Contextual communication

Applies to: Lync 2013 | Lync Server 2013

Contextual Communication is a powerful feature in Microsoft Unified Communications Managed API 4.0, enabling richer end-to-end communication by the integration of external data sources (Customer Relations Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), and Web cookies) into the conversation.

At a business level, Contextual Communication allows for the communications between a client and server to include data from external sources. This mechanism can propagate CRM, ERP, and other interaction-relevant data to the client (standard Microsoft Lync 2013 or custom clients) by way of the Lync 2013 Conversation Window Extension. This window is fundamentally a Silverlight-based interactive frame, capable of handling content and surfacing dashboards for automatic call dispatch (ACD) agents, point-of-sale inventory trackers, service management consoles, and a wide variety of other extensions for enhanced scenarios.

These client extensions can be used in conjunction with UCMA 4.0-based services to consume custom information from and send it to the application service, allowing for a user to exchange custom data seamlessly alongside their Lync 2013-based communications, and also send custom commands to the application server.

For more information, see Conversation context channel.