PSTN dialling coming to Lync Online

This is a big one. It’s been announced at this year’s Lync Conference that Lync Online will soon have the ability to make and receive calls to/from the PSTN network.

PSTN is the Public Switched Telephone Network – the “normal” phones rather than VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) phones. This update will enable Lync Online users to make/receive calls directly to the regular phone network – will open things up to a huge number of users and companies.

I can’t see much more info than this at the moment – Twitter lit up with the news that this had been announced but that seems to be the extent of it! As I hear more, I’ll post again!

July 3, 2012July 3, 2012

JaJah Voice for Office 365

Here’s an interesting bit of software I came across earlier:

Jajah Voice for Office 365

which extends the voice capabilities of Lync Online including:

Make and receive phone calls from your Lync online contacts
Click-to-call from IM conversations, Outlook, SharePoint and other Office apps
Find me/Follow me: set incoming calls to be forwarded or simultaneously ring personal mobile phone
‘Call via work’: make outgoing calls from your smart phone using work number
Mid-call transfer to your mobile phone or any other number or user.

I’m really quite excited about this. This takes Lync Online into the world of mobility very well, being able to make/receive calls via Lync Online will surely speed up the adoption of both Lync & Office 365.

The service is currently in closed beta and is expected to go live this month (July 2012)

Jajah’s MS Pinpoint page can be found here:

http://pinpoint.microsoft.com/en-us/applications/jajah-voice-for-office-365-12884930736

and their main site here:

http://www.jajah.com/

August 2, 2011

Lync Online & Lync Translator

I’m sure you already know what Lync is but just in case you don’t:

Lync is $1,000,000,000.

Lync is On-Premise.

Lync is Online.

Lync is Awesome.

Lync is Multi-Lingual.

It does:

Instant Messaging
P2P Voice Calls
Presence (are they free, in a meeting, on lunch etc)
Video Conferencing
Web Conferencing
Desktop Sharing
Presentation Sharing
VOIP Calls

and loads of other things too, like collaborative whiteboards & polls.

However, this post is about a specific add-on for Lync and what to do if you’re having problems with it & Lync Online.

Lync Translator:

This is a great feature that I saw demoed at the Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) this year in LA and it does what it sounds like – it translates your Lync IM’s from 1 language into another!

You choose your language:

Then choose the recipient’s language:

Then Voila:

It of course will translate when they reply too, allowing 2 people without a common language to have a conversation, be it personal or business.

It companies with offices across the world this could be invaluable. Not only that, as Lync allows you to federate (i.e connect) with other companies this could be used for communicating with customers and partners too!

Getting it working with Lync:

Translator is an add-on for Lync which can be downloaded from:

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=26136

and a quick, simple install to get you started.

However I ran into this issue:

I thought this was due to me using the Office 365 Lync Online but I was told via Twitter that it does work. It was a Snr Program Manager with the UC team in Redmond, Tom Laciano AKA (@TomLCSKid) who had tweeted me and he was also kind enough to help me further with some troubleshooting.

It turned out to be quite a simple step but I’d never have come up with it myself:

· Look in IE’s Trusted Sites (Tools/Options/Security/Trusted Sites/Sites) and make sure there’s an entry for http://ConversationTranslator.cloudapp.net.

That was it. I added that in and BOOM – I was off IMing in various languages with ease Smile

So if you get a similar error – make sure that step above is completed first off…

Hope that helps someone out there…

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