Microsoft Lync Mobile client for Windows Phone

Yesterday, the Microsoft Lync Mobile client for Windows Phone finally got released, just making it out in the “Q4 2011” that was promised earlier this year. After making the server side changes a couple of days ahead of time, I got a chance to try the client out yesterday, and see what it can do.

First, when you log in, the client asks about setting up a single number reach, which is really just setting up Simultaneous Ring for your mobile number. This feature has been there since day one, but if nothing else, having it front and centre like this will expose it to people that have never used it before.

IMs work based on the push notification service on Windows Phone, which appears to be reasonably fast at alerting of a new conversation. My tests showed maybe a one second lag between my desktop and phone clients notifying me of an incoming IM, which is definitely promising. There don’t appear to be any options to control notifications more granularly however. Just as with the desktop client, if you’re logged into multiple locations, each one of them gets notified of an incoming IM at the same time, so if Push Notifications are enabled, then your phone will get every incoming IM request (although it does not appear to auto answer like a desktop client will). As for presence, your mobile presence works the same way as your desktop presence does. There doesn’t appear to be any location data shared, however it is reasonably obvious that you’re active on a mobile device:

Click to call is probably the best feature on the client, even though there’s no voice over IP included. It lets you place outbound calls using Lync by having the server call your phone, and then connect the outbound call. Not only does this mean your caller ID appears to come from your work number (hiding the direct mobile number), but it takes advantage of any Lync routing rules that may be in place for things like normalization and least cost routing, while also avoiding mobile outbound long distance charges. Not having VoIP support is still a pretty major omission though, but one that will very likely be updated in a future release.

Conference joins work in just about the same way as on the desktop, with Lync calling your phone for the audio portion. There’s also no support for desktop sharing on a device, so you’ll have to be content with the audio portion of the call. I also noticed that when you joined a scheduled conference (by clicking a meet: URI in an invite), there was no way to get into the IM portion of the call-just the voice. Being added to the same conference directly through the desktop Lync client worked as expected though, and the mobile client joined both voice and IM.

Other than the Windows Phone client, there are clients coming for IOS, Blackberry, and Android, and while I haven’t tried any of them yet, the intent was that the experience would be the same (or as similar as possible) across the platforms. This is actually something that is a real determent to the Windows Phone client, which fails to take advantage of some of the unique capabilities of the platform. For example, the v 7.5 Mango update added support to the Messaging hub for presence and IMs from Windows Live, so this would have been an ideal place to hook in Lync IMs as well. The People hub in Windows Phone aggregates contact information from sources all over the web, but Microsoft Lync is not one of them. Instead of using Lync to presence-enable the entire phone experience, the Microsoft Lync mobile client exists in its own sandbox, and while this is probably to be expected on an iPhone, it would have been great to see Microsoft make a strong case for Windows Phone by providing a substantially better experience on the platform that they own.

Still, as a first release of a mobile client, it’s certainly better than the mobile Lync experience that we had before, so the real question is “what’s next?” Hopefully the next Windows Phone OS release contains some real Lync-ready hooks, like allowing for presence providers and alternate diallers in the people hub. As for the Lync client, VoIP is probably something at the top of a lot of people’s lists, but even things like being able to tag contacts for presence change alerts through the push notification service would be a big feature.