Microsoft 70-337: MCSE Communication – Lync Server

When a meeting connects but half the room cannot hear, the problem is usually not the headset. It is routing, policies, gateways, media negotiation, or a design decision that looked harmless in planning and ugly in production. That is the kind of work Lync Server Certification prepares you for. This Microsoft® 70-337: MCSE Communication – Lync Server course is built for the engineer who has to make unified communications behave reliably in a real business, not just look clean in a lab.

I wrote this course to help you understand Microsoft® Lync Server as an actual communications platform: how it is deployed, how it handles voice, how it integrates with Exchange Server 2013, how it reaches the PSTN, and how you keep it stable once users depend on it for daily work. If you are responsible for voice, presence, conferencing, or messaging infrastructure, this is the knowledge that lets you troubleshoot with confidence instead of guessing your way through escalation calls.

What this Lync Server Certification course is really about

This is not a tour of menus. It is a practical walk through the architecture and engineering choices behind a production Lync Server environment. You learn how the platform is built, how traffic flows through it, and why certain components matter more than others when the system is under load. That matters because unified communications fails in subtle ways. A user may sign in successfully and still have broken audio. A dial plan may look correct and still fail when it meets real-world number formats. A gateway may be online and still route calls poorly because the signaling path was designed without enough discipline.

The course focuses on the areas that separate a support technician from a communications engineer:

• Lync Server architecture and server roles
• Enterprise voice planning and deployment
• Dial plan design, normalization, and voice policies
• Public Switched Telephone Network integration
• Exchange Server 2013 integration for unified messaging
• Client deployment and device support
• Monitoring, troubleshooting, and service health
• Resiliency, scalability, and operational planning

If you are preparing for Microsoft 70-337: MCSE Communication – Lync Server, this course gives you more than exam familiarity. It gives you the reasoning behind the features. That is the part people usually skip, and it is exactly the part that matters when you are handed an issue that is not in the book.

Why Microsoft 70-337: MCSE Communication – Lync Server still matters

Unified communications engineering has not become simpler just because products changed names. The fundamentals remain the same: identity, routing, policy control, security, media quality, and interop with other platforms. If you understand Lync Server well, you understand the structure of enterprise communications at a level that transfers cleanly to later collaboration systems. That is why employers still value this skill set: it proves you can work with call flows, conferencing design, media edge components, and user policy in a way that holds up under real business pressure.

This course is especially useful if your work touches voice engineering, system administration, messaging, or service operations. A lot of people can click through a deployment wizard. Far fewer can explain why a SIP trunk fails, why edge connectivity breaks only for external users, or why a voice policy does not produce the expected behavior after it is assigned. That difference is the difference between being useful in a lab and being trusted in production.

For job roles, the content aligns well with work performed by:

• Unified Communications Engineer
• Voice Engineer
• Messaging Administrator
• Systems Administrator
• Collaboration Engineer
• UC Support Specialist
• Infrastructure Analyst focused on communications

In the field, professionals with these responsibilities often see salaries in the mid-range IT infrastructure market, with variation based on region, seniority, and whether the role includes voice design, enterprise telephony, or broader systems ownership. The real career value here is not just compensation; it is credibility. When you can diagnose why a call path fails, people stop treating unified communications as “that platform that mostly works.”

Core skills you will build in this course

This course is built to make you comfortable with the mechanics of the platform, not just the terminology. You will learn how to think through a deployment from the inside out: what must exist first, what depends on what, and where the most common failures occur. That is important because Lync Server is a system of dependencies. Miss one design detail and you can create a problem that only shows up when traffic increases or users move outside the office.

You will build skills in:

• Planning Lync Server topology for enterprise use
• Understanding front-end, mediation, edge, and director roles
• Configuring enterprise voice features and policies
• Creating and managing dial plans and normalization rules
• Connecting to the PSTN through gateways and trunks
• Working with SIP signaling and media flow concepts
• Configuring response groups, conferencing, and user enablement
• Integrating with Exchange Server 2013 for voicemail and messaging workflows
• Using monitoring and logs to isolate service problems
• Supporting remote access and external user connectivity

One thing I emphasize in the course is that voice issues rarely live in only one layer. A routing problem can look like a policy problem. A certificate issue can look like a media problem. A client issue can actually be an authentication or edge configuration issue. Once you learn how to trace the call path, you stop guessing and start narrowing the problem logically.

