when it would be really handy to have someone be able to place a phone call for us (and not just to General Hafner, but to anyone), or to screen our phone calls for us, or to even go in and check our voice mail for us. But where in the world can you find an adjutant?

To tell you the truth, we have no idea. (Our search on Craig’s List came up empty.) But that’s OK; we don’t need an adjutant. Instead, all we need is Call Delegation, yet another nifty new feature built into Office Communications Server 2007 R2.

As the name implies, Call Delegation lets you delegate telephone duties to one or more assistants. What can those assistants do? Well, using Communicator Attendant (sort of a souped-up, software version of the old telephone switchboard) they can do pretty much anything you give them permission to do, including:

• Answer an incoming call

• Transfer an incoming call

• Place a person-to-person call for their manager

• Set up a conference call for their manager

• Redirect an incoming call to voice mail, or send an instant message to the caller

• Take notes during a call, then send that note via email at the same time they transfer the call

• Flag a conversation for follow-up

• Get General Hafner on the line

  Note

  OK, no guarantees on that last one.

Oh, and since you asked: yes, it’s easy for a single assistant to handle the phone calls for multiple managers. You know what? This is even better than having your own adjutant.

Learn how to get started with Call Delegation in Office Communicator.

Let’s do a quick word association game. When we say “SIP trunking” what’s the first thing you think of?

Oh. Well, that’s fine, but here’s what you should have thought of: “SIP trunking? Oh, if only someone would add SIP trunking to Office Communications Server. Do that, and my life would be complete.”

If you aren’t familiar with the term “SIP trunking” let’s see if we can explain what we mean by that. When Voice over IP solutions (like Enterprise Voice, Microsoft’s implementation of Voice over IP) made their debut they were designed for making computer-to-computer “phone” calls. That meant you had to be connected to the Internet in order to receive a VoIP call. In turn, that meant you could not use your VoIP phone to call a cell phone or a PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) phone. (You know, a good old-fashioned phone, like the one plugged into the wall of your house.)

As the VoIP technology matured people begin to develop ways to connect Internet telephones with “regular” telephones. As a general rule, these were hardware-based solutions: for example, with Office Communications Server 2007 you needed to set up an IP-to-PSTN gateway and a Mediation Server in order to connect your Enterprise Voice network to the PSTN network. This was something of a limitation in Office Communications Server 2007. As Chee and Rist noted in their review of the product “…even organizations that have already installed a SIP PBX will still need to invest in a media gateway to integrate OCS with the existing phone system and to talk to the outside world.”

With SIP trunking (included in the R2 version of Office Communications Server 2007) you no longer need to set up IP-to-PSTN gateways or Mediation Servers in order to connect your Enterprise Voice network to the PSTN network. Instead, all you need is an account with a SIP trunking service provider.

The net result? It’s now faster, easier, and more cost-effective to implement Enterprise Voice, and to ensure that your VoIP users can talk to PSTN users, and vice-versa. Keep that in mind the next time you’re playing word association and someone says “SIP trunking.”

Get the details of SIP trunking by looking through the SIP Trunking Topology.

Everyone knows the advantages to Enterprise Voice, Microsoft’s implementation of Voice over IP. With Enterprise Voice, you can make phone calls using your computer or you can make phone calls using your telephone. Computer-to-computer phone calls are typically free; computer to telephone phone calls tend to be much cheaper than phone calls made over the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN, the “old-fashioned” telephone network we all know and love). In addition, your telephone – and your telephone number – are completely portable. Suppose your office is in Denver, CO but you are on the road in New Brunswick, CT. No problem: as long as you have an Internet connection you can plug an IP phone or headset into your laptop and you can make or receive phone calls as if you were in your own office.

That’s what we say: wow.

Of course, there is a catch. (Hey, there’s always a catch.) If you’re in the office, no problem: you can use your computer or your IP phone to take advantage of Enterprise Voice. If you’re on the road, you can use your computer to connect to the Internet, then use a headset or IP phone to take advantage of Enterprise Voice. But what if you’re on the road and you don’t have a computer, or you don’t have an Internet connection, or you don’t have an IP phone? Are you just plain out of luck? Of course you are. After all, you can’t use a cell phone to take advantage of Enterprise Voice.

Wait; scratch that: in the old days you couldn’t use a cell phone to take advantage of Enterprise Voice. But these are the new days, the days of Office Communications Server 2007 R2—and the days of Enterprise Cellular Telephony, also known as “outside voice.”

Enterprise Cellular what? Telephony. If you aren’t familiar with the term (and there’s probably no reason why you would be) Enterprise Cellular Telephony (or outside voice) enables your cell phone to function as just another unified communications endpoint. And what does that mean? Among other things, it means you can now use your cell phone to take advantage of Enterprise Voice.

