If you have any specific questions about anything Lync related, you can ask them here by clicking on the Ask A Question link below. The questions and answers will be posted back to this page for the benefit of other campus Lync users.
Question: I need to have a phone number configured so that I can schedule conference calls... Who do I contact?
Answer: The designers of Lync require that a phone number, or phone extension, be setup as a Lync attribute before you can setup a dialin conferencing pin that enables you to create and be the presenter of an Lync telephone conference. This attribute is normally automatically setup based on your work phone number in Active Directory. Due to various factors, this doesn't always get created via the automatic process. In these cases you should open a Service Now ticket to have the problem addressed.
Question: How do I add a new contact?
Answer: Adding someone to your Lync contact list is very straightforward. First, if you know the person's name or Lync sign on ID type it into the Lync search box.
The user(s) matched will show up beneath the search box. As you type each letter, the search is refined to match only those letters typed. After the desired user is found, place your mouse pointer over the user and rt-click to bring up an options menu. From there highlight the Add to Contacts List option.
This will bring up a fly-out menu with all the groups you currently have in your Lync contact list. Clilck the group you want and the user will be added to it. The following shows that the user I. M. Tester has been added to the FAQ Users group.
Question: I have forgotten my password for Lync. How do I reset it?
Answer: The great thing about Lync is that it has no special password, and therefore it never needs to be reset. Lync uses your LinkBlue ID and Password for logging in. If you can login to Active Directory with your LinkBlue ID, you can login to Lync.
Question: How do I remove people from my contacts list?
Answer: The Lync client provides this functionality through a right-click popup menu. Simply select the contact or contacts (you can multi-select contacts by holding down the crtl or shift key) by clicking on it/them, right-click to bring up the popup menu, locate the Remove from Contacts List option and click it.
This will bring up a confirmation dialog box asking you to confirm that you wanted to remove the contact(s) from your list. Just click Yes and the selected contacts will be removed.
Question: I have my status set to show me as away after I have been inactive for 5 minutes, but my status will not change unless I manually change it.
Answer: The Lync client by default sets a person's status to Inactive after 5 minutes and to Away after 10 minutes. If you want it to show you as Away after 5 minutes, set the away timer from 10 to 5 minutes.
Any keyboard or mouse activity during this time will reset the inactivity timer and your presence will remain as Available.
Sometimes Lync will exhibit the behavior of not automatically setting presence information when presence has been set manually. If your presence is set manually Lync interprets that as the setting you really want to show up so it will not automatically change it for you as expected. To get back to having Lync automatically set your presence for you based on activity, then you need to go into the presence list and select Reset Status.
Question: How do I load a picture?
Answer: Loading a picture can be challenging. Please see the detailed instructions on how this is accomplished that is contained on this Wiki site here.
Question: How do I add status text such as 'on a call' or 'in a meeting'? How do I personalize a change in locations such as 'working from home' or ' home office'?
Answer: Both of these are very easy to do, but lets deal with the second question first, how to set/change your location in Lync.
You will notice under your presence indicator text on the main Lync screen another line of text that says Set Your Location. Click on Set Your Location and it will turn into a text entry box where you can enter what you want you location information to say, such as Working from home as in the screen shots below. You can click this text any time you want to change it.
Managing your changing status is much easier, and automated, since it relies on the integration built into Lync to access your personal Microsoft Outlook calendar. This is easily setup from the Lync options menu by clicking the down-arrow next to the options gear and clicking the options menu item under the tools menu.
From there select the Personal tab and find the Personal Information Manager section. Make sure you select "Microsoft Exchange or Microsoft Outlook" in the drop down list and that you check the box Update my presence based on my calendar information. After saving this Lync will be integrated with your Outlook calendar and when it sees you are in a meeting that is set to show you as busy, your contacts will see your presence change to 'in a meeting'.
Any time you make a Lync call, or if you have a Lync telephone handset your presence will show you as "in a call'. We are working on ways to integrate other campus telephone systems into the Lync presence model so they will also show your presence in Lync as 'in a call'.
Question: Some of my contacts are listed Last Name, First Name and some are listed First Name, Last Name. Is there a way to standardize the listing so it will be easier/quicker to find the name of the parson I'm looking for?
Answer: This behavior can happen when you choose to list your contacts by name instead of email addresses. Most Lync contacts are listed based on the display name field in Active Directory. This field is always "Last Name, First Name". What you are experiencing happens when you have Lync contacts that are also listed in your Outlook contact list. Lync will merge information from the two sources when presenting the contact in your Lync contact list. In doing so it chooses to use the customized name from your Outlook contact list. This leaves you two options to get standardized contact naming:
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If you want all the names to be "Last Name, First Name" you will need to go back into your Outlook contact list and change all the names accordingly.
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If you want all the names to be "First Name, Last Name" then each contact you add to your Lync contact list will also have to be added to your Outlook contact list and named accordingly.
Question: How do I configure Lync for use off campus?
