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Last updated: October 2010

Contents

Privacy supplement for Microsoft Lync 2010

This page is a supplement to the Privacy Statement for Microsoft Lync Products. In order to understand the data collection and use practices relevant for a particular Microsoft Lync product or service, you should read both the Privacy statement for Microsoft Lync products and this supplement.

This privacy supplement addresses the deployment and use of Microsoft Lync 2010 communications software deployed in your or your enterprise’s network. If you are using Microsoft Lync Server 2010 as a service (in other words, if a third party [for example, Microsoft] is hosting the servers upon which the software runs), information will be transmitted to that third party. To learn more about the use of your data that is transmitted to that third party, please consult your enterprise administrator or your service provider.

Archiving

What This Feature Does: Archiving allows your administrator to archive instant-messaging conversations, meeting activities and content, and usage characteristics, such as user sign-ins and conversation starts and joins.

Information Collected, Processed, or Transmitted: Archiving stores the content of instant-messaging conversations, information about your instant messaging usage, meeting content, and meeting information on a server your administrator configures. No information is sent to Microsoft.

Use of Information: Your administrator can use this information to administer your enterprise’s use of Lync 2010.

Choice/Control: Archiving is turned off by default and must be turned on by an enterprise administrator. You should review your company’s data usage and monitoring policies to determine whether archiving can be enabled.

Activity Feed

What This Feature Does: Activity Feed enables you to see "social updates" from your contacts on your Contacts list. It permits you to display to others your most recent personal notes, changes to your picture, and changes to your title or office location.

Information Collected, Processed, or Transmitted: You will publish, through presence, this information in Lync:

  • The update time of your corporate picture (from your enterprise’s corporate directory, such as Active Directory Domain Services)

  • A web picture (that you upload and want others to see) with the updated time

  • The time your corporate title changed

  • The time your corporate office location changed

  • A history of the last several personal notes that you have posted

  • Your Out of Office note from Microsoft Exchange Server

No information is sent to Microsoft.

Use of Information: This information will be shared with contacts that are viewing your activity feed and are in a Family and Friends, Workgroup, Colleagues, or External Contacts privacy relationship.

Choice/Control:

You can control whether the above information is shared by doing the following:

  1. From the Tools menu, click Options.

  2. On the Personal tab, under Activity Feed, switch the sharing of these updates on or off. Your current personal note and current out-of-office note will appear in the Activity Feed, if they are set. If you do not want information displayed in your personal note, you can simply leave the note field blank.

  3. Click OK.

Audio Test Service

What This Feature does: The Check Call Quality button allows to you to make a test call on Lync so that you can check the voice quality of the call. It allows you to hear how you would sound in a real call. When you make a test call, the Audio Test Service prompts you to record a voice sample after a beep. Your voice sample will be recorded for a pre-defined time period (for example 5 seconds) and then it is played back to you. If the network is sub-optimal, or if you do not have a good device setup, you will discover this from the recording playback.

Information Collected, Processed, or Transmitted: If you make a test call, the Audio Test Service records your voice sample after a prompt. The voice samples are deleted after you end the call. No information is sent to Microsoft.

Use of Information: The voice sample is for your own use to check how you would sound in a real call and to indicate to you that your device is setup properly and is ready to make a call. The user can listen to this recorded voice sample to determine whether he/she is ready to make a real call by verifying that their device is in working order and audio is being rendered properly.

Choice/Control: If you do not want to record a voice sample, you can choose not to make a test call. You can make a test call as follows:

  1. From the Tools menu, click Options.

  2. On the Audio Device tab, click the Check Call Quality button, and follow the instructions.

  3. Click OK.

Call Logs

What This Feature Does: Call Logs enable you to store a record of your Lync voice calls in a Microsoft Outlook folder.

Information Collected, Processed, or Transmitted: Information about your voice calls, such as start time, end time, duration, and call participants, will be stored in your Outlook Conversation History folder. You or your enterprise administrator may also log your meeting subject and locations by choosing to use Outlook as your personal information manager on the Personal tab of the Options dialog box. Call Logs does not store the content of your voice calls. No information is sent to Microsoft.

Use of Information: You can use this information to review your voice call history.

Choice/Control: The Call Logs feature is turned on by default. If your administrator has not disabled your ability to control Call Logs, you can change your settings as follows:

  1. From the Tools menu, click Options.

  2. On the Personal tab, clear the Save my call logs in the Outlook Conversation History folder check box.

  3. Click OK.

Call Delegation

What This Feature Does: Call Delegation allows you to assign one or more delegate(s) and then have your delegate(s) place and answer calls on your behalf and set-up and join online meetings on your behalf.

