Configure Voice Policy

The next four tabs—Voice Routing, Voice Features, Response Groups, and Conferencing—are covered in detail in the voice chapters included in Section 6, “Voice,” later in this book. For this reason, this section offers only an overview of these tabs.

The Voice Routing tab has many options. The first one is Dial Plan. This is roughly equivalent to the location profile in Office Communications Server 2007 R2. It has options to configure normalization rules per dial plan. The Normalization Wizard successfully blends the best parts of the previous tools. It has the power and flexibility of raw regular expressions and the intuitive and logical interface of the Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Enterprise Voice Route Helper. This should go a long way toward helping administrators without traditional telephony backgrounds to create complex dial plans.

The Voice Policy option is something completely new. Although it has an associated usage policy, it also has a number of check boxes to enable or disable various calling features. The choices are

• Enable call forwarding

• Enable delegation

• Enable call transfer

• Enable call park

• Enable simultaneous ringing of phones

• Enable team call

• Enable PSTN reroute

• Enable bandwidth policy override

• Enable malicious call tracing

Many of these features require additional configuration that doesn’t just involve simply checking a box. For example, orbits must be defined for call park to function correctly. This simply creates a policy to allow the functionality for users assigned to a specific voice policy.

The Route option focuses on policy-based routing. This allows logical call routing based on number patterns. This can be especially helpful in mixed Enterprise Voice and PBX scenarios or where Lync Server is used for conferencing but a PBX maintains enterprise call control. Note that a call follows the first applicable path, not all paths that match.

PSTN Usage, the next tab from the top bar, is essentially the combination of a route and a voice policy. When a usage is assigned only actions that fit, the voice policy is allowed, and then calls follow the appropriate route.

The next tab, Trunk Configuration, can apply to internal or external SIP trunk configuration. Proper configuration of the Trunk Configuration options allow interoperability with a wider scope of SIP trunks and SIP trunking providers.

The last tab under Voice Routing is Test Voice Routing. This allows an administrator to define and save test cases. This is especially helpful in rapidly changing or complex environments.

The Voice Features item on the left bar has two sections: Call Park and Unassigned Number. The Call Park section allows an administrator to define Call Park number ranges and assign them to a pool. The Unassigned Number section allows an administrator to define number ranges and an action where to redirect the call. In previous versions, the call simply disconnected, but in Lync Server, the call can be routed to Exchange UM or to the Announcement service for a front end pool. Multiple rules can be defined for different number ranges. This is helpful for multiple site deployments where using a local pool or one with a different language is valuable.

Response Groups have the same familiar pieces: Workflow, Queue, and Group definition fields. Existing Response Group workflows can also be imported from Office Communications Server 2007 R2.