Microsoft 70-337: MCSE Communication – Lync Server

When a help desk ticket says “the meeting connects, but half the office can’t hear anyone,” the problem is rarely the headset. It’s usually voice routing, network design, policy settings, or a piece of integration that was never understood properly in the first place. That is exactly the kind of work Microsoft 70-337: MCSE Communication – Lync Server prepares you to handle. This course is built for the person who has to make unified communications actually work in a business, not just look good in a demo.

I built this course to give you practical control over Microsoft® Lync Server: how it’s structured, how it carries voice, how it connects to Exchange Server 2013, how it talks to the PSTN, and how you keep it stable when real users start depending on it. If you’ve ever been handed a communication platform and told to “make it reliable,” this is the knowledge that turns that vague demand into a system you can design, deploy, monitor, and defend.

What Microsoft 70-337: MCSE Communication – Lync Server Actually Teaches You

This course is not about memorizing product names or clicking through a wizard. It is about understanding the moving parts of a Lync Server environment well enough to make decisions that hold up under production traffic. That means architecture, enterprise voice, messaging integration, device deployment, monitoring, resilience, and hybrid migration. Those are the areas that separate a technician who can follow instructions from an engineer who can be trusted with a live communications platform.

We start with the foundation: how Lync Server is laid out, what roles matter, and how the pieces interact across front-end servers, mediation components, gateways, clients, and supporting services. From there, you move into enterprise voice functionality, where the real complexity begins. Voice is where small mistakes become expensive fast. A bad dial plan, an incomplete normalization rule, or a weak understanding of media routing can break call flows in ways that are painful to troubleshoot later.

You also learn how Lync ties into Exchange Server 2013 for unified messaging, because messaging and voice were never meant to live in separate silos. In the field, those integrations are not optional extras; they are the backbone of a modern communications environment. This is one reason Microsoft 70-337: MCSE Communication – Lync Server remains such a valuable technical topic: it forces you to think like an architect, not just an operator.

Why the Microsoft 70-337: MCSE Communication – Lync Server Skill Set Still Matters

Even in environments that have evolved beyond the original Lync branding, the skills you build here are still highly transferable. Unified communications engineering always comes down to the same core problems: identity, signaling, routing, security, media quality, and integration. If you can understand those at the Lync Server level, you can adapt that knowledge to newer collaboration platforms with far less friction.

Organizations still rely on legacy Microsoft UC systems, hybrid deployments, and voice infrastructure that must coexist with newer cloud services. That means someone has to manage migration paths, support existing users, keep the system compliant, and reduce downtime. This course helps you become that person. It gives you the technical judgment to look at a broken deployment and ask the right questions: Is the issue DNS? Certificates? Firewall rules? SIP routing? Media traversal? User policy? Network congestion? Those are the questions that matter.

In my opinion, voice and communications training is most valuable when it teaches you to think in chains of dependency. A call is not just a call. It’s authentication, policy, signaling, transport, device behavior, and backend integration all working together. Microsoft 70-337: MCSE Communication – Lync Server is built around that reality. Once you understand it that way, troubleshooting gets faster, deployments get cleaner, and your recommendations start to carry real weight with management.

Core Topics Covered in the Course

The course moves through the exact subject areas you need to understand in order to deploy and manage Lync Server in an enterprise setting. We don’t stop at definitions. We examine how each component behaves in a production environment and why each configuration choice matters.

• Voice architecture and server roles
• Enterprise voice configuration and policy design
• Integration with Exchange Server 2013 unified messaging
• Voice applications and call handling behaviors
• Emergency calling and location-aware configuration
• PSTN integration and PBX coexistence
• Media planning and call admission control
• Device deployment and endpoint management
• Migration to Lync Online and hybrid design
• Monitoring, quality assurance, resiliency, and disaster recovery

Each of these topics has practical consequences. For example, enterprise voice is not just about enabling users to place calls. It involves dial plans, normalization, voice policies, route configurations, trunk settings, and how Lync interacts with gateways or PBX systems. Emergency calling is another area where configuration details matter more than theory. You need to understand how location information is assigned, how users are identified, and how emergency dialing behavior changes across different access scenarios.

Microsoft 70-337: MCSE Communication – Lync Server also pays close attention to monitoring and voice quality because nobody wants a communication platform that technically works but sounds terrible. That is where performance counters, call diagnostics, and network planning become essential. Bad voice quality is often a design failure, not a random annoyance.