Information Collected, Processed, or Transmitted: When your delegate(s) answer a call on your behalf, you will receive an email notification informing you about this event. No information is sent to Microsoft.

Use of Information: You can use this feature to work with your delegate(s) to manage your schedule and meetings and/or follow-up with your delegates about calls they make and answer for you (or on your behalf).

Choice/Control: Call Delegation is turned off by default but can be turned on or off by your enterprise administrator. If it is turned on, you can set-up delegates as follows:

  1. From the Tools menu, click Options.

  2. On the Call Forwarding tab, click Simultaneously Ring or Forward my calls to, and then click My Delegates in the drop-down list.

  3. If you do not have delegates configured, click Add, and then select people to set up as your delegates.

  4. Click OK in the Delegates dialog box.

  5. Click OK in the Call Forwarding dialog box.

    Notes: 

    • Users who are set-up as your delegates see a notification informing them that they are set up as your delegate in Lync.

    • Enterprise administrators can set up Exchange Calendar Delegate sync-up with Lync Server 2010. When enabled, Exchange Calendar Delegates with appropriate permissions (equal to or greater than Nonediting Author permissions) will be automatically added as your delegates in Lync. This however, does not change your Call Forwarding settings.

Call Forwarding

What This Feature Does: Call Forwarding allows you to designate another person or number to forward your calls to when you are either not available or are away from your desk.

Information Collected, Processed, or Transmitted: No information is sent to Microsoft.

Use of Information: You can use this feature to forward your calls to another person or number when you are unavailable or are not at your primary location.

Choice/Control: Call Forwarding options are available only if your enterprise administrator has enabled them for your organization. If your enterprise administrator has enabled this feature for your organization, it is off by default on your Lync desktop client. Configure Call Forwarding using the following steps:

  1. From the Tools menu, either click Call Forwarding Settings OR click Options and then click Call Forwarding.

  2. Under Call forwarding, click Forward my calls to, and then do one of the following:

    • Select Voice Mail, and then click OK.

    • Select New Number or Contact. In the Select a Contact or Number dialog box, click a contact, search for a contact, or enter a new phone number to forward calls to, and then click OK. Click OK again.

    • Select My Delegates. In the Call Forwarding – Delegates dialog box, configure delegates according to the instructions in the Call Delegation section of this document, and then click OK. Click OK again.

Important:  When you configure Call Forwarding in Lync 2010, incoming calls will be forwarded to the number you have set. When the call is connected, the number you have forwarded your calls to will be displayed to the caller. This only occurs with Lync to Lync calls.

Caller ID in the Meeting Roster

What This Feature Does: The participant list (roster) displays a list of all participants in a meeting.

Information Collected, Processed, or Transmitted: When you dial in to a conference call, the phone number that you are calling from (the caller ID) is displayed for all participants. No information is sent to Microsoft.

Use of Information: People in the meeting can use this information to distinguish between different participants who have joined the meeting by phone.

Choice/Control:

The caller ID is displayed by default and is retrieved from the telephone company. You can choose not to share your phone number by blocking your caller ID when you make a phone call.

  • To block your caller ID permanently, contact your local telephone company.

  • If the functionality is available in your area, you can type in a special code before dialing the phone number to block your caller ID for a single call. Please contact your local telephone company for instructions.

Client-Side Logging

What This Feature Does: Client-Side Logging enables you to log your Lync usage information on your computer in your user profile. The information can be used for troubleshooting Lync issues you may experience.

Information Collected, Processed, or Transmitted: If you or your administrator enables Client-Side Logging, information such as the following will be stored on your computer: meeting subject, location, session initiation protocol (SIP) messages, responses to your Lync invites, information about the sender and receiver of each Lync message, the route that the message took, your Contacts list, your presence information, names of any programs you share, names of any attachments you share, names of any Microsoft PowerPoint files you share, names of any Whiteboards you share, names of any polls you share, poll questions that were shared and an index of the option you voted . The contents of your Lync conversations are not stored. No information is automatically sent to Microsoft, but you can choose to manually send information.

Use of Information: Client-side logs can be used to troubleshoot Lync issues.

Choice/Control: Client-Side Logging is turned off by default, and must be turned on by an enterprise administrator. If your administrator has not disabled your ability to control logging, you can change your settings as follows:

  1. From the Tools menu, click Options.

  2. On the General tab, click Turn on logging in Lync and Turn on Windows Event logging for Lync.

  3. Click OK.

Collect Logs

What This Feature Does: Collect Logs allows you to collect Lync logs so that Microsoft can investigate audio, video or connectivity issues that you may encounter.

