Office Communicator 2007 R2 provides instant messaging (IM), enhanced presence, telephony, and conferencing for users in your organization who are connecting from either inside or outside your firewall. When planning how you will meet your organization’s requirements in these areas, you need to understand the Office Communicator 2007 features that can meet these requirements along with the server components that must be deployed to enable them. The following table maps client-based access requirements to the required Office Communications Server 2007 R2 server components.
Table 1. Office Communicator 2007 R2 Features and Required Server Roles
| If you want to do this | You will need these server components |
|---|---|
|
Publish and manage your presence, search for contacts and manage your contact list, and conduct two-party or multiparty IM sessions with people inside your organization. |
No additional server roles required |
|
Conduct IM sessions and share presence with external users, including remote users, federated partners, and public IM providers such as MSN, AOL, and Yahoo!. |
Access Edge Server |
|
Conduct multiparty conferences with external users. |
Web Conferencing Edge Server |
|
Conduct two-party or multiparty audio and video conferences with external users. |
A/V Conferencing Edge Server |
|
Conduct two-party or multiparty audio and video conferences with external users. |
Mediation Server and basic media gateway, Collocated Media Gateway, or Advanced Media Gateway - or - Mediation Server connected to a SIP trunking service provider |
|
Select one or more assistants (delegates) to receive your incoming phone calls. Delegates must use Office Communicator 2007 R2 Attendant instead of Communicator. |
No additional server roles required |
|
Set up a group of contacts who can answer your incoming phone calls (referred to as Team Call). |
No additional server roles required |
|
Add a conference call number to a Communicator conference, so that invitees can dial into the audio using any phone (referred to as dial-in audio conferencing). |
Unified Communications Application Server |
|
Use Communicator to search for and contact a Response Group (also referred to as workflow, which routes and queues incoming calls to a group of designated agents). |
Unified Communications Application Server, Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Response Group Service |
|
Display entire computer desktop to other Communicator participants (referred to as desktop sharing). |
Application Sharing Conferencing Server |