Enterprise Voice: Where the Real Engineering Happens

If there is a single topic in this course that deserves your full attention, it is enterprise voice. This is where Lync Server becomes a real phone system, and this is where your understanding of routing, policies, and media pathways gets tested. Enterprise voice determines how users make calls, how numbers are normalized, how calls leave the organization, and how internal and external calling behave under different conditions.

You will work through the logic behind voice policies, routes, PSTN usages, dial plans, and gateways. These are not isolated settings. They work as a chain, and if one link is wrong, the whole call path can fail. That is why I spend so much time on the “why” instead of just the “what.” A lot of administrators can copy a configuration. Far fewer can explain why that configuration is correct or how to modify it when business requirements change.

In practical terms, this means you will be better prepared for the kinds of tasks employers actually assign to communications engineers:

• Designing dial plans that match business locations and user behavior
• Connecting Lync to the PSTN through gateways or SIP trunks
• Supporting coexistence with legacy PBX systems during migration
• Configuring voice routing that avoids call failures and expensive misroutes
• Planning media paths that reduce latency and preserve call quality

That is the difference between “I installed it” and “I know how to run it.” Microsoft 70-337: MCSE Communication – Lync Server is for the second kind of person.

Exchange Server 2013, Unified Messaging, and Messaging Integration

Voice and messaging rarely live separately in a mature organization. Users want voicemail in their inbox, call handling that respects presence, and a communication experience that feels unified instead of stitched together. That is why the integration with Exchange Server 2013 matters so much in this course. You need to understand how Lync Server and Exchange cooperate, where their responsibilities overlap, and how to configure the connection cleanly.

This section of the training helps you see unified messaging as an operational system, not a feature checkbox. You will learn the practical side of integration: what must be configured, what dependencies can break the experience, and how to verify that messaging services are actually functioning the way users expect. In the field, integration issues often hide behind symptoms like missing voicemail, delayed notifications, failed call forwarding, or unpredictable user experience across devices.

If you support a business that depends on fast communication, this knowledge has direct value. Executives, reception teams, sales groups, and remote workers all notice when voicemail and presence do not behave consistently. Microsoft 70-337: MCSE Communication – Lync Server gives you the technical background to diagnose those issues before they become visible to the entire company.

Devices, Voice Apps, and the User Experience

One mistake many administrators make is treating devices as an afterthought. They are not. Phones, endpoints, conferencing devices, and client behavior all shape how users judge the system. If deployment is clumsy, if firmware is inconsistent, or if device policies are poorly managed, people stop trusting the platform even when the server side is healthy.

This course covers device deployment and management in a way that reflects real enterprise work. You’ll learn how supported devices fit into the broader Lync ecosystem, how user experience changes across endpoint types, and what you need to think about when rolling out voice-capable hardware at scale. Voice applications are part of that same picture. They can extend what Lync does, but they also add complexity if you don’t understand how they interact with the rest of the environment.

That is why I like to frame this section around operational consistency. Your goal is not just to “get devices working.” Your goal is to create a communication experience that is predictable for users and manageable for IT. In a production environment, predictability is a feature. It lowers support calls, reduces training needs, and makes your organization more resilient when hardware or network conditions change.

Emergency Calling, PSTN Integration, and Real-World Risk

Emergency calling is one of those topics that exposes whether someone truly understands voice systems or just knows the menus. In an enterprise environment, emergency dialing must be handled carefully, with attention to location mapping, user mobility, and route behavior. A system that fails in this area is not merely inconvenient; it can create serious legal and operational risk.

This course covers emergency calling as part of the larger voice architecture, because that is the only way to do it properly. The same is true for PSTN integration and PBX coexistence. Businesses rarely start from scratch. They usually have legacy systems, mixed vendors, old numbering plans, and a transition plan that has to minimize disruption. You will learn how to think through those connections instead of pretending the rest of the environment does not exist.

Here is the practical mindset I want you to develop:

If a call leaves the Lync environment, it should do so for a reason you can explain. If an emergency call fails, you should know which part of the chain to inspect first. That is the standard for a communications engineer.

That mindset is central to Microsoft 70-337: MCSE Communication – Lync Server. It is what turns configuration into responsibility.

Monitoring, Resiliency, and Disaster Recovery

A communications platform that works in a lab but fails under pressure is not a success. Real deployments need monitoring, performance tuning, and a plan for keeping service alive when hardware, links, or sites fail. This course gives you the framework for thinking about high availability and disaster recovery in a voice environment, which is a different challenge from protecting a file server or a simple web app.

