PIN Policies

The term PIN is unfortunately extremely overused within Lync and Exchange server, and leads to some end-user confusion. In an Enterprise Voice scenario a user can have up to three different PINs they need to manage, and they generally won’t be able to distinguish where each should be used. First, it’s important to identify the different PINs a user can have:

• Lync User PIN—This PIN is used to sign in to a Lync Phone Edition device using only a PIN and an extension. It is also used for authenticating to the Lync dial-in conferencing bridge.

• Lync Device PIN—This PIN is created by a user the first time she signs in to a Lync Phone Edition device and locks her personal information such as a contact list and voice mail messages. This PIN is specific only to a single device and cannot be reset by an administrator.

• Exchange Unified Messaging PIN—This PIN is generated when a user is enabled for Exchange Unified Messaging and it is delivered via email. It does not integrate or sync with Lync at all, and is used only for authentication to Outlook Voice Access.

It’s easy to see how a user can become confused by all of these PINs because, from their perspective, they’re all just part of the phone system. A way to mitigate this confusion is to make sure the PIN policies for all options are consistent, and to advise users to keep the PINs identical.