I'm running a Lync Server 2013 Enterprise instance with all updates through the January 2016 updates. Some of my users are complaining that they have these contact groups on their Skype for Business clients where the name of the group is the SIP address of a "ghost" contact that had previously had an account on our Lync Server. I confirmed that these ghost accounts have been removed from the Lync Server (in some cases over a year ago) and the users have cleared out their Skype for Business Contacts in OWA for Exchange 2013 that we run in conjuncture with Lync 2013. I have had users clear the Lync Client Cache and re setup their accounts, but the ghost contact entries follow their accounts even when setting up the client on a brand new computer. Unfortunately the forum will not allow me to post my screenshot of what the clients are seeing until they "Verify my account". Any help or advice is appreciated.

1. So i downloaded Lync 2013 from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35451
2. After reboot when i opened its name on title instead of Lync it was Skype for Business with blue background
3. Also it was not showing contacts pictures
4. Rebooted and now it is showing Lync in the title and showing pictures
5. Why the name in the title changed and also had issue with showing contacts pictures
6. Looked into All Programs says Lync 2013

Hi everybody,

I'm facing a issue with my installation of my lync server 2013 when i try to publish a topology.

Server : One DC on Windows 2012 Server & one lync server 2013 installed on Windows 2012 server

The issue is, when i try to publish a topology i had this error message :

Creating database xds from scratch. Data File Path = C:\CsData\CentralMgmtStore\rtc\DbPath, Log File Path= C:\CsData\CentralMgmtStore\rtc\LogPath.
Exception Stack:
Type: System.IO.IOException, Message: The user name or password is incorrect.

I don't know why and which user account the wizard is trying to use (it's the user session account normally ..), i already had checked if my users account is member of CsAdministrator, RTCHSUniversalServices, RTCUniversalServerAdmins etc. but impossible to publish the topology ...

I really don't understand, if someone had an idea, i appreciate a lot :)

Thank you,

Hi,

I have two AD forest with AD trust.

In one AD forest (abc.com) with Lync and exchange and In second AD forest (xyz.com) have exchange only.

In xyz.com, I have user with exchange account. I have to give the lync service with abc.com forest to that user.

So now In ABC.com, I created one exchange contact with lync account and xyz.com user object sid copy in the msRTCSIP-OriginatorSid for lync.

Lync is working fine. I delegate that lync account and exchange account with other lync /exchange account. every thing is working.

But only on behalf lync meeting with outlook is not working.

I got the below error :-

any idea...

Regards, Deepak

In this case, there are 3 2012 RDS servers.  The main Office suite installed on all 3 is Office 2010, but the 2013 Lync client is installed. The objective is to get the Lync client patched to the latest version and the latest versions of Skype/Lync have a pre-req for Office 2013 SP1.

The 3 servers have all security & important patches installed, but Office 2013 SP1 refused to install on 2 of the 3 servers.  I initially thought the reason for this was because only the Lync client from 2013 is installed, so possibly the initial validation checks for 2013 SP1 failed (even though Microsoft Update highlighted 2013 SP1 as a required update). Just a best guess.

Then, surprisingly, Office 2013 SP1 installed on the 3rd RDS server.  It is broadly similar to the other 2 (full Office 2010 installed, and only Lync from 2013), with the only difference being that the 3rd RDS server had missed some old patches and had a larger number of patches outstanding than the other 2. Other than that, I believe the 3 RDS servers are identical.

The error code coming up is simply 

Service Pack 1 for Microsoft Office 2013 (KB2850036) 32-Bit Edition
Installation date: ‎25/‎03/‎2016 21:19
Installation status: Failed
Error details: Code 780
Update type: Important

I can't find any similar cases online with that error code, but did find a server fault post where someone bypassed a validation check with 

office2013sp1-kb.exe PACKAGE.BYPASS.DETECTION.CHECK=1

http://serverfault.com/questions/694622/service-pack-1-for-microsoft-office-2013-install-fails

...but I tested that method after manually downloading the SP and the install failed with both a normal manual install and also after bypassing the detection check.  I was a little hesitant to bypass the detection check, but at least we know it doesn't work.

