BREAKING: snom 821 and 300 Become Qualified for Microsoft Lync #lync #snom

snom has now passed the Microsoft Lync Server qualification process. It has also renamed its OCS/Lync compatible firmware which used to be called “OCS Edition” to “snom UC Edition” both updating and protecting against future Microsoft UC product name changes in one fell swoop. One final large point is that the snom UC Edition has a feature that even Lync Phone Edition does not: Ability to change presence from the phone itself.
I’ll take a few minutes to go over the snom 821 and the new snom UC Edition firmware. [Note you can click on any picture to zoom]

The snom 821 is a solid phone overall. and looks business the whole way. One of the few look-and-feel items that could improve is the round, four way button: it has a no over-the-center feel so youdon’t really get feedback that you actually pushed the button.  As an alternative there are typically softkey up/down arrows right below the screen that give excellent over-the-center feel.

As noted at the beginning of this article the snom firmware for Lync and OCS has been renamed “snom UC Edition” which is more generic and avoids becoming dated if Microsoft makes another name change. (lets hope not! This name is prominently displayed as the phone boots.

snom has also included a new feature in the snom UC Edition that is not even in Microsoft’s own Lync Phone Edition: the ability to change the phone’s presence FROM the deskphone. Its pretty nice and interesting to see snom get ahead of Microsoft on this one.

As shown above the snom UC Edition does not show the Lync user photo, either in the contact list or when there is an incoming call at this time.

The contact list is accessible by pressing one of the softkeys and shows the live presence of contacts just like in the Lync client. (In our tests we noted that sometimes this presence did not change in a timely fashion on our system. Could be us.)

If you click the “I” button in the contact list you can see the user Note and various contact numbers/URI’s and call any one of them. If you click on the presence you will see the note. Also note that the big red light in the upper right shows the Missed Call as well as on the screen.

As one would expect, pressing DND also changes the Lync status for this user. It also makes an unmistakable indication on the screen which I think is very nice. This DND indication is as a transparent overlay which is a nice visual touch.

Configuring the phone is very straightforward: just login, type your SIP-URI, domain\username and password and click Save. That’s pretty much it. There is also a Windows tray app to manage password changes. For larger implementations there is snomtastic to mass provision phones. [ snomtastic? yeah me too-I have no idea how such a professional name was arrived at. Note it is not from snom and not officially supported.]

Upgrading the firmware takes what seems like a long time (5minutes?). snom has improved the screens to give a lot more progress indication which is good. Not soo much wondering if something is happening. But truly this is an improvement.

snom 821 allows you to assign contacts (and various other features) to buttons. The nice thing about assigning a Contact to a virtual button is that in 2 clicks you can be calling an often called buddy.

Here you can see the Voicemail button lit when there is a voicemail in Exchange UM. Nice! Also on the screen on the left bottom you can see the Contacts button. This will open the Lync contact list with live presence noted above. If you have various Lync groups defined  you can switch between them by pressing the right/left on the 4 round button. Pretty slick there as well.
If you are looking to implement snom in a Lync environment or otherwise you can contact us at sales@landiscomputer.com.