New Lync Tools Released: Planning Tool and Visio Stencils

The Lync product team has released the following tools this week:

• Lync Planning Tool (7577.115) – Download Here
• Lync Visio Stencils – Download Here

Planning Tool

The Planning Tool is designed to help companies design a Lync topology based on a series of questions.  The tool will produce what hardware components are needed and allow you to output the results into a file that can be uploaded into the Lync Topology Builder.  The following screenshots show some of the options and questions within the Planning Tool.

Welcome Screen:

Central Site Options:

Branch Site Options:

Virtualization Support:

Datacenter View of Topology Design (note the Hardware and Virtual Configuration sections and the references to external links):

The Planning Tools also allows you to export the configuration to Excel, Visio, Topology Builder or to a printer:

Several reports are generated that include….

Network Diagram:

Certificate, Firewall and DNS reports:

Thanks to the product team for doing a great job on this!

Visio Stencils

Microsoft has also release a Visio Stencil set to assist in documenting and designing your Lync environment.  These are essential in providing visual representations of the Lync topology.