As most people know, Microsoft Lync meetings are normally scheduled using Microsoft Outlook. They can also be scheduled using the Outlook Web App (OWA) in Microsoft Office 365.
For this example, we will use Microsoft Outlook. In Microsoft Outlook, select the Calendar view and either create a New Meeting, or use the New Lync Meeting button in the ribbon.
If you have chosen New Meeting, rather than New Lync Meeting, click the Lync Meeting button in the ribbon to promote the standard Outlook meeting to a Lync Meeting.
Note that the "Join by Phone" phone numbers are already populated from your Lync account details. Also, your Conference ID is populated. The Join Lync Meeting hyperlink will not work until you send the meeting invitation to the attendees.
When you schedule a simple 1:1 or 1: a few collaboration meeting, all you need it do is to fill in the attendees on the To line, fill in the Subject and maybe a few details in the text area and send the invitation. (Note, don't add text between the dotted lines above and below the Lync Meeting info. If you do it may not be possible to update the meeting invitation later if you need to).
If you are scheduling a "managed" meeting such as a Team Meeting, Training Session or All-Hands/Town Hall meeting, you need to do some more things before you send the invitation. Click the Meeting Options button in the ribbon:
This will bring up a new dialog:
We need to discuss the concept of Meeting Space (the two radio buttons at the top of the dialog under "Where do you want to meet online").
Everyone in Lync gets their own Dedicated Meeting Space. It's the place where all your "normal" meetings are held. If you just schedule a Lync Meeting and send it, the meeting will be held in your personal Dedicated Meeting Space. Think of it as your own office. If you schedule another meeting and don't change the defaults, the next meeting will also be held in the same Dedicated Meeting Space (your office). You don't get any options to control here – it's just your own space. This can cause problems. Imagine you are holding two Lync Meetings, one after another. The first meeting is with a design team discussing a new secret product. The second meeting is with a member of the press. Because you just accepted the Lync Meeting defaults, both meetings are held in your Dedicated Meeting Space, but the member of the press can join your meeting before the secret design meeting has finished because the Join Meeting link in the meeting invitations are the same. Probably not ideal!
This is why you have the top option – A New Meeting Space. Note that this is not the default. You have to choose it as I did in the picture above. When you choose the New Meeting Space you get a new private meeting (like choosing to hold the meeting in a Conference Room instead of your normal office) and this space is dedicated to this one meeting. The Join Meeting link and the Conference ID in the Outlook Meeting Invitation will be changed to a unique one before the invitation is sent to reflect that this meeting in unique. Note also that once you choose the New Meeting Space, all the other options in the dialog are available for you to change for this one meeting.
The Lobby can be useful for smaller meetings if you want to control when people enter your meeting, but note that when the meeting starts you have to allow each person individually who is waiting in the lobby to enter the meeting. This can take some time for a larger meeting, so use this feature with caution!
The next option "Who's a presenter" is very important for managed meetings. In Microsoft Lync, Presenters have special powers mere Attendees do not. Amongst other things, Presenters can mute people, they can look ahead in PowerPoint presentations, they can select which WebCam to view, they can remove people from meetings etc etc. In your Dedicated Meeting Space, everyone from your organization is a Presenter. For managed meetings you will want to limit who is a Presenter. One great reason is the little check box "Mute all attendees". How many meetings have you been in where someone has left their mic open and you can hear is them typing, talking on the phone etc? With this option, all attendees joining the meeting will have their microphones' muted so they can't interrupt the meeting. You can do the same with the next check box, "Block attendees' video". In large meetings this can be very useful.
So for your managed meeting, choose "People I choose" in the "Who's a presenter" drop-down list.
When you first choose the option, only you, the meeting organizer is a presenter. But by selecting attendees in the left list (use CTRL Click to select more than one, or Shift Click to select a block) and then clicking Add, you can make your selected and trusted co-workers Presenters. Note in this meeting we have two special account – Video Tech and Audio Tech. These two accounts are used to control the Video and Audio for a Large Meeting. More about this in a future post.
When you have selected your presenters, click OK and you are ready to send the invitation. But wait. Have you thought of everyone you will need to be a Presenter in your meeting? Make sure you include them as presenters. Using Microsoft Lync 2013, in meetings with over 75 participants it is not possible to promote someone to be a presenter during the meeting (I'll explain why when we discuss the Large Meeting roster). So MAKE SURE you have selected all your presenters before the meeting. And note that every time you want to add a presenter, you have to go back into the Meeting options and move the attendee to be a presenter using the dialog above. You then have to send a Meeting Update to all meeting invitees. Again, planning is good here!
I said that the default is for all Lync meetings to be held in your Dedicated Meeting Space, rather than having an individual meeting space for each meeting. If you schedule a lot of confidential meetings and want each meeting to be unique, you can use the button "Remember my settings" at the bottom of the Lync Meeting Options dialog to set each meeting to be unique.
That's it for scheduling the meeting. Have a great meeting!