Best Practices

The following are best practices from this chapter:

• Create a dial plan in advance. Identify all required normalization rules and user dialing habits.

• Plan the voice policies, PSTN usages, and routes to match the different levels of service required to each user.

• Use existing data to analyze PSTN usage in order to estimate IP/PSTN port requirements.

• Assign a backup registrar to pools where voice resiliency is required.

• Deploy survivable branch servers or survivable branch appliances in branch offices without resilient WAN links.

• Complete the network configuration before attempting to enable Call Admission Control, Media Bypass, or Enhanced 911.

• Apply appropriate bandwidth policy limits to sites where WAN bandwidth is constrained.

• Use Media Bypass whenever possible to reduce the processing requirements on the Mediation Server role.

• Validate all addresses in the location information database before deploying Enhanced 911.

• Train users on the new devices and features they will experience with Enterprise Voice.

• Outline Response Group workflows, queues, and agent groups before attempting to create the objects in Lync Server 2010.

• Leverage the Lync Server 2010 Planning Tool prior to beginning a deployment in order to create a base configuration.