Category Archives: Lync Mobile

How I use #Lync and #Office365 as a power user – When I travel

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I´we just came back from a one months holiday in Thailand. Or actually I worked for 2 weeks so I only have to use two of those five weeks paid holiday we get as Swedes. But I could stay for double that time, I could work from the beach and 5 star hotels.
And just some weeks before Thailand I were one and a half week in the states for the Microsoft MVP summit and all this time, my customers could reach me without a thought of playing phone tennis trying to find different phone numbers or OOF responses. And the best thing about it, I could work as I was at home in my office but with the view bellow.

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This series of posts will tell you all about how to use Office 365, Lync and Enterprise voice when you are traveling international. And some other stuff to about hereworking –working from where you do it the best.

The thing is, thanks to Lync and Office 365 I was able to be as productive as I am when im in my Office. Or I would rather say that I got more done these weeks than if i´d be back home.
I would like to back that up with this article. Tell Your Boss: Unlimited Vacation Actually Increases Productivity.

Working remote or hereworking as I would like to call it, is something that is really easy now with the technology from Microsoft. I got all my documents and notebooks in the cloud stored in Office 365 and SharePoint online. I do note taking in OneNote and that notebook is automatically synced to my personal SharePoint site. Also available from my Windows Phone 7 or iPad. I do some syncing of files between all my devices with Skydrive. My email is in Exchange Online and i use both Lync Online and Lync on-premises.

So how did my setup look like.

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I have a Asus Zenbook and a Samsung Series 7 slate with Windows 8 on as my computers (and a iPad2 that I only used 5-10 minutes thanks to the Slate), depending on where I were going to sit and work I did choose the computer that best fit the needs, All files and OneNote were synced via Office 365. I use VPN and Remote Desktop Connection manager and the connection file of course also syncs between the computers.

 

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For my communication I have a unlocked HTC Titan, Plantronics Voyager Pro UC2 and a Jabra UC Voice 250 MS Lync Optimized USB headset.
Thats what I used for phone calls and meetings. Both my PC´s has built in cameras for the video meetings I had in Lync.

Well that’s it for the hardware. Now some tips on how to find a good office for some hours of work.

To start with, there is always coffee shops, Starbucks and they are generally great in the morning, I’m tiered and like to have a coffee to start the day, not so many noisy people in the mornings either, but around lunch and especially after when the moms invade with their kids its usually time to switch place. Plus it don’t feel so good to sit in one coffee shop for eight hours only ordering a coffee.
The great things with many of the coffee shops though is that they have electrical outlets where you can borrow some power, so when you see an outlet rush over there and use it cause you will need it for the afternoon.

After lunch I usually hit the hotels, and preferably the “high so” ones, 5 stars where a coffee is 3 times more expensive than where I had the morning shot. Normally theses places are gorgeous to and have great chairs to work from, but not all has electric…

Some hotels can start playing some music around 3-4pm and have some after work bar or something that could get loud, so its usually time to finish work at this time, or switch seating to some seat away from the people/music. Here is a collection of other tips when hereworking at coffee shops.

However the firsts weeks of my trip where spent in Isaan in the northeast part of Thailand, planting rise Winking smile 

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But with great 3G connection I even had some meetings from these fields in the middle of nowhere. And yes, with good quality of voice and video and I couldn’t hear that much latency either, when calling Sweden.


View Larger Map

 

And I would like to end this post with a link to 9 Tips for Overcoming Jet Lag

The next part will be a bit more technical, showing what settings I did to make this possible.

Telia starts to charge extra for using mobile VoIP

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One of the arguments to why there wasn’t support for VoIP in the Lync mobile client was that some (all) of the carriers don’t like VoIP. Now one of the largest carrier in Sweden has announced that they will start to charge a monthly extra fee on all new plans where you simply pay to use free VoIP apps.

