New Data Conferencing Features

Lync Server 2013 introduces key new features that make Lync Server 2013 a best-in-class conferencing solution for organizations of all types. This includes the following features:

• Join Launcher—When a client of any type attempts to join a meeting, the web service will validate each meeting before launching a client. This allows for a better user experience if there is an error contacting the meeting. In Lync 2010, meeting join failures on mobile and desktop clients were not very informative for end users. The new Join Launcher helps to provide users with more information on the meeting join process. Additionally, this consolidates the meeting join functionality for all clients on computers and mobile devices.

• PowerPoint Sharing with Office Web Apps—Lync Server 2013 now requires Office Web Apps Server to handle PowerPoint presentations. The use of this server allows for higher-resolution display of PowerPoint presentations and better support for enhanced PowerPoint capabilities.

• Archiving Updates—When organizations configure integrated archiving with Exchange Server 2013, any documents that are shared in meetings will also be placed into the Exchange Archiving Store. This includes PowerPoint presentations, attachments, whiteboards, and polls.

In addition to adding this functionality, Microsoft has spent a significant amount of time fine-tuning the media codecs used for desktop and application sharing. This provides a greater experience when sharing applications with high-end graphics and real-time media.

Lync Server 2013 data conferencing is made up of three content sharing types: desktop sharing, collaboration content, and PowerPoint sharing. These next few sections outline exactly what functionality is included in each content sharing type, and provide a technical overview of how Lync Server 2013 makes all of this work.