If your organization has deployed Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2, you can host meetings on your servers. Users participate in meetings through a meeting client that is installed on their computers. To schedule and manage meetings, they use the Conferencing Add-in for Microsoft Office Outlook.

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 users need to install the meeting client and the Outlook Add-in. You need to consider the following issues:

  • Whether you want to make meetings available to external users. This requires an Edge server deployment.

  • Whether you want to integrate with an Audio Conferencing Provider (ACP) so that users can dial in to conferences using their telephones. This configuration also requires an Edge server deployment.

  • Whether you want to integrate the dial-in audio conferencing option that is provided by the Conferencing Attendant application, which is a feature of the new UC Application in Office Communications Server 2007 R2.

  • How you want to deploy the meeting client. Consider the following:

    • Whether you want to manage deployment or allow users to install the meeting client themselves.

    • Whether you want to use the silent install setup option.

    • Whether you want to provide a custom URL for internal users for downloading the meeting client.

    • Whether there are existing meeting clients that require an upgrade.

  • How you want to deploy the Conferencing Add-in for Outlook.

This Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Help contains detailed information about deploying an Edge server for communication with users and organizations outside your internal network, including Audio Conferencing Providers (ACPs) and how to deploy the new Conferencing Attendant application. For details, see the Planning and Architecturedocumentation and the Deploying Edge Servers for External User Accessdocumentation. Additional deployment considerations are discussed in more depth in the remainder of the topics in this section.

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