OCS 2007 R2 shipped late last year, about a year after OCS 2007.  OCS 2007 was the first version to incorporate significant telephony capabilities - placing and receiving calls from the PSTN and integrating with a companies existing PBX systems. 

R2 has lots of great stuff it and fills in a bunch of functional areas in voice.  Haven't seen a snapshot of what's new here so that’s what this post is about; I'll follow it up with another post or two with some details on how these work.

Here's my list (think I got all the biggies, figured I'd stop when I hit 13 since that was the informal name for this release):

  1. Attendant Console

Full-screen windows app targeted at admins that handles multiple calls/IMs and typical routing scenarios around them.  This app replaces communicator.

  1. Team Calling

New capability in communicator to designate a group of people on your team to route inbound calls to - similar to a hunt group.  Set this up in OC call-forwarding settings

  1. Delegates

Setup one more folks as your delegate and they can answer/place calls on your behalf.  This works well with the Attendant Console but doesn’t require it.

  1. Response Groups

IVR system that will place inbound calls through a one or two level workflow; helpdesk is a typical scenario.

  1. Dial-in audio conferencing

Dial an access number, enter your conference ID and BAM you're in an OCS audio conference from any phone

  1. Vmail note

Call directly to someone's vmail box to avoid actually speaking with them

  1. Carrier SIP Trunking

Users wont see this but a great way to connect directly into a certified telco carrier's network  without going through PBX or voice gateway

  1. Browser call-back

Media doesn't go through browser but put in a phone number and R2 CWA will call you back at any number you want - works for both P2P and conference

  1. Mobile single number reach

Requires the new mobile (COMO) client and allows you to get/make outbound calls from your work number

  1. Media enhancements

Bunch of work here - few highlights: media resiliency, early media, comfort noise, improvements in AEC, ICE v19 and music on hold

  1. Dial plan enhancements

Private numbering support, per-user location profile

  1. Single Monitoring Server

CDR gets added to Monitoring server for consolidated/better reporting; also additional metrics/reports for QoE are collected

  1. IP phone (Tanjay) and Communicator pairing

Connect Tanjay via USB and you can control calls from OC with media going through Tanjay as speakerphone

 

It's quite a list.  My question to you - anything missing to keep you from moving most of your users from your existing phone system to OCS VoIP?