Presence Services is a multiprotocol, multifunctional server providing presence and IM services to Avaya Aura® users. Presence Services collects and distributes the communication status of an Avaya Aura® user from the various communication endpoints connected on an enterprise network. Presence Services provides aggregation and composition services in its Event State Compositor (ESC) to create a composite presence document for an Avaya Aura® user. This composite presence document is available to any authorized subscribing enterprise user. A Presence server aggregates the presence for an Avaya Aura® user and obtains the presence of a user from the following sources:

Additionally, Presence Services provides IM capabilities to Avaya Aura® users. This capability is achieved by using the XMPP or REST protocol support within an Avaya Aura® client. Avaya Aura® users can engage in IM conversations with each other through their Avaya Aura® clients. After Microsoft RTC federation is enabled, Presence Services allows:

Additionally, an Enterprise user can obtain the overall presence availability of their Avaya Aura® colleagues by adding the Presence/IM communication address or Avaya Presence handle of an Avaya Aura® user to their buddy list. The Skype client displays the presence against the contact address of an Avaya Aura® user.

This federated interworking model requires the management of trust configuration between the two systems, and the setup of network configuration in the form of DNS records (SRV and Host A records).

Microsoft RTC federation is supported in two ways for a given user, True federation and Hybrid federation. If a user is administered as both, the Avaya Aura® user and the Microsoft RTC user then the hybrid federation model may be used. It provides an additional feature to Avaya Aura® watchers of the user – namely the aggregation of presence from two sources: Avaya Aura® and Microsoft RTC. For users that are administered in the Microsoft RTC only, the ‘True’ federation model may be preferred. It offers minimal user administration and does not require additional Avaya Aura® licenses. In both cases, the user is defined in the Microsoft RTC system. A True federation user is not defined in the Avaya Aura® System Manager. A Hybrid federation user is defined in the Avaya Aura® System Manager and is presence enabled.

To enable an Avaya Aura® user as a Hybrid Microsoft RTC federation user, you must add the Microsoft SIP user handle to the Avaya Aura® user in System Manager. For more information, see Adding Microsoft SIP user handles to System Manager.

Microsoft RTC federation supports both Internal Enterprise and External Enterprise federation.