Great Post on Communicator and Call forward options

I got this post off another site and I think it provides a great description of the calling options with communicator and CWA.

On the Call-Forwarding Settings, you can select more advanced options like time-based forwarding. For example, when I’m working from home, I often select the incoming calls to be routed to my home number during business hours as shown in Figure 7 below. This feature is really neat because it provides a unified experience with working hours in your Microsoft Outlook calendar. To view or update the business hours configured in Microsoft Outlook, go to Tools > Options > Calendar Options > Calendar Work Week as shown in Figure 8.

Now this is a setting that I was not aware of. I find this quite kewl and neat.

You can also send your un-answered calls to a phone number or to another person.That way, if you are not around to answer your calls, you can redirect them to someone or some phone number.

Communicator 2007 also supports basic presence-based call routing. If you set your presence level to Do Not Disturb (aka DND), your incoming calls will be immediately routed to your voicemail without first ringing you. This is somewhat like the silent feature on your cell phone that you might already be familiar with. I find this immensely useful when I’m working on an important task or when I’m giving a presentation in front of clients and do not want to be disturbed by incoming calls. Note that contacts in your team access level can breakthrough DND to reach you if they have a pressing need to interrupt you. Also note that the call forwarding rules you have set previously do not apply while you are in DND.

You can also set all the call forwarding settings that I have described above when you use Microsoft Office Communicator Web Access 2007 as shown in Figure 10. This can come in really handy when you are at an airport kiosk, and want to change your call forwarding rules. If you happen to have an IP phone powered by Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Phone Edition (e.g. Tanjay), you will notice a subset of call-handling options (including forwarding calls to a phone number, to a contact or to your voicemail) on your phone also as shown in Figure 11 below. The call forwarding settings roam and persist from one endpoint to another. So, if you set a call forwarding rule in Communicator client, you can later update it in Communicator Web Access and then turn it off in Office Communicator Phone Edition.

I was always under the impression that CWA offered little to none call options however this is great and enough for users on the move. If you are not enabled for enterprise voice you will notice that you do not have the richer call forwarding settings that I have described above. Instead, you will notice a dialog as shown in Figure 12 that simply allows you to forward your incoming calls to a phone number or to your voicemail.