OCS Components: Presence
Filed under: Instant Messaging (IM), OCS 2007, OCS 2007 R2
Next up in our OCS Components series is Presence. This is one of those little functions few people even think about — but they love having it around.
Presence is a real-time status indicator in your OCS client, Office Communicator. (That’’s a fancy way of saying it displays your “current status” to everyone else. ) If you”ve ever used IM, you know that means you pick from a few standard options. Away, Available, Busy, etc.
The Presence controls, at the top of Office Communicator. Currently, I”m Available and have no note set.
The available Presence options in Office Communicator are:
- Available
- Busy
- Do Not Disturb
- Be Right Back
- Away
To see them, click the green button. Ta daa!
The Status options for Presence.
To the right, you”ll see ”Type a note”. That’’s the Note field. This is where you write a small note to indicate what you”re doing.
Clearly, I”m succeeding.
So what’’s this good for?
Presence tells you when you should (and should not) try to communicate with someone. Conversely, it also tells them when they should (and should not) try to communicate with you.
Think about it. Let’’s say you needed a little input to finish that customer quote. So you emailed a co-worker…and you waited. And got coffee. And waited. And stared out the window. And waited some more.
You didn”t follow up right away because you didn”t want to nag. You don”t want the stigma of constantly nagging everyone in the office, right?
With co-workers using Presence, you don”t have to. You just check what they”re doing. If they”re Available, send an email or IM them. If they”re Busy or set to Do Not Disturb, don”t. If they”re Away (depending on their note), try calling.
It works in reverse too, right?
Of course! Set your Presence status to Busy or Do Not Disturb whenever you have things to do. Then write a brief Note so everyone understands. Use it whenever you”re busy. For example, when you”re:
- Solving a customer problem
- Wrestling with the Paperdemon
- Concentrating on budget issues
- Attending a client meeting
- Avoiding Susan in Accounting
(Don”t write that last one in the Note field though.)
Your current status is only a little bit of information. But it affects who/when someone communicates with you, and vice versa. I find the biggest value in Presence is simply knowing when not to bug a co-worker. Now, if I could just get them to do the same…
Joining Technorati
Don”t mind us. Just joining some blog networks. Getting the word out and all!
Exchange 2010 is in Beta Already!
Filed under: Exchange Server 2007, OCS 2007, Unified Communications
Just a heads-up - this is the “OCS Insider” blog. But I plan on talking about technologies related to OCS too. Like Exchange Server.
Which is why I”m linking to this article from InfoWorld.com -
First Look: Exchange Server 2010 Beta Shines
Yes, the beta for Exchange 2010 is already out.
InfoWorld publishes some pretty good IT articles, in my opinion. This “first look” is no exception - lots of information about the new beta in here.
My thoughts?
Refining most of the major services from Exchange 2007 - Great!
Dropping support for Windows Server 2003/Requiring Windows Server 2008 - Problem for cash-strapped businesses. With that in mind, I think it’’s good that Exchange 2010 won”t be due out until late 2009. More time for upgrades later.
I also found this on Page 4:
“The Outlook 2010 client and OWA both will have conversation view, and both will include integrated instant messaging and voice mail. Voice mail includes a text preview of the recorded message, automatically transcribed using Microsoft’’s voice-to-text engine.”
So Exchange 2010 will sharpen up the Unified Messaging side of things in Outlook. Nice.
If you want to try out the beta, download it here: Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Beta
OCS Components: Conversation History
Filed under: Instant Messaging (IM), OCS 2007, OCS 2007 R2
OCS has so many components, there’’s no way I could cover them all at once. Especially if I want to get any serious information out there. So I”m writing a series of posts to talk about each one in detail. Today we”re starting with Conversation History.
A big frustration with Instant Messaging: the clients don”t usually log conversations. Even when you turn logging on, you often get a code-jammed block of HTML/Text that HAL 9000 would have trouble reading. I can”t read that, Chris…
Fortunately for us, OCS includes a type of logging that’’s breathtakingly easy to read. When enabled, it saves your IM conversations in a folder in Outlook! Which is called, of course, “Conversation History.”
So right away you can treat them like emails - sort by date, by the people you talked with, search through them, etc. And the Conversation History logs are formatted all pretty, just like the original instant messages.
It’’s easy to enable Conversation History. Here’’s how.
- In Office Communicator, click the Options Arrow (the small downward-pointing arrow on the top left).
- Select the Tools menu. Navigate to Options… and click.
- The first menu you”ll see is the Personal menu. The second-to-last option reads, “Save my instant message conversations in the Outlook Conversation History folder.” Check the box.
- Check the box below it too, if you”d like to save a log of your calls through OCS (this can be handy; I recommend it).
- As a precaution, click the General tab up top. At the bottom of this menu, you”ll see “Turn on Logging in Communicator.” Check this box too.
