In today’s fast paced business environment, real-time information and team collaboration are more vital to success than ever before. With more and more workers telecommuting or constantly being on the go, there needs to be a good system in place to quickly discern when your co-workers are available. Gone are the days of consistently being able to pop into the office down the hall to ask a quick question. Mobile technology has made it so work can be done from anywhere, and companies are increasingly embracing a more mobile workforce. Even if your co-workers are in the same office, how do you know they aren’t working on a project for a fast approaching deadline and don’t want to be disturbed? Microsoft Lync fills a lot of different needs for organizations, and presence is one of the most important.
One of the things you can do with Lync is to set your location. If you aren’t in the office, let your coworkers know you are remote:
Lync has several built in status messages including available, busy, do not disturb, be right back, off work, appear away, and appear offline. When combined with custom notes, these status messages can let co-workers know exactly what you are working on or where you are:
Some status messages are automated. The default setting will change your status to away after 5 minutes of inactivity and set you back to available when you interact with your mouse or keyboard. Other automatic status messages show you as being in a meeting or on a conference call.
If you need to speak with someone and they are showing as being away or busy, you can tag them for status change alerts to be notified when they are available. When their status changes, Lync will notify you with a popup message.
Contacts can be added to groups, relationships, or sorted by status within Lync so you can quickly see which of your co-workers are available at any given moment. If they aren’t available for instant messaging, you can right-click their name and send them an e-mail, schedule a meeting, or start a phone call right from your contact list.
Presence is a big deal for facilitating good team collaboration and building strong working relationsips among your peers. It is only one of a large number of features provided with Microsoft’s Lync solution that will help you work smarter and more efficently.