What might work to get the pre-requisite of 2013 SP1 installed on to these RDS servers so that the Lync client can be updated to the latest version?

UPDATE: I've cross-posted this on a few sites, and currently my plan is to clone the fully patched RDS server twice, but there may be a better solution that someone here has?

Every day since the upgrade to Skype for Business from Lync 2013, we have experienced brief outages every day (about 10 minutes) around the same time.

System log: The Skype for Business Server Front-End service terminated unexpectedly.  It has done this 1 time(s).  The following corrective action will be taken in 180000 milliseconds: Restart the service.

Application log: 

Faulting application name: RTCSrv.exe, version: 6.0.9319.0, time stamp: 0x55278459
Faulting module name: SIPStack.dll, version: 6.0.9319.0, time stamp: 0x552784a0
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x0000000000442871
Faulting process id: 0x4290
Faulting application start time: 0x01d0b7726b98451d
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\Skype for Business Server 2015\Server\Core\RTCSrv.exe
Faulting module path: C:\PROGRA~1\SKYPEF~1\Server\Core\SIPStack.dll
Report Id: 02841015-242f-11e5-8113-005056b52889
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID: 

This causes disruptions for all users. I've noticed the outages happen about every 24 hours and 3 minutes, so it happens later and later each day so I'm thinking it might be some recycling job or threshold that's reached?

Any thoughts?

Hello Everyone

We have a .net website that calls some power powershell scripts to onboard our new users.   While using Exchange 2010 we were able to get away with a total of 40 seconds of waits between commands.  Now that we are moving to Exchange 2013 that wait time has increased to 3 minutes.  I had to increase the wait between Lync powershell command and enable-ummailbox commands to 3 minutes.

I know this is a Lync forum but thought you guys may have more information then the Exchange guys because it is the UM portion that take so much longer.

What happens without the start-sleep command is we get cannot find user so the it fails at that point.  

We have tried added -domain controller to all commands and still get the same experience.

Is there any way to eliminate these waits?

The works is HR user accesses webpage that has our onboarding tool, selects location, job title, DID from available pool.  After that .net creates the AD object then calls powershell and runs the following.  I have removed all variable information and error catching and left the actual commands only.  The below has worked in 2010 UM environment but not 2013 without having user wait 3.5 minutes.

enable-mailbox $sam -database $database -alias $sam
set-mailbox $sam -retentionpolicy "xxxxx"

start-sleep -s 15

Enable-CsUser $sam  -RegistrarPool $lyncpool -SipAddressType samaccountname -SipDomain xxxxx

start-sleep -s 15

set-csuser -identity $sam -enterprisevoiceenabled $true -lineuri $lineuri
grant-csdialplan $sam -policyname $dialplan
grant-csvoicepolicy $sam -policyname $voicepolicy
Grant-CsExternalAccessPolicy $sam -policyname "Allow Federation+Public+Outside Access"

start-sleep -s 10

Enable-UMMailbox $email -UMMailboxPolicy $umpolicy -Pin $pin -Extensions $ext

Hello Everybody

Just a quick question to all the Microsoft fans out there, I have been trying to figure out the functionality, risks and costs of migration from others(AVAYA,pbx) to Microsoft.

I am really interested to know how quickly/effectively Microsoft might convince companies to go cloud/hosted.

Basically I am looking for pros and cons of migration from AVAYA,PBX to Skype for business 2015, using a tool made by VS.Net.

Just want to know how effectively will this be possible.

All your ideas and advices will be much appreciated.

Any ideas or links which might help me understand this better.Especially after reading the below article.