- Click OK. You”re done!
Think of it like someone following you around with a digital recorder all day. Every time you mumbled something out loud, like “Huh, I should tell so-and-so I”ll send this file tonight,” it was recorded. So you can check yourself anytime.
Conversation History has probably saved me a dozen times already. Can you imagine how handy a running log of on-the-fly conversations is? Say I talked with a co-worker about a client’’s website over IM. Then I forgot the URL she gave me. No problem - I grab it out of Conversation History, boom. And I don”t have to bug her again.
Things to Consider for OCS Gateways (UC Strategies.com)
Filed under: OCS 2007, Unified Communications, Voice over IP
The Unified Communications Strategies website has a good article up about things to look for in OCS gateways. The article talks mostly about the model needed for a solid VoIP network - high-availability architecture, encryption, protection against DoS attacks, etc. It emphasizes reliability a lot - and since this is a phone system we”re talking about, it’’s the right priority to have!
What is OCS 2007? What Does it Do?
Filed under: Instant Messaging (IM), OCS 2007, OCS 2007 R2, Unified Communications, Voice over IP
We can”t have an OCS Insider Blog without the obligatory “what is OCS 2007″ post to start us off, can we? I know many people are still confused over what “OCS” stands for, what this program does, why people get excited over it, etc. So I”ll try to put together a reasonable overview here.
What OCS 2007 Is
“OCS” stands for “Office Communications Server.” It’’s the abbreviated name for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. The current version is OCS 2007 R2 (stands for “Revision 2,” naturally).
OCS 2007 is a software platform for communicating with people. It gives you several communications options from existing Microsoft products, like Outlook. (Yes, this means it’’s even easier for people to bug you in the middle of a project. Or does it? See the “Presence” stuff below.)
OCS exists in two primary parts: the main OCS server, and the Office Communicator client application. Office Communicator is what 95% of users will see every day. It acts much like a commercial IM application - but the server behind it has more capabilities than AIM or Yahoo! Messenger.
What You Use OCS 2007 For
- Talk with co-workers via Instant Messaging/”IM”.
- Hold a group chat if you need several opinions (or approvals).
- Set your current status - Available, Do Not Disturb, Away, In a Call - with Presence. Leave a note as to what you”re doing.
- See? With Presence you can notify everyone when you”re working on something important. That doesn”t necessarily stop them from bugging you, but it”ll help!
- You can see other peoples” status like this too.
- Hold a conference (video conference or audio-only) anytime, with as many people as you want.
- (if VoIP is set up) Talk with anyone, even non-OCS phones, either through your computer or using a SIP-enabled phone.
- If you want VoIP functionality through OCS, you”ll need a SIP gateway between the OCS server and the main POTS network. Only a few of these are available: Aculab has one; Sprint is working on it too.
OCS” Role in Unifying Communications
OCS is part of Microsoft’’s Unified Communications (UC) platform. Microsoft intends to streamline all forms of communication - phone, fax, email, voice - using Unified Communications software. OCS is something of a vanguard for this platform, since it plugs communication into almost every other Microsoft system.
So, What Have We Learned?
There’’s a LOT more detail about OCS 2007 out there. I”ll get to much of it here, in future posts. I”ll also link to other blogs and articles, to build up The OCS Insider as a central resource for this ridiculously-handy application.
Welcome to the Inside, everybody!
Welcome to the OCS Insider Blog!
Filed under: Instant Messaging (IM), OCS 2007, Unified Communications, Voice over IP
Welcome to the OCS Insider!
This blog is dedicated to talking about Microsoft OCS, its related technology, and peoples” experiences with it.
My name’’s Chris. I”m the tech writer for PlanetMagpie, an IT Consulting firm in Silicon Valley. I”ll be your blogger for the year. My specialty? Translating very technical OCS jargon into language about its capabilities we can all understand.
A few of the topics we”ll cover here:
- Components of an OCS Phone System
- OCS With VoIP, OCS Without VoIP - Which is
- When IM is a Big Help
- When IM is Annoying
- How to Use the “Presence” Feature
- Does OCS Really Save Money? How?
- Where’’s OCS Headed?
- Your OCS Questions, Answered
Why an “Inside” Perspective?
We”re an IT firm. So, we”re definitely “inside” the tech industry. Not only that, but we”re the first ones to setup a complete OCS installation in the San Francisco Bay Area.
In fact, that’’s part of the reason why we started this blog - people keep asking us questions about OCS!
We see a huge amount of potential in this software. Many others do too (check our Links list for some OCS-related websites). So we”re establishing The OCS Insider as a resource for anyone interested in moving to OCS and its related technologies.
Bookmark TheOCSInsider.com here. Or click on the RSS Feeds link above to add us to your feed reader. We”ll have more posts coming soon!
And if you”re curious, send us your OCS questions! We”ll do our best to answer all of them.