Information Collected, Processed, or Transmitted: If you click Collect Logs, the following information will be collected:

  • Lync logs, containing your Contacts list and information about your previous conversation sessions. Lync logs do not include the content of your instant-messaging conversation.

  • Audio parameters, such as speech signal level and noise level

  • Network conditions

  • Device setup

  • Operating system version and information

  • Programs running on your computer such as Outlook and Windows Internet Explorer

If you choose, the following information is collected as well:

  • A 30 second recording of your latest call

  • A screenshot of your desktop

You will need to manually upload the logs as per your enterprise administrator's instructions. The enterprise administrator will send them to Microsoft for troubleshooting purposes.

Use of Information: The information collected from your computer will be used to help troubleshoot the problem that you encountered and to help improve Lync.

Choice/Control: Lync does not collect logs from your computer by default. Rather, it only collects logs when you click the Collect Logs button. The logs are collected locally on your computer (under %USERPROFILE%\tracing\). You will need to manually upload the logs by following your enterprise administrator's instructions. Clicking on Collect Logs does not automatically transmit your logs to a remote server.

Contact Card

What This Feature Does: The contact card collects static and dynamic information about other people in your enterprise and displays that information in Lync and for contacts in recent versions of Outlook. The contact card provides one-click actions to send email, make a call, send an instant message, and schedule a meeting, among other actions.

Information Collected, Processed, or Transmitted: The static information in the contact card is collected from the enterprise’s corporate directory (such as Active Directory), and is shared with others through Lync Server. The dynamic information that is collected, such as phone numbers and presence, may be entered by you and then shared with others through Lync Server. Calendar free/busy information that is displayed on the card is retrieved from Microsoft Exchange Server. Location information displayed on the contact card is retrieved as described in the Location section. No information is sent to Microsoft.

Use of Information: The contact card information is displayed so that you can share your contact information with others.

Choice/Control: You have the following control options:

Privacy Relationships: You can choose to put specific contacts in different privacy relationships (Family and Friends, Workgroup, Colleagues, External Contacts, and Blocked Contacts). This controls which pieces of information are shared with which contacts. Set privacy relationships as follows:

  1. Right-click a contact.

  2. Click Change Privacy Relationship.

  3. Click the choice that applies to how you want to share your information.

Calendar information: You can control the "permissions for viewing free/busy information" from Outlook options.

Location: See the Choice/Control section for Location feature.

Conversation History

What This Feature Does: Lync Conversation History obtains a user's conversation history from Exchange Server and displays it in the Lync Conversations tab.

Information Collected, Processed, or Transmitted: If you enabled Conversation History logging, the content of your instant-messaging conversations and statistics about your voice conversation (such as date, time, duration and caller information) will be stored in the your Exchange account. If conversation history logging is disabled in Lync either by you or by policy as defined by your enterprise administrator, these items will not be collected or displayed. No information is sent to Microsoft.

Use of Information: Lync displays this information on the Conversations tab in the main user interface, which enables users to view and continue their past conversations.

Choice/Control: You can disable logging of instant-messaging conversations, calls, or both. You can change these setting as follows:

  1. From the Tools menu, select Options.

  2. On the Personal tab, select or clear the Save my instant messages conversations in the Outlook Conversation History Folder check box.

  3. Click OK.

If you enable Conversation History, you should notify people that you communicate with that their instant-messaging conversations will be saved.

Customer Experience Improvement Program

What This Feature Does: If you choose to participate, the Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP) collects basic information about your hardware configuration and how you use Microsoft software and services in order to identify trends and usage patterns. CEIP also collects the type and number of errors you encounter, software and hardware performance, and the speed of services. Microsoft does not collect your name, address, or other contact information.

Information Collected, Processed, or Transmitted: CEIP information is automatically sent to Microsoft when the feature is turned on. For more information about the information collected, processed, or transmitted by CEIP, see the Privacy Statement for the Microsoft Customer Experience Improvement Program.

Use of Information: Microsoft uses this information to improve the quality, reliability, and performance of Microsoft software and services.

Choice/Control: CEIP is turned off by default unless your enterprise administrator has chosen to turn it on for you. You will be prompted to sign up in the Lync installer. Unless your administrator has disabled the control, you can change your CEIP settings at any time as follows:

  1. From the Tools menu, select Options.

  2. On the General tab, check or clear the Allow Microsoft to collect information about how I use Lync check box

  3. Click OK.

Note:  If the administrator changes the setting to enable or disable CEIP while the user is already using Lync, the new setting will take effect only after user exits Lync and signs back in.

Desktop/Program Sharing

What This Feature Does: Desktop/Program Sharing enables you to share a view of your computer’s screen or specific program you are running with other participants in your Lync conversation.

Information Collected, Processed, or Transmitted: If you start sharing, depending on what you are sharing, all conversation participants will be able to see the monitor(s), entire desktop, or selected program on your computer’s screen. No information is sent to Microsoft.

Use of Information: You can use Desktop/Program sharing to collaborate with conversation and participants.

Choice/Control:

To start Desktop Sharing in a new Lync conversation:

  1. In the Contacts list, point to the contact’s picture or presence icon to display the contact card.

  2. Click the View more options for interacting with this person button.

  3. Click the Share menu, and then click Desktop.

To start Desktop/Program Sharing during an ongoing Lync conversation:

  1. In the conversation window, click Share.

  2. From the menu, click Desktop, a monitor (if you have more than one), or Program, to select one or more programs.

To stop sharing your Desktop/Program:

  1. Click Stop Sharing from the sharing bar at the top of the screen.

Important:  Documents or pictures that are open on your desktop that are protected by Digital Rights Management software may be visible to others with whom you share your desktop in a Lync conversation.

Desktop/Program Sharing Control

What This Feature Does: Sharing Control enables you to grant control of your desktop or program to someone else that is also using a Lync client on another computer.

Information Collected, Processed, or Transmitted: Once you grant control to someone else, that person can control your computer or the selected program and make changes, as if he or she were using your computer directly, with their keyboard and mouse. You and other participants in your Lync conversation will be able to view these changes as they are made. No information is sent to Microsoft.

Use of Information: You can use Sharing Control to allow others to take control of your desktop or programs, depending on what you are sharing, while you and other conversation participants observe.

Choice/Control: To share control of your desktop with a person in the conversation, do the following:

  1. In the conversation window, click Share button, and then share what you want to (your desktop, for example).

  2. Select the person that you want to give control to, from the Give Control menu, on the sharing bar, at the top of the screen.

To revoke control of your desktop from a remote party, do the following:

  1. Click the Give Control menu, on the sharing bar, at the top of the screen.

  2. Click Take Back Control.

Emergency Services (911)

What This Feature Does: When made available by your enterprise administrator Emergency Services allows Lync to transmit a location to emergency responders when an emergency services number is dialed (such as 911 in the United States). Your enterprise administrator can restrict the emergency calling capability to your work location, so you should check with your administrator for information about the extent to which the emergency calling functionality is available. When enabled, the location information transmitted to emergency services personnel is the location that your enterprise administrator has assigned to your location (for example, office number) and entered into the location database or, if such a location is not available, the location you may have manually entered in the Location field. If you dial emergency services while using Lync via a wireless Internet connection, while you are still in your work location, the location information transmitted to emergency responders will be merely an approximate location because it will be the location of the particular wireless endpoint with which your computer is communicating. The location information of that wireless endpoint, moreover, is input manually by your enterprise administrator, and therefore, the location information transmitted to the emergency services personnel may not be your actual location. To be fully functional this feature requires your enterprise to retain a routing service provided by certified solution providers, and the service is only available within the United States.

Information Collected, Processed, or Transmitted: The location information obtained by Lync is determined by the automatic location information populated by the Location Information Server or by the location information you have manually entered in the Location field. This information is stored in memory on your computer, so when an emergency services number is entered, this location information is transmitted with the call for the purpose of routing to the appropriate emergency services provider and providing your approximate location. Your location may also be sent using an instant message to a local security desk. For emergency calls, the call detail record will contain your location information. No information is sent to Microsoft.

Use of Information: Location is used for routing the call to the appropriate emergency services provider and for dispatching emergency responders. This information can also be sent to the enterprise's security desk as a notification with the caller’s location and call back information.

Choice/Control:

This feature is turned off by default and must be enabled by your enterprise administrator. Check with your enterprise administrator to determine if this feature is available. There is no ability for you to control whether a location is acquired automatically or transmitted to emergency dispatchers when an emergency call is made.

However, if a location is not acquired automatically, you may be given the opportunity to enter a location manually by receiving a notification to do so. The notification may be dismissed, but based on policy may require your acknowledgment of choosing not to enter a location.

Location

What This Feature Does: Location and time zone information is computed and shared with others over the presence functionality. In addition, location information may be used for emergency services, as described in the Emergency Services section above. If you enable Privacy Mode (as mentioned in the Privacy Mode section), location information will be shared as described in the Privacy Mode section.

