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Response Groups in Office Communicator

Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 will reach end of support on January 9, 2018. To stay supported, you will need to upgrade. For more information, see Resources to help you upgrade your Office 2007 servers and clients.

The Response Group Service is a Unified Communications application that you use to create and configure workflows. You use workflows to route and queue incoming calls to groups of designated agents.

As an Office Communicator 2007 R2 user, you can search for a response group and initiate a call to a response group just as you would any other distribution group. You can also add a response group to your Contact List. Communicator uses an automated service icon to differentiate response groups from other distribution groups.

An agent group is a collection of agents who handle incoming calls from the Response Group Service. When an administrator creates an agent group, he or she can select the agents that are assigned to the group, and specify whether the group requires agents to sign in and out. Users are considered to be either informal agents or formal agents, depending on whether they are required to formally sign in to an agent group to begin receiving calls, as follows:

  • Informal agents are agents that have been assigned to an agent group that does not require them to sign in and out. Informal agents are automatically signed in to the group when they sign in to Office Communications Server 2007 R2. If you are an informal agent, you can receive calls routed to your group by using Office Communicator 2007 R2 Attendant or Office Communicator 2007 R2.

  • Formal agents are agents that have been assigned to an agent group that requires them to sign in and out. Formal agents must be signed in to the group before they can receive calls routed to the group.

The Response Group Tab is a custom tab on the Office Communicator 2007 R2 client that formal agents use to sign in and out of their assigned agent groups. The Response Group Tab displays your agent group membership information. The Response Group Tab lists your group membership information for a particular pool. If you are assigned to multiple groups and the groups are handled by more than one pool, which are each running the Response Group Service, you will have a Response Group Tab for each pool.