Communicator Mobile 2007 R2

Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile 2007 R2 is almost ready to be shipped to customers, so now is the perfect time to present this Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) client that makes it easy to stay connected from a mobile phone.

The Communicator Mobile project was conducted in parallel with the other OCS 2007 projects. The goal was to elevate mobile devices to first-class participants in Microsoft’s Unified Communications (UC) ecosystem. Thinking about the investments Microsoft made in voice, it made sense for us to have an OCS client on the mobile phone.  We wanted this client to be a full UC endpoint, allowing the mobile phone to be the user’s only phone and a great complement to Microsoft Office Communicator.

When Communicator Mobile 2007 shipped last year, it had the necessary foundations that we needed to achieve our goal. It allowed a user to send and receive instant messages, receive and publish presence, and search for contacts in the enterprise’s address book. Shipping Communicator Mobile 2007 was exciting. We were anxiously awaiting the first customer feedback—after  all, this is who we build products for. Users were happy with the ability to receive and send instant messages from the mobile phone and to update their presence on the road, but they asked for better battery life and the ability to receive and place phone calls through their enterprise OCS server. Both features had been on our minds from the beginning, and this feedback told us what to focus on for the next release Communicator Mobile.

Fast forward to the end of 2008: We are getting ready to release Communicator Mobile 2007 R2, which features more than 60% improvement in power consumption, single-number reach capabilities, plus various other tweaks and improvements that will make the mobile worker’s life better.

To reduce power consumption, we mainly focused on adapting the OCS presence model to a mobile device.   The always pulling presence feature is a great solution for Communicator, but it wasn’t so great on a mobile device (rapid power consumption). On a mobile device, (which features limited screen real estate and only one visible application at a time), presence doesn’t need to be updated when Communicator Mobile is in the background. With this in mind, we designed a new presence model that prevents waking up the phone’s radio when it is not really needed. We also tied subscription packets to IM packets (to use the fact that radio is already active) and we suspended presence updates when the application is running in the background. At the same time, we improved the sign-in process to add some caching and significantly reduce sign-in time.

Because presence is essential to modern communication and because we had the goal of making a mobile client that is a first-class citizen of the UC world, we decided that Communicator Mobile will not only display presence but that it will also actively participate in the presence model.

When I am on the road, if I am connected on my mobile device, it is useful for my contacts to know this before contacting me; very often, for example, this helps people decide to use voice instead of IM, as they know I might be driving. Communicator Mobile 2007 R2 publishes a specific presence state that shows my presence as on a mobile device (I am available on mobile, or busy on mobile, etc…). It is also publishing my device capabilities, so I don’t receive application sharing invites, for example.