Information Collected, Processed, or Transmitted: Your geographic location data is collected by one of two mechanisms: you manually enter the data, or the enterprise Location Information Server provides the location data to Lync. In addition, your time zone is retrieved from the Windows operating system on your computer. The location data that is collected consists of a "description" string as well as formatted address information. The description is any string that would help inform others about your location (such as “Home” or “Work”), while the formatted address information is a civic address meant to locate you (such as “5678 Main St, Buffalo, NY, 98052”). No information is sent to Microsoft.

Use of Information: The location description and time zone data are shared over Lync presence, based on how your presence privacy is configured. This information is displayed in the user’s contact card. Note that the formatted address, or civic address, is not shared over presence.

Choice/Control:

If your enterprise administration has enabled location sharing and has configured to allow you to see the full location user interface, you will have the following controls by using the Location field and menu at the top of the Lync main window:

  1. Set Location: You can manually edit the text string that is shared with presence (the location description).

  2. Show Contacts My Location: An on/off toggle that controls whether any location data is shared over presence. This does not affect the sharing of location for emergency services.

Meeting Attachments

What This Feature Does: You can share files with meeting participants by uploading them as attachments.

Information Collected, Processed, or Transmitted: Attachments are stored on Lync Server according to meeting content expiration policies as defined by your enterprise administrator. You can choose to upload attachments. Attachments are downloaded by you or others in a meeting. No information is sent to Microsoft.

Use of Information: The information contained in uploaded Meeting Attachments is shared with other participants in a Lync meeting.

Choice/Control: Presenters can restrict the availability of attachments according to meeting participants’ roles (organizer, presenters, everyone). If an attachment is not available, you cannot see it in your attachments list.

Meeting Dial-out

What This Feature Does: The Meeting Dial-out feature allows Lync users who are present in a meeting to add a public switched telephone network (PSTN) number to an existing audio video (AV) meeting.

Information Collected, Processed, or Transmitted: When the PSTN user who is being invited to the AV meeting receives the call, he or she will receive the caller ID of the AV meeting organizer (and not necessarily the caller ID of the party adding them to the meeting). As soon as the PSTN user answers the phone, he or she will immediately be joined into the meeting.

Use of Information: The organizer’s caller ID is sent out to the PSTN user who is being invited to the meeting.

Choice/Control: There is no user or enterprise administrator control for this feature. If possible, prior to adding a PSTN user, you could send an instant message or an email to the PSTN user to ask whether they are okay with joining the AV meeting, so they are aware they are being joined to a meeting. The PSTN user could also choose not to accept the call.

Lync 2010 Managed API

What This Feature Does: The Lync 2010 Managed API allows third-party programs to access the Lync client and interact with it in a manner that extends the Lync user experience. Third-party programs include programs built by vendors or by Microsoft (for example, Outlook and other applications in the Microsoft Office suites).

Information Collected, Processed, or Transmitted: Information made available through the Lync Managed API to third-party applications includes any personal information that is viewable within the Lync user interface. The information could include a user’s location, phone numbers, work title, Contacts list (including phone numbers and other details), personal note, activity state, and current conversations and their contents.

Use of Information: Programs using the Lync Managed API utilize the information within the Lync session to provide enhanced or complementary functionality to the end-user. However, use of this information is at the discretion of the third-party program, which should provide its own privacy statement regarding how it intends to use this information.

Choice/Control:

Third-party programs that use Lync Managed APIs fall into three categories: desktop (that is, locally-installed) programs; web-hosted programs; and Lync extension programs (programs that are embedded within the Lync conversation window user interface). Controlling third- party access to your information varies for each scenario as follows:

Desktop (locally-installed) programs: Desktop programs are installed by you or any administrator of the local computer and will always have access to the user’s information through the Lync Managed API. As always, do not install any programs that you do not trust.

Web-hosted programs: Programs hosted on the Internet or intranet may also be able to access the user’s information through the Lync Managed API. To protect against unwanted programs gaining access to your information without your knowledge, such programs must be hosted from a domain/URL that has been added to your Internet Explorer Trusted Sites list by a local computer administrator.

Lync extension programs: In Lync, developers will be able to extend the Lync experience by embedding a program within the Lync conversation window. This program can also have access to Lync information through the Lync Managed API. In this case, the extension program must have been registered with the Lync client by a local computer administrator. This act of registration also grants the program access to the Lync Managed API.

