First Impression Review of Lync Mobile for WindowsPhone

The Microsoft Lync Mobile client for Windows Phone became available a day early: around 7.30 EST on Sunday evening.

After working with it for just a little bit here is some feedback:

• Very straightforward initial setup: Has very simple wizard based setup.
• Lync Mobile start up time is about 6seconds on my Samsung Focus with Mango, which feels snappy.
• Push notifications and Live Tile
• Tap the push notification and you will be taken directly to the IM conversation
• The Lync Live Tile while show how many missed items

• Push notifications that come in when phone is locked and asleep will vibrate/ring phone and light up screen with notification at the top.

• Has a responsive Metro interface (but does not observe WindowsPhone theme colors, Messaging Hub integration or Mango contact pinning capability at this time) Lync uses a blue colored theme.

• Lync Mobile “remembers” which screen (my Info, contacts, conversations) you were on when you exited the program and open there when rerun the app
  • change your note, status or incoming call settings by taping on the item.

• set your status
• here is where you sign out as well.

• You can call (using Outside Voice) Lync contacts that do not have Enterprise Voice—very nice.
• You can also audio call (using Outside Voice) Lync federated contacts (LiveMessenger or Lync): for example I just called a federated LiveMessenger contact.
• The ability to have group IM chats and easily add new contacts to chat from Lync Mobile works very straightforward 

• When a group chat is in progress you can easily “View Participants List”
• Lync Mobile IM has Spell checker and emoticons

• Lync Mobile IM does not make URLs hot linkable (by default at least. checking if this is a setting…) But you can easily copy and paste. Not bad.

• IM History is not stored to exchange like desktop Lync, but you can email it to yourself.
• Making a voice call from Lync Mobile dialer (shown below) will set your status to busy although making a call from WindowsPhone dialer does not.
  • In a nod to the telephony world the Lync Mobile dialer has a button on EVERY screen—right in center, bottom.

• Lync Contacts List is metro, clean and straightforward.
  • Lync will remember which groups you have expanded even after shutting down the app and restarting which is nice.
  • If you have long contact lists you can search for contacts using search button
  • I’ve noticed that presence for contacts refreshes nice and fast: usually in about 2 seconds of the change.
  • Note: Pictures did not show up for us: I think this is because it only supports AD pictures, not URLs.

• Joining a meeting from WindowsPhone works very nicely, just one click on Join Meeting URL then accept incoming call.
  • You can easily see who is joining/leaving meeting (picture1 below) and a list of participants
  • You can even easily add/Invite participants from mobile quite easily. (Picture2 below: There is a UI issue that the mobile phone call info area somewhat covers the field you need to type Invitee into, but it still works)

 

• The first time you get an IM from a contact you will get a toast notification at the top of the screen as shown on the picture below. After that the phone vibrates on each new IM.

• Lync Mobile handles multiple chats very smoothly via a “Conversations” screen. You can even have other ongoing chats going while you are in a Voice conference. (I’m sure msft would want me to note not to do this while driving please--grin )

• Changing your own presence/availability works as expected. Perhaps a little slower to update on your own mobile device after you make a change (I’ve noticed up to 6 seconds…perhaps our server?) You will notice update happens on a Lync 2010 client more immediately.
• Technet article under “Telephony Support” section notes WindowsPhone cilent should have “Access voice mail” as a feature—but we can’t find it? (maybe overlooking?)

Some Technical/Other Notes:

• If you “Call as Work” or click to Join Meeting, make sure you answer the resulting call to your mobile device. (otherwise called party will get your mobile voicemail) (via bibble-it blog)
• We are hearing some people need to enter UserName as well to achieve a successful login.
• Note: you need the Lync Server to be updated to CU4 and the mobility service installed before this client will work.

Summary:
Microsoft has brought the Lync experience to WindowsPhone, and a day early by some counts. It is optimized for the mobile user UI and bandwidth wise and I expect this will be appreciated by many. I am pleasantly surprised at the smoothness of joining the audio portion of a Lync meeting and the ability to see attendees and invite new ones—right on a mobile device. The ability to voice call non-EV Lync and other federated contacts means big toll savings when calling around the world. Some will note that there are more WindowsPhone native capabilities that could be taken advantage of, VoIP voice and visual portion of Lync meetings is not a part of the product. Overall, Microsoft has a good solid start on the path to get Lync functionality on mobile devices and Lync Mobile is a big win for Lync users.

Users on WindowsPhone Marketplace give #Lync Mobile a 4.5 Star rating.
See Lync Moble for WindowsPhone on Marketplace: click here