A Microsoft-Based Computer Telephony Integration Solution

This schematic illustrates the components that form Microsoft’s Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) solution. Users have a Windows XP or 2000 PC running Office Communicator 2005 and a private branch exchange (PBX) extension. If they want to use Communicator’s Voice-over-IP (VoIP) features, they must also have a headset or microphone and speakers plugged into the PC’s sound card. Although not required, Office 2003 provides additional capabilities, such as using Outlook contact information to dial calls. (Exchange 2003 provides the back end to Outlook and will serve as a repository for voice-mail messages in the next release.)

The PC communicates with a Live Communications Server (LCS) 2005 SP1 server to retrieve presence information and establish voice (or video) sessions with the user’s contacts. LCS in turn uses Active Directory (AD) to authenticate users and obtain configuration information particular to each user. Using information extracted from AD, LCS can also serve as a user directory for the Communicator clients.