WP8 and Lync 2013 Mobile App Video Experience

The Lync 2013 Mobile App is finally here. With that comes some cool new features namely voice and video. I have been testing the WP8 Lync 2013 Mobile App on my HTC 8.x WP for a little while now and I think people will really enjoy the new features. Video over Wi-Fi and LTE works really well. The screenshots below were taken while I was on my home Wi-Fi but LTE works equally as well. I was using my home PC to generate the main video feed via the Lync Web App in a meeting and I then joined from my WP8 on Lync mobile. So even though you may see my face in both camera views they are on different devices that are part of a meeting.

The top shot (excuse my messy hair) is full screen landscape view and the second shot down is with the call controls available. With the camera controls you have the ability to switch between front and rear cameras on the phone. The one PIP down on the right hand corner is my rear facing camera pointed at my laptop.

Below are some more screenshots of the meeting join experience (I had to sanitize a little to hide names, numbers and URL’s but you get the idea). One of the great new features is the in app calendar view for the day. So rather than having to swap between apps to join a meeting it all occurs within the Lync 2013 Mobile App. Lync enabled meetings are highlighted in blue.The video is in portrait mode along with the camera controls for starting and stopping the camera and switching camera’s. If you follow along with the screenshots this gives a pretty good flow of what a scheduled video meeting might look like.

I didn’t want to go through every feature and there are some screen shots available in the Windows phone store for other features. Also the Lync Team has published some more screenshots of new iOS Lync Apps here which are due to release shortly.

Lync 2013 Mobile Client Compatibility Confusion

I have noticed that there is some mobile client confusion. This mainly stems from the fact that the Lync 2013 desktop client can register and function with Lync Server 2010. The Lync mobile clients are a little different. A Lync 2013 mobile app can not register with Lync Server 2010 or Lync Server 2013 pre CU1 but the Lync 2010 mobile apps can register with Lync Server 2013 that has had CU1 installed. Confused yet.

While this may sound confusing, from the user standpoint they will not be able to sign in with Lync 2013 mobile until you have the right pieces in place which means they will not see new features and buttons that wont function. So from an end user perspective this will alleviate confusion over what's supposed to work and gives admins some feature release control.Not something I am sure your users want but something that most engineers need to have to orchestrate the required configuration and ensure ancillary pieces like training and helpdesk scripts are in place. All the things that go into an enterprise grade service offering.

See more below:

	Lync Server 2010 with Mobility Service	Lync Server 2013 (prior to CU “1” update)	Lync Server 2013, CU “1” – Mobility Enabled	Lync Server 2013, CU “1” – Mobility Disabled
Lync 2010 mobile clients			Notification to upgrade to the latest version of the mobility client.	Error: “Can’t sign in because you are not setup to use Lync 2013. Please contact your support team.””
Lync 2013 mobile clients	Error: “You can't sign in with this version of Lync. Please install Lync 2010.”	Error: “You can't sign in with this version of Lync. Please install Lync 2010.”		Error: “Can’t sign in because you are not setup to use Lync 2013. Please contact your support team.””

BTW, I used the native screen capture feature in WP8 to get the screen grabs above. Just press the 'Power button' and 'Start' icon together and briefly. You hear the camera shutter sound, and it's saved in the 'Photo' section in an album called 'Screenshots'.

VoIPNorm