In a Lync environment, the shortest path to a fix is usually not the obvious one. You have to understand identity, routing, and media together or you will chase the wrong layer for hours.

Architecture, deployment, and the decisions that make or break stability

Every reliable Lync Server implementation begins with architecture. If the topology is careless, everything else becomes harder: failover, call routing, client behavior, and support. In this course, I walk you through the design mindset that matters in real deployments. You need to know where to place core services, how front-end pools support users, how mediation fits into voice routing, and why edge components matter when people work outside the network.

Just as important, you need to understand what not to overcomplicate. Some teams build elegant but fragile designs because they are trying to impress management or satisfy an abstract ideal. That is a mistake. Good communications architecture is boring in the best possible way. It should be predictable, supportable, and recoverable. If you cannot explain the path of a call from the client to the gateway and back, your design is not finished.

This section of the course helps you understand:

• Topology design principles
• Server role placement and dependencies
• DNS, certificates, and authentication considerations
• High availability and disaster recovery concepts
• Client access and external connectivity planning

That is the kind of knowledge that makes you useful during planning meetings, not just after something fails. You will be the person who notices the missing dependency before it becomes an outage.

Enterprise voice, dial plans, and PSTN integration

This is where the course gets serious. Enterprise voice is the part of Lync Server that exposes weak design immediately. A user dials a number, and if normalization is wrong, the call fails. If the gateway path is wrong, the call may go out but not come back cleanly. If the voice policy is off, the user experience becomes inconsistent in ways that are hard to explain to non-technical stakeholders. This is why voice engineering is both technical and political: when it fails, everybody notices.

You will learn how to design and support enterprise voice features such as:

• Dial plans and normalization rules
• Voice policies and route configuration
• PSTN gateway connectivity
• Call admission and routing considerations
• Number translation and user behavior alignment
• Response groups and calling workflows

I spend time on number normalization because it is one of the most common places where otherwise competent teams stumble. The system is only as good as the numbers it can understand. If your dial plan does not match how users actually dial, support calls begin immediately. The same is true of PSTN integration. You are not just connecting to a phone system; you are connecting to a business workflow that people rely on every hour of the day.

Once you understand enterprise voice, you stop treating calls as magic. You see the route, the policy, the media relationship, and the failure points. That is the skill employers want.

Exchange Server 2013 integration and unified messaging workflows

Lync Server does not live in isolation. In real organizations, it intersects with messaging, calendaring, voicemail, and user experience. That is why this course covers integration with Exchange Server 2013. When these platforms are aligned properly, users get a smoother communication experience. When they are not, voicemail delivery, meeting workflows, and presence behavior can become frustratingly inconsistent.

You will learn how the systems work together and what that means operationally. This is not just about feature checkboxes. It is about understanding how mail, voicemail, conferencing, and identity services interact. If you support both platforms, you need to know where Lync ends and Exchange begins, because blame often gets pushed across the boundary when something fails.

Key areas include:

• Unified messaging concepts
• Mailbox and voicemail integration
• Meeting and calendaring interactions
• Presence and user experience consistency
• Support considerations across messaging and communications teams

This is where a lot of administrators first realize that collaboration platforms are really ecosystems. You cannot tune one piece in a vacuum and expect the whole user experience to improve. The best engineers understand the dependencies and the operational impact of each configuration choice.

Troubleshooting and service health in real production environments

Most people learn a platform by setting it up. The better test is whether they can keep it running. That is where this course puts real weight on troubleshooting and monitoring. Production systems do not fail in neat categories. Users report symptoms, logs show fragments, and the actual issue is often several layers removed from what was reported. A good Lync Server engineer knows how to narrow the field without wasting time.

