Presence is a core feature of Microsoft's Lync Server 2010, enabling users to reach the right person the first time, avoiding the typical inefficiencies that arise from voicemail and endless phone tag. Lync’s rich presence provides a common, intuitive representation of a user’s availability for communications. It also provides other useful information and features such as the ability to share the time a user is away from their desk and the ability to monitor a user’s presence to help aid in enabling timely communications.

Although presence information is valuable to an organization as it enables users to know the availability of a colleague before attempting to contact them, it also presents privacy issues as users can view presence information of other users and potentially use it for purposes that may not be consistent with the enterprise’s code of conduct or works councils employee privacy requirements.

Introducing presence, in a company that has thus far been using traditional telephony, is a high hurdle for employees to overcome in their daily communications habits. Transforming this cultural shift in a more streamlined way often requires organizations to make the transition more gradual. Additionally, users need step-by-step guidance on managing presence and making it a natural part of their everyday workflow.

With Unify²'s Enhanced Presence Privacy Suite 2.0, enterprises have the option of disabling presence information for all users in a given pool. When presence is disabled, users still have full use of all Lync communication modalities, including instant messaging, voice, video and conference calling. With the functionality of the Enhanced Presence Privacy Suite, organizations can deploy Lync Server 2010 while maintaining the privacy requirements of the works councils or other similar organizations. It also allows selectively excluding individual users from the restrictions provided by the Unify² Presence Privacy Suite utilities. This is useful for response group contacts, attendant console users, or individual users who want to share their presence to enable communications that are more efficient. This way, enterprises can roll out Lync with its rich presence across the enterprise, by gradually introducing presence to meet the business requirements while maintaining the privacy requirements of the works councils.

The Enhanced Presence Privacy Suite consists of a set of four utilities that provide the following functionality:

• Disabled Presence States (PresenceOffline Utility)
  The PresenceOffline utility sets the presence state for all users to "Offline." Users are still able to place and receive calls using all Lync modalities, including IM, voice and conferencing. Individual users may override this by explicitly setting their Lync presence state by using the “Sign In As” option in Lync client.
  
  
  
• Disabled Status Change Alerts (TagFilter Utility)
  The TagFilter utility will turn off all presence state change alerts. Lync users will still able to tag people in their contact lists, however Lync Server will not send any status change alerts.
  
  
  
• Disable state duration information (AwayStatus Utility)
  The AwayStatus utility will disable all presence “away from the desk” or “offline” duration information from being shared. This information is normally made available to other Lync users when the user accessing presence has been assigned to the “Company”, “Team” or “Personal” presence access levels. With the AwayStatus utility, Lync users are not able to see for how long a user has been in the presence state “Away” or "Offline."
  
  


• Disable presence polling (NonContact Presence Utility)
  This application suppresses sharing presence information in the case where the user is trying to access presence that is not contained in the user’s contact list (including federated contacts).
  
  

Please contact emeasales@unifysquare.com for additional information.