Scopes

Scopes in Lync Server 2013 are available to help define the boundary of a policy. Scopes are applied based on the topology built within the Topology Builder. The highest level that exists is the Global level. Within the Global level are sites, which represent physical locations where pools exist. Sites typically are data centers where the Front End pool servers reside. Each site then contains the pools that make up the deployment. A site can have one pool or multiple pools. This arrangement is depicted in Figure 14.3.

Figure 14.3. Scope priority.

After the topology is defined, default policies for many aspects of Lync Server 2013 are created. For example, global policies are created for Voice Policies, Conferencing Policies, and External Access Policies.

Global policies apply to all sites, pools, and users by default. Additional policies can be created at any of the other scopes as well, giving flexibility on overriding the defaults. The benefit of applying policies to a site or pool scope is that the additional task of assigning a policy directly to the users is no longer required. Instead, policies defined at a higher level are automatically applied to all scopes below as long as the lower scope does not have a policy already defined.

Administrators can still create new policies and assign them directly to a user account to override any global or site policies. This might be necessary to grant executives or VIP users a higher level of access than the default for everyone else in the site.