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The biggest news from Microsoft Ignite is the announcement of Microsoft Teams replacing Skype for Business Online. This has sent the Community, Skype for Business service providers and Integrators around the globe into a bit of a rumour mill. So the key point is Teams will replace Skype for Business Online. Microsoft will be announcing a new version of Skype for Business Server 2019 (Formerly LCS, OCS & Lync) that we all know and love next year, however this will be for On-Prem customers (I.E. not in a Microsoft datacentre). You will be able to have a Skype for Business and Teams Hybrid deployment. ...

If you don’t have Office 365 or are not using the Office 2016 Click To Run (CTR) software on your end users computers they may be missing out on some great new features. The first great feature of the CTR version of Office 2016 is Consult and Transfer. Lync 2010, Lync 2013 and Skype for Business has desperately needed a Consult and Transfer button. In the past this was a complicated process for some users and I have had potential customers reject Lync and Skype for Business because the process wasn’t slick. I was always of the opinion you could drop a user an IM before transfering rather than making an actual call but some businesses insist they need this feature. Well, it’s here but you need to be running the Office 2016 CTR Skype for Business installed from the O365 portal. ...

Every Lync/Skype admin has the same nightmare with Response Group Holiday sets, something that has to manually be programmed each year for Public Holidays in your country. What if you could script populating Holiday Sets automatically using PowerShell and an API? I live in England and most of my customers are UK based so I needed a service that would give me Public Holidays for the UK. Our government website lists all Public Holidays here: https://www.gov.uk/bank-holidays. They are also conveniently provided in JSON format here: https://www.gov.uk/bank-holidays.json ...

During a side-by-side Lync 2013 to Skype for Business migration I encountered an error moving Response Groups using Move-CsRgsConfiguration. Move-CsRgsConfiguration -Source lyncfepool.domain.local -Destination skypefepool.domain.local This resulted in the error “Move-CsRgsConfiguration : Object reference not set to an instance of an object.”. To resolve I ran Move-CsRgsConfiguration again with the -verbose switch: Move-CsRgsConfiguration -Source lyncfepool.domain.local -Destination skypefepool.domain.local -verbose Verbose output below: VERBOSE: Performing the operation "Move-CsRgsConfiguration" on target "service:ApplicationServer:skypefepool.domain.local/531286fe-e965-4c1c-9949-26eca4d8d3db". VERBOSE: Handle audio files... VERBOSE: Update associations with holiday sets... VERBOSE: Update associations with managers... Move-CsRgsConfiguration : Object reference not set to an instance of an object. At line:1 char:1 + Move-CsRgsConfiguration -Source lyncfepool.domain.local -Destination skyp ... + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ + CategoryInfo : WriteError: (Microsoft.Rtc.R...lRgsDataContext:TransactionalRgsDataContext) [Move-CsRgsC onfiguration], NullReferenceException + FullyQualifiedErrorId : Microsoft.Rtc.Rgs.Management.MoveCsRgsConfigurationCmdlet VERBOSE: Rollback transaction. ...

I recently had a customer that required 90 Common Area Phones creating in Skype for Business. This is quite a tedious task so the easiest way is to populate a CSV and use a PowerShell script to do the import. When creating a Common Area Phone in Lync/SfB it can take a few seconds before you’re able to assign Policies and Pin numbers to the objects. This slows the script down significantly if waiting 20 seconds between creating the object, then assigning Policies. So, I’ve actually made three ForEach loops, the first one creates the Common Area Phone objects, then it waits 20 seconds before assigning policies to every object, then it waits another 20 seconds before assigning the pins (I found that assigning Pins would fail if I didn’t wait longer). ...

The short answer is no, you require Exchange Unified Messaging, whether that is provided by Exchange 2010 SP3, 2013 2016 or Exchange Online. But, what about if you deploy an Exchange server just to service Voicemail and forward the Voicemail on as an attachment to Lotus Notes, or any other email platform for that matter? *NOTE - You will need to license any users that have an Exchange Mailbox & UM.* ...

After Microsoft released Microsoft Teams yesterday I tried to install it on my company issued laptop (Windows 8.1 64bit). Upon opening Teams I was greeted with the following error: “The program can’t start because MSVCP140.dll is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem” The fix was to install the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015 available here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=48145

We recently came across an issue where a customer could not sign-in to a Microsoft Surface Hub. There’s a great article here: https://ucsorted.com/2015/08/31/understanding-user-mapping-in-a-skype-for-business-resource-forest/ explaining how a Resource Forest model works. When you enable a SfB user, the proxyAddresses attribute is populated with the users SIP address in the format SIP:name@domain.com. In a Resource Forest model this is populated on the disabled user object in the Resource Forest. Usually the attribute flow is one way from the User Forest to the Resource Forest so the SIP: value never populates the proxyAddresses attribute in the User Forest. ...

I was recently installing the latest Skype4B CU and came across a strange issue where one of the updates would not install. The error message I received was: “Skype for Business Server 2015 Update Installer: There were errors during the installation process. For details, see the log file atC:\Users\chris\AppData\Local\Temp\Skype_patchinstallerlog-FE01-[2016-08-01][15-28-31].txt” Checking the log files indicated an error 1603. A bit of googling led me to various blog posts advising to ensure all MMCs were closed, checking there was enough disk space on the Front End and also running the Deployment Wizard again. None of these solutions worked for me, I tried running the installer from an elevated prompt and also tried installing server.msp manually. ...

On your current farm run “Get-OfficeWebAppsFarm”. Make a note of the InternalURL, ExternalURL, CertificateName and Machines (Note you may only have the ExternalURL configured). E.g. InternalURL: https://webapps.mycompany.local ExternalURL: https://webapps.mycompany.com CertificateName: My WAC Certificate Machines: WebApps01, WebApps02 Run “Get-OfficeWebAppsHost”. Make a note of the allowList. E.g. allowList: mycompany.com, mycompany.local On each Office Web Apps 2013 server: Uninstall “Microsoft Office Web Apps Server 2013” Install Windows Identity Foundation 3.5 (Add Roles and Features > Features) Install the Update for Universal C Runtime in Windows KB (https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/kb/2999226) Install Microsoft Office Online Server 2016 Using the information you gathered from Get-OfficeWebAppsFarm, on the first machine in the farm (WebApps01) run New-OfficeWebAppsFarm, E.g. New-OfficeWebAppsFarm -InternalURL https://webapps.mycompany.local -ExternalURL https://webapps.mycompany.com -CertificateName “My WAC Certificate” ...