Seven Things to Know About Microsoft Lync (And One Thing You Should Do About It) Luke Stangel  | March 25, 2013
The economy remains a schizophrenic beast. The stock market may be rocketing upwards, but governments are imposing painful cutbacks such as the U.S. Government’s $1.2 trillion sequestration.
At the same time, businesses are eager to gain the benefits that collaboration solutions can deliver to their organizations. 56 percent of enterprises view collaboration tools as very important or critical to their companies’ future, according to a February 2013 survey by Computerworld magazine .
Driven by BYOD, 58 percent of business leaders are pushing for more video collaboration tools , according to a recent 2,000-respondent survey sponsored by Avaya.
What does it all mean?
Business and IT leaders are still investing. However, they are investing carefully, looking for easy-to-use mobile video collaboration solutions, while keeping a close eye on cost, value and deployment risk.
Related article: Why Can’t Microsoft Get Lync to Work In Its Own Backyard?
Into this environment enters Microsoft Lync 2013. Microsoft touts improvements in the latest version of Lync. It is pushing hard for customers using Lync today as their desktop instant messaging app to upgrade to voice and video, as well.
I recently returned from the Enterprise Connect 2013 conference in Orlando, where Microsoft did a slick keynote demo of Lync 2013. However, there were some things about Lync that Microsoft didn’t share with the audience – things that we discovered from interviewing nearly 100 IT leaders, channel partners and analysts. Before you engage with Microsoft, you should prepare by considering these seven areas of concern:
#1: Lync’s limited video conferencing capabilities
#1: Lync’s limited video conferencing capabilities
Lync’s pathway into enterprises was as a low-cost instant messaging application. Despite improvements, its video capabilities remain immature even in Lync 2013:
No end-to-end solution. Microsoft doesn’t yet provide executive video desktops, video room systems, video gateways or telepresence systems. Even more importantly, Lync’s multi-party video solution only works on desktops.
Limited conferencing capabilities. You can only have continuous presence with 5 different parties in Lync 2013, for example. Also missing are common features such as dual presentation, multicasting and server-side recording. And interoperability with 3rd-party systems remains undefined.
Until this is addressed, Lync remains an island in the sea of collaboration, unable to work with any of your existing room-based video conferencing gear or telepresence systems. By comparison, Avaya offers full end-to-end video collaboration, from room systems to desktop and mobile clients, all fully interoperable with all major 3rd-party systems.
High resource utilization. Bandwidth is a huge part of your TCO. But Lync uses up to 600 percent more bandwidth than competing distributed media solutions, according to a white paper by Constellation Research’s Dr. E. Brent Kelly.
# 2: Inconsistent support for BYOD.
BYOD has been driven by workers toting their personal Samsung Galaxy smartphones and iPad devices. But Lync doesn’t do a great job of supporting BYOD. While it can support instant messaging and presence on Windows, Android and iOS, features such as viewing shared meeting content and simultaneous multi-party video are mostly missing from iOS and Android devices.
The problem is that Android and iOS dominate, together holding 92% of the global smartphone market, while Windows holds just 2.6%.
# 3: Lync voice remains limited.
Voice is supposed to be Lync 2013’s biggest area of improvement. But there are many enterprise-class features it lacks that Avaya Aura has. To get Lync 2013 voice running well, you’ll need to buy additional 3rd-party gateways, Session Border Controllers for security as well as new desk and conference phones. If you already have a contact center or telephony solution in place, you’ll need to rip it out completely if you choose Lync (for the fiscal implications, see point #6.
There’s no contact center or call recording features. Such limitations may inhibit using Lync in your business. For instance, Lync’s weaknesses with the feature ‘call park’ may prevent many retailers from adopting it. These are all things that we, with decades of experience in communications and the most innovative solutions, already do better.
#4: Lync requires complex integration for real-time collaboration. To get Lync working as well as other solutions, you’ll need to source a variety of applications from 3rd-party vendors. For enterprises looking for reliability, simplicity and “one throat to choke,” it’s bad news.
Lync’s complexity is evident even at the most basic level. Well-known enterprise IT analyst Josh Greenbaum recently detailed his failed attempt to get Lync working with the cloud-based Office 365 in his blog, “Microsoft Lync 2013 Flunks the Unified Communications Opportunity.”
