Overview

When it comes to extensibility, there is so much that Lync can do that at first it can be overwhelming to consider all the possibilities. Imagine being able to enable your whole enterprise for VoIP. Think of the savings you can get by replacing all the telephony hardware with a software solution. The capability to have instant communications with employees, vendors, and customers worldwide using a single Lync client is powerful. Think of the travel expenses you can save by using the same client instead of having to gather your far-flung team together in one city for meetings.

Think about your company help desk and your customer support individuals being able to share desktops to resolve problems. What could be done to decrease the time it takes to deal with support issues? What would it do for employee morale or for customer satisfaction? All this functionality is available right out of the box.

But there comes a time when the “wow” starts to wear off and you begin asking the what-if questions. What if Lync could do this? Or what if it could do that? How can Lync help me conduct my business better? After using Lync for a while, you begin to see not limitations in Lync but rather possibilities. You start seeing areas of your business that could benefit from the features of Lync. You begin to see how it can integrate and become an integral part of your business processes.

At this point, you might ask how Lync can do the things you need. Microsoft has thought of you and provided application programming interfaces (APIs) that enable you to tap into the power and functionality of Lync. In the rest of this chapter, we look at these APIs and how you can leverage them to enhance your business.