Special control for Location Name: As an added precaution, your system administrator has the option to allow, block, or allow the end user (you) to decide whether these third-party programs should have access to the Location Name field within Lync. By default, access to location is available to third-party programs. You can control this setting as follows:

  1. From the Tools menu, click Options.

  2. On the Personal tab, go to Personal information manager.

  3. Modify the check boxes as appropriate.

  4. Click OK.

Online Meeting Add-in for Outlook

What This Feature Does: This is an Outlook add-in that is installed with Lync and enables users to schedule and customize online meetings.

Information Collected, Processed, or Transmitted: The following information will be stored in your computer. No Information is sent to Microsoft.

  • Organizer name

  • Participants name(s)

  • Presenters name(s)

  • Email addresses list

  • Subject of meeting and other information about the meeting (such as, start/end-time, conference ID, passcode, and conference auto attendant/audio conferencing provider information for the user)

  • All proxy addresses for the user in Microsoft Exchange (X400-X500 addresses, Exchange Unified Messaging (UM) addresses, and SIP and phone/Exchange UM-voice mail URIs)

  • Meeting location information

Use of Information:

The above information is used only for scheduling a meeting and related logging as described in the Client-Side Logging section. For scheduling, the information is processed in memory and stored in your local computer’s registry for quick access.

Note:  The information is shared with Lync Managed API and Lync Server.

Choice/Control:

Logging is turned off by default. If your enterprise allows logging, you can control enabled/disable logging from Options -> Logging section.

Peer to Peer File Transfer

What This Feature Does: Lync users can transfer files to one another in two-party instant-messaging conversations (not meetings).

Information Collected, Processed, or Transmitted: The file is transferred directly between the Lync clients. Users choose to initiate the file transfer and choose the file to be transferred. The file recipient must explicitly agree to receive the file. No information is sent to Microsoft.

Use of Information: The Peer-to-Peer File Transfer feature lets users send files to one another in a real- time manner during an instant-messaging conversation.

Choice/Control:

Your enterprise administrator can enable or disable this feature for any or all users. You can choose to accept or decline a file transfer request from another user.

Personal Picture

What This Feature Does: Personal Picture displays your picture, as well as pictures of other people in your enterprise.

Information Collected, Processed, or Transmitted: Your Personal Picture sharing preference is collected for both displaying and sharing your picture including its web address. No information is sent to Microsoft.

Use of Information: The information is used to customize your experience and to share your picture with others.

Choice/Control:

The enterprise administrator has these controls:

  • Controls whether users share the pictures initially by default or not. You can override this.

  • Controls the maximum size of a picture that any user would download.

  • Controls what kinds of pictures are allowed.

You have these Personal Photo preference controls:

  • Show photos of my contacts: Controls whether pictures are displayed in Lync.

  • Do not show my picture: Publishes a value in presence that causes others who view your presence to display your picture or not. If your contacts do not get this value in presence, they revert to the administrator default (see above).

  • Default corporate picture: If the enterprise provides a mechanism to edit the Active Directory picture, then you can change your picture in Active Directory and have the changes appear in Lync within 48 hours. Lync also has a link to your Microsoft SharePoint MySite profile, and changes to that picture may affect Active Directory, depending on the administrator configuration.

Presence and Contact Information

What This Feature Does: Presence and Contact Information allows you to access information published about other users (both within and outside your organization) and provides other users with access to information published about you, such as status, title, phone number, location and notes. Your administrator may also configure integration with Outlook and Exchange so that you will display out-of-office messages and other status information (for example, when you have a meeting scheduled in your Outlook calendar).

Information Collected, Processed, or Transmitted: You use your sign-in address and a password to connect to Lync Server. You and your administrator can publish information about your presence status and contact information that will be associated with your sign in. No information is sent to Microsoft.

Use of Information: Other Lync users and programs will be able to access your presence and contact information to determine your published status and information so as to better communicate with you.

Choice/Control: You can choose what information is published about you. Your administrator also can configure published information on your behalf. If your administrator has not disabled your ability to control your published information, you can change your settings at any time as follows:

  1. From the Tools menu, click Options.

  2. On the Personal tab, enter your sign-in address under My account. You can use the Advanced button to enter the name of the server to connect to.

  3. On the Phones tab, view the information about phone numbers that your administrator has published. You can also enter more numbers and decide what to publish to other users.

  4. If Privacy Mode is enabled by your enterprise administrator, you could change your setting to share your presence with contacts on your Contacts list by making the appropriate selection on the Status tab.

