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Getting started with UniCom

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Eligibility

All Indiana University students, faculty, and staff are eligible to use some features of UniCom. Students, as well as faculty and staff members with no IU phone number, may use UniCom Basic, which operates independently of a phone number. Faculty and staff members with a traditional phone line may use UniCom Basic alongside their phone service. Telephone service for all faculty and staff will eventually be converted to UniCom Enterprise Voice, which replaces traditional phones, but individual faculty and staff members may choose to sign up for Enterprise Voice in advance of department conversion.

For more about the features of the two different modes, see IU UniCom feature comparison. Note that an Exchange account is necessary in order to use voice mail; see With UniCom Enterprise Voice, how can I use voice mail if I choose not to have an IU Exchange account?

When you sign the Emergency 911 statement (see below), you automatically get a UniCom Basic account. To change your service, contact your department's telecommunications coordinator or local support provider (LSP).

If you do not know who your telecommunications coordinator is, at IU Bloomington, call 812-856-2287; at IUPUI, call 317-274-3004. You can also email Telecom Consulting.

Note: To learn the name of your department's LSP, call the UITS Support Center at 812-855-6789 (Bloomington) or 317-274-4357 (Indianapolis).

Emergency 911 Notification

To be activated for the UniCom service, first read and agree to the IU Emergency 911 Acknowledgment Statement. As described more fully in that statement, computer-based phone services have inherent limitations with connecting to location-specific services, such as the emergency response services accessed by dialing 911. This is chiefly a problem when using UniCom Enterprise Voice to make calls from a location other than your desk. If you make a call from your desk using UniCom Enterprise Voice, your location should still be transmitted to emergency responders correctly. VoIP phones will transmit the location correctly if used in the location where they were installed. Also, newer cell phones use either GPS or triangulation to determine location. (UniCom Basic users can only call other UniCom users by name, and thus cannot use UniCom to dial 911.)

Software

If you have accepted the Emergency 911 Acknowledgment Statement, you can download the clients for Windows or Mac OS X from IUware, or install a client on your mobile device.

Windows

  • Lync: Lync is the client most people will use with UniCom in Windows. For more, see About Microsoft Lync. Download it from IUware.

    Note: If you use the IU Video Bridge technology, UITS recommends not upgrading to Office 2013 yet. The Lync 2013 client cannot make video calls to conferences on the IU Video Bridge (e.g., 22xxxx@vc.iu.edu and 24xxxx@vc.iu.edu ) or direct calls to conference room systems. These calls will connect as audio only. If you do upgrade to 2013 but still need to participate with video in IU Video Bridge calls, you can request a Cisco Telepresence Movi account as an alternative.

  • Lync Attendant: This client is intended for administrative assistants, receptionists, and others who routinely answer calls for others or handle high call volumes; it replaces the previous UniCom Attendant client. You can install both Lync Attendant and Lync on the same computer, but they cannot be running at the same time. For more, see What is Lync Attendant? Download it from IUware.

Mac

  • Lync for Mac: For more about the Lync client, see About Microsoft Lync. Download it from IUware.

  • Communicator for Mac: This Mac version of the Communicator client is bundled with Office 2011. For more, see About Microsoft Lync. Anyone may download the software, but Communicator for Mac will not work with UniCom unless you have a UniCom account, created by acknowledging the Emergency 911 statement (see above).

Note: For Mac users, UITS recommends Lync for Mac to connect to UniCom at Indiana University. Communicator for Mac and Messenger for Mac are not supported.

Mobile clients

Equipment

To use the voice communication capabilities of UniCom, you'll need a headset or a Lync-optimized phone. If you want others to see you in video conferencing, you'll also need a webcam. For more, see About equipment for use with UniCom.

Learning the basics

To learn how to perform common tasks in the Lync client, see Microsoft's Quick Start guides and How-to videos (Windows) or Lync Help (Mac).

Additional resources are available at Learn how to use UniCom.

Troubleshooting, help, and feedback

To get help with UniCom, or comment about the service, contact the Support Center. If you're having trouble, you can also try signing out of and completely closing your client software (including Outlook, if you use UniCom Enterprise Voice), and restarting to see if that resolves the problem.

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Last modified on January 23, 2013.

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