What are my Office Communicator client options?

 Here is another common question I get from schools. What options do I have to connect to Office Communications Server 2007 from a client perspective?

 

Office Communicator Client 2007

The first client option is the Office Communicator Client that is available for your PC.

 

Supported OSes for the Office Communicator Client:

·  Windows Vista® operating system, 3

32-bit editions

·  Windows XP SP2 Professional Edition

·  Windows® 2000 SP4 Professional Edition (requires Windows Media Player® 9 and Microsoft Windows Installer, version 3.0). SRTP (Secure Real-time Transport Protocol), which Office Communications Server uses to encrypt voice and video, is not supported by Windows 2000.

 

Messenger for Mac 7

The next client available is the recently released Communicator client for Mac called Messenger for Mac 7.

Mac minimum requirements to run:

·  Processor: PPC/Intel MHz

·  Mac OS X 10.4.9 or later

 

A nice feature is this can be used with a students Hotmail/Windows Live account or with your Office Communications Server 2007.

Here is a feature comparison list:

Features	Available with Office Communicator 2007	Available with Messenger for Mac 7
Instant messaging	Yes	Yes
File transfer	Yes	Yes
Global address list search	Yes	Yes
Video communication	Yes	Yes
Audio communication	Yes	Yes
Detecting subnet users (Bonjour)	No	Yes
Microsoft Office integration	Yes	Yes (Entourage Project Center, Word Reviewing toolbar)
Improved Presence types	Yes	Yes
Whiteboard sessions	Yes	No
Private Branch Exchange (PBX) integration	Yes	No
Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) conferencing	Yes	No

 

Office Communicator Web Client

If you would rather not deploy a client to desktops you could leverage the Office Communicator Web Client. This is useful for roaming students, student dorm PCs and Macs.

Supported browsers:

Operating System	Internet Browser
Windows 2000 SP4	Microsoft Internet Explorer® 6 SP1
Windows XP SP2	Internet Explorer 6 SP2 Windows Internet Explorer 7
	Mozilla Firefox 2.0 with the latest update
Windows Vista Enterprise Edition	Internet Explorer 7
	Mozilla Firefox 2.0 with the latest update
Mac OS X 10.4.9	Safari 2.0.4 Mozilla Firefox 2.0 with the latest update

 

 

Communicator Mobile Client

For the mobile users, students, you can setup a quick IM session with your Windows Mobile device using the Communicator Mobile Client (CoMo).

 

Here is the new Blackberry client for OCS:

More Blackberry screenshots:

 

Supported Phones:

WM5.0, WM6.x and newly added Blackberry support

You can't use the VOIP components similar to SKYPE for your mobile phone but you can call contacts using your mobile service.

 

 

Office Communicator Phone Edition (Tanjay)

The last Communicator client option available to your end users is the Office Communicator Phone Edition.

These phones also log into Office Communications Server and are called UC devices. As you can see above, the device provides a detailed presence status of users via the LCD screen.

I hope this gives you a better summary of all the Office Communicator client options available to your school when you deploy Office Communications Server. For more information on OCS and Communicator clients click here.