Cloud apps aimed at small companies are supposed to be easy to use, but Greenbaum was stymied,
Cloud apps aimed at small companies are supposed to be easy to use, but Greenbaum was stymied, despite four calls to Microsoft tech support, two to his ISP’s, and Greenbaum’s background as a seasoned IT pro. Greenbaum’s conclusion? Lync is “a bloody nightmare” and “not worth the trouble.”
#5: Unproven “-ilities”.
Complexity is not just an academic issue. It means you need more IT staff, more training in new, diff fferent pieces of software, and more places where things can go wrong, costing you time and money. Lync customers will need to deploy management stations for each 3rd-party system, as well as real-time performance monitoring software. Even then, survivability of branch office telephony in Lync is limited to basic features only (messaging and conferencing are not available). That forces Lync customers to either endure costly downtime or invest more to prevent it.
Which leads me to…
#6: Lync Voice is more expensive.
Forget what you think you know about Lync’s cost based on what you pay Microsoft for IM. Switching to Lync for your voice is likely to be much more expensive. That’s not just my opinion, but the findings of Robin Gareiss, co-founder and analyst at Nemertes Research. In her No Jitter piece, “Considering Lync for Telephony? Plan for Rising Opex,” Gareiss writes that “Lync’s operational costs can be significantly higher than competitors’.”
According to detailed interviews with 211 real-world customers that had actually installed and run Lync or solutions from other vendors (including Avaya), Lync customers spent an average of $1,912 on operational costs in the first year, nearly 3x more than the median (and more than 6x than customers using Avaya).
Customers of Microsoft attributed the higher cost “to challenges related to integration and sound quality,” according to Nemertes. While operational costs do fall 20% after the first two years, according to Nemertes, they will still make up the bulk of any businesses’ communications budget. Meaning Lync will likely remain pricier for you than other solutions. To learn more, you can download the entire Nemertes white paper here .
At Avaya, meanwhile, we are very sensitive to enterprise budget realities. Our solutions can offer you a better TCO through efficiency and ease of manageability, as my CEO Kevin Kennedy recently told No Jitter .
#7: Lync Reduces Customer Choice. This might seem strange, considering Microsoft’s heavy reliance on 3rd-party components. But Microsoft’s bundling of its solutions can leave enterprises effectively locked in. That’s a problem when Redmond raises its prices 15% for client enterprise software like Lync, as it did last December.
 You’ll face no such lock-in here at Avaya. As Kennedy, who gave the keynote speech at Enterprise Connect last week , told No Jitter: “We have an end-to-end play, but we have an open stack.”
Let’s give Microsoft some credit. They’ve done a great job at popularizing enterprise IM and presence, and have about half of the market. At the same time, many customers have successfully deployed real-time communications solutions from Avaya. So what should the enterprise do?
If you are looking for the best real-time communications and collaboration solution that preserves your existing workflows and keeps your TCO low, you should take a good look at Avaya. Our Avaya
If you are looking for the best real-time communications and collaboration solution that preserves your existing workflows and keeps your TCO low, you should take a good look at Avaya. Our Avaya Client Applications 6.2 plug-in works with our proven Avaya Aura communications stack to deliver simple, high-quality and reliable voice to Lync as well as Office 365, and at an estimated cost over three years of between 1.8x to 3x cheaper than Microsoft can do.
“Avaya’s ACA 6.2 plug-in is an ideal solution for customers who want to use Microsoft Lync for presence and instant messaging, but prefer the field-proven Avaya back-end infrastructure for telephony and collaboration,” says Ira Weinstein, senior analyst and partner with Wainhouse Research. Avaya’s “solution lets customers choose the experience they want, without increasing complexity.”
So let’s not be swept up by the hyperbole around Lync and the assumptions you may have as a Lync instant messaging user. The facts and figures show that if you are thinking of deploying an easy-to-use, mobile video collaboration solution for any of your users, Avaya offers a simpler, betterquality and more tried-and-tested solution than Lync, and at a much lower cost to boot.
If you have invested in Lync for IM or presence, you can expand into Unified Communications and earn maximum value at minimal cost and risk by integrating with Avaya. No need to impact your contact center, or risk impacting the reliability of your communications systems. That makes sense anytime, of course, but it’s the perfect solution in these challenging economic times.

