Audio Dial-Out

One of the key strategies in Lync voice implementations is the notion that organizations don’t need to replace all the existing PBX phones and can instead leverage the Lync dial-in conferencing features with the old phones during a lengthy migration. This worked just fine for users who dialed in to the conferencing service, but there were some serious caveats with the capability to support dial-out from the conferencing service to the PBX phones. Although it was possible, there was no control over what numbers could be dialed within Lync, so businesses had to turn to gateways or the old PBX to provide class of restrictions or number manipulations. The last pain point was the fact that only a single gateway would be targeted in this dial-out scenario, similar to the old 1:1 Mediation Server to media gateway ratio in Office Communications Server 2007 R2.

Lync Server 2013 has added a feature to the conferencing policies to support audio dial-out for non-Enterprise voice users. The end result is that users who are not enabled for Enterprise Voice yet but have a Lync 2013 client can join a conference and have the conferencing service call their desk phone. The user only needs to answer the call to be placed in the conference. The primary advantage in Lync 2013 is that the dial out numbers can now be controlled on a per-user basis with voice policies.