And what does that – OK, good point; maybe we should explain this in a little more detail. Let’s assume that your cell phone is your primary phone, and that you are often on the road as part of your job. With Enterprise Cellular Telephony you can enable the new Single-number Reach feature in the R2 version of Office Communications Server 2007. What does Single-number Reach do for you? Well, suppose someone calls you at work. When they do, an “Incoming Work call” notification will automatically pop up on your cell phone. If you want to, you can answer the call. Alternatively, you can ignore the call and have it automatically sent to your office voice mail. Cool, huh?

And you can do the whole thing in reverse, too. Need to make a business call? Then use the Call via Work option. When you do that, Office Communications Server will effectively make two phone calls: one to you, and one to the person you want to call. (And then magically merges the two calls so that you can have a conversation with the other party.) The net effect is twofold: 1) the call appears to come from your office (which means the person you’re talking to never knows your current location or your cell phone number); and, 2) if you’re calling someone back in your hometown you’ll be charged for a local call rather than a long distance call. That’s because the call actually originates in your hometown, or wherever Office Communications Server happens to reside.

Nice. No, scratch that, too: very nice.

Of course, we should make it clear that you can’t do all these cool things with just any cell phone; instead, you must have a cell phone running both Windows Mobile 6 (or later) and Office Communicator for Windows Mobile. But that’s fine: surely you want a cell phone running both Windows Mobile 6 and Office Communicator for Windows Mobile. After all, with Communicator for Windows Mobile you can check the presence of all your contacts right from your cell phone; you can also manage that Contact List which, as you might expect, is the same list used by Office Communicator and Communicator Web Access. With Communicator for Windows Mobile you can send and receive instant messages from your cell phone. And when you’re done with your instant message session? You can send the transcript of that session as an email.

Which reminds us: did we mention that you can use your cell phone to send email?

The R2 version of Communicator for Windows Mobile also includes some nifty new features. For example, if your most active ‘endpoint” (an endpoint is the client software being used for communication) happens to be a phone then your presence won’t just appear to other users as “Available.”Instead it will appear as “Available – Mobile,” making it clear to everyone that you are currently working from your phone. That way, people will realize that your availability might be somewhat sporadic. (Hey, you never know when you might drive through a tunnel, right?)

Here’s another cool example: your Communicator Mobile Contact List includes a special group – Recent Contacts – that lists the people you’ve most recently communicated with by phone. Pretty nice, huh?

Now, admittedly, Communicator Mobile doesn’t have a downloadable application that makes it look like you’re lighting a cigarette lighter. (Maybe in the next version.) In the meantime, you’ll just have to do with applications that help make your life a whole lot easier.

See how this all works by taking a look at the Outside Voice Control Architecture.

We all know the score. If you’re looking for a cool phone, one packed with nifty new features and innovations, well, you’re pretty much limited to cell phones. Desktop phones? No one makes cool desktop phones, not in this day and age.

Well, except for the people who make the Communicator Phone Edition phone, that is.

The fact of the matter is this: the Communicator Phone is pretty cool. In effect, a Communicator Phone is like having a mini-version of Office Communicator built right into your telephone (and with no computer required). On the phone’s monitor you can view all your contacts and their current status; in addition, you can search for new contacts in both your organization’s global address book and your own set of Microsoft Outlook contacts. With one click on the phone’s touch screen you can place a call to any of your contacts. (And, of course, you can locate – and call – these contacts by name, without having to memorize a bunch of phone numbers.)

Is there more? You better believe there is: the 2007 R2 version of Office Communicator Phone Edition includes a whole bunch of enhancements. For example, you can now automatically redial the last number you called. Not a big deal, perhaps, but still a nice feature to have. With the new version you can choose from four different ring tones. Cell phone users might not be impressed by this, but, remember, this isn’t a cell phone: when’s the last time you could choose a ring tone for your desk phone? Oh, and this is nice: you can now view someone’s contact card right on the phone screen.

Did someone say, “Is this secure?” Of course the Communicator Phone is secure: at any time you can lock the phone and prevent access to the device. To regain access, you simply need to type in your 6-digit PIN.

For more information, see: Office Communicator Phone Edition Enhancements.

Believe it or not, we’ve hardly scratched the surface of the new additions to Office Communications Server 2007 R2. For example, we didn’t mention some of the enhancements to Office Communicator, including the ability to – at last! – sort your contacts alphabetically by name. We haven’t talked about the changes to Archiving Server and Call Data Recording; we skipped right over the simplified firewall configuration management for A/V Edge Server; and we totally ignored the fact that you can now use Office Communicator to make a peer-to-peer call using high-definition video (defined as a resolution of 1270 pixels by 720 pixels and an aspect ratio of 16:9). In other words, there are a lot of cool things in the R2 version of Office Communications Server 2007.

But have no fear: we’ll be back with many more articles in the weeks and months to come. And if you can’t wait until then, well, the first wave of Office Communications Server documentation (the Planning and Deployment guides) are online, with a second wave (including Getting Started and Technical Reference guides) scheduled to follow in mid-March. And then come April 1st – well, let’s just say we hope to have something special for on April 1st. We’ll see you then.