inrich consulting

Four considerations before deploying Microsoft OCS2007

For those not familiar, Office Communications Server (OCS) is Microsoft’s Instant Messaging, voice and video communications product. In Microsoft’s own words OCS lets users find and communicate with the right person, right now, from the applications they use most.

Users can initiate communications with colleagues via a desktop client called Office Communicator or directly from Microsoft Office applications. For example using the desktop client users can Instant Message a colleague and then escalate into a voice or video call, or from Microsoft Outlook users can view an email together with the availability of the sender allowing them to choose to reply by email or reply via a voice call.

The following key points are built from our observations of clients who have deployed or who are considering Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS). These may be of value if you are evaluating how OCS may benefit your organisation.

1 - Telephony integration

OCS2007 has many integration options which will be primarily influenced by your existing telephony plans. The exact approach will depend on your functionality objectives with the greatest considerations for organisations with their own PABX.

If OCS meets all your telephony needs and is planned to 100% replace your existing PABX then all that will be required is a voice gateway to the public telephone network.

If however OCS will complement your existing PABX environment then various levels of functionality will be available depending on the level of integration. Some examples include; an inbound call can potentially simultaneously ring your Office Communicator client and your PABX phone allowing users to accept the call on either endpoint, this includes if your Office Communicator client is running on a remote computer; when initiating a call from an OCS interface your PABX can act as the voice gateway providing public network connectivity; your PABX voicemail system can provide voicemail for OCS; and your PABX and OCS directories can be merged providing a common telephone numbering plan.

Telephony integration extends beyond the PABX to include mobile platforms including Microsoft Mobile, RIM and Symbian devices. For example organisations with a Blackberry Enterprise Server can extend OCS features including Presence, Instant Messaging and directories to Blackberry phones.

Irrespective of the options available successful telephony integrations focus on providing users a single integrated telephony platform rather than separate OCS, PABX and mobile solutions.

2 – Presence federation

For those not familiar, Presence provides a visual indication of a user’s availability and preference for contact. For example I may be on a teleconference but available for an Instant Message chat. Alternatively on listening to my voicemails I can prioritise return calls according to the availability of my colleagues rather than playing “phone tag” (especially relevant if OCS features are extended to mobile phones), or perhaps if I prefer not to be disturbed I can set my status to “not available”.

For Presence to be effective the various devices that impact on our availability to communicate need to share, or federate, information. For example, if my PC is in standby that means I am not available for Instant Messaging; my telephone off hook means I cannot accept a phone call; if I chose to manually set my status to “not available” then update my Presence accordingly.

Having separate Presence systems for OCS, your PABX and mobile environments will mean one system can show me as available while another shows unavailable. Clearly this is counter productive and will result in poor user adoption.

For an effective presence environment all key communications technologies will need to federate their information to each other, perhaps not immediately but this should be the objective for an efficient communications environment.

3 - User adoption

The business advantage of features such as Instant Messaging and Presence can be hard to justify unless they are integrated into business process. Many users in an organisation will never have used these technologies so their adoption can be poor without a clear use.

As an example an organisation where all employees keep their calendars up to date provide an efficient method for booking group meetings. If a significant number of users ignore updating their calendars efficiencies for the entire organisation are lost due to the time required to rebook and reconfirm meetings. This analogy can be extended to Presence. Unless users update their Presence and observe the Presence of others then the communications efficiencies will be lost. More voicemails will be left and retrieved, more people will be interrupted when occupied, and more critical emails will be sent when a phone call would be more effective.

4 - Business process

If OCS is successfully integrated into your environment and users have adopted the features then the true business value will be found through integration with business processes. For example if Presence categories are applied to job roles as well as people then IT support or customer inquiries can be efficiently directed by searching and identifying immediately available resources. This reduces the “human latency” in finding the right person and in these examples directly provides a reduction in IT downtime and increased customer service.

Every organisation will be different and targeted pilots will assist in identifying the value of potential opportunities.

Of course there are many other considerations in addition to those above. As with any new technology getting informed and learning from the observations of others will only assist in making your own projects a success.

Entry Filed under: microsoft office communications server, unified communications