Hello

Well I am all new to skype for business, I have a test server, which has 4 VMs, skype for business DC, FE, client1 and client2.

I have installed skype for business and want to see if this can actually contact users outside my test server.

Can I add external users with another domain name to my skype for business client machine?

If yes can I do it with federation and external access in skype for business control panel?

I have seen online which says use Office 365 admin centre but does it need to be registered domain I mean its a test server and SFB 2015 is an evaluation version.

Just want to know all the possible ways to add external users to my SFB2015 test domain.

Hi

Has anyone found any guidance or articles on TLS support for Lync 2013?

We are trying to disable TLS1.0 on our edge servers (SSLv3 is already disabled) but I can't get it to work. We are running SQL2012 express SP3 CU1 locally on the edge server which should support TLS1.2 but when I have tried disabling TLS1.0 in the registry the Lync 2013 services fail to start and complain about connectivity issues to SQL.

This is the error I see in the Lync edge server logs:

I have two subnets all the sudden can not call voicemail. they get the emails and they get the Lync Client shows the voicemails but the phone (CX 600 4.0.7577.4455) can not call. I have pulled the logs and it looks like DHCP is an issue I got this when I ran DHCPUtil.exe -emulateclient

C:\Windows\system32>DHCPUtil.exe -EmulateClient
Starting Discovery ...
Sending Packet (Size: 280, Network Adapter: 10.10.10.14, Attempt Type: Broadcast
 only)
--Begin Packet--
DHCP: INFORM                (xid=B04AC82D)
DHCP: Op Code           (op)      = 1
DHCP: Hardware Type     (htype)   = 6
DHCP: Hops              (hops)    = 0
DHCP: Transaction ID    (xid)     = 2957690925
DHCP: Seconds           (secs)    = 0
DHCP: Flags             (flags)   = 0000
DHCP: Client IP Address (ciaddr)  = 10.10.10.14
DHCP: Your IP Address   (yiaddr)  = 0.0.0.0
DHCP: Server IP Address (siaddr)  = 0.0.0.0
DHCP: Relay IP Address  (giaddr)  = 0.0.0.0
DHCP: Client HW Address (chaddr)  = 000C29289146
DHCP: Server Host Name  (sname)   =
DHCP: Boot File Name    (file)    =
DHCP: Magic Cookie                = 99.130.83.99
DHCP: Option Field
    DHCP: DHCP MESSAGE TYPE(  53) = (Length: 1) DHCP INFORM
    DHCP: Server Identifier(  54) = (Length: 0) 0.0.0.0
    DHCP: Client Identifier(  61) = (Length: 7) ? (01000C29289146)
    DHCP: SIP Server( 120)        = (Length: 0) enc:0  ()
    DHCP: Host Name(  12)         = (Length: 5) DOCO1
    DHCP: Vendor Identifier(  60) = (Length: 12) MS-UC-Client
    DHCP: Param Req List(  55)    = (Length: 2) 120 43
    DHCP: Vendor Info(  43)       = (Length: 0)  ()
    DHCP: End of this option field
--End Packet--


Result: Failure =  1

C:\Windows\system32>

Any Ideas?

Hi, 

There are a lot of papers and info on the setup of snooper and actually capturing data etc but I cannot see anything that has an explanation of the actual Snooper messages output - line by line.

For example - when viewing the messages section of a capture in Snooper there is a list of info on the right - What does this all mean. I understand some but a full in depth explanation of each and every possible output would be much better than the 1000's of explanations of how to set up and capture logs which is pretty basic after someone explains briefly.

I am talking about the following dark Blue highlighted output 

Instance-id:

Direction:

Peer:

start line:

Instance:Contact 

Via

Record-Route

and also ALL the output you will see in a error line (highlighted red)

etc etc

Please can someone help!! I feel I have wasted a whole day here looking into this and would love to take something home to go through tonight to save the day.

Thanks very much

Tom

Thomas Anderson

Hi!

I have encountered a problem with my possibilities to join Skype for Business meetings.

