Using a Line URI/PIN in Lync, without using Enterprise Voice.

Months ago my boss came to me with a simple request, “How can we minimize GoTo meeting accounts and also improve our integration and collaboration initiatives?”  Well the answer, with some research, was easy… Lync.  Lync provided us all the necessary tools to be more collaborative and allow for a reduction in accounts for GoTo meeting.  Double whammy!

     Well we rolled out Lync with all the bells and whistles EXCEPT Enterprise Voice and we had people test it as a replacement for GoTo meeting.  I was quite content in my position that it could do everything GoTo could do and more until……..  A group of our more hardcore beta testers relayed a message.  The call went as follows, “Hey, uhhh, I am on a conference call with some clients and no-one can get on.  Heeeelp.”  Come to find out that the entire group of invitees were using dial-in only and no-one was authenticated to the Lync client.  Because of that everyone was waiting in the lobby.  I also discovered that no matter what you set your meeting options to, dial-in only meetings will not work without someone authenticated.

     Determined to fix the issue, I began to tinker around on the settings.  I had seen the PIN options before and knew you needed Line URI setup to get it to work.  I also knew that Line URI was associated with Enterprise Voice, which we don’t use.  I tried everything else I could think of and as a last ditch effort I entered my phone number into Line URI and set a PIN, thinking surely it would not work.  But…. It did!  If you add a phone number in Line URI and then set a PIN, it will authenticate the user into the call thus allowing an all dial-in conference.  We have since rolled this solution out and it works great.

Let me tell you how I did this.

Requirements:

1.  Lync 2010
2.  Phone Number (Cell or office works fine.  It won’t be charged and is just for ID purposes)
3.  PIN Policy turned on

Steps:

1.  Go into the Lync Control Panel
2.  Go to Users
3.  Open up an account that you wish to be able to authenticate over dial-in
4.  Go to the Line URI: field and type in the number as such tel:+12345678901 , where the user’s number would be (234) 567-8901
5.  Commit the changes
6.  Have the user login to the Dial-In site, usually seen at the bottom of meeting invites where it says “Forgot your dial-in PIN?”
7.  Once they have signed in here a link appears to reset your PIN, click that and a list of rules comes up.  These rules are the same rules that your PIN policy illustrates.
8.  Enter the PIN, with these rules in mind, and then confirm.
9.  You will get a message that Your PIN was successfully changed.
10.  Test it out.  Have someone make a meeting, log into Lync and you join via dial-in.  Authenticate with the number and PIN combo and the users name will come up.

     This was incredibly useful and so far has worked like a charm!  Not only is it useful for all dial-in meetings but it authenticates a user in a standard meeting as well.  now, instead of talking to a guest, a name pops up and you can immediately know who is speaking.  Come to find out that you used to NOT be able to do this back in the OCS days so I can see why people still believe it is not a viable solution.  Somewhere along the line this has changed and I am glad it did.

     UPDATE:  I actually had a ticket open to make sure my facts were right about this and I got a communication from Jeff Schertz, a Lync MVP, and he told me that this was changed in OCS R2.  Thanks for the info Jeff!

DJ Jack