When you use Lync on a mobile phone today and use the call via work feature the Lync server calls your cell phone and your mobile will not be charged for a outgoing call. This is actually also something that some carriers have expressed some negative thoughts about, but its technically not possible for them to stop so I guess why bother. But there will probably be some sorts of network limitations on using some apps like Skype and I hope that they wont try to block Lync.

http://www.telia.se/privat/kundservice/aktuellt/mobil-ip/

http://www.dn.se/ekonomi/telia-borjar-ta-betalt-for-skype-och-viber

Some words from Skype @ CES on Lync integration. – #Lync

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Ok so over at Microsoft’s YouTube channel they just posted an interview from CES with the Vice Precedent of products at Skype that said that a Windows Phone Skype will be coming soon. He also said that there are 200 000 000 monthly users that made 300 000 000 000 minutes of calls last year and that’s about a quarter of the worlds internationals long distance calls.

The question that everybody asks, when are MS and Skype going to be more integrated. “We are working on it with a lot of MS products groups, Windows Phone, Windows 8, Xbox and Lync”

No real news, but its good to hear that they are working on it.

How I use Lync on my mobile devices – #Lync

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So Lync for mobile devices are out, I know you all heard it elsewhere and there are tons of other posts on this topic, but I have waited a bit with my thoughts on them to be able to use them for real before I start the talking.

I have been using Lync 2010 mostly on my Windows Phone 7.5 htc titan. But also a lot on the ipad 2 and of course some on a Android

And at first I was a bit disappointed that there were no cool features like teleportation or holographic video chats and so on… There was simply an IM/P client with a dial back function as cisco said it in a blog post. And this is true! And from my perspective this is good enough! There are things I miss that I think should have been there and those things are NOT VOIP or video. Yepp that’s right I don’t need Lync on a mobile device to do VoIP just yet and that is mostly a network issue. So dial back is perfectly fine for me and for most of the people I talk to.
And yes I live in one of the worlds most covered area with “great and reliable” 3g/4g coverage. (but there are still blind spots here and there where data network drops to gprs even in the city center of Stockholm, Sweden)

When I got the iPhone 4 I rushed to do a facetime call to my wife. That was in the same room, way cool. And then I never ever used it again. So will you use VoIP and video over 3g networks to do business calls?

For me I want those calls to be a 100% reliable.

Mostly when I’m at the computer sitting on a chair at a desk and working I’m connected via Wi-Fi and I do Lync calls just fine. So why is there no Wi-Fi VoIP option in the client then? Well how often do you just sit there when you are on your phone?

Personally I use Lync on the PC when I sit down and the mobile device when I’m on the run. And even when you are moving in a small office Wi-Fi reception might drop out when you go around a corner or when you roam from one AP to the next one and this will affect call quality and give users a broken experience.

So what’s so good with the Mobile clients then? Well simply put, the Call via work / dial back and IM/P.

I will just list my top four things I have used this month, but you are more than welcome to fill in what I missed in the comments.

  1. I can choose to only show my land line number to the people I do business with and also direct them back to my voice mail in Exchange UM (that I also have voicemail rules for).
    1. I also set the option in my Windows Phone to only show my number to people in my contacts list, and if I just dial a number it will not show my mobile number.
    2. I configured my mobile phone voice mail option to redirect to my Lync number so that I won’t get any voice mails on my carrier vm. This will result in all calls coming in to Lync and Exchange VM. (yes poor man’s mobile extension, but good enough )
  2. I can use least cost routing via Lync and save loads of money
    1. When I’m abroad I can simply buy a prepaid sim card and use dial via work and then have the Lync server call my new number
      1. I have a sip-trunk provider that is really cheap on international calls and one for national calls, making all our calls super cheap.
      2. I re-configure my simultaneously ring setting to ring this new number
      3. Since I configured my original sim card / mobile number to redirect all calls to the Lync number (which in turn do simultaneously ring to the new number I won’t miss any calls, and voice mail will still go to the Exchange UM voice mail.)
    2. When I’m home I can change plan from an expensive buffet plan to a smaller one and save about 50% on our mobile cost each month.
      1. If I use call via work those calls will be incoming and I will not be charged for them on my mobile phone bill, but of course instead be charged for those calls twice since the Lync server both calls me and then calls the one I want to talk to. So it’s recommended to have a good plan on the sip trunk instead.
  3. I can check presence of colleagues, partners, and customers before I call them.
    1. Or just IM from the phone.
    2. I am always reachable and can set my presence so that people know how to contact me even when I’m not at a computer.
  4. I can call federated contacts on
    1. Lync
    2. Lync online
    3. OCS
    4. Live Messenger

