#snom m9 #Lync 2010 and #OCS 2007 R2 Features

The snom m9 is the first Lync 2010 interoperable phone to the market. This unit will also connect to a standard SIP pbx such as 3CX, snom ONE, Brekeke, etc as well. It is also a dual IP stack IPv6 unit. So quite of bit of promise in this little unit.

In this blog article I will go over some of the Lync specific features of the m9. This report is not intended as a complete review of the m9 (coming later) but just a quick overview of the m9 Lync features specifically. Below is my video review of the m9 Lync features and my written report.



Presence is huge with Lync 2010 and the snom m9 will automatically change your Lync presence based on the User State of the m9 unit. (It currently does not take into account Device State) So if your m9 is not on a call or DND it shows "Green light" as shown below.

If we select to set the m9 to Do Not Disturb the Lync presence will be set as well.

Here the presence is set to "On a call".

The snom m9 will also allow you to put your contact in a list and dial Lync buddies based on this. This list does not show the contact's Lync presence as you may know that the snom 3xx/8xx do. According to product manager this is a limitation of Dect technology and is not a feature planned for the m9.

The m9 does not pull the Lync contact list but you can make this list yourself from the phone user interface or the web user interface. It will allow you to import VARDS/.vcf's as well so you can include a picture.

The unit will also allow you to setup 10 one digit speed dials. So you can dial a Lync contact with one button! Think about it: If you have Lync federated with MSN/etc you could call them with 1 button! Pretty neat!

Also note the IPv6 address. Since the unit run dual parallel IP stack, you can log in to the unit even if you don't know the IPv4 address. Very slick.

See the dual parallel IPv6 stack below:

Configuring the m9 for Lync is fairly straight forward using the below configuration screen. You will also want to click on SIP tab and set the Server Type to "Microsoft Office Communication Server (OCS)" to make it work.

The m9 is very new to the USA market and it shows. Right now you need to type in a pin to change DND, lack of automatically populated contact list, searching address book only works with some letters, etc but snom is working hard rectify these issues and I hope to be able to report that it has passed my critique shortly. ;-)

If you own an m9 you might want to look at the recently update pdf manual.
I think the m9 shows real promise as a Lync 2010 Dect phone. It also shows that snom is committed to bringing interesting Lync devices to the market.