OCS R2/Lync user meeting join experience during co-existence and migration

While working with customer who has already OCS R2 fuilly deployed and planning to deploy Lync, I heard many questions from customer on Lync and OCS R2 co-existence. I thought this may be useful. Lets review different meeting joining experience  for OCS R2 users and Lync user during OCS R2 to Lync migration and coexistence period. There are couple of changes can be done on Lync backend  to make User experience more smoother during Lync migration and coexistence.

Changes to meetings in Microsoft Lync Server 2010

In OCS R2 world, OC conference meeting invite has conference URL start with conf:sip: and live meeting URL start with meet:sip: prefix as show below

OCS R2 - OC Conference meeting invite and Live meeting invite

 In Microsoft Lync Server 2010, live meeting client functionality is consolidated into Lync client. all newly-scheduled meetings use Lync 2010 as the primary client, and have a URL prefix of https://.

Once user install Lync client on desktop, it install online meeting conference plug in and also it install live meeting hosting service conference plug in, if outlook conference plug in is already installed, it will automatically overwrite/uninstall.

Following are three scenarios for meeting join experience during co-existence.

• Lync client sends online meeting invitation to OCS R2 client
• OCS R2 client sends OC conference meeting invitation to Lync client
• OCS R2 client sends live meeting invitation to Lync user

 Lync client sends online meeting invitation to OCS R2 client:

When Lync user send meeting invite to OCS R2 user,  when OCS R2 user clicks a meeting link, it will determine which client to launch based on the installed client(s). It will check for Lync 2010, Lync 2010 Attendant and Lync 2010 Attendee. If it finds one of these client it will launch them. If both Lync 2010 and Lync 2010 Attendant are installed it will launch the last used client. If none of the clients are installed it will check if Silverlight is installed. If it is not installed it will prompt the user to install Silverlight.









If user has Silverlight installed on workstation, it will show up first screen, at this point, user can select to launch join meeting using web browser option (which doesn’t require any client installation.













if user wants to join call using Lync web app, user will be presented with following screen

At this point user can join that call as guest or using corporate credential. User will have no audio but user can join audio using dial in or dial out functionality. All other functionality will work like white boarding, desktop sharing, program sharing and poll page etc.







User also have option to join same call using Lync attendee client, Lync attendee client is freely available from Microsoft download web site. Lync attendee download link is disabled on below page by default, it can be easily enabled by PoweShell on backend. If Lync 2010 or Microsoft Lync 2010 Attendant is installed, the client starts and joins the meeting present with below options.

 




Joining Lync online meeting using OCS R2 client

User has option to join meeting using legacy client. That link is disabled by deault. It can be enabled using powershell command on backend. All new features like white boarding, Poll page will not work if client join Lync hosted meeting using OCS R2 legacy client





OCS R2 users sends OC conferencing and Live meeting invite to Lync user.

OC conferencing meeting invite will work and Lync client should able to join that meeting invite without any issue. if Lync user doesn't have live meeting client installed, Lync user will get following error.

 For Live Meeting web conferences, Lync 2010 users must also have the Live Meeting client installed in order to attend. The email invitation contains instructions for installing the Live Meeting client.




Lync user sends meeting invite to Federated users who are using OCS R1 and R2 client

By default, when Lync user schedule a meeting, it allows only corporate users to join, if Lync user would like to invite federated/Anonymous user who are on OCS R1/R2 legacy client, he has to configure meeting invitation before send it to Federated/Anonymous users if federated and anonymous users are planning to join that call using OC R1/R2 client. Otherwise OCS R1/R2 federated user client will receive error.



Related blogs:

http://communicatorteam.com/archive/2010/11/12/2000.aspx

http://communicatorteam.com/archive/2010/10/26/1906.aspx

http://communicatorteam.com/archive/2010/10/19/1763.aspx