Lync Tool Belt #5: A little Tit-Bit about Presence
Presence is a function of Lync that has proven to be extremely useful. For those of you that are unfamiliar with what presence is, here is a little Lync Presence 101. Presence is the red, yellow and green bars next to contacts on your Lync interface. These colors can be changed manually or automatically in some cases.
Manually changing presence: I can click the pull down menu next to my name in the “me” section on the top of my Lync interface. I can change my presence to Available, Busy, Do not Disturb, Be Right Back, Off Work or Appear Away. These options are shown below.
Automatically changing presence: If I have an Outlook meeting scheduled on my calendar my presence will automatically change to, “In a Meeting.” Within Outlook, if I am scheduled on an Online Meeting, my presence will show me as “On a Conference Call.” If I am on the phone my presence will show me as, “On a Call.” When I lock my computer or walk away from my computer my presence will change to “Away.” By having my presence change it allows my co-workers to quickly identify whether or not I am sitting at my desk and available to collaborate.
You can see in the above picture the statuses of all my co-workers. From this screen I can see that Adam is away from his computer, Dan is available to chat and Emilio is in a meeting.
Just another tool that Lync encompasses, making collaboration and communication that much easier! To learn more about Lync please visit pei.com or give us a call at 303-786-7474
-Andrea Leonhardt, PEI