As I don't have a Skype for Business Client installed, I need to participate via webinterfaceaccess, but the pluginSkypeForBusinessPlugin.msi never downloads.

I have checked that the domain is trusted as well as activex are allowed to be installed and that IE asks for an acceptance prior to installation.

I always end up in the meeting without any sound or microphone and I believe that this depends on the missing plugin.

Is there any link to download this plugin to manually force an installation to gain the right rights?

Looking forward to all kind of reply that will help to solve my issue.

Regards
//Peter

Is it possible in Lync Server 2013 to assign contacts to all users?

What I'd like to be able to do is have the groups sorted by department (Seniors, Juniors, etc.), and have all of the users be able to contact each other - without having to go through and add the person themselves.

Thanks for the help!

computerdude100

Hello everyone,

I recently started at this company that has a odd issue.  I will get to that but here is the topology

All users are in pool2 Enterprise pool consisting of 3 servers

There is a pool 3 which is DR no users on it.

There is a edge pool 2 that has federation enabled

there is a Edge pool 3 at DR which also has federation enabled

there is also a 2010 Pool with no users and a 2010 edge which also has federation enabled......

Federation route is to pool 2 edge

all users have edge 2 as their Dedicated edge

Edge 2 next hop is Pool 2...

OK now for the fun part.  We have open federation and Presence IM and Voice seem to have no issues.

HOWEVER Screen Sharing seems to be random Somtime I can share out and sometime Federations can share in, then with no reason I can not share out or they can not share in or neither of us can share.  I see in my reporting server 25; reason="A federated call failed to establish due to a media connectivity
failure where both endpoints are internal"; UserType="Callee";
MediaType="application-sharing";

I am having the FW team double and triple check the ports are all open as they should be but does anyone think it COULD be the fact that all 3 Edge pools DR / Primary and old 2010 all have federation enabled?

_sipfederationtls._tcp.company.com  only has the one record for edge pool 2

I have a feeling that inbound is always useing edge 2 but due to the federation being enabled on all edge pools that outbound COULD be going out any of them thus breaking 443 for screen share?

thoughts?

Hi All,

Just want to ask how to configure the Mobility function of Lync 2013, I'm very new to this so please bear with me.

My client has a coexistence setup of Lync 2013 and Lync 2010 :

1.)Lync 2010 Frontend4.)Lync 2013 Frontend

2.)Lync 2010 Archiving5.)Lync 2013 Archiving

3.)Lync 2010 Edge6.)Lync 2013 Edge

Actually we're not using the Lync 2013 edge since they want to use the Lync 2010 Edge. The problem here is that Lync 2013 users cannot connect using Lync mobile but 2010 users can even the Topology of Lync 2013 Pool is pointed to Lync 2010 Edge. 

I try to reconfigure the Certificates in Lync 2010 Frontend and Edge and put the FQDN of Lync 2013 on SAN's but still no luck. I also try to put different External Web URL for Lync 2013 but I don't know what will I do next? The Public IP is pointing to port 80,443 and 5061 of Lync 2010 Frontend Server and NAT is pointed to SIP.domain.com.

They're using Firewall which capable of providing Reverse Proxy. Any suggestions or solutions will help.

Thank you,

Ken

We have a backend of Lync 2013 but a lot of our clients run Skype for Business 2016. When users try to present a PowerPoint document in a meeting, it just says Loading.... but never loads. Its not Lync or the WAC server. This used to work and I think the problem is the Office upgrade from 2013 to 2016 which upgraded PowerPoint to 2016.

Wondering if someone that is running Office 2016 with PowerPoint 2016 installed can check and validate the Registry key below:

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\TypeLib\{91493440-5A91-11CF-8700-00AA0060263B}\2.c]
"PrimaryInteropAssemblyName"="Microsoft.Office.Interop.PowerPoint, Version=15.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71E9BCE111E9429C"

I definitely think its something in this key that broke this. If I remove the key completely, I can't present the PowerPoint file without an error. You can see the Version about is not right and refers I think to Office 2013.