  5. Click OK.

You can also set privacy relationships to designate what each user can see regarding your presence level and information. To do so:

  1. Right-click a contact.

  2. Click Change Privacy Relationship.

  3. Click the appropriate level of access for the user.

Polling

What This Feature Does: Lync users can conduct a poll and gather anonymous responses from participants during online meetings and conversations.

Information Collected, Processed, or Transmitted: Individual votes are anonymous. Aggregated poll results are seen by all presenters and can be shown to all attendees by any presenter. Polls are stored on Lync Server according to meeting content expiration policies, as defined by your enterprise administrator. No information is sent to Microsoft.

Use of Information: The Polling feature enhances collaboration by enabling presenters to quickly determine participant preferences.

Choice/Control:

  • Presenters can restrict Poll availability according to participant role (organizer, presenters, everyone) when the Poll is not being shown to all participants. If a poll is not available to you, it cannot be seen in your content list when it is not currently being shared, and the poll cannot be saved to your local computer.

  • Presenters can open or close a poll for voting and clear poll results at any time.

PowerPoint Collaboration

What This Feature Does: Lync users can show, view, and annotate PowerPoint presentations during an online conversation or meeting.

Information Collected, Processed, or Transmitted:

Your actions drive all uses of this feature – whether you are uploading, navigating through, or annotating a PowerPoint presentation. Any file presented in a conversation or meeting will be transmitted to all meeting participants, and they will be able to retrieve it directly from a folder on their computers. The file owner or presenter can restrict others from saving the file, but this does not restrict them from retrieving or seeing it.

PowerPoint files are stored on Lync Server according to the meeting content expiration policies defined by your enterprise administrator. No information is sent to Microsoft.

Use of Information: Collaborating with PowerPoint helps conversation participants deliver effective presentations and receive feedback.

Choice/Control:

  • Presenters can restrict annotation privileges according to participant role (presenters only, everyone, none) by doing the following:

    1. From the Join Information and Meeting Options dialog box in the conversation window, click Meeting Options.

    2. Under Privileges, in the Annotation Privileges drop-down list, click the option you want.

    3. Click OK.

  • Presenters can restrict participants from viewing slides that are not being presented by doing the following:

    1. From the Join Information and Meeting Options dialog box, click Meeting Options.

    2. Under Privileges, in the View Privately drop-down list, click the option you want.

    3. Click OK.

Note:  Choose an alert and enter text here. You may also set it's AlertPosition property.

Note: This privilege can be set according to participant role (presenters only, everyone, or none)

  • Presenters can restrict PowerPoint presentation availability according to participant role (organizer, presenters, everyone) when the PowerPoint presentation is not being shared. If a PowerPoint presentation is not available, you cannot see it in your content list when it is not being shared and cannot save it to your computer.

Privacy Mode

What This Feature Does: Privacy Mode is a setting that allows you to share your presence information (such as Available, Busy, Do Not Disturb, and so on) only with contacts listed in your Contacts list.

Information Collected, Processed, or Transmitted: Enabling Privacy Mode causes Lync to enter a mode in which you can switch user settings so that your presence information is shared only with contacts in your Contacts list. No information is sent to Microsoft.

Use of Information: The setting of this mode determines how presence data is shared.

Choice/Control:

  • When Privacy Mode is enabled on the server, through the administrator setting, you can choose whether you want everyone to see your presence (Standard Mode) or only your contacts to see your presence (Privacy Mode), from the Status tab, in the Options dialog box.

  • If Standard Mode is enabled on the server through the admin settings, you cannot actually switch to Privacy Mode. However, you can "pre-opt-out" of Privacy Mode so that if the administrator were to later switch to Privacy Mode, you would not be switched upon signing into Lync.

Recording

What this feature does:

This feature allows presenters to record all aspects of a Lync session including who entered the meeting, audio, video, and content, such as instant-messaging conversations, program sharing, PowerPoint presentations, polling, handouts and whiteboards. When the organizer or other presenters pause or stop their recording, other recordings in progress are unaffected.

Information Collected, Processed, or Transmitted:

If presenters choose to record, the recording will be saved to their computer. Additional video files generated from the recording are saved to a presenter’s local computer by default but can also be saved to another computer, if specified by the presenter who is recording. When users upload content to a meeting, permission is granted to add that content to recordings that those users or other users create.

If there are failures during a recording's publishing phase, it is possible for data captured during a paused recording state to be unintentionally included in the recording. If any part of the publishing phase fails (See Recording Manager for a "Warning..." status), recordings should not be distributed to others even if they can be played back in some form.

Use of Information:

The recording can be played by anyone who has access to the location where the recording is saved.

