Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Public Beta

Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 is a unified communications client that supports a large range of communication methods and makes it easier for information workers to find and connect with their colleagues and coworkers from anywhere.
Office Communicator 2007 is a unified communications client that helps people be more productive by enabling them to communicate easily with others in different locations or time zones using a range of different communication options, including instant messaging (IM), voice and video. Integration with programs across the 2007 Microsoft Office system - including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Groove and SharePoint Server - gives information workers many different ways to communicate with each other via a consistent and simple user experience
Connect with others
Office Communicator 2007 provides easy access to rich presence, IM, and other real-time communications capabilities to enable information workers to communicate with each other more easily and quickly.
- Integration with existing address books and corporate directories means that its not necessary to maintain separate and disconnected contact lists just for real-time communications. You can find anyone in your contact lists, see information about their availability, and communicate with them right away.
- Rich presence capabilities enable you to share information about your availability with other contacts, and to view their availability. Office Communicator 2007 integrates presence information from multiple sources—including your calendar and out of office message—to provide better information so people know if youre available to communicate, and if so, which method would be best.
Consistent experience
Office Communicator 2007 helps to keep things simple by integrating varying modes of communication into a single user experience, centered on the person who the communication is being conducted with.
- A communication might start with a simple IM. With Office Communicator 2007 you can add other modes of communication. If voice or video would be more effective, you can add those modes without opening new windows or starting another program.
- Office Communicator 2007 focuses on the people in a conversation and provides a consistent experience regardless of whether the conversation is using IM, voice, video, or other modes.
Communicate contextually
Office Communicator 2007 is part of the Microsoft Office system and is closely integrated with other Microsoft Office programs. This integration helps ensure that communications can occur in the context of the program being used, without having to switch to a different program for a different form of communication.
- From an e-mail message received in Office Outlook 2007, users can view presence information about other users and initiate real-time communication from within the message, avoiding the need to switch applications and search for users.
- When working on a document in Office Word 2007, users can see a list of the people associated with the document along with availability information for those users. From this contextual list and based on this availability information, users can initiate a conversation directly with the appropriate people.