You will work through the mindset needed to investigate issues such as:

• Sign-in problems
• Audio quality complaints
• Call routing failures
• Conferencing issues
• External user access problems
• Gateway or trunk instability
• Policy behavior that does not match expectations

The real value here is method. You need to know how to gather evidence, identify the layer where failure begins, and confirm the fix without assuming the first successful test means the problem is solved. In communications, intermittent issues are often the hardest because they create distrust. People stop believing the platform is dependable. Once that happens, your job is not only technical; it is also about restoring confidence.

If you work in support or operations, this section alone can change how you approach escalations. You will stop chasing symptoms and start evaluating the full path of the service.

Who should take this course

This course is for anyone who needs to understand, deploy, support, or troubleshoot Lync Server in a professional environment. It is especially useful if you already work in infrastructure and want to move deeper into communications or unified messaging. You do not need to be a voice engineer already, but you do need to be willing to think carefully about dependencies and configuration details.

You are a strong fit for this course if you are:

• An administrator supporting Microsoft communication services
• A systems engineer moving into voice and collaboration
• A messaging specialist expanding into unified communications
• A help desk or support professional handling Lync-related escalations
• An infrastructure professional preparing for Microsoft 70-337: MCSE Communication – Lync Server
• A consultant who needs a stronger grasp of enterprise communications design

If you already understand Active Directory, DNS, certificates, and server administration, you will probably move through the material faster. If those areas are newer to you, you can still benefit, but you will want to pay close attention to the architecture and identity sections. Lync Server rewards careful thinking. The people who do well with it are the ones who respect the dependencies instead of rushing past them.

Prerequisites and the background that helps you succeed

You do not need to be an expert in every related technology before starting, but you should be comfortable with core Windows Server administration and enterprise network concepts. This course assumes you can work through infrastructure topics without getting lost in them. If you can already manage users, understand DNS basics, and read network diagrams without panic, you are starting in a good place.

The background that helps most includes:

• General Windows Server administration
• Basic networking and IP concepts
• Active Directory user and group management
• Certificate and authentication basics
• Comfort with command-line and GUI administration tools
• Some exposure to messaging or voice systems

If you lack voice experience, do not worry. Voice is learnable. What matters more is discipline. You need to be willing to trace call paths, read configuration carefully, and think in terms of services and dependencies. That is what turns an IT generalist into a capable communications engineer.

Career impact and why employers value this knowledge

Organizations still need people who can keep communication services stable, secure, and understandable. That is true in large enterprises, consulting environments, and hybrid infrastructure teams. A technician who can explain why a call routes a certain way, or why a remote user cannot connect, is more valuable than someone who merely knows where the settings live.

Completing this course can help you in roles that involve:

• Voice and telephony support
• Collaboration infrastructure management
• Unified communications operations
• Messaging and conferencing administration
• Technical escalation and incident resolution
• Migration planning and platform support

From a career standpoint, this training can strengthen your credibility for internal promotions, consulting work, and specialized infrastructure roles. It signals that you can work beyond basic server administration and into a more business-critical service area. That matters because communications systems are user-facing. When they fail, the business feels it immediately. People notice the engineers who can keep that environment steady.

If you are aiming for Lync Server Certification, this course is designed to help you build the practical judgment that goes with the credential. Certification matters, but confidence in production matters more.

How I recommend you approach the course

Do not rush through this material as if it were a checklist. Lync Server is one of those platforms that only becomes intuitive when you understand the relationship between components. Watch with a notepad nearby. Sketch the call flow. Write down what depends on what. When you hit a section on voice routing or PSTN connectivity, pause and think about how your own environment does it or how a future employer might do it.

Here is the approach I recommend:

1. Learn the architecture first so the rest of the platform has context.
2. Pay close attention to voice routing and normalization, because that is where many real-world failures live.
3. Understand integration points before focusing on individual features.
4. Use troubleshooting concepts to connect symptoms to root causes.
5. Review the deployment and policy sections again after the technical pieces make sense.

The point is not to memorize settings. The point is to think like someone who can keep a communications platform working when people depend on it. That is the real payoff of this course.

Microsoft®, MCSE, and Lync Server are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. This content is for educational purposes.