Implementing and Maintaining Audio/Visual Conferencing and Web Conferencing Using Microsoft Office

Course details

This instructor-led course provides students with the knowledge and skills to plan, deploy, and manage audio/visual and Web conferencing by using Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007.

Target Audience

This course is intended for IT Professional infrastructure specialists. This includes real-time communications Technology Specialists and professional real-time communications engineers. In addition, IT Professionals in any job role that interacts with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, Microsoft SharePoint® Server, and Exchange Server will benefit from the course.

Objectives

• After completing this course, students will be able to:
• Determine implementation requirements for an on-premise conferencing solution.
• Deploy an on-premise conferencing solution by using Office Communications Server 2007 Standard Edition.
• Deploy an on-premise conferencing solution by using Office Communications Server 2007 Enterprise Edition.
• Deploy and configure participant clients for on-premise conferencing.
• Schedule conferencing and configure user and meeting policies for on-premise Web conferencing and on-premise audio/visual conferencing.

Course Outline

Module 1: Determining the Implementation Requirements for On-Premise Conferencing

The way people work has changed in the last few decades as technology has enabled greater mobility. While this mobility can offer tremendous benefits to both employees and the organizations for which they work, it does present some challenges. The need to communicate effectively with work colleagues does not diminish with distance. If two or more employees need to meet in order to progress a project, collaborate on documents, or simply share ideas, Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 can enable them to do so by providing support for on-premise conferencing. On-premise conferencing provides a number of benefits over hosted conferencing solutions.

In order to implement Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, you must make some changes to Active Directory and deploy additional application servers, such as Internet Information Server, SQL Server 2005, and Exchange Server 2007.

Module 2: Implementing an On-Premise Conferencing Solution by Using Office Communications Server 2007 Standard Edition

This module explains how to implement an on-premise conferencing solution by using Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Standard Edition. The module also explains how to configure the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Address Book. The module provides an overview of the conferencing components provided by Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Standard Edition.

Module 3: Implementing an On-Premise Conferencing Solution by Using Office Communications Server 2007 Enterprise Edition

The Enterprise Edition of Office Communications Server is better suited to larger organizations as it offers support for more users, and flexible server configuration options. For example, you can install all the Office Communications Server services on a single server or a group of servers; alternatively, you can deploy conferencing components to separate server computers in load-balanced pools. Enterprise Edition provides the capability to more easily scale to support more users as your needs change. In addition, because you must install the SQL Server component on a separate physical computer, you can provide resilience at the back end by clustering this SQL Server.

Module 4: Deploying and Configuring Participant Clients for On-Premise Conferencing

To participate in an on-premise conference, you must typically install some software onto your users’ workstation computers. Microsoft provides three client programs for use with Office Communication Server 2007: Office Communicator 2007, Office Live Meeting 2007, and Office Live Meeting Add-In for Microsoft Office Outlook® 2007.

Module 5: Working with On-Premise Web and Audio/Video Conferencing

Office Communications Server 2007 supports the creation of both scheduled and unscheduled Web conferences by using Microsoft Office Live Meeting Add-In for Office Outlook 2007. Users participating in an on-premise Web conference can collaborate and share their data by using Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. You can use Group Policies to control how users share their data and to specify additional settings for an on-premise conference.

Office Communications Server 2007 also supports audio/video conferencing. Users can create audio/video conferences by using a variety of hardware components, including Microsoft Office RoundTable.