Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Getting Started Guide Published: July 2007
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Table of Contents Part 1 Overview .............................................................................................................................. 1 Chapter 1: What’s New with Office Communicator 2007 .......................................................... 1 Contact Management ................................................................................................................ 1 Enhanced Presence and Presence Management ............................................................
Manually Change Your Presence Information .........................................................................25 Chapter 5: How to Contact Others ..............................................................................................27 Know If and When a Contact is Available ...............................................................................27 Get Additional Contact Details ................................................................................................
Part 4 Phone and Video ................................................................................................................53 Chapter 12: Getting Started with Office Communicator Phone and Video Capabilities ......55 About Phone and Video Capabilities .......................................................................................55 What You Should Do First .......................................................................................................56 About Phone Number Formats.
Part 1 Overview In this Part: Chapter 1: What’s New with Office Communicator Chapter 2: Getting Started
Chapter 1: What’s New with Office Communicator 2007 In this chapter, we will cover what’s new with: x Contact Management x Enhanced Presence and Presence Management x Conferencing x Phone and Video Contact Management Office Communicator 2007 offers new features that make it easier for you to manage your contacts and Contact List, as shown in Figure 1.1 below. New features include: x Show Recent Contacts. A Recent Contacts group is now available in the Communicator Contact List.
2 | Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Getting Started Guide Figure 1.1. The Office Communicator Contact List and Contact Card Enhanced Presence and Presence Management Office Communicator 2007 offers new presence states to more accurately reflect a person’s willingness and ability to communicate. In addition, Communicator now gives you more granular presence management, enabling you to control access to your presence information by assigning contacts to access levels, as shown below in Figure 1.
Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Getting Started Guide | 3 Figure 1.2. Access levels determine the amount and type of presence information that is available to contacts x Interrupt list. You can now assign a Team access level to your contacts to create a preferential list of contacts who are allowed to communicate with you, even when your Presence status is set to Do Not Disturb. x Location setting configuration.
4 | Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Getting Started Guide x Ability to start a conference call by selecting a group in the contact window. You can multi-select contacts in the Contact List or click a group in the Contact List, and then select a conference call option to start a conference. x Improved connection in conference roster. New icons in the conference roster provide additional conference connection status, indicating whether a user’s status is Inviting, Connecting or Connected. Figure 1.3.
Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Getting Started Guide | 5 Figure 1.4. Communicator Call in the Call options menu x Call forwarding options. If your environment is configured for enterprise voice, you can forward calls to another number or contact, enabling you to receive calls on your mobile phone when you are not in the office.
6 | Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Getting Started Guide Office Communicator 2007 Documentation The following documentation is available for Communicator 2007. You can find the documents on your Office Communications Server 2007 TAP Web site. The Online Help is accessible directly from the Office Communicator 2007 client. x Office Communicator 2007 Release Notes Covers product limitations and workarounds for the Public Beta release.
Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Getting Started Guide | 7 Chapter 2: Getting Started In this chapter, we will cover: x Software and hardware requirements for Office Communicator 2007. x Installing Office Communicator 2007. x Starting Office Communicator 2007 and signing in. Software Requirements This release of Communicator 2007 is compatible with the following environments, as shown below in Table 2.1. Table 2.1.
8 | Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Getting Started Guide x A half-duplex or full-duplex sound card. Half-duplex audio allows only one person to speak at a time. Full-duplex audio allows two people to speak simultaneously. Video Requirements x To make video calls, you must have a webcam connected to your computer. Note that you can receive video calls without a webcam and view the caller’s video stream.
Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Getting Started Guide | 9 Starting Communicator and Signing In Typically, Communicator is configured for you by your system administrator. The administrator may or may not have configured Communicator to start automatically when you log into Windows, so we will cover this option in this section. To start Communicator 1. Click Start, point to All Programs, and then click Microsoft Office Communicator 2007. 2.
Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Getting Started Guide | 11 Part 2 Contact Management, Presence and Instant Messaging In this Part: Chapter 3: Manage your Contact List Chapter 4: Customize your Presence Information Chapter 5: How to Contact Others Chapter 6: Send and Receive Instant Messages
Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Getting Started Guide | 13 Chapter 3: Manage Your Contact List Your Contact List is a list of co-workers, family, friends, and associates with whom you communicate most often. The Communicator Contact List shows the availability of your contacts and allows you to view additional contact details by clicking on the contact’s Presence button. The Contact List is your starting point for communicating with your contacts.
14 | Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Getting Started Guide Figure 3.1 below shows the Office Communicator window, and points out the portions of the user interface that you use most often when managing your contacts and Contact List. Figure 3.1 The Office Communicator window and Contact List To add a contact or distribution group to your Contact List 1. In the Office Communicator window, type the display name or e-mail address of a person or distribution group in the Search box.
Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Getting Started Guide | 15 3. You can drag existing contacts from the Contact List into the group or use the Communicator Search feature to find users and add them to the group. Add Public Instant Messaging Contacts If your organization is configured to support public instant messaging (IM) connectivity, you can add instant messaging contacts from AOL, Yahoo, MSN, and the Windows Live™ network of Internet services to your Office Communicator Contact List.
16 | Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Getting Started Guide contacts, but you can make calls to the contact’s home, business, and or mobile phone numbers. For more information about adding public IM contacts to your Contact List, see the Communicator online Help. Add Federated Contacts Office Communicator and Office Communications Server 2007 support the ability to federate (connect) with other organizations, enabling you to add contacts from those organizations.
Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Getting Started Guide | 17 When you add a public instant messaging contact using the Outlook Contacts folder, you can add home, mobile, and other phone numbers for the contact, so you can use the click-to-call feature in Communicator to call the contact on his or her home, mobile, or work phone number.
18 | Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Getting Started Guide View a Person’s Contact Card A person’s contact card provides details about the contact’s availability and activity. Depending on the access level that a contact granted you, you can see a contact’s schedule, as well as any personal note the contact has written.
Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Getting Started Guide | 19 To change the way you view contacts x Click the Change View button from the menu. , as shown below in Figure 3.3, and then select a view Figure 3.3. The Office Communicator window and Contact List For more information about access levels, see Chapter 3, “Manage Your Contact List.” For more information about tagging contacts, see Chapter 5, “How to Contact Others.
Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Getting Started Guide | 21 Chapter 4: Customize Your Presence Information Communicator provides a full set of personal presence attributes that you can make available to other contacts to help them get in touch with you. Presence attributes include information about you, such as your work phone, mobile phone, and home phone, along with additional information, such as your work schedule and personal notes.
22 | Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Getting Started Guide Meeting Subject X Free Busy X X X Working Hours X X X X X Endpoint Location Notes (Out of Office Note) X X X Notes (Personal) X X X X X Last Active *If these attributes are defined in Microsoft Active Directory, they are visible to all contacts in your company, regardless of access level. They are also visible to federated contacts, depending on the assigned access level.
Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Getting Started Guide | 23 Control Access to Your Presence Information with Access Levels With Communicator, you use Access Levels to control the level of your presence information that others see. For example, you probably have a short list of co-workers who you want to have access to your mobile and home phone numbers. To expose these alternate phone numbers to a contact, you need to assign that contact to the Personal or Team access level.
24 | Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Getting Started Guide Assign Access Levels when someone adds you to their Contact List When a person adds you to his or her Contact List, you receive an alert, as shown below in Figure 4.1. The alert enables you to add the contact to your Contact List and allows you to set the person’s level of access to your presence information. Figure 4.1.
Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Getting Started Guide | 25 Home Phone number Other Phone number Team Work Phone number Mobile Phone number Company Work Phone number Public None Blocked None Manually Change Your Presence Information Your Presence information is constantly being updated by Communicator and Office Communications Server, based on a variety of factors, including your Outlook Calendar, whether you are in a call, an instant messaging session, or conference.
26 | Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Getting Started Guide For example, a person with a Team access level to your presence information can interrupt you and sees this status in their Contact List: A person with a Company or lower access level to your presence information cannot interrupt you with an instant message or phone call and sees this status in their Contact List: For more information about setting Access Levels to control interruptions, see the Office Communicator online Help.
Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Getting Started Guide | 27 Chapter 5: How to Contact Others Each contact in your Contact List has a Presence button that reflects his or her current state of availability. You can use a contact’s presence status to decide which mode of communication is best suited for successful communication that contact. For example, if a contact’s status is Available, you can send her an instant message or place a call to her.
28 | Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Getting Started Guide Figure 5.1.
Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Getting Started Guide | 29 Table 5.1 below describes each Presence button and the accompanying status text. Table 5.1. Presence states set by the user or by Communicator Presence button Contact status Description Available The contact is online and can participate in conversations. This status can be set manually by the user. Busy In a Call In a Conference In a Meeting The contact is available but engaged in another activity.
30 | Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Getting Started Guide Presence button Contact status Description Blocked This indicator is displayed in your Contact List next to the name you have blocked. To the person you have blocked, you appear to be offline. Get Additional Contact Details If a contact’s status is not available, you can open his or her Contact Card to get additional details to determine when the contact will be available, assuming that you have been granted Company access level or higher.
Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Getting Started Guide | 31 Get Notified When a Contact’s Status Changes Communicator can notify you of changes in a contact’s status by displaying an alert whenever the contact’s status changes to Available or Offline. The alert shows the contact’s name, title, instant messaging address, and new presence status. You can click the alert to start an instant messaging session with that person.
