Found this useful looking article detailing a handy way of getting entry to a Lync Conference Call via a mobile when you are out and about using a saved speed-dial system.
Thanks to the guys at the Lync Team for this one.
Ever been stuck in traffic in your car, late for a meeting you need to attend, and fumbling around trying to find the right numbers to dial to call in? Well, you don’t need a fancy new Win7 phone to be able to quickly join into your meetings hosted on Lync Server. You can do it on any phone that has basic speed-dial functionality – better yet, you’ll join the meeting in a way that people will see who you are in the roster (and without having to record your name!). In Lync Server 2010 we made sure that there’s a path through the dial-in conferencing system that’s static, meaning it’s always the same regardless of which conference and who’s in it, so that you can program your speed-dial to do this.
Here’s how!
Create a new speed-dial entry, and make the number like this:
18001231234,,,{confID+#},,,*,*,{yourExtensionOrFullPhoneNumber+#},,{yourPIN+#}
… where:
- 18001231234 is the Conferencing Attendant access number. Not sure what this is? On your computer, make a new online meeting, and look for the phone number it shows in the body of the invite
- {confID+#} is the conference ID of your meeting. Again, you can find this by making a new online meeting and looking in the body of the invite. Your conference ID doesn’t change – it stays the same (unless you deliberately change it on the dialin-conferencing webpage, which will invalidate your speed-dial!). If you want to join somebody else’s meeting using speed-dial, then put their conference ID in here instead. Important: make sure you use a ‘#’ to terminate any multi-digit input, like this conf ID.
- The first and second ‘*’s are instructing the system that you wish to manually authenticate yourself using a phone a PIN. Nothing to see here, move along…
- {yourExtensionOrFullPhoneNumber+#} – this can be either your extension, or your full phone number (starting with country code). If you’re not sure, try dialing up manually first and entering your phone number and PIN to see if it works. Again, make sure you end with ‘#’.
- {yourPIN+#} – this is your conferencing PIN, the same PIN you use on your deskphone (Lync Phone Edition) if you have one. If you’re not sure what your PIN is (or you never set one!), then make a new online meeting and click the “Forgot your dial-in PIN?” link in the body of the invite. You’ll find yourself on the dialin-conferencing webpage where you can change your PIN.
The commas are pauses – they’re necessary to give the system time to react to the input. If you can’t enter a comma on your phone itself, then if your phone syncs with your Outlook another way to do this is to create a contact for the speed-dial entry in Outlook (with commas) and then sync it to your phone. Different phones will make different-length pauses for a single comma, and in general you’ll have to play around with the number of commas to find what works for you. Here are some hints:
- If you’re calling an access number that’s geographically far away from you (ie. you live & work in Dallas but you call an access number in Boston), you’ll probably need more commas right after the access number (phone number)
- If you find that you’re ever being asked to record your name, then there’s a problem somewhere after the conference ID – try adding more commas.
Finally, if you’re joining your own meeting (one that you scheduled yourself), then there’s a shortcut that allows you to omit your extension or phone number – you can just use this instead:
18001231234,,,,{confID+#},,,*,,{yourPIN+#}
Hope you find this as useful as I.
Neil
