Microsoft Lync Server 2010 : Windows, Browser, and Silverlight Clients - Lync Silverlight Client - Silverlight Functions

1. Silverlight Functions

The Silverlight client looks similar to the full client, although there are a few functions that are not available (for example, audio or video features). When Silverlight users click the Phone menu, they are prompted to enter their own number, and Lync Server 2010 calls them when they click Call Me, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Using the Call Me Option

Users who join a conference through the Silverlight client see the same IM information as the full client. They also are able to participate in screen sharing and application sharing. If the user joined as a guest, the meeting organizer needs to update the Meeting Option to allow everyone to act as a presenter in order for the guest user to be able to initiate sharing.

By clicking Share from the Silverlight client, users receive several items from which to choose:

• Desktop

• Program

• New Whiteboard

• New Poll

• Show Stage

Sharing the desktop gives Silverlight clients an indication that their desktop is shared. This triggers the Show Stage function on other participants so that they can see what Silverlight users are sharing.

Choosing to share a program shows a preview of the applications that are currently running on Silverlight users’ systems, and they can select one of these programs, as shown in Figure 2, and click Start Sharing.

Figure 2 Sharing Programs

This action causes the application to appear on the stage of other participants who see the sharer’s screen with near real-time updates. Some visual lag might occur and will be affected by latency, bandwidth, and the complexity of the images that change in the shared application. This is to say that something like a Word document will appear to update very quickly but something like a PowerPoint presentation will take a little longer to update from the point of view of the participants following along.

2. Effective Ways to Use Silverlight

Having access to this type of functionality can be exceptionally useful for presentations to customers because they can quickly and easily connect to a visual presentation, have the central system call them to include them in the audio features, and simply have them follow along during the presentation. The necessary software is platform independent and can be removed after the presentation if necessary. The user is prompted with easy-to-follow choices the whole way through and the organizer of the meeting has full control over who enters the meeting and exactly when they enter. They can assume complete control over the presentation or they can hand the mouse and keyboard over to someone else to drive the presentation. Considering how many companies rely on third-party applications to do this, the potential for long-term savings is huge.

Another great use for this technology is in the area of troubleshooting. You can use the Lync client to send an IM to the corporate help desk to ask questions. If the questions become complicated, you can be escalated to a voice call. If the technician needs to perform an action on the remote system, you can share the desktop and give control to the help desk technician. Now you can watch the support person fix the system so that there is little concern about what the support person was doing. It can even be limited to a specific application. Imagine that a user needs to be walked through the process of performing a mail merge in Word. He can search the address book for someone who listed Word mail merge as a skill, determine whether the person is available, IM a question, turn it into a call, and potentially share Word with that person to walk him through the process while explaining it. This type of collaboration between users or between users and support is easily extended outside the immediate office by giving experts access to the Silverlight-based client so that they can quickly and easily participate. Obviously, this has some security implications that should be reviewed by the security group, but the system offers plenty of options for centrally controlling behaviors to mitigate possible risks.

3. Troubleshooting

The Lync client is stable and easy to configure, but there are a few things that might go wrong in a large deployment.

• If the client doesn’t connect, try setting the client to a manual configuration and listing the pool name. If this results in the client connecting, your service records in DNS are not configured properly.

• If a manual connection still doesn’t work, try pinging the pool name. If it fails to resolve, there might be an issue with DNS. Try pinging the DNS server as well; it’s possible you’re having other network issues.

• If you’re getting audio feedback when conferencing, your sound card might not support noise cancelation. Having a good sound card results in a better overall experience. Another possible fix is to run the configuration utilities for your sound card. This enables you to correctly set levels for the speakers and the microphone. This can prevent clipping of the signal that results in a distorted voice.

• If you aren’t getting presence information or if the client complains about Outlook integration, it’s possible that you activated an account for Lync Server 2010 and created a SIP name for the user that doesn’t match the e-mail address. These need to match for everything to work perfectly.

• If you are using certificates from your own CA and external users are having issues connecting, they might not trust your root CA. The public certificate from the Root CA needs to be imported into the Trusted Root store. If external systems trust the Root CA but aren’t able to reach the Certificate Revocation List for the CA, they will fail to connect.

• If you are having problems connecting through the Silverlight client, double-check the security zone settings. If you aren’t able to run JavaScript or if the plug-ins aren’t allowed to download, you will have problems connecting.

• If you’re having issues with the Lync client, check the Application event log.

• If the client isn’t connecting, an excellent way to check on network connections to Lync Server 2010 is the netstat command. If a connection on TCP 5061 is in a Syn_sent state, it means the Lync Server is unavailable. If the connection is sitting at Time_Wait, odds are that the application is having issues. It means that the connection was acknowledged, but that the application isn’t sending data.