Nowadays most enterprises use some sort of instant messaging solution like Jabber or Microsoft Office Communicator which now is called Microsoft Lync.
While there are many advantages in using an instant messaging client such as quickly asking someone for information instead of writing an e-mail, or check someone’s availability for a short phone call, there are also some disadvantages. First people always expect to get an immediate response, second there is a risk that people get too much sidetracked.
Office Communicator allows a user to set their current status. (Available, Busy, Do Not Disturb, Be Right Back and Away). If no interruption is required, the status should be set to “Do Not Disturb”.
Once the status is set to Do Not Disturb any user trying to send an instant message will receive the following message:
Completely blocking everyone might not always be the optimal choice as one might want remain reachable for their closest co-workers. For that case Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 provides a nice configuration option I just learned about yesterday.
Once the Alerts configuration is applied, users that are allowed to send an instant message at any time regardless of the current Status must be granted “Team” level access.