Download Lync 2010 for Mobile devices

Lync 2010 for
Windows Phone

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Lync 2010 for
iPhone

​Lync 2010 for
iPad

Lync 2010 for
Android​

Lync 2010 for
Nokia Symbian​

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Lync for iOS and certificates

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Ok so Lync for iOS are out, and I think that some people will have problems logging in at first (at least I had) and its because those ipads are on the corporate WIFI don’t have the CA certificate installed. So just a quick pointer on where to start troubleshooting before your crowd goes crazy and spamming your IT department with angry emails Winking smile

Ok I’m back to my Office 365 lab and will post my take on all this mobile stuff after the Christmas break Winking smile

Lync Server 2010 Protocol Workloads Poster updated with some mobile goddies – #Lync

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But not that much mobile stuff in it? It still missing a lot of stuff when it comes to mobile workloads… so we could probably expect another update in the future Winking smile

Anyway, this poster shows each workload in Microsoft Lync Server 2010 communications software, describing relationships, dependencies, flow of information, and certificate requirements. Version 5.10 incorporates Mobility Services and corrections in the IM and Presence workload. Download http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=6797

But I also updated the Deepzoom version to the latest one and the link to it is http://zoom.it/36Qq

And of course embedded as always Winking smile

Configuring the Reverse Proxy for Lync Mobility: by using Port 80 (the not recommended way of doing it)

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When publishing the services for Lync mobility there are two ways of doing it, HTTP or HTTPS.
If you decide to use HTTPS for the Lync Server 2010 Autodiscover Service it requires you to update the subject alternative names lists on the reverse proxy certificates, i.e. buy a new certificate with a SAN name for every sip domain on your Lync Server.
But if you don’t want to do this, you could enable this service over port 80 (its only the autodiscover information that are being sent here so no authentication information are being sent or anything else. but this is still not the recommended way of doing this.)

This post will guide you through the settings for HTTP and a later post will guide you through the settings for HTTPS.

This information is originally from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh690011.aspx but edited and with screen dumps for LyncLab.org

To create a web publishing rule for port 80

  1. Create a New Web Publishing Rule page, type a display name for the new publishing rule (LyncDiscoveryURL (HTTP)).
  2. Select Allow, on the Select Rule Action page.
  3. Select Publish a single Web site or load balancer, on the Publishing Type page.
  4. Use non-secured connections to connect to the published Web server or server farm.
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  5. Type the pool FQDN for your Front End or Director pool (for example, pool01.lynclab.org) on the Internal Publishing Details page. (This should point to the External virtual directory on the IIS and will be redirected to port 8080 later in step 15)
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  6. In Path, on the Internal Publishing Details page type /* as the path of the folder to be published, and then select Forward the original host header instead of the one specified in the Internal site name field.
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  7. On the Public Name Details page, do the following:
    1. Under Accept Requests for, select This domain name.
    2. In Public Name, type something like lyncdiscover.lynclab.org (the external Autodiscover Service URL)
    3. In Path, type /
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  8. On Select Web Listener page, in Web Listener, select the same Web Listener that you used to publish Lync external webservices or create a new one.
    (To find your reverse proxy FQDN use this PowerShell one-liner on your Front End server Get-CsService -WebServer | ft ABHandlerExternalUri )
  9. If you reused your old rule, select it and then click Edit and make sure that Enable HTTP connections on port 80 are checked and that No authentication are selected.
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  10. Click Ok on the listener. And then Next on the Select Web Listener page
  11. On the Authentication Delegation page, select No delegation, and client cannot authenticate directly.
  12. Select All Users, on the User Set page
  13. And then click Finish.
  14. Now double-click the new rule you just added and open Properties for it.
  15. On the Bridging tab, configure the following:
    1. Select Redirect requests to HTTP port, and type 8080 for the port number.
    2. Verify that Redirect requests to SSL port is not selected.
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  16. Click OK. and Apply the new rules
 

Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Mobility Service and Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Autodiscover Service for your weekend installation – #Lync

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The bits for the mobility service is now live on download.microsoft.com

These new services for Microsoft Lync Server 2010 support Lync 2010 functionality, such as instant messaging (IM), presence, management of contacts and groups, Call via Work, Single Number Reach, and Single-click Conference Join on mobile and slate devices.

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=28356