Choice/Control:

By default, the ability to record is turned off and must be enabled by the enterprise administrator. If this feature is enabled for meetings, any of the meeting presenters can start a recording. When a presenter turns recording on, a notification that a recording has started will broadcast to participants with compatible clients and devices. Participants in a recorded session who are using any of the following incompatible clients or devices will be recorded but will not receive the recording notice.

Incompatible clients include:

  • Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2

  • Microsoft Office Communicator 2007

  • Microsoft Office Communicator Web Access (2007 R2 release)

  • Microsoft Office Communicator Web Access (2007 release)

  • Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Attendant

Incompatible devices include:

  • Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2 Phone Edition

  • Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Phone Edition

Additionally, regardless of the device or client being used, a participant using video in a full-screen mode during a meeting or conversation will not be signaled that a recording has started until he or she returns to the conversation window.

Skill Search

What This Feature Does: This feature lets you search for people in your enterprise by using any property listed in Microsoft SharePoint services (for example, name, email, skills, area of expertise, etc.) This feature is available only if your enterprise administrator has deployed SharePoint and turned on Lync and SharePoint integration.

Information Collected, Processed, or Transmitted: The search query entered in Lync will be sent to the enterprise’s SharePoint server. The response from SharePoint is processed by Lync, and the search results and related information is displayed. No information is sent to Microsoft.

Use of Information: Information entered by the user is sent to SharePoint to get search results, which are displayed in Lync.

Choice/Control:

This feature is enabled or disabled by Lync Server administrators.

Unified Contact Store

What This Feature Does: The Unified Contact Store consists of three main features:

  • Search merge – This feature merges your Global Address list (GAL) with your personal Outlook contacts so that, when you search for a contact, there will be only a single entry in the search results.

  • Contact merge – This feature aggregates contact information between Outlook and GAL entries using matching email and/or sign-in identifiers. Once a match is determined, Lync aggregates data from three data sources (Outlook, GAL, and presence). This aggregated data is displayed in various user interface components, including search results, your Contacts list, and a contact card.

  • Creating Outlook contacts for Lync contacts (contact synchronization) – Lync will create Outlook contacts for all the user’s contacts in the default contacts folder, if the user has Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 or a later version mailbox. By having an Outlook contact for every Lync contact, the user can access Lync contact information from Outlook, Outlook Web Access, and mobile devices that synchronize contacts with Exchange.

Information Collected, Processed, or Transmitted: Lync aggregates contact information from presence, Active Directory, and Outlook. This information is used internally by Lync. When creating Outlook contacts, Lync will be writing presence, Active Directory, and Outlook contact information to Exchange. No information is sent to Microsoft.

Use of Information: Contact information from presence, Active Directory, and Outlook are shown in the Lync user interface (Contacts list, contact card, search results, and so on). This information can also be written to Exchange by using contact synchronization (the third item in the preceding list).

Choice/Control:

You can enable or disable contact synchronization as follows:

  1. From the Tools menu, click Options.

  2. On the Personal tab, under Personal information manager, modify the check boxes as appropriate.

  3. Click OK.

User option – A user option for Microsoft Exchange or Microsoft Outlook is available under Personal information manager, in the Lync - Options dialog box.

Voice Quality Improvements

What This Feature Does: Lync provides notifications to help you improve the quality of your call if it detects device, network, or computer issues during the call.

Information Collected, Processed, or Transmitted: If you have a device setup that is adding poor audio in a call (for example, echo or noise), Lync will inform you and will also inform others in the call that the quality of the call is being degraded because of the device setup at your end. Others are only shown a notification that you are using a device that is causing poor audio quality. They don't know what device you are using. No information is sent to Microsoft.

Use of Information: The information that is sent to others in the call will help them improve the quality of the call. For example, presenters can mute your line if you are just listening in on the call.

Choice/Control: Lync does not allow you to turn off call quality notifications.

Whiteboard Collaboration

What This Feature Does: This feature allows you to share virtual whiteboards in Lync and annotate them during online meetings and conversations.

Information Collected, Processed, or Transmitted: Annotations made on whiteboards will be seen by all participants. Whiteboards are stored on Lync Server according to meeting content expiration policies. No information is sent to Microsoft.

Use of Information: The Whiteboard feature enhances collaboration by enabling meeting participants to discuss ideas, brainstorm, take notes, and so on.

Choice/Control:

Presenters can restrict whiteboard availability according to participant role (organizer, presenters, everyone) when the whiteboard is not being shown to all participants. If a whiteboard is not available to a user, he or she cannot see it in their content list and cannot save it to his or her computer.

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