Communicator provides a full set of personal presence attributes that you can make available to other contacts to help them reach you. Presence attributes include information about you, such as your work phone, mobile phone, home phone, along with additional information, such as your work schedule and personal notes. When you first start using Communicator, it is generally best to personalize and publish your presence information, and then set access levels for your contacts to control the presence information that they see. In this way, you can make presence information, such as your home or mobile phone numbers, available to your closest contacts, but not available to everyone in your company.

• About your presence information and access levels

• Control access to your presence information with access levels

• Block a user from contacting you

• Control interruptions

About your presence information and access levels

The following table lists Communicator presence attributes that others can potentially see. The left side of the table shows the Presence information attributes, while the right side of the table shows whether the attribute is available for a given access level.

Presence Information and Access Levels

 Note   *If these attributes are defined in Microsoft Active Directory, they are visible to all contacts in your company, regardless of Access Level. They are also visible to federated contacts, depending on the assigned Access Level. They are not visible to public instant messaging contacts.

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Control access to your presence information with access levels

With Communicator, you use access levels to control the level of your presence information that others see. For example, you probably have a short list of co-workers who can access your mobile and home phone numbers. To expose these alternate phone numbers to a contact, you need to assign that contact to the Personal or Team access level. Setting access levels is generally done in one of three ways:

• You set an access level for a contact when you add them to your Contact List. By default, when you add a contact to your Contact List, they are given the Company access level.
• After you add a contact to your Contact List, you can easily change his or her access level to add or decrease the amount of information you want them to see.
• When a contact adds you to his or her list, you receive an alert that enables you to accept or reject the request. From this alert, you can set the access level for the contact, and optionally add them to your Contact List.

To view contacts by access level

• In the Communicator window, click the Change the way you view contacts button, and then click Access Levels. (To understand what presence information is exposed for each access level, see the Presence Information and Access Levels table earlier in this topic.

To change an access level for a contact

1. In the Communicator window, click the Change the way you view contacts button, and then click Access Levels.
2. Right-click a contact, click Change Level of Access, and then select an access level for the contact. You can also assign a contact to an access level by dragging the contact into the Access Level group. To understand how Access Levels control what other see, see “Access Levels and Phone Numbers Example” later in this topic.

Assign access levels when someone adds you to their Contact List

When a person adds you to his or her Contact List, you receive an alert. The alert enables you to accept or reject the person’s request to add you to his or her Contact List and allows you to set the person’s level of access to your presence information.

To assign an access level when someone adds you to their Contact List

1. In the Communicator alert, in the This person’s level of access list, select an access level, and then click OK. To understand how Access Levels control what others see, see “Access Levels and Phone Numbers Example” later in this topic.
2. Right-click a contact, click Change Level of Access, and then select an access level for the contact. You can also assign a contact to an Access Level by dragging the contact into the Access Level group. To understand how Access Levels control what other contacts see, see “Access Levels and Phone Numbers Example” later in this topic.

Access levels and phone numbers example

One of the most important aspects of access levels is controlling the exposure of your mobile and home phone numbers to others. After all, you will want your closest co-workers to have your mobile number, but not the entire company. In addition, you will want to make your home phone number available only to a short list of people. If you want to make your mobile phone number available to a contact, you assign that contact to the Team Access level. If you want to make all your phone numbers available to a contact, you assign that contact to the Personal Access level. The following table provides an example of how access levels assigned to a contact affect the phone numbers that they see.

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Block a user from contacting you

1. To block a person from contacting you, right-click on the contact name in the Contact List. If the contact is not in the Contact List, type the contact's name or e-mail address in Search text box, and then right-click the contact name in the search results.
2. Click Change Level of Access click Blocked, and then click OK.

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Control interruptions

Communicator is designed so that contacts that are likely to be important should still interrupt you. Only contacts granted the Team access level can interrupt you in Do Not Disturb status, while contacts in other access levels cannot interrupt you.

 Tip   Alerts that appear when in Do Not Disturb status can be configured in the Alerts tab in the Communicator Options dialog box. For more information, see Setting Alerts Options.

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