The Planning Tool is a wizard that includes a series of questions that are divided into three main sections:

• Features section.This section of the wizard asks a series of questions that introduce the features for Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and enable you to specify which of these features your organization requires.
  
  
• Central Sites section.This section of the wizard starts with a list that shows the available features in Office Communications Server 2007 R2. The list also indicates which ones are to be included in the topology to be created. This section of the wizard also allows you to customize the solution for each of your sites by choosing the features you require at each central site, which is a site in your organization where Office Communications Server 2007 R2 is to be deployed. In this section, you also specify the site name and fully qualified domain name (FQDN), as well as the number of users who are enabled for unified communications.
  
  
• Capacity Planning section.The questions in this section focus on capacity planning and ask you a series of questions about how you expect the users in your organization to use these features. If you plan to have multiple central sites, you must specify the information for each of those sites—after you complete the questions about the first central site, the wizard provides you with the opportunity to add more sites. After you answer the questions in the Capacity Planning section, the wizard dynamically draws your topologies of each of your sites and lists the types and amount of server components you need.
  
  

You can use the Planning Tool to add, edit, and delete sites to update your planning. You can also export your topologies to the Microsoft Office Visio drawing and diagramming software and make updates to your topologies and export the component information, including hardware requirements, for the sites to the Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheet software. The Planning Tool enables you to save your designs, so you can display and change them in the tool in the future. You should run the tool early in your planning process to understand the types of questions you need to answer, as well as how you can use the results. You can run it as often as appropriate to update your plans so that they reflect your planning decisions.

Use the Planning Tool results together with the Office Communications Server 2007 R2 planning documentation to facilitate the solution design process. As described in the previously in this section, based on the answers you provide when you run the Planning Tool, the tool creates a recommended topology and list of required components for each of your central sites. If your organization has a user model that is different from the one on which the wizard is based or has other requirements that are not reflected in the tool results, you might need to make adjustments to the results to complete the design of the topology and identification of the components that you need.