Top 10 reasons to try Lync 2010 - Lync - Microsoft Office

One communication experience

Microsoft Lync 2010 is truly a unified communication client with instant messaging, meetings, and voice. With an updated user interface, Lync 2010 brings together communication tools that work the way you are used to using them. The client features a dashboard that makes it easy to find and use common functions such as the dial pad, visual voicemail, the contact list, and the list of active conversations.

Find the right people, right now, with Skill Search

Lync 2010 works with Microsoft SharePoint-based Skill Search to help you find the expertise you need. In Skill Search, you can enter keywords that describe skills, expertise, and group information to get a list of experts in your organization who have the skills you are looking for. And when you’ve found experts with the right skills, you can contact them directly through Lync 2010.

Communicate from Office and SharePoint

By default, you can see presence information—who’s available, away, busy, or offline— in Microsoft Outlook, SharePoint, and other Office applications. A hovering presence icon displays a quick hover menu that you can use to start a conversation from the application. Lync Server 2010 gives you more streamlined communications and lets you click to communicate from within the applications you routinely use.

Connect with people outside your organization

With server-to-server federation capabilities, you can use presence and IM with other Microsoft Lync Server users outside your corporate network. And public IM connectivity increases your reach even further by letting you connect with several public IM networks, including MSN, Windows Live, Yahoo!, and AOL.

Extend presence with Personal Note, Location, and Photo

Presence now displays your personal notes, locations, and photos, while giving you control over your personal information with enhanced privacy settings. You can now set Presence status yourself, or it can be set automatically based on your calendar, sign-in status, and more. You can also customize access levels for specific contacts to share more or less information with them.

Never miss a call

Use Lync 2010 simultaneous ringing to have incoming calls automatically ring on your mobile phone, home phone, or other telephone number, in addition to your desktop client.

Simple, essential, reliable conferencing

Collaborate more effectively. Lync 2010 provides built-in desktop and application sharing, PowerPoint uploads, and rich whiteboard capabilities, including the ability to copy and paste images and other content. Schedule and join meetings with a single click in Outlook or in the meeting reminder. Place attendees in a virtual lobby for greater security and control over who will attend.

Manage your conferences effectively

If you are the conference organizer, you can place participants in a “lobby” and then allow them in to prevent embarrassing errors or security issues that may result from unauthorized forwarding of meeting invitations. Conference organizers can also eject or mute participants after the conference begins.

Stay up to date with Activity Feed

The Activity Feed tab in Lync 2010 allows you and others in your company to find out what colleagues are thinking and doing. Share common praises or frustrations by broadcasting opinions and letting everyone know “What’s happening today?”

View and rejoin existing conversations

The Conversations tab contains conversation history from interactions with contacts in Lync 2010. You can choose to save instant messages to help keep track of your communications. Lync 2010 also maintains a history of incoming and outgoing phone calls, which are listed along with phone numbers for quick reference. That way, you can restart a conversation with the original context, and both participants can see the history in the conversation window. And if a conference or call is dropped, you can rejoin from the Conversations tab without redialing the phone number or looking for the meeting invitation.

via office.microsoft.com