Answer: For a Windows computer Lync requires no special configuration an does not require VPN access. When the Windows Lync client starts, it automatically figures out how to get connected back to campus and will then bring up the Lync Sign in screen.
The Mac Lync client cannot automatically get connected and does require manual configuration. After starting the Lync for Mac client, at the bottom of the Sign in screen, click the Advanced button. In the menu that comes up, click the Manual configuration radio button. In the text box for External Server Name: enter the following: ocsedge.uky.edu:443 and make sure that the connect using: radio button is set to TLS then click Ok and sign in.
Question: Today when I tried to sign in to Lync on my PC I could not get logged in, but all my co-workers got logged on successfully. I tried going in through the Communicator Web Access in my browser and that worked fine. What is the problem with my Lync client?
Answer: While there could be several potential things that could be going on that could cause a failure on loggin in, what usually has happened in a case like this where you can not login via the client but can successfully login through the Communicator Web Access client is that for whatever reason the time on your PC has drifted far enough off from Active Directory to affect successfully logging into Lync. To remedy this, synchronize your PC's time with an Internet time source or you can use the University of Kentucky campus time server, time.uky.edu.
Question: It seems that since we've migrated from OCS 2007 R2 to Lync 2010 that my file transfers via the Lync IM client are noticably slower than they were under OCS, is that true or is it my imagination?
Answer: It's not your imagination there has indeed been a change in Lync 2010 that affects file transfer speeds compared with the OCS 2007 R2 client. During development of Lync Server 2010 a great deal of the work centered around improving service reliability and quality. With this in mind, Microsoft built in various safeguards to prevent any one Lync feature or component (e.g. file transfers) from completely saturating the available bandwidth of a given network. The Lync client has built-in quality control logic for monitoring available network bandwidth and ranking certain Lync services by priority. Based on this built-in logic the Lync client dynamically adjusts bandwidth consumption to guarantee service quality.
Question:
How do you setup a new group in Lync?
Answer: The way to setup a new group in Lync is to position your mouse cursor over an existing group within Lync, such as Frequent Contacts or Other Contacts, right-click and you will get the following popup menu:
Click the Create New Group option and give your new group the name you want. Then you can drag and drop contacts into it as you see fit. Also, a contact can be in more than one group if it makes sense to do so.
Question: Upon first downloading and starting Lync what should be used as username and password? My LinkBlue username and password do not work.
Answer: There are three pieces to the Lync Sign-in process, your Lync sign-in address, your username and password. If the Lync sign-in address is incorrect, it can appear that your LinkBlue username and password do not work. When signing into Lync, your Lync sign-in address is always your LinkBlue address with @uky.edu appended, the username is always Active Directory Domain\LinkBlue address and lastly your LinkBlue password. For example, if user John Doe has a LinkBlue account name of jdoe01 and his account is in the AD Active Directory domain then this is what his Lync login would look like:
Question: What, if any, other IM clients will Lync work with (Yahoo, Microsoft Live Messenger, etc.)?
Answer: Our Lync environment is federated with all major Public Internet Connectivity (PIC) providers: AIM/AOL, Windows Live/MSN Messenger, Yahoo! and gmail chat. Adding these federated users to your contact list is done in the same manner as adding other Lync federated partners (see Federation Partners) in that you have to know the user's exact contact address in order to be able to get presence and send them instant messages. The contact addresses could be something like these sample addresses:
username@msn.com
username@hotmail.com
username@gmail.com
username@aol.com
username@yahoo.com
Naturally, the user of the PIC provider would have to be setup on that end for doing instant messaging. Once you have them added to your llist, you should be able to see their presence and send them messages. These clients can only do basic instant messaging and presence, theh cannot do voice calls, webcam video nor desktop sharing at this time.
Question:
What is the maximum number of participants in a group meeting?
Answer: The maximum number of participants allowed by default in a Lync meeting is 250.
Question: Our environment is primarily Windows XP and Office 2007. Should we be able to use Lync without significant issues, or should we stay with OCS R2 until we move to Office 2010?
Answer: First of all, there are no issues in running Lync with Windows XP and Office 2007. The updated presence features of Office 2010 will not be available, but it will not hamper the Lync 2010 environment in any way. Secondly, with the move to Lync 2010 the OCS 2007 R2 environment will be phased out and by the end of January 2011 all University of Kentucky users will be migrated to the Lync server and be required to run the Lync 2010 client.
Question:
I am using iDialogPro which is a Lync application for iPhone, it requests license code for communicator web access server. Could you please let me know the license code?
Answer: There are two different iDialog applications, iDialog and iDialogPro. The former, iDialog, is a $9.99 download from iTunes store, but it is then licensed for your use and you can connect to the UK CWA server and it will work fine. The latter, iDialogPro, is a free download from the iTunes store, however it is freely downloadable because it is designed for enterprises that purchase bulk licenses and it is enabled via an enterprise license key. UK does not have this enterprise license so if you want to use iDialog on your iPhone to have Lync connectivity, you will need to purchase the $9.99 iDialog version from the iTunes App store.