Voice systems are sensitive to latency, packet loss, service availability, and topology design. Monitoring must therefore go beyond “is the server up?” You need to know how call quality is trending, whether media traffic is being impacted, and where bottlenecks are forming. That is the only way to catch problems early enough to matter.

You will also study resiliency concepts that help you design systems users can still rely on when something fails. That may involve redundancy, failover planning, alternate routing, or careful topology choices. In a job interview, these are the details that set you apart. Any administrator can say “I backed it up.” An engineer can explain how voice service continues when a component disappears. Employers notice the difference immediately.

For people targeting roles such as UC engineer, messaging engineer, collaboration specialist, or systems administrator with voice responsibilities, this part of Microsoft 70-337: MCSE Communication – Lync Server is especially valuable. It teaches you to protect availability, not just configure features.

Who Should Take This Course

This course is a strong fit if you already work in IT and are moving closer to unified communications, messaging, or voice administration. It is also a good choice if your job already touches Microsoft collaboration tools and you want deeper control over how those services are designed and maintained.

You will benefit most if you are one of the following:

• System administrators responsible for Microsoft communication platforms
• Network engineers who need to understand voice traffic and media behavior
• Telecommunications professionals moving into Microsoft-based UC environments
• IT consultants supporting enterprise communication deployments
• Engineers preparing for Microsoft 70-337: MCSE Communication – Lync Server
• Administrators supporting hybrid messaging or migration projects

If you are new to voice engineering, you can still learn from this course, but you should be prepared to think carefully. This is not a “click next and pass” topic. It rewards people who are willing to understand dependencies and technical reasoning. If you already know the basics of networking, Windows Server administration, and enterprise messaging, you will be in a strong position to absorb the material and apply it immediately.

Prerequisites and Recommended Background

You do not need to be an expert in every Microsoft communication product before starting, but you should be comfortable with core IT concepts. A solid background in Windows Server administration, networking fundamentals, DNS, certificates, and basic security will make the course much easier to absorb. Voice systems live or die on infrastructure details, so this is not the place to be shaky on fundamentals.

Before you begin, I recommend that you already understand:

• TCP/IP, routing, VLANs, and basic network troubleshooting
• Windows Server roles, Active Directory concepts, and service management
• DNS resolution and certificate basics
• General client/server architecture
• How enterprise messaging or collaboration systems are typically deployed

If you have that background, Microsoft 70-337: MCSE Communication – Lync Server becomes much easier to work with because you can focus on the higher-level voice and collaboration design concepts instead of getting stuck on foundational mechanics. And if some of those skills are still developing, this course will still help you, but you may want to pause and review networking and server basics as needed.

Career Value and the Kind of Roles This Supports

Employers do not hire communications engineers because they can repeat feature lists. They hire them because they can keep teams connected, protect call quality, and support business operations that depend on reliable communication. That is why the skill set behind Microsoft 70-337: MCSE Communication – Lync Server maps well to several technical roles.

Common job titles in this space include collaboration engineer, unified communications administrator, messaging engineer, systems administrator, voice engineer, and Microsoft infrastructure consultant. Depending on location and experience, professionals working in these roles can often see salary ranges roughly from the mid-$70,000s to well over $120,000 annually, with senior specialists and consultants sometimes earning more. The exact number depends on region, industry, and whether you handle architecture, migration, and operational support.

More importantly, this course helps you become useful in situations that are often stressful and visible. A failed voice deployment gets noticed quickly. A smooth rollout gets noticed too, but in a very different way: fewer complaints, happier users, and less escalation. That is the kind of outcome that gets you trusted with larger projects. If you want to move from general IT support into a more specialized and valuable technical lane, this course is a strong step in that direction.

How to Get the Most Out of Microsoft 70-337: MCSE Communication – Lync Server

Don’t treat this as passive viewing. The best way to learn a communications platform is to keep asking yourself how each setting affects the call path. When you study voice architecture, ask where media flows. When you study routing, ask what happens if one gateway fails. When you study integration, ask what user behavior depends on it. That habit will make you far stronger than someone who only remembers terms.

I also recommend that you take notes in a troubleshooting format. For each major topic, write down:

1. What the feature does
2. What dependencies it requires
3. What breaks when it is misconfigured
4. How you would verify it in production

That approach mirrors how real support and engineering work happens. And it is the same mindset that will help you when preparing for Microsoft 70-337: MCSE Communication – Lync Server or when applying the knowledge to an active enterprise environment. This course is not about trivia. It is about control, design, and the ability to keep communication systems dependable when people are counting on them.

Microsoft® and Microsoft 70-337: MCSE Communication – Lync Server are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. This content is for educational purposes.