Avaya Aura® Presence Services indicates the presence of a user through the presence states, such as Busy, Away, or Do Not Disturb. The presence is an indication of the availability of the user and the readiness to communicate across services, such as telephony, instant messaging (IM), and video.

The presentity is the visibility of a user on a shared communication network. The users who are a part of the presentity group have access to the presence status of another user. A watcher is a user who monitors the presentity of another user. The watcher must subscribe to Presence Services to receive presence updates for a presentity.

Presence Services supports collecting presence information from diverse sources. This information is aggregated for a user and then made available to the presence-aware applications. When an application subscribes to Presence Services, the application receives presence change notifications that contain the aggregated presence for a user and the communication resources available to the user. By using this information, the application can provide a visual indication about the presence of the user.

Presence Services is compatible with the client software from Microsoft®, IBM® Domino®, and open source. Users can utilize the following collectors to use the core Presence Services capabilities with other presence sources: