This blog is post #7 in the Ten Days of Office series to celebrate the one-year anniversary since the release of Office 2010 and provide you with tips and tricks to get the most from your Office experience. Tune in each week day for new tips and tricks!

June 9, 2011,

Yancey Smith, Director of Product Management, Lync

On the advent of the one-year anniversary of Office 2010, the Lync team is seeing a tremendous amount of momentum. Even though we just launched Lync last November, we’re thrilled about the results we’ve already seen. We’ve grown the number of Lync licenses by approximately 30% since last year, reflecting the increased interest and excitement that our customers have.

Since Lync launched last year as the final piece of the Office 2010 wave, we’ve seen customers use Lync to quickly achieve amazing results. Customers are freeing their employees from landline phone systems by using Lync enterprise voice, allowing workers to be more easily accessible when working remotely. Lync builds communication right into collaboration and productivity tools by weaving in the ability to initiate a conversation from the software people are already using, like SharePoint, Exchange or Office applications. This not only makes it easier to connect with others, but it also speeds up the process of working since you no longer need to play phone tag or rally e-mails back and forth to get questions answered. Effectively, Lync lights up Office and turns the entire suite into a collaborative, social application. And with the HD voice and video experience, many customers are already saving hundreds of thousands of dollars on travel while their global teams are working more effectively together through Lync.

Customers are seeing super-fast user adoption when Lync is rolled out, and we’re working to make sure Lync is providing workers with the features they need to work more effectively. Whether you’re using Lync now or thinking about implementing it in the future our Lync Adoption and Training Kit can help you make the most of your Lync experience.

We also recently released a new set of applications for Lync that are currently available for free download, to make business communications even easier. The new apps include:

• IM an Expert - IM an Expert is a social networking tool that helps the people in your organization who have questions find the people in your organization who have answers. IM an Expert parses the question to determine the topic area, finds topic area experts in its user-populated expert database, and forwards the question. A willing expert responds to the initial question and follow-up questions using Lync.
• Conversations Analyzer - Conversations Analyzer is an application that reviews your Lync instant messaging (IM) conversation history and gives you scores for your use of trust-building language in day-to-day communications with business associates and friends. Conversations Analyzer applies trust rules to determine the occurrence of words and phrases that have a positive or negative effect on trust.
• Conversation Translator - Conversation Translator provides a real-time language translation service for Lync instant messaging (IM) conversations in up to 35 different languages. With Conversation Translator, both the sender and receiver can converse in their native language and Conversation Translator handles the translation.
• Information Dashboard - Information Dashboard helps you start a conversation with a remote contact by providing current information about the contact's location. For example, if you are calling a coworker or a client in Shanghai, China, you can open Information Dashboard and enter the location of Shanghai before making the call. Information Dashboard will return the day, date, time, whether you’re calling during regular working hours, the weather forecast, and a news feed of articles related to the location. Lync also saves these settings are for your contact, so it’s easy to access the same information the next time you talk.
• Tabbed Conversations - Tabbed Conversations provides a tabbed conversation window to allow multiple instant messaging (IM) conversations in a single window.
• Group Chat Stress Tool - You can use the Group Chat Stress Tool to help verify your Microsoft Lync Server 2010 and Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Group Chat hardware deployment. Group Chat Stress is made up of two applications: Group Chat Stress Tool and Group Chat Loaders, the stress engine. Use Group Chat Stress Tool to create the configuration files for the loaders and to distribute the binaries to the remote machines that will be running the loaders. Use Group Chat Loaders to apply the specified load parameters on the Group Chat Server.

Really, Lync makes it easy to connect with anyone – whether they’re across the hall or across the globe. If you haven’t taken a closer look at Lync, visit http://lync.microsoft.com to learn more about the product and download a free 180-day trial version of Lync Server 2010 for testing in your own environment. To learn more about the Lync applications, please see the Channel 9 video below, and keep checking back as there will be more posted in the coming weeks:

IM an Expert: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Lync-IM-an-Expert-Part-1-of-2

(Removing mentions of Power Pack and using the formal name: Lync Adoption and Training Kit)