On the 7th July I (along with 1000 others) Microsoft staff moved into our new building - Building 5. As well as looking like a rather large Big Brother House there are some major technological advancements with reusable water and all sorts of gizmo's to help save the environment but nothing quite as tangible as there being no phones - none. In the plethora of meeting rooms are Microsoft Round Tables to provide audio and video conferencing capabilities and each and every one of the 1000 employees has had their work telephone extension number homed on Office Communications Server 2007 (OCS).
So when you call any one of us now, the call will come in off the PSTN, through a gateway and Mediation server where OCS will then signal to any one of the multiple OCS endpoints that there's an incoming call. (That's unless your one of the 500+ companies federated) Communicator on our laptops starts ringing. A true phenomenon, for those at least that are looking round for their old TDM desk phone. We have just had our major event that has enabled Microsoft UK to - let's be careful here - not use a PBX in B5. OCS 2007 is handling the voice and video and Ex2007 is our voicemail system - Software is running the show.
Now this has led to a little problem, for a small proportion of the user base, of how do we actually use this new system, we don't provide end user training in the true sense of the word - it's all word of mouth and "Have you seen this..?". As I have been living in this world of OCS and Ex2007 for over a year I have been writing a OCS and Communicator Daily Tip Tip - these (I have been told) are worth their weight in gold - or at lease time it has taken to write some of them. Over the next two weeks I will post a new one here everyday and I hope you enjoy them as much as the Microsoft UK staff have.
I have had to amend some of them so they are appropriate for the external blog.
If they don't help you in short term, then you will begin to learn what the current released software of Exchange and OCS can really do.
