 Welcome to Microsoft Link 2013. My name is Debbie Fierst, and I'll be your instructor. I own an organization that has offices spread across the United States, and so I use Link every day to interact with my colleagues. So I intend to share all of my little tips and tricks with you throughout this course. In this unit, setting up Link 2013, we'll learn how to sign in and get oriented. We'll also learn how to establish our Link options, and we'll learn how to add contacts and groups. In this topic, we'll learn how to sign in to Link 2013, and we'll get oriented to the interface. Link 2013 is a communication tool. It piggybacks off of your Microsoft account settings, and so you need a Microsoft account before you can utilize Link. After you've installed Link 2013, the very first time you launch the application, it's going to ask you to sign in. So notice, you need to have your Microsoft account ready because you've got to type in your sign in address, and that's going to be your Microsoft username or email address that you utilized to sign up. As soon as you enter that here and click sign in, then it will also ask you for your password, but I want to show you a few other things that are on this sign in screen. Notice that you have the capacity to set your presence, it's called, inside of Link. In other words, once you're logged in, whatever you select from this dropdown box is going to show up as your availability. Are you available to chat with someone? Are you busy? Are you out for the day? Whatever you pick from this dropdown list is going to show up as your initial availability. We call that your presence. You also have the option in the upper right here to drop down this arrow and change some settings related to your Link account. I'll be talking about that more, but I want you to see that you can do it from the sign in box. You can also delete your sign in information, anything that might be there being held from the last session. And if you need help, you can go into the help system from here. So this is what the sign in box looks like. You need to have your Microsoft account set up before you go to sign in. Once you have successfully signed in to Link 2013, this is what the interface looks like. In the upper left-hand corner, you have the ability to type in a box that says what's happening today, kind of a status update. For instance, I might type in there, I'm in the office getting work done today, or I just returned from a trip and I'm glad to be back, whatever. I can put my little status update there and other people will see that when they look at my people card. Also, my name appears. If I've set up a picture, my picture appears. There's that presence that I discussed from the sign in box where I can say my availability, am I busy, am I available to chat. And I want you to notice that a colored bar appears to the left of your picture that correlates with that presence. We'll talk more about that later, but I just want you to see that I am available right now and available is shown in green. Also, I can put a location if I want to. Over here in the right, I have that little icon that allows me to go in and change some settings. We'll be talking about that. And I have three critical buttons right below my picture where I can switch between seeing people, conversations, and I also have a third one that we'll be getting into more later. I don't want to talk about that one right now. Okay, but these allow you to switch back and forth between areas of link. And then down below I see all of the people that I currently have set up in my link account that I can interact with.