Quick Tips on Easier Ways to Use OCS 2007
Filed under: Instant Messaging (IM), OCS 2007, OCS 2007 R2, Reference
We”ve been using OCS for a while now. When you use a system day in/day out, you begin to pick up a few tricks. Ways to make chatting easier, taking advantage of lesser-known features, that sort of thing. Some questions along the same lines have come in from our OCS clients too. So I collected a few for today’’s OCS Insider post.
When you”re done with a conversation, leave the window open for a moment. This gives OCS a chance to realize you”re through, so it can record the conversation in Conversation History. You”ll see a notice when it’’s done so like this:
----------
This conversation is being saved in the Conversation History
folder in your Outlook mailbox.
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When in a conference call or chatting on IM, you may need to pass a link to someone. If you put an underscore ( _ ) in front of the link URL, OCS will not activate the link. Much easier to copy this way.
If for some reason you want to “appear offline” in Office Communicator…long lunch anyone?…I have some bad news. It IS possible to appear offline. But it’’s not enabled by default.
You should really use Away for anytime you”re not at the keyboard. Or Do Not Disturb if you can”t have anyone bugging you. But, if you absolutely HAVE to get out, this is how you enable Appear Offline (warning: this involves editing the registry).
- Log on to a computer running Communicator Web Access as a member of the local Administrators group.
- Click Start / Run.
- Type regedit in the Run dialog box. Hit ENTER.
- In Registry Editor, expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, expand Software, expand Policies, expand Microsoft, click Communicator, and then do one of the following:
- If the Policy key already exists, go to step 6.
- If the Policy key doesn”t exist, right-click Communicator, point to New, and then click Key.
- After the new registry key is created, type Policy to rename the key.
- Right-click the new Policy registry key, point to New, and then click DWORD (32-bit) Value.
- After the new value is created, type EnableAppearOffline to rename the value.
- Double-click the new EnableAppearOffline registry value.
- In the Edit DWORD (32-bit) Value dialog box, type 1 in the Value data box, and then click OK.
(Instructions courtesy of Enabling Users to Appear Offline, Microsoft TechNet)
If you haven”t changed your Presence status message in more than 24 hours, do so at once. Leaving your status message unchanged for days means people don”t know what you”re doing. So they”ll often assume you”re available anyway, and bug you about their stuff.
Remember, the default status is Available. Unless you illustrate that you”re not, people will act like you are.
That’’s it for now. We”ve got more though; you”ll see them soon.
Have you found a useful tip while using OCS? If so, please list it in the Comments.
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OCS 2007 R2
Office communications server
OCS 2007 R2 Documentation Published
Microsoft published new documentation for OCS 2007 R2 July 27th. The new documentation is split up in Word and CHM files. Download just one reference; Small- to-Medium Business Deployment Walkthrough, for example. Or grab the “Communications_Server_2007_R2_Documentation.zip” file for everything.
Insanely useful page for OCS reference material.
Microsoft.com Downloads — Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Documentation
Thanks to Tom Keating’’s TMCNet Blog for the notice.
