Public Address (Paging) Options for Lync

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This is part 1 of what’s (so far) a 3-part series:

I recently had a customer with a retail presence ask if we could interface Lync to the paging / public address / PA / evac systems in their stores. “Sure”, I said, then thought I should POC it up to see just how we’d go about it.

Turns out there are a number of ways you can do this. Here are the ones I’ve found. Choose the option that suits your environment best!

“Traditional” Paging

Back in prehistoric days when PABXs roamed the earth we used to connect the PA system to an analog trunk circuit (an “FXO” port) or perhaps a tie-line circuit. This was a relatively neat interface, as it provided the audio on a single pair, and the inherent “supervision” of an FXO or E&M circuit meant it cleared as soon as the paging party hung up the line.
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Review: Espera Reporter – Historical Reporting for the Lync Response Group

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Lync’s Response Group (herein “RGS”) is a great entry-level hunt group and small queue / contact centre application.

Out of the box (and included free with every Lync!) is lots of functionality that you can turn on and off on a per queue – or in Lync parlance, “workflow” – basis, including time-of-day, day-of-week & public holiday opening hours, recorded announcements, text-to-speech messages and even a multi-level speech-reco(!) IVR / auto-attendant / voice menu. There are also overflows based upon time in queue or number of callers – but I think you get the idea.

One of the Response Group’s shortcomings is the real-time visibility is “poor”, as is the historical reporting: the latter being limited to either 1 (or possibly 2) canned reports. I guess that Microsoft focussed on call handling – getting the calls to the agents, using an in-built queuing engine – and left “others” to add extra value on the user’s desktop.

This is where Aussie software developer AdvaTel has stepped in and released “Espera” [Spanish for ’waiting’].

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A free “basic” client for Lync 2013

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Breaking somewhat with tradition, Microsoft has released a free “basic” client for Lync 2013. It’s clearly targeted at the Office 365 set, intended to make it easier to get them on-board without having to bother with licencing, distributing & managing use of the Client application, but there’s potentially a use for it with on-prem users.

This 336M download (“lyncentry.exe”) also strangely seems to fit and possibly have an application where the now-discontinued Lync Attendee left off. You can install this free client on your machine (perhaps at home) and login to Lync from there, or maybe join meetings.

The Download page calls out the limitations and requirements:

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Profiles for Lync v2: for Lync 2010 and 2013

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This post is obsolete. ‘Profiles’ has been replaced by bounSky!

 

 

This post is obsolete. The latest Profiles post (1 Jan 2015) is here: https://greiginsydney.com/p4l-sticky/.

It’s been a while coming, but I’ve finally updated my Profiles For Lync app. We now need two builds because the DLLs between the 2010 and 2013 Preview clients aren’t cross-compatible – but the good news is that both apps will happily co-exist.

Download

You’ll find the files here on the TechNet Gallery site:

P4L v2 for 2010

P4L v2 for 2013

If you run Profiles for 2010 with the Lync 2013 client running it’ll take a while and then report error “LyncController.Init caught”. The other way (Profiles 2013 and the 2010 client) Profiles will just report that Lync is permanently “Not Running”.

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Force A Lync Meeting to Open in Your Browser

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This one’s been kicking about for a while, but I thought I’d document it here.

If for whatever reason you don’t want a Lync meeting to launch in the client, just append “?sl=1” to the end of the invitation URL:

https://meet.contoso.com.au/greiginsydney/ABC123?sl=1

The meeting will launch a page (the image below) that gives you the option of joining from the Lync Web App – a browser window:

Lync-JoinMeetingFromBrowser1

Beware that if the presenter’s Conferencing Policy doesn’t permit anonymous participants you won’t get far by trying to join as a Guest:

Lync-JoinMeetingFromBrowser3

More SoundPoint for Lync – Aussie Tones, DST & Hotlines!

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Following my recent post about the SoundPoint phones, I thought I’d dig some more and refine them.

Customising the Tones

First off, let’s make them sound Aussie.

With a bit of digging, I was able to customise the dial, busy and ringback tones and cadences. In the process of testing this config I found I couldn’t get Lync to send me a busy signal (SIP 486) – the best I could get was SIP 480 (Temporarily Unavailable). So I added a “reorder” section to the config – just so I could hear what the busy tone sounds like.
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Elyza

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“Elyza”, sister to “Profiles for Lync”, is a client-side app I’ve built using the Lync SDK.

Elyza started life as a means for me to test Federation when I deploy a new Lync, and also as an auto-responder to help me present demos and deliver user-training without needing to annoy some poor colleague back in the office.

Elyza hooks into the running Lync client instance on your PC and responds to incoming IMs. When sent a suitably formatted “/” command, Elyza will change status, add or remove you as a Contact, update her personal note or even tell you the time. (Send “/?” for a list of the available commands).

With that code largely working, my partner suggested incorporating “ELIZA”, a text-based “chatterbot” that we both encountered in our high school years. I remember chatting with ELIZA on the solitary computer that the school possessed – an Apple ][.

I was lucky enough to stumble across a java version written by Charles Hayden, and he kindly consented to me re-using and converting it to C# for this application. Charles’ version of the script is a complete and faithful implementation of Weizenbaum’s original, and I’ve used the same here. The script is however resident in a plain text file in the Elyza directory, so you’re free to extend the grammar to move it with the times, or perhaps even translate it into other languages!

Download

Elyza 2013 (v13.1.0.40 – 10th May 2014) can be downloaded from here.
Elyza for Lync 2010 (v1.0.0.39 – August 2012) can be downloaded from the TechNet Gallery site here.

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Lync Client Version Policy – Allow with URL

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I was recently presented with the challenge of how to manage a customer’s client upgrades from OCS to Lync.

Users on the company’s domain are OK and catered for with SCCM to push the necessary upgrade, but there are apparently some remote users on workgroup machines that are immune to policy and other sneaky management tools that we need to find and “motivate” into upgrading.

Enter Lync’s “Client Version Policy” and the ability to allow or deny with a URL.

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A Safety Net for Lync Gateway AD-Lookups

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Superceded 12th Nov2012 by the Mk-II.

A not uncommon user-misconfiguration for a Lync user is to find their account possessing a LineURI (their “msRTCSIP-Line”) telephone number, but for them to not be enabled for Enterprise Voice.

This more commonly occurs in the early stages of a deployment (ahead of cutover), or as the on-site admins settle into the new product and role.

Lync doesn’t have a problem with this – but things *will* start to go awry if your gateway has AD-lookups enabled and sends calls for that phone number to Lync!

Here’s a “safety net” you can add to the NET UX1000 and UX2000 gateways that gives you some ways to better handle these calls – at least until you can fix the user accounts!

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