Skype For Business

Can you schedule a Skype for Business meeting if you’re in Teams Only mode? When a user moves to Teams Only, the “New Skype Meeting” button is removed from the Outlook Ribbon. Therefore the user can no longer schedule Skype for Business Meetings. I’ve been testing Teams Only for the past couple of months and out of interest I wondered whether I could still schedule a Skype for Business Meeting. Note, I can’t find any official guidance from Microsoft, so although this works today, I would imagine Microsoft could disable this at any point. When you’re in Teams Only mode, your meetings should be scheduled in Teams. ...

Are you using Citrix or any other 3rd party application that handles media (e.g. Call Recording / Contact Centre) with Skype for Business? You may find you’re not marking this traffic with the correct DSCP markings. You should configure QoS in the usual method using a Windows GPO. Mark Vale documents this process really well: https://blog.valeconsulting.co.uk/2015/09/07/skype-for-business-configuring-quality-of-service-qos/ Pat Richard has a really useful QoS Calculator here: https://www.ucunleashed.com/2821 “Why does it matter if I’m using Citrix or a call recording application like Verba?” Answer - They have their own executables and don’t use the standard SfB exe’s to send/receive media! ...

Note this script is provided as an example only - By default a user can set their own Client Pin via the Dial-In Conferencing page (usually dialin.domain.com). You may have a requirement to bulk set a Client Pin if you’re rolling out a large number of VOIP phones. The script example below sets a 6 digit client PIN consisting of a two digit prefix followed by the last 4 digits of the users LineUri: ...

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.* ...

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. ...